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+ Narrativism: Story Now
+
+ by Ron Edwards <[8]sorcerer@sorcerer-rpg.com>
+ Copyright 2003 Adept Press
+
+ Acknowledgments are due to Mike Holmes, Ralph Mazza, Christopher Kubasik,
+ Jesse Burneko, Paul Czege, Clinton R. Nixon, Vincent Baker, Seth Ben-Ezra,
+ M. J. Young, Chris Chinn, Pete Darby, Gordon C. Landis, Walt Freitag, and
+ Matt Snyder for comments on the first draft of this essay. All mistakes or
+ misattributions should be considered my responsibility.
+
+ This is the third of three essays building upon the topics addressed in
+ "GNS and other matters of role-playing theory"
+ ([9]http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/1/). The previous two essays were
+ "Simulationism: The Right to Dream"
+ ([10]http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/15/), and "Gamism: Step On Up"
+ ([11]http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/21/). This series' purposes are to
+ clarify the original essay and to develop and incorporate insights from
+ discussions at the Forge.
+
+ This one is about Narrativist play, which is simultaneously the least and
+ most problematic of the Creative Agendas I've described. It's incredibly
+ easy in application, and the most difficult for discussion. I think that
+ this difficulty lies mainly in some of the peculiarities of
+ role-player/gamer culture, entrenched in the history of the hobby, rather
+ than any particular logical or cognitive hitches in the mode of play
+ itself.
+
+ In the first two essays, I began presenting an overall model of
+ role-playing, but piecemeal and in stumbling verbal form. As of this
+ writing, I've finished that model, and it is included here as well. It's a
+ bit out of place, being more of a capstone or umbrella to the three essays
+ rather than an intrinsic piece of the Narrativist one. More complete
+ discussions about it may also be found in "The whole model - this is it"
+ ([12]http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=8655).
+
+History of the term
+
+ The Threefold Model for role-playing included the term Dramatism, as
+ presented by John Kim at his Threefold Model
+ ([13]http://www.darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/theory/) webpage. When I learned
+ about the Threefold, I'd already been thinking about stuff I'd later call
+ Currency and also about Jonathan Tweet's discussion of resolution
+ presented in Everway. The basic notion of the Threefold impressed me: it
+ was time to talk about goals and priorities independently of everything
+ else, then to see whether everything else flowed to and from them. This
+ was at the time that Sorcerer was making its small way into commerce, so
+ the mailing list was the place for our first discussions; most of them are
+ archived at the Sorcerer website ([14]http://www.sorcerer-rpg.com).
+
+ At this point, since "Drama" as a resolution category in Tweet's schema
+ and "Dramatism" as a goals-category in the Threefold referred to two
+ different things, I decided that the names were confusing. Going by which
+ set of ideas was first presented (Tweet's), I changed Dramatism to
+ Narrativism. This terminological change was limited to discussions on the
+ Sorcerer mailing list and later at the Gaming Outpost.
+
+ However, our use of the terms and ideas on the Sorcerer mailing list took
+ on its own character almost immediately, such that in my first essay
+ "System Does Matter" ([15]http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/11/), "story"
+ was already its own distinct, process-oriented term.
+
+ The biggest change in my thinking about role-playing is represented in the
+ essay "GNS and other matters of role-playing theory"
+ ([16]http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/1/), in which the concept of
+ Exploration becomes the underlying foundation for the three modes or goals
+ of play. This new picture was startling: (1) potential story elements were
+ now considered present for all three modes play, and (2)Narrativism now
+ appeared to be a mirror image or twin sibling of Gamism, counter to older
+ impressions shared by me and anyone else who ever wrote about role-playing
+ that Gamism was the odd man out.
+
+ I've tried to emphasize this new outlook throughout these three supportive
+ essays. Whereas I think most people think of Gamism with (or synonymous
+ with) its Hard Core variant over in one ballpark, with Simulationism
+ containing an internal "story" variant in another ballpark, my concepts
+ are radically different. I hope to make this picture, and its
+ implications, entirely clear in this essay.
+
+The foundation: Exploration and more
+
+ Here's the big ol' model for role-playing that the previous two essays
+ sort of fumbled at. Notice that "rules" are absent; I now consider "rules"
+ simply to mean text, which may be about anything you find in the model.
+ The brackets are very important: if B relates to A as [A[B]], then B is
+ considered a part, application, version, or expression of A.
+
+ [Social Contract]. Social Contract encompasses everything else about
+ role-playing. If these people happen to be role-playing together, then
+ Social Contract crucially includes "Let's play this game." This crucial
+ element is what's further subdivided throughout the rest of this model.
+
+ [Social Contract [Exploration]]. Exploration means "shared imaginings."
+ The sharing has to be explicit and agreed upon, usually through the spoken
+ word although any form of communication counts. The imaginings have to be
+ the subject that is shared, which is why me reading aloud to my wife does
+ not constitute Exploration. We are independently imagining based on the
+ spoken word, but neither she nor I is telling the other what we imagine
+ from that point. Exploration means that such communication is occurring.
+
+ The five elements of Exploration are interdependent: Character + Setting
+ make Situation, System permits Situation to "move," and Color affects all
+ the others. This concept applies only to the imaginary causes among the
+ elements; the real people's actual priority or cause among these things,
+ in social and creative terms, varies widely. See my essay "GNS and other
+ matters of role-playing theory"
+ ([17]http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/1/) for more about these elements.
+
+ [Social Contract [Exploration [Creative Agenda]]]. Creative Agenda is the
+ blanket term for people's demonstrated goals and desired feedback during
+ play. In the past, I called it "GNS." Since all of this is enclosed in
+ Social Contract, GNS-stuff is not only "what I want" but also "what I want
+ from role-playing with this group of people." Since Exploration
+ necessarily includes System, that means, as soon as we start talking about
+ Creative Agenda, real play has begun.
+
+ On paper, I draw this term as an arrow, because this "step" or "level" in
+ my model shifts out of the abstract and solidly into this group, playing
+ this game, this way, at this time. The model instantly ceases to be a
+ broad overview and becomes a diagnostic or description of a real
+ play-experience among real people. Unless you are thinking of such a case,
+ you will be left flailing at this point in the discussion.
+
+ [Social Contract [Exploration [Creative Agenda --> [Techniques]]]]. The
+ panoply of Techniques being employed over time either satisfy or fail to
+ satisfy one or more Creative Agendas. Techniques include IIEE,
+ Drama/Karma/Fortune, search time & handling time, narration apportioning,
+ reward system, points of contact, character components, scene framing,
+ currency among the character components, and much more. Each of these
+ terms represents a range of potential play-methods. I consider the two
+ most important Techniques to be reward system and IIEE (see glossary).
+
+ Techniques may be thought of as directly expressing the more abstract
+ concept of System (way up in Exploration), except that System doesn't
+ exist all by itself - it's fully integrated with the other components of
+ Exploration. But if you keep that in mind, then yes, the arrow represented
+ by Creative Agenda can indeed be "shot" from the bow of System.
+
+ Techniques do not map 1:1 to Creative Agenda, but combinations of
+ Techniques do support or obstruct Creative Agendas.
+
+ [Social Contract [Exploration [Creative Agenda --> [Techniques
+ [Ephemera]]]]]. Ephemera refers to the smallest-scale interactions and
+ activities of role-playing: anything that gets factored into or is
+ expressed by play in the space of a few seconds. As with every level/box
+ so far, fairly extensive combinations of Ephemera express or apply to one
+ or more Techniques. They are the internal anatomy, if you will, of
+ Techniques and hence (conceptualizing upward) of System.
+
+ Ephemera include individual Stances, in-character vs. out-of-character
+ diction and dialogue, referring to texts, sound effects, taking or
+ referring to notes, kibitzing, laughing, praise or disapproval, showing
+ pictures, and anything similar.
+
+ Understanding any Creative Agenda, in this case Narrativism, means
+ examining its potential roles and expressions in the whole model.
+ Narrativism's little code phrase for that purpose is "Story Now."
+
+ Story
+
+ Long ago, I concluded that "story" as a role-playing term was standing in
+ for several different processes and goals, some of which were
+ incompatible. Here's the terms-breakdown I'll be using from now on.
+
+ All role-playing necessarily produces a sequence of imaginary events. Go
+ ahead and role-play, and write down what happened to the characters, where
+ they went, and what they did. I'll call that event-summary the
+ "transcript." But some transcripts have, as Pooh might put it, a "little
+ something," specifically a theme: a judgmental point, perceivable as a
+ certain charge they generate for the listener or reader. If a transcript
+ has one (or rather, if it does that), I'll call it a story.
