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     5 

     6                              Narrativism: Story Now

     7 

     8    by Ron Edwards <[8]sorcerer@sorcerer-rpg.com>

     9    Copyright 2003 Adept Press

    10 

    11    Acknowledgments are due to Mike Holmes, Ralph Mazza, Christopher Kubasik,

    12    Jesse Burneko, Paul Czege, Clinton R. Nixon, Vincent Baker, Seth Ben-Ezra,

    13    M. J. Young, Chris Chinn, Pete Darby, Gordon C. Landis, Walt Freitag, and

    14    Matt Snyder for comments on the first draft of this essay. All mistakes or

    15    misattributions should be considered my responsibility.

    16 

    17    This is the third of three essays building upon the topics addressed in

    18    "GNS and other matters of role-playing theory"

    19    ([9]http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/1/). The previous two essays were

    20    "Simulationism: The Right to Dream"

    21    ([10]http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/15/), and "Gamism: Step On Up"

    22    ([11]http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/21/). This series' purposes are to

    23    clarify the original essay and to develop and incorporate insights from

    24    discussions at the Forge.

    25 

    26    This one is about Narrativist play, which is simultaneously the least and

    27    most problematic of the Creative Agendas I've described. It's incredibly

    28    easy in application, and the most difficult for discussion. I think that

    29    this difficulty lies mainly in some of the peculiarities of

    30    role-player/gamer culture, entrenched in the history of the hobby, rather

    31    than any particular logical or cognitive hitches in the mode of play

    32    itself.

    33 

    34    In the first two essays, I began presenting an overall model of

    35    role-playing, but piecemeal and in stumbling verbal form. As of this

    36    writing, I've finished that model, and it is included here as well. It's a

    37    bit out of place, being more of a capstone or umbrella to the three essays

    38    rather than an intrinsic piece of the Narrativist one. More complete

    39    discussions about it may also be found in "The whole model - this is it"

    40    ([12]http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=8655).

    41 

    42 History of the term

    43 

    44    The Threefold Model for role-playing included the term Dramatism, as

    45    presented by John Kim at his Threefold Model

    46    ([13]http://www.darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/theory/) webpage. When I learned

    47    about the Threefold, I'd already been thinking about stuff I'd later call

    48    Currency and also about Jonathan Tweet's discussion of resolution

    49    presented in Everway. The basic notion of the Threefold impressed me: it

    50    was time to talk about goals and priorities independently of everything

    51    else, then to see whether everything else flowed to and from them. This

    52    was at the time that Sorcerer was making its small way into commerce, so

    53    the mailing list was the place for our first discussions; most of them are

    54    archived at the Sorcerer website ([14]http://www.sorcerer-rpg.com).

    55 

    56    At this point, since "Drama" as a resolution category in Tweet's schema

    57    and "Dramatism" as a goals-category in the Threefold referred to two

    58    different things, I decided that the names were confusing. Going by which

    59    set of ideas was first presented (Tweet's), I changed Dramatism to

    60    Narrativism. This terminological change was limited to discussions on the

    61    Sorcerer mailing list and later at the Gaming Outpost.

    62 

    63    However, our use of the terms and ideas on the Sorcerer mailing list took

    64    on its own character almost immediately, such that in my first essay

    65    "System Does Matter" ([15]http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/11/), "story"

    66    was already its own distinct, process-oriented term.

    67 

    68    The biggest change in my thinking about role-playing is represented in the

    69    essay "GNS and other matters of role-playing theory"

    70    ([16]http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/1/), in which the concept of

    71    Exploration becomes the underlying foundation for the three modes or goals

    72    of play. This new picture was startling: (1) potential story elements were

    73    now considered present for all three modes play, and (2)Narrativism now

    74    appeared to be a mirror image or twin sibling of Gamism, counter to older

    75    impressions shared by me and anyone else who ever wrote about role-playing

    76    that Gamism was the odd man out.

    77 

    78    I've tried to emphasize this new outlook throughout these three supportive

    79    essays. Whereas I think most people think of Gamism with (or synonymous

    80    with) its Hard Core variant over in one ballpark, with Simulationism

    81    containing an internal "story" variant in another ballpark, my concepts

    82    are radically different. I hope to make this picture, and its

    83    implications, entirely clear in this essay.

    84 

    85 The foundation: Exploration and more

    86 

    87    Here's the big ol' model for role-playing that the previous two essays

    88    sort of fumbled at. Notice that "rules" are absent; I now consider "rules"

    89    simply to mean text, which may be about anything you find in the model.

    90    The brackets are very important: if B relates to A as [A[B]], then B is

    91    considered a part, application, version, or expression of A.

    92 

    93    [Social Contract]. Social Contract encompasses everything else about

    94    role-playing. If these people happen to be role-playing together, then

    95    Social Contract crucially includes "Let's play this game." This crucial

    96    element is what's further subdivided throughout the rest of this model.

    97 

    98    [Social Contract [Exploration]]. Exploration means "shared imaginings."

    99    The sharing has to be explicit and agreed upon, usually through the spoken

   100    word although any form of communication counts. The imaginings have to be

   101    the subject that is shared, which is why me reading aloud to my wife does

   102    not constitute Exploration. We are independently imagining based on the

   103    spoken word, but neither she nor I is telling the other what we imagine

   104    from that point. Exploration means that such communication is occurring.

   105 

   106    The five elements of Exploration are interdependent: Character + Setting

   107    make Situation, System permits Situation to "move," and Color affects all

   108    the others. This concept applies only to the imaginary causes among the

   109    elements; the real people's actual priority or cause among these things,

   110    in social and creative terms, varies widely. See my essay "GNS and other

   111    matters of role-playing theory"

   112    ([17]http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/1/) for more about these elements.

   113 

   114    [Social Contract [Exploration [Creative Agenda]]]. Creative Agenda is the

   115    blanket term for people's demonstrated goals and desired feedback during

   116    play. In the past, I called it "GNS." Since all of this is enclosed in

   117    Social Contract, GNS-stuff is not only "what I want" but also "what I want

   118    from role-playing with this group of people." Since Exploration

   119    necessarily includes System, that means, as soon as we start talking about

   120    Creative Agenda, real play has begun.

   121 

   122    On paper, I draw this term as an arrow, because this "step" or "level" in

   123    my model shifts out of the abstract and solidly into this group, playing

   124    this game, this way, at this time. The model instantly ceases to be a

   125    broad overview and becomes a diagnostic or description of a real

   126    play-experience among real people. Unless you are thinking of such a case,

   127    you will be left flailing at this point in the discussion.

   128 

   129    [Social Contract [Exploration [Creative Agenda --> [Techniques]]]]. The

   130    panoply of Techniques being employed over time either satisfy or fail to

   131    satisfy one or more Creative Agendas. Techniques include IIEE,

   132    Drama/Karma/Fortune, search time & handling time, narration apportioning,

   133    reward system, points of contact, character components, scene framing,

   134    currency among the character components, and much more. Each of these

   135    terms represents a range of potential play-methods. I consider the two

   136    most important Techniques to be reward system and IIEE (see glossary).

   137 

   138    Techniques may be thought of as directly expressing the more abstract

   139    concept of System (way up in Exploration), except that System doesn't

   140    exist all by itself - it's fully integrated with the other components of

   141    Exploration. But if you keep that in mind, then yes, the arrow represented

   142    by Creative Agenda can indeed be "shot" from the bow of System.

   143 

   144    Techniques do not map 1:1 to Creative Agenda, but combinations of

   145    Techniques do support or obstruct Creative Agendas.

   146 

   147    [Social Contract [Exploration [Creative Agenda --> [Techniques

   148    [Ephemera]]]]]. Ephemera refers to the smallest-scale interactions and

   149    activities of role-playing: anything that gets factored into or is

   150    expressed by play in the space of a few seconds. As with every level/box

   151    so far, fairly extensive combinations of Ephemera express or apply to one

   152    or more Techniques. They are the internal anatomy, if you will, of

   153    Techniques and hence (conceptualizing upward) of System.

   154 

   155    Ephemera include individual Stances, in-character vs. out-of-character

   156    diction and dialogue, referring to texts, sound effects, taking or

   157    referring to notes, kibitzing, laughing, praise or disapproval, showing

   158    pictures, and anything similar.

   159 

   160    Understanding any Creative Agenda, in this case Narrativism, means

   161    examining its potential roles and expressions in the whole model.

   162    Narrativism's little code phrase for that purpose is "Story Now."

   163 

   164   Story

   165 

   166    Long ago, I concluded that "story" as a role-playing term was standing in

   167    for several different processes and goals, some of which were

   168    incompatible. Here's the terms-breakdown I'll be using from now on.

   169 

   170    All role-playing necessarily produces a sequence of imaginary events. Go

   171    ahead and role-play, and write down what happened to the characters, where

   172    they went, and what they did. I'll call that event-summary the

   173    "transcript." But some transcripts have, as Pooh might put it, a "little

   174    something," specifically a theme: a judgmental point, perceivable as a

   175    certain charge they generate for the listener or reader. If a transcript

   176    has one (or rather, if it does that), I'll call it a story.

   177 

   178    Let's say that the following transcript, which also happens to be a story,

   179    arose from one or more sessions of role-playing.

   180 

   181    Lord Gyrax rules over a realm in which a big dragon has begun to ravage

   182    the countryside. The lord prepares himself to deal with it, perhaps trying

   183    to settle some internal strife among his followers or allies. He also

   184    meets this beautiful, mysterious woman named Javenne who aids him at

   185    times, and they develop a romance. Then he learns that she and the dragon

   186    are one and the same, as she's been cursed to become a dragon periodically

   187    in a kind of Ladyhawke situation, and he must decide whether to kill her.

   188    Meanwhile, she struggles to control the curse, using her dragon-powers to

   189    quell an uprising in the realm led by a traitorous ally. Eventually he

   190    goes to the Underworld instead and confronts the god who cursed her, and

   191    trades his youth to the god to lift the curse. He returns, and the curse

   192    is detached from her, but still rampaging around as a dragon. So they slay

   193    the dragon together, and return as a couple, still united although he's

   194    now all old, to his home.

   195 

   196    The real question: after reading the transcript and recognizing it as a

   197    story, what can be said about the Creative Agenda that was involved during

   198    the role-playing? The answer is, absolutely nothing. We don't know whether

   199    people played it Gamist, Simulationist, or Narrativist, or any combination

   200    of the three. A story can be produced through any Creative Agenda. The

   201    mere presence of story as the product of role-playing is not a GNS-based

   202    issue.

   203 

   204 Story Now

   205 

   206    Story Now requires that at least one engaging issue or problematic feature

   207    of human existence be addressed in the process of role-playing. "Address"

   208    means:

   209 

   210      * Establishing the issue's Explorative expressions in the game-world,

   211        "fixing" them into imaginary place.

   212 

   213      * Developing the issue as a source of continued conflict, perhaps

   214        changing any number of things about it, such as which side is being

   215        taken by a given character, or providing more depth to why the

   216        antagonistic side of the issue exists at all.

   217 

   218      * Resolving the issue through the decisions of the players of the

   219        protagonists, as well as various features and constraints of the

   220        circumstances.

   221 

   222    Can it really be that easy? Yes, Narrativism is that easy. The Now refers

   223    to the people, during actual play, focusing their imagination to create

   224    those emotional moments of decision-making and action, and paying

   225    attention to one another as they do it. To do that, they relate to "the

   226    story" very much as authors do for novels, as playwrights do for plays,

   227    and screenwriters do for film at the creative moment or moments. Think of

   228    the Now as meaning, "in the moment," or "engaged in doing it," in terms of

   229    input and emotional feedback among one another. The Now also means "get to

   230    it," in which "it" refers to any Explorative element or combination of

   231    elements that increases the enjoyment of that issue I'm talking about.

   232 

   233    There cannot be any "the story" during Narrativist play, because to have

   234    such a thing (fixed plot or pre-agreed theme) is to remove the whole

   235    point: the creative moments of addressing the issue(s). Story Now has a

   236    great deal in common with Step On Up, particularly in the social

   237    expectation to contribute, but in this case the real people's attention is

   238    directed toward one another's insights toward the issue, rather than

   239    toward strategy and guts.

   240 

   241 Say it yourself

   242 

   243    I receive a lot of emails like this one from Landon Darkwood:

   244 

   245    I think I may have had a revelation.

   246 

   247    ... In your Simulationism essay, you have this: "'Story,' in this context,

   248    refers to the sequence of events that provide a payoff in terms of

   249    recognizing and enjoying the genre during play."

   250 

   251    Is this the key to distinguishing the [Narrativist vs. Simulationist] play

   252    modes? My intepretation of this statement is that in Simulationist gaming,

   253    a long and complex story might come about and be part of play, but only

   254    for the express purpose of bringing about all the appropriate genre

   255    elements in the game as part of the internal consistency of the Dream.

   256    i.e., a Sim game Colored with elements from Chinese wuxia movies might

   257    have a multilayered story involving class conflict, people being trapped

   258    by their social position, repressed romance, heavy action, a sorcerer and

   259    his eunuch henchmen - but these are all trappings of the genre. So, their

   260    inclusion in the game, part and parcel as they are to the Dream, isn't

   261    Narrativist because no one is creating a theme that isn't already there.

   262    In other words, it's just played out as the Situation part of the

   263    Exploration; because the Dream calls for it, there just so happens to be a

   264    kind of intricacy involved.

   265 

   266    In Narrativism, by contrast, the major source of themes are the ones that

   267    are brought to the table by the players / GM (if there is one) regardless

   268    of the genre or setting used. So, to sum up, themes in Nar play are

   269    created by the participants and that's the point; themes in Sim play are

   270    already present in the Dream, reinforced by the play, and kind of a

   271    by-product.

   272 

   273    Am I on this now?

   274 

   275    "In a word," I replied, "Yes."

   276 

   277    Narrativism has a single definition, but it's difficult to articulate for

   278    people grappling with muddled RPG terminology. As far as I was concerned,

   279    not only had I presented what Landon said in "GNS and other matters of

   280    role-playing theory" ([18]http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/1/), I'd

   281    repeated it dozens of times in forum discussions. In fact, I'd said it in

   282    the message to Landon that immediately preceded this reply. But he had to

   283    say it himself, with his own use of words like "just" and "genre." I am

   284    now convinced, after many such exchanges, that an "experienced"

   285    role-player comes to this conclusion only by working it out in his or her

   286    own terms and examples.