+
+ Let's say that the following transcript, which also happens to be a story,
+ arose from one or more sessions of role-playing.
+
+ Lord Gyrax rules over a realm in which a big dragon has begun to ravage
+ the countryside. The lord prepares himself to deal with it, perhaps trying
+ to settle some internal strife among his followers or allies. He also
+ meets this beautiful, mysterious woman named Javenne who aids him at
+ times, and they develop a romance. Then he learns that she and the dragon
+ are one and the same, as she's been cursed to become a dragon periodically
+ in a kind of Ladyhawke situation, and he must decide whether to kill her.
+ Meanwhile, she struggles to control the curse, using her dragon-powers to
+ quell an uprising in the realm led by a traitorous ally. Eventually he
+ goes to the Underworld instead and confronts the god who cursed her, and
+ trades his youth to the god to lift the curse. He returns, and the curse
+ is detached from her, but still rampaging around as a dragon. So they slay
+ the dragon together, and return as a couple, still united although he's
+ now all old, to his home.
+
+ The real question: after reading the transcript and recognizing it as a
+ story, what can be said about the Creative Agenda that was involved during
+ the role-playing? The answer is, absolutely nothing. We don't know whether
+ people played it Gamist, Simulationist, or Narrativist, or any combination
+ of the three. A story can be produced through any Creative Agenda. The
+ mere presence of story as the product of role-playing is not a GNS-based
+ issue.
+
+Story Now
+
+ Story Now requires that at least one engaging issue or problematic feature
+ of human existence be addressed in the process of role-playing. "Address"
+ means:
+
+ * Establishing the issue's Explorative expressions in the game-world,
+ "fixing" them into imaginary place.
+
+ * Developing the issue as a source of continued conflict, perhaps
+ changing any number of things about it, such as which side is being
+ taken by a given character, or providing more depth to why the
+ antagonistic side of the issue exists at all.
+
+ * Resolving the issue through the decisions of the players of the
+ protagonists, as well as various features and constraints of the
+ circumstances.
+
+ Can it really be that easy? Yes, Narrativism is that easy. The Now refers
+ to the people, during actual play, focusing their imagination to create
+ those emotional moments of decision-making and action, and paying
+ attention to one another as they do it. To do that, they relate to "the
+ story" very much as authors do for novels, as playwrights do for plays,
+ and screenwriters do for film at the creative moment or moments. Think of
+ the Now as meaning, "in the moment," or "engaged in doing it," in terms of
+ input and emotional feedback among one another. The Now also means "get to
+ it," in which "it" refers to any Explorative element or combination of
+ elements that increases the enjoyment of that issue I'm talking about.
+
+ There cannot be any "the story" during Narrativist play, because to have
+ such a thing (fixed plot or pre-agreed theme) is to remove the whole
+ point: the creative moments of addressing the issue(s). Story Now has a
+ great deal in common with Step On Up, particularly in the social
+ expectation to contribute, but in this case the real people's attention is
+ directed toward one another's insights toward the issue, rather than
+ toward strategy and guts.
+
+Say it yourself
+
+ I receive a lot of emails like this one from Landon Darkwood:
+
+ I think I may have had a revelation.
+
+ ... In your Simulationism essay, you have this: "'Story,' in this context,
+ refers to the sequence of events that provide a payoff in terms of
+ recognizing and enjoying the genre during play."
+
+ Is this the key to distinguishing the [Narrativist vs. Simulationist] play
+ modes? My intepretation of this statement is that in Simulationist gaming,
+ a long and complex story might come about and be part of play, but only
+ for the express purpose of bringing about all the appropriate genre
+ elements in the game as part of the internal consistency of the Dream.
+ i.e., a Sim game Colored with elements from Chinese wuxia movies might
+ have a multilayered story involving class conflict, people being trapped
+ by their social position, repressed romance, heavy action, a sorcerer and
+ his eunuch henchmen - but these are all trappings of the genre. So, their
+ inclusion in the game, part and parcel as they are to the Dream, isn't
+ Narrativist because no one is creating a theme that isn't already there.
+ In other words, it's just played out as the Situation part of the
+ Exploration; because the Dream calls for it, there just so happens to be a
+ kind of intricacy involved.
+
+ In Narrativism, by contrast, the major source of themes are the ones that
+ are brought to the table by the players / GM (if there is one) regardless
+ of the genre or setting used. So, to sum up, themes in Nar play are
+ created by the participants and that's the point; themes in Sim play are
+ already present in the Dream, reinforced by the play, and kind of a
+ by-product.
+
+ Am I on this now?
+
+ "In a word," I replied, "Yes."
+
+ Narrativism has a single definition, but it's difficult to articulate for
+ people grappling with muddled RPG terminology. As far as I was concerned,
+ not only had I presented what Landon said in "GNS and other matters of
+ role-playing theory" ([18]http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/1/), I'd
+ repeated it dozens of times in forum discussions. In fact, I'd said it in
+ the message to Landon that immediately preceded this reply. But he had to
+ say it himself, with his own use of words like "just" and "genre." I am
+ now convinced, after many such exchanges, that an "experienced"
+ role-player comes to this conclusion only by working it out in his or her
+ own terms and examples.
+
+ Premise
+
+ How is this done, actually, in play? It relies on the concept of something
+ called Premise and its relationship to an emergent theme.
+
+ I already snuck Premise past you: it's that "problematic issue" I
+ mentioned. I've taken the term from The Art of Dramatic Writing by Lajos
+ Egri. In reading what follows, bear in mind that he is discussing the
+ process of writing, not an existing playscript or a performance:
+
+ ... every good premise is composed of three parts, each of which is
+ essential to a good play. Let us examine "frugality equals waste." The
+ first part of this premise suggest character - a frugal character. The
+ second part, "leads to," suggests conflict, and the third part, "waste,"
+ suggests the end of the play. ...
+
+ A good premise is a thumbnail synopsis of your play. [examples follow,
+ including "Egotism leads to loss of friends." - RE]
+
+ ... What is wrong, then? What is missing?
+
+ The author's conviction is missing. Until he takes sides, there is no
+ play. Does egotism lead to loss of friends? Which side will you take? We,
+ the readers or spectators of your play, do not necessarily agree with your
+ convictions. Through your play you must therefore prove to us the validity
+ of your contention.
+
+ A protagonist is not "some guy," but rather "the guy who thinks THIS, and
+ does something accordingly when he encounters adversity." Stories are not
+ created by running some kind of linear-cause program, but rather are
+ brutally judgmental statements upon the THIS, as an idea or a way of
+ being. That judgment is enacted or exemplified in the resolution of the
+ conflict, and a conviction that is proved to us (as Egri says),constitutes
+ theme. Even if we (the audience) disagree with it, we at least must have
+ been moved to do so at an emotional level.
+
+ I think that any reliable means of story-writing, in any medium, conforms
+ to Egri's principles. They may seem simplistic: the burning passion of the
+ protagonist directly expresses a burning passion of the author's, who uses
+ the plot as a polemic to demonstrate it. However, "Why Johnny shouldn't
+ smoke dope" is only the starting point. More nuanced, ambiguous, and
+ insightful applications arise insofar as more nuanced, ambiguous, and
+ insightful authors and audiences are involved.
+
+ I said earlier that any role-playing can produce a story, and that's so.
+ But Narrativist role-playing is defined by the people involved placing
+ their direct creative attention toward Premise and toward birthing its
+ child, theme. It sounds simple, and in many ways it is. The real variable
+ is the emotional connection that everyone at the table makes when a
+ player-character does something. If that emotional connection is
+ identifiable as a Premise, and if that connection is nurtured and
+ developed through the real-people interactions, then Narrativist play is
+ under way. Some nuances:
+
+ * "Character does something" can mean foreshadowing, flashback, and
+ anything in between. It can mean the character is just thinkin' about
+ it, or it can mean the character flat-out does it. As long as the
+ fictional character is brought into the perceptions and possible
+ emotional responses of the other people at the table, then it counts.
+
+ * It doesn't matter whether the character fictionally "meant" to do the
+ action, premeditated it, or acted on-the-spot.
+
+ * In stories (unlike real life), the character's immediate environment
+ is kind of a weird sidekick, who sometimes acts in the character's
+ favor and sometimes against him or her. "Character does something"
+ often includes this sidekick's behavior.
+
+ * "Identifiable" means assessing how the players treat one another
+ during the process, socially.
+
+ From my essay "GNS and related matters of role-playing theory"
+ ([19]http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/1/):
+
+ Narrativist Premises focus on producing Theme via events during play.
+ Theme is defined as a value-judgment or point that may be inferred from
+ the in-game events. My thoughts on Narrativist Premise are derived from
+ the book The Art of Dramatic Writing by Lajos Egri, specifically his
+ emphasis on the questions that arise from human conundrums and passions of
+ all sorts.