   287 

   288   Premise

   289 

   290    How is this done, actually, in play? It relies on the concept of something

   291    called Premise and its relationship to an emergent theme.

   292 

   293    I already snuck Premise past you: it's that "problematic issue" I

   294    mentioned. I've taken the term from The Art of Dramatic Writing by Lajos

   295    Egri. In reading what follows, bear in mind that he is discussing the

   296    process of writing, not an existing playscript or a performance:

   297 

   298    ... every good premise is composed of three parts, each of which is

   299    essential to a good play. Let us examine "frugality equals waste." The

   300    first part of this premise suggest character - a frugal character. The

   301    second part, "leads to," suggests conflict, and the third part, "waste,"

   302    suggests the end of the play. ...

   303 

   304    A good premise is a thumbnail synopsis of your play. [examples follow,

   305    including "Egotism leads to loss of friends." - RE]

   306 

   307    ... What is wrong, then? What is missing?

   308 

   309    The author's conviction is missing. Until he takes sides, there is no

   310    play. Does egotism lead to loss of friends? Which side will you take? We,

   311    the readers or spectators of your play, do not necessarily agree with your

   312    convictions. Through your play you must therefore prove to us the validity

   313    of your contention.

   314 

   315    A protagonist is not "some guy," but rather "the guy who thinks THIS, and

   316    does something accordingly when he encounters adversity." Stories are not

   317    created by running some kind of linear-cause program, but rather are

   318    brutally judgmental statements upon the THIS, as an idea or a way of

   319    being. That judgment is enacted or exemplified in the resolution of the

   320    conflict, and a conviction that is proved to us (as Egri says),constitutes

   321    theme. Even if we (the audience) disagree with it, we at least must have

   322    been moved to do so at an emotional level.

   323 

   324    I think that any reliable means of story-writing, in any medium, conforms

   325    to Egri's principles. They may seem simplistic: the burning passion of the

   326    protagonist directly expresses a burning passion of the author's, who uses

   327    the plot as a polemic to demonstrate it. However, "Why Johnny shouldn't

   328    smoke dope" is only the starting point. More nuanced, ambiguous, and

   329    insightful applications arise insofar as more nuanced, ambiguous, and

   330    insightful authors and audiences are involved.

   331 

   332    I said earlier that any role-playing can produce a story, and that's so.

   333    But Narrativist role-playing is defined by the people involved placing

   334    their direct creative attention toward Premise and toward birthing its

   335    child, theme. It sounds simple, and in many ways it is. The real variable

   336    is the emotional connection that everyone at the table makes when a

   337    player-character does something. If that emotional connection is

   338    identifiable as a Premise, and if that connection is nurtured and

   339    developed through the real-people interactions, then Narrativist play is

   340    under way. Some nuances:

   341 

   342      * "Character does something" can mean foreshadowing, flashback, and

   343        anything in between. It can mean the character is just thinkin' about

   344        it, or it can mean the character flat-out does it. As long as the

   345        fictional character is brought into the perceptions and possible

   346        emotional responses of the other people at the table, then it counts.

   347 

   348      * It doesn't matter whether the character fictionally "meant" to do the

   349        action, premeditated it, or acted on-the-spot.

   350 

   351      * In stories (unlike real life), the character's immediate environment

   352        is kind of a weird sidekick, who sometimes acts in the character's

   353        favor and sometimes against him or her. "Character does something"

   354        often includes this sidekick's behavior.

   355 

   356      * "Identifiable" means assessing how the players treat one another

   357        during the process, socially.

   358 

   359    From my essay "GNS and related matters of role-playing theory"

   360    ([19]http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/1/):

   361 

   362    Narrativist Premises focus on producing Theme via events during play.

   363    Theme is defined as a value-judgment or point that may be inferred from

   364    the in-game events. My thoughts on Narrativist Premise are derived from

   365    the book The Art of Dramatic Writing by Lajos Egri, specifically his

   366    emphasis on the questions that arise from human conundrums and passions of

   367    all sorts.

   368 

   369      * Is the life of a friend worth the safety of a community?

   370 

   371      * Does love and marriage override one's loyalty to a political cause?

   372 

   373      * And many, many more - the full range of literature, myth, and stories

   374        of all sorts.

   375 

   376    Narrativist Premises vary regarding their origins: character-driven

   377    Premise vs. setting-driven Premise, for instance. They also vary a great

   378    deal in terms of unpredictable "shifts" of events during play. The key to

   379    Narrativist Premises is that they are moral or ethical questions that

   380    engage the players' interest. The "answer" to this Premise (Theme) is

   381    produced via play and the decisions of the participants, not by

   382    pre-planning.

   383 

   384      * A possible Narrativist development of the "vampire" initial Premise,

   385        with a strong character emphasis, might be, Is it right to sustain

   386        one's immortality by killing others? When might the justification

   387        break down?

   388 

   389      * Another, with a strong setting emphasis, might be, Vampires are

   390        divided between ruthlessly exploiting and lovingly nurturing living

   391        people, and which side are you on?

   392 

   393    I'm still saying the same thing. But now, I've returned to my earlier

   394    usage; it's the only meaning for the term "Premise" in my model.

   395 

   396    That bit about moral and ethical content is merely one of those

   397    personalized clincher-phrasings that some people find helpful. It helps to

   398    distinguish a Premise from "my guy fought a dragon, so that's a conflict,

   399    so that's a Premise" thinking. However, if these terms bug you, then say,

   400    "problematic human issue" instead.

   401 

   402    Egri presents his Premises as flat statements, and I state them as

   403    questions. Using the question form isn't changing anything about what Egri

   404    is saying. Premise must pose a question to the real people, creator and

   405    audience alike. The fictional character's belief in something like

   406    "Freedom is worth any price" is already an implicit question: "Is it

   407    really? Even when [insert Situation]?" Otherwise it will fail to engage

   408    anyone.

   409 

   410    Egri's statement-construction is very useful for the single author faced

   411    with a blank sheet of paper, with the goal at hand being a finished

   412    script. The audience will see the play, not the process of creation.

   413    However, in the role-playing medium, not only are there multiple authors,

   414    but the audience is also composed of these same authors, and their

   415    appreciation of the material occurs simultaneously with the significant

   416    creative decisions. Therefore, the Premise's imaginary resolution is up

   417    for grabs among the group in role-playing, just as it is up for grabs

   418    within the author's own head before the play reaches final draft. In the

   419    latter case, the jump to "the point" is swift and hopefully certain; in

   420    the former case, the new medium, it is anything but. I phrase it as a

   421    question for role-playing, to indicate that everyone involved has his or

   422    her fair crack at it as one of the authors.

   423 

   424    From Robin Laws' essay "The Literary Edge," published in Over the Edge

   425    (Atlas Games, 1992):

   426 

   427    OTE is, among other things, an attempt to further the development of

   428    role-playing as art. GMs will find it fruitful to approach decisions as an

   429    artist creating a collaborative work with players. The idea of

   430    collaboration is important: the GM is not a "storyteller" with the players

   431    as audience, but merely a "first among equals" given responsibility for

   432    the smooth progress of the developing story.

   433 

   434    ... The GM is not a movie director, able to order actors to interpret a

   435    script a given way. Instead, he should be seeking ways to challenge PCs,

   436    to use plot development to highlight aspects of their character, in hopes

   437    of being challenged in return.

   438 

   439    ... For years, role-players have been simulating fictional narratives the

   440    way wargamers recreate historical military engagements. They've been

   441    making spontaneous, democratized art for their own consumption, even if

   442    they haven't seen it in those terms. Making the artistry conscious is a

   443    liberating act, making it easier to emulate the classic tales that inspire

   444    us. Have fun with it, and enjoy your special role in aesthetic history -

   445    it's not everybody who gets to be a pioneer in the development of a new

   446    art form.

   447 

   448    Egri's Premise, meet role-playing. Oh, I can quibble ... instead of the

   449    word "conscious," I prefer "mindful," and I think that "emulate the

   450    classic tales" is a bit simplistic, but never mind. The point is, if you

   451    want a Narrativist Manifesto from one of the great minds of role-playing,

   452    then there you go.

   453 

   454    Here's a bit more about that theme business. Think of it as the conclusive

   455    "uh!" that may accompany the climax and resolution of a story. It's

   456    uttered by the playwright as he hits a certain key or scribes a certain

   457    sentence, by the audience members at a certain point as they view the

   458    play, and by role-players in both capacities during the session, often

   459    simultaneously.

   460 

   461    From the discussion of themes in the chapter "The Art of Storytelling" in

   462    Demon's Lair: the "God" Guide (Lasalion Games, 2002):

   463 

   464    The theme is the idea that you wish to explore in the story. It brings

   465    unity to the story and is explored throughout the story by the actions of

   466    the players and the main characters. Even the obstacle or conflict that

   467    forms the plot usually resonates with the theme. It is the thread that

   468    ties everything together and usually teaches the players something.

   469 

   470    Substitute Premise for theme, and theme for the "something," and that's

   471    just about right. I especially like the implied causality: (1) the actions

   472    of the players (2) teach the players something, which becomes non-circular

   473    when play actually addresses Premise. Unfortunately, few other features of

   474    Demon's Lair, including the example which follows the above text, are

   475    consistent with this point, and most are wildly at odds with it.

   476 

   477    More insights about theme are available in Chris Chinn's article "The

   478    power of myth" in Daedalus #1, in which the word "theme" may be

   479    substituted for "myth" throughout.

   480 

   481   The other way: pastiche

   482 

   483    What happens when you want a story but don't want to play with Story Now?

   484    Then the story becomes a feature of Exploration with the process of play

   485    being devoted to how to make it happen as expected. The participation of

   486    more than one person in the process is usually a matter of providing

   487    improvisational additions to be filtered through the primary

   488    story-person's judgment, or of providing extensive Color to the story.

   489    Under these circumstances, the typical result is pastiche: a story which

   490    recapitulates an already-existing story's theme, with many explicit

   491    references to that story.

   492 

   493    Is pastiche necessarily bad and evil? No. Is non-pastiche necessarily

   494    incredibly good? No.

   495 

   496    Here's a little dialogue between me and one of the first-draft readers of

   497    this essay:

   498 

   499    Jesse: Now we come to a point of personal confusion. Pastiche. I still

   500    don't get it, in any medium. If the Situation involves "...class conflict,

   501    people being trapped by their social position, repressed romance..." and

   502    the GM lets the players resolve it anyway they like, then how is that not

   503    Narrativist?

   504 

   505    Me: It is Narrativist. What you're describing is not pastiche, or more

   506    clearly, it typically does not produce pastiche. The key is the "resolve

   507    it any way they like" part.

   508 

   509    Jesse: Similarly if I'm writing a story and I make a check-list of items I

   510    feel like I "need" to include to tell the "kind of" story I want to tell,

   511    and I have a character experience and resolve those things, then how have

   512    I not written a new story?

   513 

   514    Me: You have. What you're missing is that pastiche does not do this at all

   515    - instead, it references existing works in order to re-invoke what they,

   516    originally, provided for the reader/viewer, rather than doing it on its

   517    own. Die Hard is an outstanding movie. Passenger 57 stinks on ice. Why?

   518    Because Passenger 57 is only enjoyable if it reminds you, successfully, of

   519    Die Hard. Same goes for Broken Arrow, Con Air, and a slew of similar

   520    films. [Disclosure: I do enjoy many of these films, on the basis of the

   521    "reminder" alone. - RE]

   522 

   523    And it's not a matter of "who does it first." Die Hard works because it

   524    nails its Premise, with the explosions and one-liners all being supportive

   525    of that goal. The other movies fail to provide Premise of their own,

   526    merely using the explosions and one-liners to remind you of Die Hard, and

   527    by (putative) extension, tapping into Die Hard's Premise through

   528    association alone.

   529 

   530    Jesse: I guess I'm having trouble resolving a couple of things. Either I

   531    can't imagine the items listed above being included in the absence of

   532    Premise or I'm too stuck on the idea that there's nothing new under the

   533    sun. I mean how many romantic comedies are written off the premise, "true

   534    love can only be found by putting aside petty differences." Are you saying

   535    that 90% of romantic comedies are just pastiche? And if you are saying

   536    that, then aren't you putting kind of a tall order up if for something to

   537    be Narrativist it has to say something totally unique that no one has ever

   538    said before?

   539 

   540    Huh, I just noticed that I did shift focus from repetition of elements

   541    that express a Premise to repetition of Premise itself, so maybe that has

   542    something to do with my confusion.

   543 

   544    Me: Yes, it does. With any luck my text above has helped. It's not the

   545    "new-ness" of the Premise or theme, it's its presence and power in the

   546    particular story. Pastiche has no such presence or power, just reminders

   547    of them in other stories through common motifs. Many romantic comedies are

   548    indeed pastiche (some of them quite clever), but a certain number of them

   549    are not - and whether they say the same thing as, say, Gentlemen Prefer

   550    Blondes or The Devil and Miss Jones is irrelevant. The point is whether

   551    they as self-contained stories actually do say it, or anything at all.

   552 

   553    Jesse: I'm just still a little confused between Narrativism and

   554    Simulationism where the Situation has a lot of ethical/moral problems

   555    embedded in it and the GM uses no Force techniques to produce a specific

   556    outcome. I don't understand how Premise-expressing elements can be

   557    included and players not be considered addressing a Premise when they

   558    can't resolve the Situation without doing so.

   559 

   560    Me: There is no such Simulationism. You're confused between Narrativism

   561    and Narrativism, looking for a difference when there isn't any.

   562 

   563    My final point for this issue is that creating pastiche is primarily a

   564    form of fandom, pure homage to an existing body of work. Most High Concept

   565    Simulationist play gravitates toward it, and some game texts are

   566    explicitly about nothing else.

   567 

   568 Issues on the table

   569 

   570    I submit that playing in the Narrativist mode is just as intuitive and

   571    instantly understood by most people as Gamist play. Not everyone agrees.

   572 

   573   Two sources of resistance and confusion

   574 

   575    The most difficult aspect of writing this essay is the presence of two

   576    distinct problematic audiences, neither of which I realized existed when I

   577    first wrote System Does Matter ([20]http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/1).