+
+ * Is the life of a friend worth the safety of a community?
+
+ * Does love and marriage override one's loyalty to a political cause?
+
+ * And many, many more - the full range of literature, myth, and stories
+ of all sorts.
+
+ Narrativist Premises vary regarding their origins: character-driven
+ Premise vs. setting-driven Premise, for instance. They also vary a great
+ deal in terms of unpredictable "shifts" of events during play. The key to
+ Narrativist Premises is that they are moral or ethical questions that
+ engage the players' interest. The "answer" to this Premise (Theme) is
+ produced via play and the decisions of the participants, not by
+ pre-planning.
+
+ * A possible Narrativist development of the "vampire" initial Premise,
+ with a strong character emphasis, might be, Is it right to sustain
+ one's immortality by killing others? When might the justification
+ break down?
+
+ * Another, with a strong setting emphasis, might be, Vampires are
+ divided between ruthlessly exploiting and lovingly nurturing living
+ people, and which side are you on?
+
+ I'm still saying the same thing. But now, I've returned to my earlier
+ usage; it's the only meaning for the term "Premise" in my model.
+
+ That bit about moral and ethical content is merely one of those
+ personalized clincher-phrasings that some people find helpful. It helps to
+ distinguish a Premise from "my guy fought a dragon, so that's a conflict,
+ so that's a Premise" thinking. However, if these terms bug you, then say,
+ "problematic human issue" instead.
+
+ Egri presents his Premises as flat statements, and I state them as
+ questions. Using the question form isn't changing anything about what Egri
+ is saying. Premise must pose a question to the real people, creator and
+ audience alike. The fictional character's belief in something like
+ "Freedom is worth any price" is already an implicit question: "Is it
+ really? Even when [insert Situation]?" Otherwise it will fail to engage
+ anyone.
+
+ Egri's statement-construction is very useful for the single author faced
+ with a blank sheet of paper, with the goal at hand being a finished
+ script. The audience will see the play, not the process of creation.
+ However, in the role-playing medium, not only are there multiple authors,
+ but the audience is also composed of these same authors, and their
+ appreciation of the material occurs simultaneously with the significant
+ creative decisions. Therefore, the Premise's imaginary resolution is up
+ for grabs among the group in role-playing, just as it is up for grabs
+ within the author's own head before the play reaches final draft. In the
+ latter case, the jump to "the point" is swift and hopefully certain; in
+ the former case, the new medium, it is anything but. I phrase it as a
+ question for role-playing, to indicate that everyone involved has his or
+ her fair crack at it as one of the authors.
+
+ From Robin Laws' essay "The Literary Edge," published in Over the Edge
+ (Atlas Games, 1992):
+
+ OTE is, among other things, an attempt to further the development of
+ role-playing as art. GMs will find it fruitful to approach decisions as an
+ artist creating a collaborative work with players. The idea of
+ collaboration is important: the GM is not a "storyteller" with the players
+ as audience, but merely a "first among equals" given responsibility for
+ the smooth progress of the developing story.
+
+ ... The GM is not a movie director, able to order actors to interpret a
+ script a given way. Instead, he should be seeking ways to challenge PCs,
+ to use plot development to highlight aspects of their character, in hopes
+ of being challenged in return.
+
+ ... For years, role-players have been simulating fictional narratives the
+ way wargamers recreate historical military engagements. They've been
+ making spontaneous, democratized art for their own consumption, even if
+ they haven't seen it in those terms. Making the artistry conscious is a
+ liberating act, making it easier to emulate the classic tales that inspire
+ us. Have fun with it, and enjoy your special role in aesthetic history -
+ it's not everybody who gets to be a pioneer in the development of a new
+ art form.
+
+ Egri's Premise, meet role-playing. Oh, I can quibble ... instead of the
+ word "conscious," I prefer "mindful," and I think that "emulate the
+ classic tales" is a bit simplistic, but never mind. The point is, if you
+ want a Narrativist Manifesto from one of the great minds of role-playing,
+ then there you go.
+
+ Here's a bit more about that theme business. Think of it as the conclusive
+ "uh!" that may accompany the climax and resolution of a story. It's
+ uttered by the playwright as he hits a certain key or scribes a certain
+ sentence, by the audience members at a certain point as they view the
+ play, and by role-players in both capacities during the session, often
+ simultaneously.
+
+ From the discussion of themes in the chapter "The Art of Storytelling" in
+ Demon's Lair: the "God" Guide (Lasalion Games, 2002):
+
+ The theme is the idea that you wish to explore in the story. It brings
+ unity to the story and is explored throughout the story by the actions of
+ the players and the main characters. Even the obstacle or conflict that
+ forms the plot usually resonates with the theme. It is the thread that
+ ties everything together and usually teaches the players something.
+
+ Substitute Premise for theme, and theme for the "something," and that's
+ just about right. I especially like the implied causality: (1) the actions
+ of the players (2) teach the players something, which becomes non-circular
+ when play actually addresses Premise. Unfortunately, few other features of
+ Demon's Lair, including the example which follows the above text, are
+ consistent with this point, and most are wildly at odds with it.
+
+ More insights about theme are available in Chris Chinn's article "The
+ power of myth" in Daedalus #1, in which the word "theme" may be
+ substituted for "myth" throughout.
+
+ The other way: pastiche
+
+ What happens when you want a story but don't want to play with Story Now?
+ Then the story becomes a feature of Exploration with the process of play
+ being devoted to how to make it happen as expected. The participation of
+ more than one person in the process is usually a matter of providing
+ improvisational additions to be filtered through the primary
+ story-person's judgment, or of providing extensive Color to the story.
+ Under these circumstances, the typical result is pastiche: a story which
+ recapitulates an already-existing story's theme, with many explicit
+ references to that story.
+
+ Is pastiche necessarily bad and evil? No. Is non-pastiche necessarily
+ incredibly good? No.
+
+ Here's a little dialogue between me and one of the first-draft readers of
+ this essay:
+
+ Jesse: Now we come to a point of personal confusion. Pastiche. I still
+ don't get it, in any medium. If the Situation involves "...class conflict,
+ people being trapped by their social position, repressed romance..." and
+ the GM lets the players resolve it anyway they like, then how is that not
+ Narrativist?
+
+ Me: It is Narrativist. What you're describing is not pastiche, or more
+ clearly, it typically does not produce pastiche. The key is the "resolve
+ it any way they like" part.
+
+ Jesse: Similarly if I'm writing a story and I make a check-list of items I
+ feel like I "need" to include to tell the "kind of" story I want to tell,
+ and I have a character experience and resolve those things, then how have
+ I not written a new story?
+
+ Me: You have. What you're missing is that pastiche does not do this at all
+ - instead, it references existing works in order to re-invoke what they,
+ originally, provided for the reader/viewer, rather than doing it on its
+ own. Die Hard is an outstanding movie. Passenger 57 stinks on ice. Why?
+ Because Passenger 57 is only enjoyable if it reminds you, successfully, of
+ Die Hard. Same goes for Broken Arrow, Con Air, and a slew of similar
+ films. [Disclosure: I do enjoy many of these films, on the basis of the
+ "reminder" alone. - RE]
+
+ And it's not a matter of "who does it first." Die Hard works because it
+ nails its Premise, with the explosions and one-liners all being supportive
+ of that goal. The other movies fail to provide Premise of their own,
+ merely using the explosions and one-liners to remind you of Die Hard, and
+ by (putative) extension, tapping into Die Hard's Premise through
+ association alone.
+
+ Jesse: I guess I'm having trouble resolving a couple of things. Either I
+ can't imagine the items listed above being included in the absence of
+ Premise or I'm too stuck on the idea that there's nothing new under the
+ sun. I mean how many romantic comedies are written off the premise, "true
+ love can only be found by putting aside petty differences." Are you saying
+ that 90% of romantic comedies are just pastiche? And if you are saying
+ that, then aren't you putting kind of a tall order up if for something to
+ be Narrativist it has to say something totally unique that no one has ever
+ said before?
+
+ Huh, I just noticed that I did shift focus from repetition of elements
+ that express a Premise to repetition of Premise itself, so maybe that has
+ something to do with my confusion.
+
+ Me: Yes, it does. With any luck my text above has helped. It's not the
+ "new-ness" of the Premise or theme, it's its presence and power in the
+ particular story. Pastiche has no such presence or power, just reminders
+ of them in other stories through common motifs. Many romantic comedies are
+ indeed pastiche (some of them quite clever), but a certain number of them
+ are not - and whether they say the same thing as, say, Gentlemen Prefer
+ Blondes or The Devil and Miss Jones is irrelevant. The point is whether
+ they as self-contained stories actually do say it, or anything at all.