   578    - Role-players who greatly value the story quality of their transcripts,

   579    but don't play Narrativist to make them. It's often painful for them to

   580    be, as they see it, relegated to Simulationist play (usually Exploration

   581    of Situation). "We create stories too, dammit!" - Role-players who play

   582    Narrativist already, but who think what I'm describing must be harder or

   583    more abstract than it is. Since they can identify Exploration of Character

   584    and Situation in their play preferences, they think they must be playing

   585    Simulationist. "That's Narrativist? But we do that, using a plain old

   586    well-known role-playing game - it can't be Narrativist!"

   587 

   588    The first problem these audiences pose for me is that any point, example,

   589    or clarification I make that's specific to one of them is automatically

   590    misleading for the other.

   591 

   592    The second problem is that, when I say Not Narrativist to the first, and

   593    when the second mistakenly says Not Narrativist to me, then Narrativism as

   594    a label gets misconstrued as "how Ron himself plays."

   595 

   596    I can't afford giving special consideration to these outlooks in this

   597    essay. Otherwise I'd have to write three separate essays, two of them

   598    piece-by-piece dismantling the respective bugaboos, and one "everyone else

   599    essay." I've decided to reserve the customized discussions for the on-line

   600    forums.

   601 

   602   What it ain't

   603 

   604    The following misunderstandings only arise from exposure to the

   605    role-playing subculture, as distinct from the activity. I'll have more to

   606    say about that later in the essay.

   607 

   608     1. The so-called Storyteller rules-set is not especially, nor even

   609        partly, facilitative toward Narrativist play. Furthermore, I have

   610        observed only a decided minority of White Wolf play that can be called

   611        Narrativist, usually involving considerable rules-Drift.

   612 

   613    2 (related). Adhering to published metaplot which is intended to surprise

   614    and involve players in tandem with their characters, or any similar

   615    one-hand-on-rudder for the crucial story decisions, will not facilitate

   616    Narrativist play.

   617 

   618     1. The number of textual rules involved, as well as how much the rules

   619        must be consulted during play, are irrelevant. "Narrativist? Must be

   620        rules-light!" is just one of those little humps to get over.

   621 

   622     2. Focusing on single Techniques to define Narrativism will not yield

   623        understanding. For instance, Drama resolution is not in and of itself

   624        Narrativist. Nor are the common use of improvisation, trading of

   625        narration, and overt Director stance, in and of themselves,

   626        Narrativist play.

   627 

   628     3. Issues of "consciousness" in terms of Premise are collectively a

   629        complete red herring. People daily address Premise without

   630        self-reflecting, both as audience and authors. There's no special need

   631        to say to one another, "This is the Premise" in order to be playing

   632        Narrativist. Laws' term "conscious" and my "mindful" only refer to the

   633        attention to and social reinforcement of the process - not to

   634        self-analytical or abstract discussion about the content.

   635 

   636     4. Narrativist play doesn't force a "separation" from the imaginative

   637        commitment to the role-playing. As the whole medium of Creative Agenda

   638        is Exploration, you don't have to diminish Exploration at all during

   639        Narrativist play. It is instead focused and heightened as the

   640        mechanism for addressing Premise.

   641 

   642     5. Depth and profundity of the Premise and/or theme are false variables.

   643        The key issue is whether participants care enough to produce a point,

   644        not whether the point is deep.

   645 

   646 Fundamental Techniques

   647 

   648   People's creative roles: what you do

   649 

   650    Narrativist play makes special use of the general role-playing principle

   651    that the participants are simultaneously authors and audience. The common

   652    metaphor of improvisational jazz applies quite well, better than any other

   653    medium-comparison. "Entertainment," in role-playing in general and in

   654    Narrativist play especially, does not flow from playwright to script to

   655    production team to audience. Instead, the shared-imagining act = the

   656    shared-performance act = the entertainment = the audience feedback.

   657 

   658    Role-playing texts are consistently very confusing about how conflicts and

   659    resolutions are established in play, especially in games whose mechanics

   660    and some features of their instructions suggest Narrativist play. "Prep

   661    and plan carefully! But story never goes as planned, so be ready to change

   662    and improvise!" What's that supposed to mean, from a Narrativist

   663    perspective?

   664 

   665    I grappled with this in my own work - from the chapter "Fantastic

   666    Adventure" in Sorcerer & Sword (Adept Press, 2001, author is Ron Edwards):

   667 

   668    The doctrine for Sorcerer & Sword relies ... on the following idea: -

   669    Playing this game, for all concerned, means creating stories about one or

   670    more heroic protagonists. - The player produces the protagonist's

   671    decisions and thus directly creates the story. - The GM makes it possible

   672    for such play to occur, and therefore has great power over events in the

   673    game world. However, he or she does not determine the protagonists'

   674    actions, and must fully respond to those actions when they do occur.

   675 

   676    Therefore, the GM cannot be considered "the narrator" or "the storyteller"

   677    in any way, shape, or form. Such an entity exists as the outcome of the

   678    GM-player interface and continuing creativity. His or her arbitrative role

   679    in game events, as well as most of the Director power over time and space,

   680    do remain. But the purpose of that role is inspiring and facilitating, not

   681    dictating.

   682 

   683    That text is specific to Sorcerer, so it needs expanding into what the

   684    term "GM" means in the first place, and how the answer is subordinate to

   685    Creative Agenda - and in fact, is nothing more nor less than a Techniques

   686    question for role-playing in general.

   687 

   688    I suggest that considering "the GM" to be either (a) necessarily one

   689    person or (b) a specific and universally-consistent role is badly mistaken

   690    - we are really talking about a set of potential behaviors (roles, tasks,

   691    whatever) which may be independently centralized within or distributed

   692    across a group of people. Here are some of those GM behaviors, roles, and

   693    tasks: - rules-applier and interpreter, as in "referee" - in-game-world

   694    time manager - changer of scenes - color provider - ensurer of protagonist

   695    screen time - regulator of pacing (in real time) - authority over what

   696    information can be acted upon by which characters - authority over

   697    internal plausibility - "where the buck stops" in terms of establishing

   698    the Explorative content - social manager of who gets to speak when

   699 

   700    A given role-playing experience must have these things - there is no such

   701    thing as "GM-less" play. But which of these require(s) enforcing varies

   702    greatly, as does whether they are concentrated into a particular person,

   703    and as does whether that person is openly acknowledged as such. What

   704    matters for Narrativist play, however, isn't any specific point in the

   705    diversity-matrix of these variables - it's about what the person (or

   706    persons) currently in the GM-role is responsible for.

   707 

   708    From Maelstrom (Hubris Games, 1997, author is Christian Aldridge):

   709 

   710    Narrative Tools

   711 

   712    ... The whole premise of role-playing is the freedom the players have to

   713    take their characters in whatever direction they want. It is important to

   714    maintain this free will, and not lead the players with a heavy hand down a

   715    course only the narrator controls. Though the narrator may tell a good

   716    story, it loses the rich creative spirit of role-playing if the players

   717    have little say in what happens.

   718 

   719    Putting aside the synecdoche ("the whole premise," etc), two key features

   720    show up in this passage as well as in the whole of the Maelstrom game

   721    text. (1) No mention is made whatever of seeming to grant player control -

   722    it's real freedom he's talking about. (2) The freedom is specifically over

   723    what the character thinks is right and decides to do: the goal he or she

   724    brings into the current imaginary situation. The GM ("narrator" in this

   725    case) cannot wield any authority over what the characters are supposed to

   726    want, which therefore extends to a similar lack of authority over how any

   727    conflict during play is supposed to turn out.

   728 

   729    From Christopher Kubasik's Interactive Toolkit series of essays (1995,

   730    originally published in White Wolf Inphobia #50-53):

   731 

   732    So, what are the differences between roleplaying games and Story

   733    Entertainments? Let's start with roleplaying's GM (referee, Storyteller,

   734    or whatever). This is usually the person who works out the plot, the world

   735    and everything that isn't the players'. To a greater or lesser degree, she

   736    is above the other players in importance, depending on the group's

   737    temperament. In a Story Entertainment, she is just another player.

   738    Distinctly different, but no more and no less than any other player. The

   739    terms GM and referee fail to convey this spirit of equality. The term

   740    Storyteller suggests that the players are passive listeners of her tale.

   741    So here's another term for this participant - one that invokes the spirit

   742    of Story Entertainment - Fifth Business.

   743 

   744    Fifth Business is a term that originates from European opera companies. A

   745    character from Robertson Davies' novel, ... Fifth Business, describes the

   746    term this way:

   747 

   748    "You cannot make a plot work without another man, and he is usually a

   749    baritone, and he is called in the profession Fifth Business. You must have

   750    a Fifth Business because he is the one who knows the secret of the hero's

   751    birth, or comes to the assistance of the heroine when she thinks all is

   752    lost, or keeps the hermitess in her cell, or may even be the cause of

   753    someone's death, if that is part of the plot. The prima donna and the

   754    tenor, the contralto and the basso, get all the best music and do all the

   755    spectacular things, but you cannot manage the plot without the Fifth

   756    Business!"

   757 

   758    This certainly sounds like the GM, but it also makes it clear that he's

   759    part of the show, not the show itself.

   760 

   761    Let's call the players Leads. They're not players in the GM's game.

   762    They're participants in a story. The Fifth Business has a lot more work to

   763    do than do the Leads, changing costumes and shaping the story while it's

   764    in progress. But the Leads are equal to the Fifth Business. The Leads must

   765    react to the characters, incidents, and information that the Fifth

   766    Business offers, just as players must react to what the GM offers in a

   767    roleplaying game. But the Fifth Business must always be on his toes and

   768    react to what the Leads offer.

   769 

   770    ... The Fifth Business can't decide what the plot is going to be and then

   771    run the players through it like mice in a maze. The Leads determine the

   772    direction of the story when they create their characters ... What do the

   773    characters want? What are their goals? The story is about their attempt to

   774    gain those goals. The Fifth Business creates obstacles to those goals.

   775 

   776    [From Part 3, "Character, character, character"]

   777 

   778    As the designer of the character you shouldn't simply depend on the Fifth

   779    Business ... to provide you with trouble. You should look for trouble for

   780    your character. ...

   781 

   782    Moreover, you know best of all what kind of problems you want for your

   783    character. ... in a story entertainment you're not the passive passenger

   784    in the gamemaster's roller coaster. You are a co-creator with Fifth

   785    Business and the other players of a story.

   786 

   787    [From Part 4, "Running Story Entertainments"]

   788 

   789    Listen to the players, keep in mind the idea of obstacles, mix up volatile

   790    characters and objects, and remember you don't have to know where you're

   791    going. No roleplaying game ever follows the "path" of the story anyway, so

   792    a story entertainment just dismisses the whole notion of adventure. Rather

   793    than become frustrated when the characters don't do what they're supposed

   794    to, let them lead the story with their Characters' Goals.

   795 

   796    It all comes down to this: a "player" in a Narrativist role-playing

   797    context necessarily makes the thematic choices for a given

   798    player-character. Even if this role switches around from person to person

   799    (as in Universalis), it's always sacrosanct in the moment of decision.

   800    "GMing," then, for this sort of play, is all about facilitating another

   801    person's ability to do this.

   802 

   803 Protagonism

   804 

   805    In all role-playing, the player-character is the lens of the Creative

   806    Agenda at work. That's right, I said all role-playing.

   807 

   808      * Simulationist = the character "fits" - its setting, capabilities,

   809        outcomes, behavior patterns, and so on, all reinforce the Dream for

   810        everyone.

   811 

   812      * Gamist = the character is a direct opportunity for player-strategy.

   813        Its construction doesn't hamstring the player (except with agreed-upon

   814        handicaps) and permits him or her to Step On Up.

   815 

   816      * Narrativist = the character's predicament is how Premise is seen/felt

   817        in full, and what he does, and what happens is how a theme is

   818        realized.

   819 

   820    By definition, a character faces "relevant stress" for the Creative

   821    Agenda. The term used most often for that is "adversity," and it is

   822    required in all three modes of play. Without it, there is no Situation.

   823    Without Situation, there's no role-playing, just sitting around and

   824    diddling. You can tell when this happens: everyone stops paying attention

   825    to one another, and quite likely the one person talking is only paying

   826    attention to himself or herself. Adversity, which may come from any

   827    participant during play, is the key.

   828 

   829    Now we run into a conceptual tangle. In literary terms, if there's a

   830    story, there's one or more protagonists. Since story can arise from any

   831    sort of role-playing, then protagonism of the relevant character comes

   832    with that, part and parcel. However, "protagonism" at the Forge as

   833    discussed most frequently by Paul Czege, tends to focus on very specific

   834    processes of play: those which prompt Premise-addressing interest in a

   835    given character among all of the real-person participants; in other words,

   836    a specifically Narrativist process.

   837 

   838    That's a real terminological conundrum. I shudder at the thought of

   839    co-opting the term "protagonist" into anything besides the fictional

   840    context of a story, regardless of how it was produced. However, I also

   841    want to preserve Paul's point that people may establish emotional,

   842    relatively high-stakes connections to other people's player-characters.

   843    But neither are restricted to Narrativist play.

   844 

   845    Fortunately, for discussing Narrativist play by itself, the two things are

   846    one and the same. Which means I shall happily relegate debate about the

   847    term in a larger (all of role-playing) sense to the forums and neatly

   848    dodge it for purposes of the essay.

   849 

   850    So let's talk about Narrativist protagonism and how it's established,

   851    starting with the adversity. From Sorcerer (Adept Press, 2001, author is

   852    Ron Edwards):

   853 

   854    GET TO THE BANGS!

   855 

   856    Bangs are those moments when the characters realize they have a problem

   857    right now and have to get moving to deal with it. It can be as simple as a

   858    hellacious demon crashing through the skylight and attacking the

   859    characters or as subtle as the voice of the long-dead murder victim

   860    answering when they call the number they found in the new murder victim's

   861    pockets.

   862 

   863    But that needed clarifying, so from Sorcerer & Sword (Adept Press, 2001,

   864    author is Ron Edwards):

   865 

   866    Driving with Bangs ... how is the poor GM able to assure any happenings

   867    when he or she is no longer the primary author?