+
+ Jesse: I'm just still a little confused between Narrativism and
+ Simulationism where the Situation has a lot of ethical/moral problems
+ embedded in it and the GM uses no Force techniques to produce a specific
+ outcome. I don't understand how Premise-expressing elements can be
+ included and players not be considered addressing a Premise when they
+ can't resolve the Situation without doing so.
+
+ Me: There is no such Simulationism. You're confused between Narrativism
+ and Narrativism, looking for a difference when there isn't any.
+
+ My final point for this issue is that creating pastiche is primarily a
+ form of fandom, pure homage to an existing body of work. Most High Concept
+ Simulationist play gravitates toward it, and some game texts are
+ explicitly about nothing else.
+
+Issues on the table
+
+ I submit that playing in the Narrativist mode is just as intuitive and
+ instantly understood by most people as Gamist play. Not everyone agrees.
+
+ Two sources of resistance and confusion
+
+ The most difficult aspect of writing this essay is the presence of two
+ distinct problematic audiences, neither of which I realized existed when I
+ first wrote System Does Matter ([20]http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/1).
+ - Role-players who greatly value the story quality of their transcripts,
+ but don't play Narrativist to make them. It's often painful for them to
+ be, as they see it, relegated to Simulationist play (usually Exploration
+ of Situation). "We create stories too, dammit!" - Role-players who play
+ Narrativist already, but who think what I'm describing must be harder or
+ more abstract than it is. Since they can identify Exploration of Character
+ and Situation in their play preferences, they think they must be playing
+ Simulationist. "That's Narrativist? But we do that, using a plain old
+ well-known role-playing game - it can't be Narrativist!"
+
+ The first problem these audiences pose for me is that any point, example,
+ or clarification I make that's specific to one of them is automatically
+ misleading for the other.
+
+ The second problem is that, when I say Not Narrativist to the first, and
+ when the second mistakenly says Not Narrativist to me, then Narrativism as
+ a label gets misconstrued as "how Ron himself plays."
+
+ I can't afford giving special consideration to these outlooks in this
+ essay. Otherwise I'd have to write three separate essays, two of them
+ piece-by-piece dismantling the respective bugaboos, and one "everyone else
+ essay." I've decided to reserve the customized discussions for the on-line
+ forums.
+
+ What it ain't
+
+ The following misunderstandings only arise from exposure to the
+ role-playing subculture, as distinct from the activity. I'll have more to
+ say about that later in the essay.
+
+ 1. The so-called Storyteller rules-set is not especially, nor even
+ partly, facilitative toward Narrativist play. Furthermore, I have
+ observed only a decided minority of White Wolf play that can be called
+ Narrativist, usually involving considerable rules-Drift.
+
+ 2 (related). Adhering to published metaplot which is intended to surprise
+ and involve players in tandem with their characters, or any similar
+ one-hand-on-rudder for the crucial story decisions, will not facilitate
+ Narrativist play.
+
+ 1. The number of textual rules involved, as well as how much the rules
+ must be consulted during play, are irrelevant. "Narrativist? Must be
+ rules-light!" is just one of those little humps to get over.
+
+ 2. Focusing on single Techniques to define Narrativism will not yield
+ understanding. For instance, Drama resolution is not in and of itself
+ Narrativist. Nor are the common use of improvisation, trading of
+ narration, and overt Director stance, in and of themselves,
+ Narrativist play.
+
+ 3. Issues of "consciousness" in terms of Premise are collectively a
+ complete red herring. People daily address Premise without
+ self-reflecting, both as audience and authors. There's no special need
+ to say to one another, "This is the Premise" in order to be playing
+ Narrativist. Laws' term "conscious" and my "mindful" only refer to the
+ attention to and social reinforcement of the process - not to
+ self-analytical or abstract discussion about the content.
+
+ 4. Narrativist play doesn't force a "separation" from the imaginative
+ commitment to the role-playing. As the whole medium of Creative Agenda
+ is Exploration, you don't have to diminish Exploration at all during
+ Narrativist play. It is instead focused and heightened as the
+ mechanism for addressing Premise.
+
+ 5. Depth and profundity of the Premise and/or theme are false variables.
+ The key issue is whether participants care enough to produce a point,
+ not whether the point is deep.
+
+Fundamental Techniques
+
+ People's creative roles: what you do
+
+ Narrativist play makes special use of the general role-playing principle
+ that the participants are simultaneously authors and audience. The common
+ metaphor of improvisational jazz applies quite well, better than any other
+ medium-comparison. "Entertainment," in role-playing in general and in
+ Narrativist play especially, does not flow from playwright to script to
+ production team to audience. Instead, the shared-imagining act = the
+ shared-performance act = the entertainment = the audience feedback.
+
+ Role-playing texts are consistently very confusing about how conflicts and
+ resolutions are established in play, especially in games whose mechanics
+ and some features of their instructions suggest Narrativist play. "Prep
+ and plan carefully! But story never goes as planned, so be ready to change
+ and improvise!" What's that supposed to mean, from a Narrativist
+ perspective?
+
+ I grappled with this in my own work - from the chapter "Fantastic
+ Adventure" in Sorcerer & Sword (Adept Press, 2001, author is Ron Edwards):
+
+ The doctrine for Sorcerer & Sword relies ... on the following idea: -
+ Playing this game, for all concerned, means creating stories about one or
+ more heroic protagonists. - The player produces the protagonist's
+ decisions and thus directly creates the story. - The GM makes it possible
+ for such play to occur, and therefore has great power over events in the
+ game world. However, he or she does not determine the protagonists'
+ actions, and must fully respond to those actions when they do occur.
+
+ Therefore, the GM cannot be considered "the narrator" or "the storyteller"
+ in any way, shape, or form. Such an entity exists as the outcome of the
+ GM-player interface and continuing creativity. His or her arbitrative role
+ in game events, as well as most of the Director power over time and space,
+ do remain. But the purpose of that role is inspiring and facilitating, not
+ dictating.
+
+ That text is specific to Sorcerer, so it needs expanding into what the
+ term "GM" means in the first place, and how the answer is subordinate to
+ Creative Agenda - and in fact, is nothing more nor less than a Techniques
+ question for role-playing in general.
+
+ I suggest that considering "the GM" to be either (a) necessarily one
+ person or (b) a specific and universally-consistent role is badly mistaken
+ - we are really talking about a set of potential behaviors (roles, tasks,
+ whatever) which may be independently centralized within or distributed
+ across a group of people. Here are some of those GM behaviors, roles, and
+ tasks: - rules-applier and interpreter, as in "referee" - in-game-world
+ time manager - changer of scenes - color provider - ensurer of protagonist
+ screen time - regulator of pacing (in real time) - authority over what
+ information can be acted upon by which characters - authority over
+ internal plausibility - "where the buck stops" in terms of establishing
+ the Explorative content - social manager of who gets to speak when
+
+ A given role-playing experience must have these things - there is no such
+ thing as "GM-less" play. But which of these require(s) enforcing varies
+ greatly, as does whether they are concentrated into a particular person,
+ and as does whether that person is openly acknowledged as such. What
+ matters for Narrativist play, however, isn't any specific point in the
+ diversity-matrix of these variables - it's about what the person (or
+ persons) currently in the GM-role is responsible for.
+
+ From Maelstrom (Hubris Games, 1997, author is Christian Aldridge):
+
+ Narrative Tools
+
+ ... The whole premise of role-playing is the freedom the players have to
+ take their characters in whatever direction they want. It is important to
+ maintain this free will, and not lead the players with a heavy hand down a
+ course only the narrator controls. Though the narrator may tell a good
+ story, it loses the rich creative spirit of role-playing if the players
+ have little say in what happens.
+
+ Putting aside the synecdoche ("the whole premise," etc), two key features
+ show up in this passage as well as in the whole of the Maelstrom game
+ text. (1) No mention is made whatever of seeming to grant player control -
+ it's real freedom he's talking about. (2) The freedom is specifically over
+ what the character thinks is right and decides to do: the goal he or she
+ brings into the current imaginary situation. The GM ("narrator" in this
+ case) cannot wield any authority over what the characters are supposed to
+ want, which therefore extends to a similar lack of authority over how any
+ conflict during play is supposed to turn out.
+
+ From Christopher Kubasik's Interactive Toolkit series of essays (1995,
+ originally published in White Wolf Inphobia #50-53):
+
+ So, what are the differences between roleplaying games and Story
+ Entertainments? Let's start with roleplaying's GM (referee, Storyteller,
+ or whatever). This is usually the person who works out the plot, the world
+ and everything that isn't the players'. To a greater or lesser degree, she
+ is above the other players in importance, depending on the group's
+ temperament. In a Story Entertainment, she is just another player.
+ Distinctly different, but no more and no less than any other player. The
+ terms GM and referee fail to convey this spirit of equality. The term
+ Storyteller suggests that the players are passive listeners of her tale.
+ So here's another term for this participant - one that invokes the spirit
+ of Story Entertainment - Fifth Business.
+
+ Fifth Business is a term that originates from European opera companies. A
+ character from Robertson Davies' novel, ... Fifth Business, describes the
+ term this way:
+
+ "You cannot make a plot work without another man, and he is usually a
+ baritone, and he is called in the profession Fifth Business. You must have
+ a Fifth Business because he is the one who knows the secret of the hero's
+ birth, or comes to the assistance of the heroine when she thinks all is
+ lost, or keeps the hermitess in her cell, or may even be the cause of
+ someone's death, if that is part of the plot. The prima donna and the
+ tenor, the contralto and the basso, get all the best music and do all the
+ spectacular things, but you cannot manage the plot without the Fifth
+ Business!"
+
+ This certainly sounds like the GM, but it also makes it clear that he's
+ part of the show, not the show itself.
+
+ Let's call the players Leads. They're not players in the GM's game.
+ They're participants in a story. The Fifth Business has a lot more work to
+ do than do the Leads, changing costumes and shaping the story while it's
+ in progress. But the Leads are equal to the Fifth Business. The Leads must
+ react to the characters, incidents, and information that the Fifth
+ Business offers, just as players must react to what the GM offers in a
+ roleplaying game. But the Fifth Business must always be on his toes and
+ react to what the Leads offer.
+
+ ... The Fifth Business can't decide what the plot is going to be and then
+ run the players through it like mice in a maze. The Leads determine the
+ direction of the story when they create their characters ... What do the
+ characters want? What are their goals? The story is about their attempt to
+ gain those goals. The Fifth Business creates obstacles to those goals.
+
+ [From Part 3, "Character, character, character"]
+
+ As the designer of the character you shouldn't simply depend on the Fifth
+ Business ... to provide you with trouble. You should look for trouble for
+ your character. ...
+
+ Moreover, you know best of all what kind of problems you want for your
+ character. ... in a story entertainment you're not the passive passenger
+ in the gamemaster's roller coaster. You are a co-creator with Fifth
+ Business and the other players of a story.
+
+ [From Part 4, "Running Story Entertainments"]
+
+ Listen to the players, keep in mind the idea of obstacles, mix up volatile
+ characters and objects, and remember you don't have to know where you're
+ going. No roleplaying game ever follows the "path" of the story anyway, so
+ a story entertainment just dismisses the whole notion of adventure. Rather
+ than become frustrated when the characters don't do what they're supposed
+ to, let them lead the story with their Characters' Goals.
+
+ It all comes down to this: a "player" in a Narrativist role-playing
+ context necessarily makes the thematic choices for a given
+ player-character. Even if this role switches around from person to person
+ (as in Universalis), it's always sacrosanct in the moment of decision.
+ "GMing," then, for this sort of play, is all about facilitating another
+ person's ability to do this.
+
+Protagonism
+
+ In all role-playing, the player-character is the lens of the Creative
+ Agenda at work. That's right, I said all role-playing.
+
+ * Simulationist = the character "fits" - its setting, capabilities,
+ outcomes, behavior patterns, and so on, all reinforce the Dream for
+ everyone.
+
+ * Gamist = the character is a direct opportunity for player-strategy.
+ Its construction doesn't hamstring the player (except with agreed-upon
+ handicaps) and permits him or her to Step On Up.
+
+ * Narrativist = the character's predicament is how Premise is seen/felt
+ in full, and what he does, and what happens is how a theme is
+ realized.
+
+ By definition, a character faces "relevant stress" for the Creative
+ Agenda. The term used most often for that is "adversity," and it is
+ required in all three modes of play. Without it, there is no Situation.
+ Without Situation, there's no role-playing, just sitting around and
+ diddling. You can tell when this happens: everyone stops paying attention
+ to one another, and quite likely the one person talking is only paying
+ attention to himself or herself. Adversity, which may come from any
+ participant during play, is the key.
+
+ Now we run into a conceptual tangle. In literary terms, if there's a
+ story, there's one or more protagonists. Since story can arise from any
+ sort of role-playing, then protagonism of the relevant character comes
+ with that, part and parcel. However, "protagonism" at the Forge as
+ discussed most frequently by Paul Czege, tends to focus on very specific
+ processes of play: those which prompt Premise-addressing interest in a
+ given character among all of the real-person participants; in other words,
+ a specifically Narrativist process.
+
+ That's a real terminological conundrum. I shudder at the thought of
+ co-opting the term "protagonist" into anything besides the fictional
+ context of a story, regardless of how it was produced. However, I also
+ want to preserve Paul's point that people may establish emotional,
+ relatively high-stakes connections to other people's player-characters.
+ But neither are restricted to Narrativist play.
+
+ Fortunately, for discussing Narrativist play by itself, the two things are
+ one and the same. Which means I shall happily relegate debate about the
+ term in a larger (all of role-playing) sense to the forums and neatly
+ dodge it for purposes of the essay.
+
+ So let's talk about Narrativist protagonism and how it's established,
+ starting with the adversity. From Sorcerer (Adept Press, 2001, author is
+ Ron Edwards):
+
+ GET TO THE BANGS!
+
+ Bangs are those moments when the characters realize they have a problem
+ right now and have to get moving to deal with it. It can be as simple as a
+ hellacious demon crashing through the skylight and attacking the
+ characters or as subtle as the voice of the long-dead murder victim
+ answering when they call the number they found in the new murder victim's
+ pockets.
+
+ But that needed clarifying, so from Sorcerer & Sword (Adept Press, 2001,
+ author is Ron Edwards):
+
+ Driving with Bangs ... how is the poor GM able to assure any happenings
+ when he or she is no longer the primary author?
+
+ ... It is the GM's job to present and, for lack of a better word, drive
+ Bangs, in the sense of driving a nail or driving something home. In
+ narrative terms, Bangs tend to come as one of the following: [list follows
+ with details; to summarize: crisis to crisis, twist to twist, link to
+ link, locale to locale - RE]
+
+ Ultimately, all of these elements provided by the GM are the same thing: a
+ means for moving from decision to decision on the part of the players.
+ Bangs are always about player-character responses.
+
+ This is why Bangs are not represented by many of the fight scenes or clues
+ in traditional role-playing. Throwing mad hyenas at the player-characters
+ is not a Bang if the only result of the fight is to wander into the next
+ room. Nor is a clue a Bang at all if all it does is show where the next
+ clue may be found. A real Bang gives the player options and requires his
+ or her decision about how to handle it, which in turn reveals and develops
+ the player-character as a hero.
+
+ In Sex & Sorcery (2003), I presented some further terms to represent
+ multiple-person input and some other nuances into the Bang concept: Bobs,
+ Weavings, Crosses, and Openings; all are listed in the glossary following
+ this essay.
+
+ Aside from a lack of adversity, the other issue regarding protagonism is
+ the problem of de-protagonizing, a term coined by Paul Czege.
+ Deprotagonizing literally means to deprive a person of the means to
+ express one of the bulleted points above (depending on the Creative Agenda
+ at hand; Paul is usually discussing Narrativist play). There are dozens of
+ ways to do that, and all of them are grounds for instant breaking of the
+ Social Contract for that play-experience. No one accepts deprotagonization
+ willingly; those bulleted points are heartfelt priorities at the very core
+ of Creative Agenda. As a minor but thought-provoking point, character
+ death is not deprotagonizing if it satisfies the Creative Agenda for that
+ person and group.
+
+ Nearly all of the dysfunctional issues described later in the essay
+ concern deprotagonizing in the context of Narrativist play, which is best
+ defined as Force: the final authority that any person who is not playing a
+ particular player-character has over decisions and actions made by that
+ player-character. This is distinct from information that the GM imparts or
+ chooses not to impart to play; I'm talking about the protagonists'
+ decisions and actions. In Narrativist play, using Force by definition
+ disrupts the Creative Agenda.
+
+ Force techniques include IIEE manipulation, fudged/ignored rolls,
+ perception management, clue moving, scene framing as a form of reducing
+ options, directions as to character's actions using voiced and unvoiced
+ signals, modifying features of various NPCs during play, and authority
+ over using textual rules. The Golden Rule of White Wolf games is, in
+ application, a mandate for Force.