   868 

   869    ... It is the GM's job to present and, for lack of a better word, drive

   870    Bangs, in the sense of driving a nail or driving something home. In

   871    narrative terms, Bangs tend to come as one of the following: [list follows

   872    with details; to summarize: crisis to crisis, twist to twist, link to

   873    link, locale to locale - RE]

   874 

   875    Ultimately, all of these elements provided by the GM are the same thing: a

   876    means for moving from decision to decision on the part of the players.

   877    Bangs are always about player-character responses.

   878 

   879    This is why Bangs are not represented by many of the fight scenes or clues

   880    in traditional role-playing. Throwing mad hyenas at the player-characters

   881    is not a Bang if the only result of the fight is to wander into the next

   882    room. Nor is a clue a Bang at all if all it does is show where the next

   883    clue may be found. A real Bang gives the player options and requires his

   884    or her decision about how to handle it, which in turn reveals and develops

   885    the player-character as a hero.

   886 

   887    In Sex & Sorcery (2003), I presented some further terms to represent

   888    multiple-person input and some other nuances into the Bang concept: Bobs,

   889    Weavings, Crosses, and Openings; all are listed in the glossary following

   890    this essay.

   891 

   892    Aside from a lack of adversity, the other issue regarding protagonism is

   893    the problem of de-protagonizing, a term coined by Paul Czege.

   894    Deprotagonizing literally means to deprive a person of the means to

   895    express one of the bulleted points above (depending on the Creative Agenda

   896    at hand; Paul is usually discussing Narrativist play). There are dozens of

   897    ways to do that, and all of them are grounds for instant breaking of the

   898    Social Contract for that play-experience. No one accepts deprotagonization

   899    willingly; those bulleted points are heartfelt priorities at the very core

   900    of Creative Agenda. As a minor but thought-provoking point, character

   901    death is not deprotagonizing if it satisfies the Creative Agenda for that

   902    person and group.

   903 

   904    Nearly all of the dysfunctional issues described later in the essay

   905    concern deprotagonizing in the context of Narrativist play, which is best

   906    defined as Force: the final authority that any person who is not playing a

   907    particular player-character has over decisions and actions made by that

   908    player-character. This is distinct from information that the GM imparts or

   909    chooses not to impart to play; I'm talking about the protagonists'

   910    decisions and actions. In Narrativist play, using Force by definition

   911    disrupts the Creative Agenda.

   912 

   913    Force techniques include IIEE manipulation, fudged/ignored rolls,

   914    perception management, clue moving, scene framing as a form of reducing

   915    options, directions as to character's actions using voiced and unvoiced

   916    signals, modifying features of various NPCs during play, and authority

   917    over using textual rules. The Golden Rule of White Wolf games is, in

   918    application, a mandate for Force.

   919 

   920    Force Techniques often include permitting pseudo-decisions, which we can

   921    discuss at the Forge if necessary. Also, Force Techniques do vary in how

   922    flexible a scene's outcome is permitted to be. Some GMs (to use the

   923    classic single-GM context) might do anything up to actually picking up

   924    your dice for you in order for you to talk to "that guy," or he might let

   925    the characters miss the clue, either 'porting it to another character or

   926    letting its absence go ahead and affect the outcome.

   927 

   928 System - "it does matter" all over again

   929 

   930    Remember the System "bow" which shoots the Creative Agenda arrow? It must

   931    be an active tool. The Explorative Situation must change with verve -

   932    anything that introduces ebbs, flows, and unpredictable elements into the

   933    real-person decision-making process. That's what System does, whether it's

   934    composed entirely of dialogue or relies on pages and pages of probability

   935    charts. How does it do it? Through the combinations of Techniques being

   936    employed.

   937 

   938    I'll focus on one bit of System: resolution. I'll break it up into

   939    Techniques regarding what exactly is being resolved. For Narrativist play,

   940    the key is to focus on conflicts rather than tasks. A conflict statement

   941    is, "I'm trying to kill him," or, "I'm trying to humiliate him," whereas a

   942    task statement is, "I swing my sword at him." (It doesn't matter, by the

   943    way, how much in-game time and space are involved; conflict resolution can

   944    be "very small" and task resolution can be "very big." We can discuss this

   945    more on-line.) I submit that trying to resolve conflicts by hoping that

   946    the accumulated successful tasks will turn out to be about what you want,

   947    is an unreliable and unsatisfying way to role-play when developing

   948    Narrativist protagonism.

   949 

   950    How does this relate to game mechanics? I'll take the most-common example

   951    of Fortune systems. The big distinction I want to make is between

   952    Fortune-in-the-Middle and the more commonly-understood Fortune-at-the-End.

   953    For the record, I think both go back to the very beginning of

   954    role-playing; I didn't invent anything by naming them.

   955 

   956    Fortune-at-the-End: all variables, descriptions, and in-game actions are

   957    known, accounted for, and fixed before the Fortune system is brought into

   958    action. It acts as a "closer" of whatever deal was struck that called for

   959    resolution. A "miss" in such a system indicates, literally, a miss. The

   960    announced blow was attempted, which is to say, it was also perceived to

   961    have had a chance to hit by the character, was aimed, and was put into

   962    motion. It just didn't connect at the last micro-second.

   963 

   964    Fortune-in-the-Middle: the Fortune system is brought in partway through

   965    figuring out "what happens," to the extent that specific actions may be

   966    left completely unknown until after we see how they worked out. Let's say

   967    a character with a sword attacks some guy with a spear. The point is to

   968    announce the character's basic approach and intent, and then to roll. A

   969    missed roll in this situation tells us the goal failed. Now the group is

   970    open to discussing just how it happened from the beginning of the action

   971    being initiated. Usually, instead of the typical description that you

   972    "swing and miss," because the "swing" was assumed to be in action before

   973    the dice could be rolled at all, the narration now can be anything from

   974    "the guy holds you off from striking range with the spearpoint" to "your

   975    swing is dead-on but you slip a bit." Or it could be a plain vanilla miss

   976    because the guy's better than you. The point is that the narration of what

   977    happens "reaches back" to the initation of the action, not just the

   978    action's final micro-second.

   979 

   980    There's a whole spectrum of extreme connect/disconnect between conflict

   981    and task. At one end, the task does fail, but the goal fails too, perhaps

   982    with a nuance or two. The other end is much wider in interpretative scope:

   983    we know the character's goal (killing some guy) doesn't happen, but with

   984    those in place, narration takes over to provide all the events involved.

   985    Applying different judgments along this spectrum, for different parts of

   986    play, is a big deal in games like Dust Devils, Trollbabe, Sorcerer, and

   987    HeroQuest. In Sorcerer, failing a dice roll means failing the goal, almost

   988    always due to failing at the task; in Dust Devils, certain card outcomes

   989    dictate that you fail at the goal, but whether the task failed or

   990    succeeded within that context is entirely up for grabs and determined by

   991    that scene's designated narrator. HeroQuest and Trollbabe permit the group

   992    to customize between these extremes as they see fit for that scene.