+
+ Force Techniques often include permitting pseudo-decisions, which we can
+ discuss at the Forge if necessary. Also, Force Techniques do vary in how
+ flexible a scene's outcome is permitted to be. Some GMs (to use the
+ classic single-GM context) might do anything up to actually picking up
+ your dice for you in order for you to talk to "that guy," or he might let
+ the characters miss the clue, either 'porting it to another character or
+ letting its absence go ahead and affect the outcome.
+
+System - "it does matter" all over again
+
+ Remember the System "bow" which shoots the Creative Agenda arrow? It must
+ be an active tool. The Explorative Situation must change with verve -
+ anything that introduces ebbs, flows, and unpredictable elements into the
+ real-person decision-making process. That's what System does, whether it's
+ composed entirely of dialogue or relies on pages and pages of probability
+ charts. How does it do it? Through the combinations of Techniques being
+ employed.
+
+ I'll focus on one bit of System: resolution. I'll break it up into
+ Techniques regarding what exactly is being resolved. For Narrativist play,
+ the key is to focus on conflicts rather than tasks. A conflict statement
+ is, "I'm trying to kill him," or, "I'm trying to humiliate him," whereas a
+ task statement is, "I swing my sword at him." (It doesn't matter, by the
+ way, how much in-game time and space are involved; conflict resolution can
+ be "very small" and task resolution can be "very big." We can discuss this
+ more on-line.) I submit that trying to resolve conflicts by hoping that
+ the accumulated successful tasks will turn out to be about what you want,
+ is an unreliable and unsatisfying way to role-play when developing
+ Narrativist protagonism.
+
+ How does this relate to game mechanics? I'll take the most-common example
+ of Fortune systems. The big distinction I want to make is between
+ Fortune-in-the-Middle and the more commonly-understood Fortune-at-the-End.
+ For the record, I think both go back to the very beginning of
+ role-playing; I didn't invent anything by naming them.
+
+ Fortune-at-the-End: all variables, descriptions, and in-game actions are
+ known, accounted for, and fixed before the Fortune system is brought into
+ action. It acts as a "closer" of whatever deal was struck that called for
+ resolution. A "miss" in such a system indicates, literally, a miss. The
+ announced blow was attempted, which is to say, it was also perceived to
+ have had a chance to hit by the character, was aimed, and was put into
+ motion. It just didn't connect at the last micro-second.
+
+ Fortune-in-the-Middle: the Fortune system is brought in partway through
+ figuring out "what happens," to the extent that specific actions may be
+ left completely unknown until after we see how they worked out. Let's say
+ a character with a sword attacks some guy with a spear. The point is to
+ announce the character's basic approach and intent, and then to roll. A
+ missed roll in this situation tells us the goal failed. Now the group is
+ open to discussing just how it happened from the beginning of the action
+ being initiated. Usually, instead of the typical description that you
+ "swing and miss," because the "swing" was assumed to be in action before
+ the dice could be rolled at all, the narration now can be anything from
+ "the guy holds you off from striking range with the spearpoint" to "your
+ swing is dead-on but you slip a bit." Or it could be a plain vanilla miss
+ because the guy's better than you. The point is that the narration of what
+ happens "reaches back" to the initation of the action, not just the
+ action's final micro-second.
+
+ There's a whole spectrum of extreme connect/disconnect between conflict
+ and task. At one end, the task does fail, but the goal fails too, perhaps
+ with a nuance or two. The other end is much wider in interpretative scope:
+ we know the character's goal (killing some guy) doesn't happen, but with
+ those in place, narration takes over to provide all the events involved.
+ Applying different judgments along this spectrum, for different parts of
+ play, is a big deal in games like Dust Devils, Trollbabe, Sorcerer, and
+ HeroQuest. In Sorcerer, failing a dice roll means failing the goal, almost
+ always due to failing at the task; in Dust Devils, certain card outcomes
+ dictate that you fail at the goal, but whether the task failed or
+ succeeded within that context is entirely up for grabs and determined by
+ that scene's designated narrator. HeroQuest and Trollbabe permit the group
+ to customize between these extremes as they see fit for that scene.
+
+ Fortune-in-the-Middle as the basis for resolving conflict facilitates
+ Narrativist play in a number of ways.
+
+ * It preserves the desired image of player-characters specific to the
+ moment. Given a failed roll, they don't have to look like incompetent
+ goofs; conversely, if you want your guy to suffer the effects of cruel
+ fate, or just not be good enough, you can do that too.
+
+ * It permits tension to be managed from conflict to conflict and from
+ scene to scene. So a "roll to hit" in Scene A is the same as in Scene
+ B in terms of whether the target takes damage, but it's not the same
+ in terms of the acting character's motions, intentions, and experience
+ of the action.
+
+ * It retains the key role of constraint on in-game events. The dice (or
+ whatever) are collaborators, acting as a springboard for what happens
+ in tandem with the real-people statements.
+
+ Not all versions of this principle are alike. Some of them involve
+ scene-scale resolution (Story Engine), some involve narration-trading
+ (Dust Devils), some are heavily integrated with tactics (The Riddle of
+ Steel), and some of them require role-playing "bits" to justify
+ incorporating system features (The Dying Earth).
+
+ Some Fortune-in-the-Middle applications give opportunities for tweaking
+ after the roll: usually, spending points of some kind after the dice have
+ hit the table to alter the effects. Some games have this feature and some
+ don't; Forge jargon calls such things "FitM with teeth" because such a
+ system forces the group to acknowledge that the dice do not "finish" the
+ job of resolution.
+
+ Does Fortune-in-the-Middle define Narrativism? No, nor does it even
+ facilitate it in isolation. It's merely a strong component of many
+ Narrativist-facilitating combinations of Techniques; I've left its
+ potential integration with reward and behavioral mechanics out of this
+ discussion.
+
+ Is there such a thing as Fortune-at-the-beginning? Playtesting so far
+ indicates that it's not very satisfying for Narrativist play; see
+ discussions at the Forge of Human Wreckage and The World the Flesh and the
+ Devil.
+
+ Is Fortune the only resolution method for conflict resolution? The answer
+ is emphatically no. The two main alternatives are apparently Karma +
+ Resource management, which I consider to be underdeveloped at this point,
+ and highly-structured Drama, which may be investigated through Puppetland,
+ Soap, and to a lesser extent Universalis.
+
+ The game world
+
+ Since Exploration is best understood as a medium and tool in Narrativist
+ play, rather than a product itself, the role of "in game reality" needs
+ some review - not so much about who has authority over it (the usual
+ concern in Simulationist play), but what the heck it is. The answer is,
+ it's a medium and tool for addressing Premise, and nothing more at all.
+
+ From Maelstrom (Hubris Games, 1994, author is Christian Aldridge):
+
+ Literal vs. Conceptual
+
+ A good way to run the Hubris Engine is to use "scene ideas" to convey the
+ scene, instead of literalisms. ... focus on the intent behind the scene
+ and not on how big or how far things might be. If the difficulty of the
+ task at hand (such as jumping across a chasm in a cave) is explained in
+ terms of difficulty, it doesn't matter how far across the actual chasm
+ spans. In a movie, for instance, the camera zooms or pans to emphasize the
+ danger or emotional reaction to the scene, and in so doing it manipulates
+ the real distance of a chasm to suit the mood or "feel" of the moment. It
+ is then no longer about how far across the character has to jump, but how
+ hard the feat is for the character. ... If the players enjoy the challenge
+ of figuring out how high and far someone can jump, they should be allowed
+ the pleasure of doing so - as long as it doesn't interfere with the
+ narrative flow and enjoyment of the game.
+
+ The scene should be presented therefore in terms relative to the
+ character's abilities ... Players who want to climb onto your coffee table
+ and jump across your living room to prove that their character could jump
+ over the chasm have probably missed the whole point of the story.
+
+ The "doesn't interfere" matches to my "prioritization." The "narrative
+ flow and enjoyment" matches to addressing Premise. The "whole point of the
+ story" and "intent behind the scene" are Premise itself, expressed in this
+ scene as a Bang. More topically, I can think of no better text to explain
+ the vast difference between playing the games RuneQuest and HeroQuest.
+
+ Stance
+
+ A lot of mental sweat has been shed to try to link Stances with modes and
+ goals of play. I think most of that discussion was misguided by an overly
+ 1:1 approach. In my big model as currently constructed, only combinations
+ of Ephemera comprise a Technique, so we're not talking about one Stance in
+ a given moment, but the distribution of Stances through multiple character
+ actions, decisions, and scenes. And that's only one Technique, which is
+ not enough to dictate or identify Creative Agenda.
+
+ Bearing all that in mind, Author Stance may be considered the default for
+ Narrativist play only in the sense that it needs to be in there somewhere.