   993 

   994    Fortune-in-the-Middle as the basis for resolving conflict facilitates

   995    Narrativist play in a number of ways.

   996 

   997      * It preserves the desired image of player-characters specific to the

   998        moment. Given a failed roll, they don't have to look like incompetent

   999        goofs; conversely, if you want your guy to suffer the effects of cruel

  1000        fate, or just not be good enough, you can do that too.

  1001 

  1002      * It permits tension to be managed from conflict to conflict and from

  1003        scene to scene. So a "roll to hit" in Scene A is the same as in Scene

  1004        B in terms of whether the target takes damage, but it's not the same

  1005        in terms of the acting character's motions, intentions, and experience

  1006        of the action.

  1007 

  1008      * It retains the key role of constraint on in-game events. The dice (or

  1009        whatever) are collaborators, acting as a springboard for what happens

  1010        in tandem with the real-people statements.

  1011 

  1012    Not all versions of this principle are alike. Some of them involve

  1013    scene-scale resolution (Story Engine), some involve narration-trading

  1014    (Dust Devils), some are heavily integrated with tactics (The Riddle of

  1015    Steel), and some of them require role-playing "bits" to justify

  1016    incorporating system features (The Dying Earth).

  1017 

  1018    Some Fortune-in-the-Middle applications give opportunities for tweaking

  1019    after the roll: usually, spending points of some kind after the dice have

  1020    hit the table to alter the effects. Some games have this feature and some

  1021    don't; Forge jargon calls such things "FitM with teeth" because such a

  1022    system forces the group to acknowledge that the dice do not "finish" the

  1023    job of resolution.

  1024 

  1025    Does Fortune-in-the-Middle define Narrativism? No, nor does it even

  1026    facilitate it in isolation. It's merely a strong component of many

  1027    Narrativist-facilitating combinations of Techniques; I've left its

  1028    potential integration with reward and behavioral mechanics out of this

  1029    discussion.

  1030 

  1031    Is there such a thing as Fortune-at-the-beginning? Playtesting so far

  1032    indicates that it's not very satisfying for Narrativist play; see

  1033    discussions at the Forge of Human Wreckage and The World the Flesh and the

  1034    Devil.

  1035 

  1036    Is Fortune the only resolution method for conflict resolution? The answer

  1037    is emphatically no. The two main alternatives are apparently Karma +

  1038    Resource management, which I consider to be underdeveloped at this point,

  1039    and highly-structured Drama, which may be investigated through Puppetland,

  1040    Soap, and to a lesser extent Universalis.

  1041 

  1042   The game world

  1043 

  1044    Since Exploration is best understood as a medium and tool in Narrativist

  1045    play, rather than a product itself, the role of "in game reality" needs

  1046    some review - not so much about who has authority over it (the usual

  1047    concern in Simulationist play), but what the heck it is. The answer is,

  1048    it's a medium and tool for addressing Premise, and nothing more at all.

  1049 

  1050    From Maelstrom (Hubris Games, 1994, author is Christian Aldridge):

  1051 

  1052    Literal vs. Conceptual

  1053 

  1054    A good way to run the Hubris Engine is to use "scene ideas" to convey the

  1055    scene, instead of literalisms. ... focus on the intent behind the scene

  1056    and not on how big or how far things might be. If the difficulty of the

  1057    task at hand (such as jumping across a chasm in a cave) is explained in

  1058    terms of difficulty, it doesn't matter how far across the actual chasm

  1059    spans. In a movie, for instance, the camera zooms or pans to emphasize the

  1060    danger or emotional reaction to the scene, and in so doing it manipulates

  1061    the real distance of a chasm to suit the mood or "feel" of the moment. It

  1062    is then no longer about how far across the character has to jump, but how

  1063    hard the feat is for the character. ... If the players enjoy the challenge

  1064    of figuring out how high and far someone can jump, they should be allowed

  1065    the pleasure of doing so - as long as it doesn't interfere with the

  1066    narrative flow and enjoyment of the game.

  1067 

  1068    The scene should be presented therefore in terms relative to the

  1069    character's abilities ... Players who want to climb onto your coffee table

  1070    and jump across your living room to prove that their character could jump

  1071    over the chasm have probably missed the whole point of the story.

  1072 

  1073    The "doesn't interfere" matches to my "prioritization." The "narrative

  1074    flow and enjoyment" matches to addressing Premise. The "whole point of the

  1075    story" and "intent behind the scene" are Premise itself, expressed in this

  1076    scene as a Bang. More topically, I can think of no better text to explain

  1077    the vast difference between playing the games RuneQuest and HeroQuest.

  1078 

  1079   Stance

  1080 

  1081    A lot of mental sweat has been shed to try to link Stances with modes and

  1082    goals of play. I think most of that discussion was misguided by an overly

  1083    1:1 approach. In my big model as currently constructed, only combinations

  1084    of Ephemera comprise a Technique, so we're not talking about one Stance in

  1085    a given moment, but the distribution of Stances through multiple character

  1086    actions, decisions, and scenes. And that's only one Technique, which is

  1087    not enough to dictate or identify Creative Agenda.

  1088 

  1089    Bearing all that in mind, Author Stance may be considered the default for

  1090    Narrativist play only in the sense that it needs to be in there somewhere.

  1091    Narrativist play doesn't have to be exclusively in this Stance, nor does

  1092    it even have to be employed more often than the others. The only

  1093    requirement is that it be present in a significant way. Narrativist play

  1094    is very much like Gamist play in this regard, and for the same reason: the

  1095    player of a given character takes social and aesthetic responsibility for

  1096    what that character does.

  1097 

  1098   Narration the non-issue

  1099 

  1100    Before going on, I'll take a quick break to discuss "narration," which is

  1101    no more and no less than saying what happens in the imaginary events. I

  1102    want to distinguish saying what happens (narrating) from establishing what

  1103    happens (currently a non-named concept), because they are often confused.

  1104    I'm taking the

  1105 

  1106    I'll break it down.

  1107 

  1108      * Narration is not a Drama mechanic unless it is literally the means of

  1109        resolution.

  1110 

  1111      * Narration is in practice shared among members of a role-playing group

  1112        and far less centralized than most people think.

  1113 

  1114    The only concern about narration per se is that its relationship to

  1115    establishing-what-happens must be clear. That entails that how things are

  1116    established is itself clear: is it ad-lib? is the GM where the buck stops?

  1117    is it traded about, organized in any way? or what? Those are good

  1118    questions, but once they're established, narration is a no-brainer.

  1119 

  1120    Game texts are typically astonishingly bad at explaining this issue.

  1121    Positive exceptions for Narrativist-leaning games include Soap, The Pool,

  1122    and Universalis, and other recent games like InSpectres, Otherkind, Dust

  1123    Devils, Trollbabe, and Donjon, which all distribute narration around the

  1124    group as a means of distributing who establishes what.

  1125 

  1126 Historical diversity of Narrativist play

  1127 

  1128    Narrativist play-procedures are pretty scattered in terms of actual game

  1129    books. I suggest that titles and texts are really just rustles in the

  1130    bushes, such that one has to infer the actual play that either informed

  1131    them or might have proceeded from them. For most of what follows, I've

  1132    spoken with game designers and many, many play-groups about these issues.

  1133 

  1134    I think that Narrativist play goes back to the beginning of role-playing.

  1135    Yes, a "non-Narrativism" shroud descended over role-playing design and