+ Narrativist play doesn't have to be exclusively in this Stance, nor does
+ it even have to be employed more often than the others. The only
+ requirement is that it be present in a significant way. Narrativist play
+ is very much like Gamist play in this regard, and for the same reason: the
+ player of a given character takes social and aesthetic responsibility for
+ what that character does.
+
+ Narration the non-issue
+
+ Before going on, I'll take a quick break to discuss "narration," which is
+ no more and no less than saying what happens in the imaginary events. I
+ want to distinguish saying what happens (narrating) from establishing what
+ happens (currently a non-named concept), because they are often confused.
+ I'm taking the
+
+ I'll break it down.
+
+ * Narration is not a Drama mechanic unless it is literally the means of
+ resolution.
+
+ * Narration is in practice shared among members of a role-playing group
+ and far less centralized than most people think.
+
+ The only concern about narration per se is that its relationship to
+ establishing-what-happens must be clear. That entails that how things are
+ established is itself clear: is it ad-lib? is the GM where the buck stops?
+ is it traded about, organized in any way? or what? Those are good
+ questions, but once they're established, narration is a no-brainer.
+
+ Game texts are typically astonishingly bad at explaining this issue.
+ Positive exceptions for Narrativist-leaning games include Soap, The Pool,
+ and Universalis, and other recent games like InSpectres, Otherkind, Dust
+ Devils, Trollbabe, and Donjon, which all distribute narration around the
+ group as a means of distributing who establishes what.
+
+Historical diversity of Narrativist play
+
+ Narrativist play-procedures are pretty scattered in terms of actual game
+ books. I suggest that titles and texts are really just rustles in the
+ bushes, such that one has to infer the actual play that either informed
+ them or might have proceeded from them. For most of what follows, I've
+ spoken with game designers and many, many play-groups about these issues.
+
+ I think that Narrativist play goes back to the beginning of role-playing.
+ Yes, a "non-Narrativism" shroud descended over role-playing design and
+ publishing, but I think that dates from the mid-late 1980s. In other
+ words, the "Narrativist revolution" of 2000-2003 is not an innovation, but
+ a return to a lost art.
+
+ Looking at earlier games from a Techniques perspective, a shift to
+ Narrativist play within the larger Gamist context is apparent in some
+ Tunnels & Trolls, as discusssed in "Gamism: Step On Up". I also recommend
+ reading and playing Marvel Super Heroes, reviewing the entire Strike Force
+ text in light of the 1st and 2nd editions of Champions being used by that
+ group, reviewing the extensive documentation of Champions play presented
+ in the APA-zine The Clobberin Times', and giving Toon, Ghostbusters, and
+ James Bond a try. I am not saying "These are Narrativist games," but
+ rather, evidence supports the claim that these rules-sets supported some
+ Narrativist play back then.
+
+ I do not think that the strong minority trend beginning in the very late
+ 1980s toward Drama-heavy role-playing represented by Amber, Theatrix, and
+ The Window was especially Narrativist in application, although that mode
+ of play was probably found in some groups playing these games. This trend
+ is better understood in combination with games like Fudge and Risus, and
+ most especially in terms of the Mind's Eye Theatre approach to LARPs.
+
+ During the early 1990s, however, a certain approach to numbers and Fortune
+ became apparent across a number of games: Prince Valiant, Over the Edge
+ (especially in light of Laws' essay), Castle Falkenstein, Everway,
+ Maelstrom/Story Engine, Zero, and The Whispering Vault. Later, similar
+ games include Sorcerer, Orkworld, and The Riddle of Steel. All of these
+ texts demonstrate an internal struggle to articulate means of addressing
+ Premise, littered with trip-ups based on assumptions of GM-power and the
+ utter lack of precedent in explaining the whole idea. Some of them slammed
+ toward Simulationist texts upon second-edition revision and via
+ supplements, probably to make it "more like an RPG."
+
+ The internet revealed something vastly more startling: in-your-nose
+ Narrativist designs like Ghost Light, Soap, InSpectres, and The Pool, as
+ well as their Gamist cousin Elfs. These games' influence was vast at the
+ Forge, including but not limited to Dust Devils, Trollbabe, Otherkind,
+ Paladin, Violence Future, My Life with Master, and Universalis, along with
+ further Gamist cousins like Donjon. The internet also revealed active
+ play-communities that had previously been invisible to store-centered
+ commerce, including Marvel Super Heroes among others.
+
+ Since the historical trends are so textually diffuse, I think that this
+ section will do better to focus on procedural diversity, small point by
+ small point. Each point presents a separate and independent spectrum of
+ variation. As always, game titles are used only to refer to the actual
+ play that they best seem to facilitate.
+
+Basic diversity of Narrativist play
+
+ Making it up in play vs. setting it up beforehand
+
+ A lot of people have mistakenly interpreted the word "Narrativist" for
+ "making it up as we go." Neither this nor anything like it is definitional
+ for Narrativist play, but it is indeed an important issue for role-playing
+ of any kind. So it's not a bad idea simply to ask, for a given group or
+ session, when and how is the Explorative context (setting, situation,
+ whatever) established?
+
+ * High improvisation during play: e.g., Universalis, InSpectres, Extreme
+ Vengeance
+
+ * Rock steady based on preparation - Orkworld, Castle Falkenstein,
+ HeroQuest, Sorcerer
+
+ * In between - Trollbabe, The Pool, Dust Devils, My Life with Master
+
+ Many people get unnecessarily hung up on this issue ... playing
+ Universalis is not "more Narrativist" than playing Orkworld, for instance.
+ Also, this issue is not at all correlated with centralizing vs.
+ distributing the various GM-tasks discussed previously.
+
+ Where little Premises come from
+
+ Given that Explorative content for Narrativist play exists to provide meat
+ for addressing a Premise, it shouldn't be surprising that differing
+ starting points for the process can be found depending on what kind of
+ details and efforts are involved in preparing for play.
+
+ Just as in Gamist play, the big gorilla of the five Explorative elements
+ is Situation. What I'm contrasting here is which elements begin detailed
+ enough to yield Situation relatively quickly during play, as opposed to
+ which ones can be "relaxed" in terms of detail and depth at the start, to
+ be developed later.
+
+ * Character-based Premise: Characters begin play with at least one
+ significant Premise-based decision in their backgrounds.
+
+ * Setting-based Premise: External adversity swarms upon the characters
+ based on unavoidable, often large-scale elements of the overall
+ setting.
+
+ * Situation-based Premise: The immediate conflict at hand is already
+ under way and rich with Premise; fill in Character goals and Setting
+ justification as needed during play.
+
+ I suggest that it's useful to reduce the pre-play effort on the other
+ elements involved. Loading too many of them with Premise prior to play
+ yields a messy and unworkable play-situation in Narrativist terms, in
+ which characters' drives and external adversity are too full to develop
+ off of or to reinforce one another. More discussion and debate about this
+ issue may be taken up at the Forge.
+
+ Character-based Premise is the easiest to implement, and unsurprisingly it
+ reflects Egri's ideas in full. Games whose design relies on this approach
+ include Zero, Sorcerer, Dust Devils, and The Riddle of Steel, among many
+ others. I think this form of Premise-building is probably the most common
+ form of Drifting to Narrativist play. From the "Campaigning" chapter and
+ "The Developing Campaign" section in Strike Force (Hero Games, 1988,
+ author is Aaron Allston):
+
+ THE "CHARACTER STORY"
+
+ One thing that each Champions GM needs to learn to do is to spot,
+ carefully nurture, and eventually play out the "Character Story."
+
+ Each player-character has a Story above and beyond the ordinary adventures
+ encountered during the course of the campaign. This Character Story
+ usually involves the resolution of the most important desires of the
+ character.
+
+ Phosphene - Discovery of and Acceptance by Family. Raised by a single
+ parent and knowing of no other relatives, Phos started his career cynical
+ and alone. Learning that he had a family, the enigmatic Brood, he
+ discovered that he had a tremendous need to become one of them. Eventually
+ he met all his surviving relatives and earned the affection of most of
+ them. Now married and a family man himself, his personal story is
+ resolved.
+
+ Lorelei - Growth into Womanhood. In the course of her years of playing,
+ Lorelei grew from a 15-year-old innocent into a mature woman and team
+ leader; the most important elements of transition (other than the years
+ involved) were her romance with Commodore and her eventual rescue of and
+ reunion with her father.
+
+ Take a look at your own character - or at all the PCs if you're the GM -
+ and try to root out the Character Story of each one. [examples follow -
+ RE] In short, try to figure out what element of the character's
+ background, relations, or psychology make him interesting but will
+ eventually make him (or his player) frustrated and unhappy if not
+ ultimately resolved. That's the Character Story.
+
+ An interesting qualifier shows up in the final paragraph of this section:
+
+ Of course, no campaign lasts long enough for every Character Story to be
+ discovered and exploited ...
+
+ ... which I think is a bizarre statement, possibly related to the idea
+ (which I remember all too well) that Champions players should all
+ cooperate to preserve the group regardless of their differing goals during
+ play.
+
+ The final section in this chapter indicates, I think the key point - which
+ is only presented parenthetically in the earlier text (above - "or his
+ player").
+
+ LISTENING TO YOUR PLAYERS
+
+ Always listen to your players' discussion of the ongoing adventure.
+ They'll constantly be analyzing, theorizing, and commenting on the
+ adventure. Often, their discussion will give you even better ideas than
+ those you've been implementing.
+
+ Also, pay attention to the recurring phrase, "It might be neat if ..." The
+ player who is saying this, whether he realizes it or not, is expressing a
+ desire about a future storyline or character development. Usually it's
+ easy to accomodate him, and gives him a more personal interest in that
+ specific plotline.
+
+ I consider this important because it acknowledges that the developing
+ Premise is best recognized by the people who play the protagonists.
+
+ Setting-based Premise is a bit more developmental, usually involving
+ "someone else's problem" or an overriding external adversity of some kind
+ - zombie attack being perhaps the most basic example. It might actually be
+ a bit better for introducing Simulationist-by-habit players to Narrativist
+ play, as they can start with sketchy characters and grow into addressing a
+ pretty-well-defined Premise over time. From HeroQuest (Issaries Inc, 2003,
+ primary text author is Greg Stafford):
+
+ Make Your Own Part
+
+ All heroes are extraordinary and destined for some fame in the world of
+ Glorantha. This is guaranteed, since they are individually guided by a
+ higher power: you, the player.
+
+ Your heroes will have the chance to be involved in the great events of the
+ Hero Wars, such as [several colorful examples - RE]. Such events are not
+ only for the super-powerful; they require the participation of your hero
+ at whatever level of power he has achieved.
+
+ [just past halfway through the book - RE]
+
+ Drama
+
+ Drama in Glorantha often comes from the conflict between what is and what
+ ought to be. Living up to expectations of cult behavior, for instance, is
+ meant to be difficult and limiting. After all, religious requirements are
+ not human ideals. [Wow! Talk about an Egri Premise! - RE] The intensity of
+ the plot comes from the hero trying to fulfil these expectations while
+ living with the everyday temptations and complications of life: a cow is
+ missing, some of your clan died in a raid, your children are ominously
+ ill, or neighbors are poaching the hunting lands. Add to this the
+ imperative of the Hero Wars, where some things will happen no matter what
+ the heroes do, and the heroes have to make difficult choices about what to
+ do and who [sic] to aid.
+
+ [and near the end - RE]
+
+ Politics, Always Politics
+
+ Glorantha may be a world of magic and myth, but there are some human
+ constants that remain, not the least of which is politics. [examples
+ follow of politics both as rivalries and means to social authority and
+ respect - RE]
+
+ The Hero Wars are breaking upon Glorantha. On the one hand, they are
+ throwing old alliances into question, tearing established communities
+ apart, and raising new dilemmas for leaders and led alike. But they are
+ also creating new and unexpected communities, as rivals are forced into
+ partnership by new threats or novel opportunities.
+
+ I don't think I've ever seen a more challenging Premise in a role-playing
+ text than "religious requirements are not human ideals." That is HeroQuest
+ in a nutshell, and there is no avoiding it during play. A character may
+ begin as just another goat-herder, but he isn't going to stay that way.
+ Other games with similar origins of Premise include Castle Falkenstein and
+ My Life with Master, in which the Master is, for all intents and purposes,
+ the setting.
+
+ Situation-based Premise is perhaps the easiest to manage as GM, as
+ player-characters are well-defined and shallow, and the setting is vague
+ although potentially quite colorful. The Premise has little to do with
+ either in the long-term; it's localized to a given moment of conflict.
+ Play often proceeds from one small-scale conflict to another,
+ episodically. Good examples of games based on this idea include Prince
+ Valiant, The Dying Earth, and InSpectres. From The Dying Earth (2001,
+ Pelgrane Press, authors are Robin Laws, John Snead, and Peter Freeman):
+
+ Many Dying Earth stories revolve around a closed community, which may be
+ either a small settlement or an isolated workplace. In its isolation, it
+ has developed its own highly-structured, sometimes legalistic, always
+ peculiar rules. Without outside influence, and with the stout enforcement
+ of its codes, the group has survived for a long time. When the protagonist
+ arrives, the locals try to enforce the rules on him, assimilating him into
+ their bizarre system. Instead, the hero ... takes action which utterly
+ disrupts the delicately-balanced harmony of the community. ... the
+ community, the basis of its rules destroyed, collapses.
+
+ [now for play]
+
+ When creating an adventure, dream up a bizarre rule or activity on which a
+ community's existence depends. Figure out at least one way in which the
+ PCs could wreak havoc on the community by disrupting the activity or
+ subverting the rule.
+
+ Then create a reason for the PCs to do so ... [actually, the entire
+ character creation process for this game takes care of this detail - RE]
+
+ The point is that the Situation doesn't have any particular role or
+ importance to the Setting, either in terms of where it comes from or what
+ happens later. The setting can be quite vague and might even just be a
+ gray haze that characters are presumed to have travelled through in order
+ to have encountered this new Situation.
+
+ This type of Premise does carry some risks: (1) the possibility of a
+ certain repetition from event to event, but probably nothing that you
+ wouldn't find in other situation-first narrative media, which is to say
+ serial fiction of any kind; (2) the heightened possibility of producing
+ pastiche; and (3) the heightened possibility of shifting to Gamist play.
+
+Deep diversity
+
+ Who gets the GM jobs
+
+ Earlier, I listed some of the various roles and tasks usually associated
+ with the term "GM." As I said, the question is not whether there is a GM
+ (there is always one or more for any scene during play), but rather how
+ the GMing tasks are distributed. The potential range of diversity is
+ staggering. The most important variables include: - Which of these roles
+ are most important to be formalized for this game - Whether the roles are
+ centralized in one person - The concept of "the buck" - in the event that
+ different people suggest different things, who says what goes
+
+ In the interest of space and keeping the complexity of these sections
+ limited, I'll only provide examples for the centralization-issue. -
+ Centralized: The Riddle of Steel, Sorcerer, Orkworld, Castle Falkenstein,
+ HeroQuest, The Dying Earth - Widely distributed: Universalis, Soap - In
+ between: Trollbabe, The Pool, InSpectres, Dust Devils, Violence Future
+
+ Story structure
+
+ Classically, a story has the following structure: (a) introduce character
+ and situation, (b) introduce conflict, (c) rising conflict, (d) climax,
+ and (e) resolution, of which (a, b, d) are the key pieces. Most stories
+ indeed follow this model regardless of their chronological presentation,
+ point-of-view, or any other details. There's usually no particular worry
+ that Narrativist play will fail to produce a story (of whatever quality),
+ without any overt effort to force it. However, it is also at least
+ possible for overall story structure to be part of System.
+
+ Sorcerer presented the Kicker Technique, which is to say, a
+ player-authored Bang included in character creation, giving the GM
+ responsibility to make it central to play. It may be considered the
+ precise opposite of the "character hook" concept presented in many
+ adventure scenarios and role-playing games.
+
+ Some recent games feature the Endgame concept: a status for a character
+ (and sometimes all characters) that signals "Now is really Now," and it's
+ time for Premise to become theme without dilly-dallying. I suppose it can
+ first be seen in Soap and Puppetland based on these games' explicit
+ real-time constraints, but it's also embedded in the Guts/Coincidence
+ mechanics in Extreme Vengeance, the "Schism" version of Humanity in
+ Sorcerer, and the Insight mechanics in The Riddle of Steel. It's most
+ explicitly present in Violence Future and My Life with Master.
+
+ A similar structural issue is to decide how much Premise-addressing
+ (story, if you will) has already occurred before in-play decision-making
+ begins. At one extreme, you have "Blood Opera," which is to say, several
+ characters already engaged in serious committed effort to do
+ something-or-other, usually contradictory. Such play, regardless of how
+ many sessions are involved, tends to end up with several dead protagonists
+ and plenty of tragedy due to conflicting obligations and/or
+ misunderstandings; it's quite cathartic. Typically it's more satisfying
+ when all of the participants are enlisted in scenario preparation. At the
+ other extreme, you have play in which the Premise is introduced very
+ slowly and piecemeal, through a variety of scenes and events.
+
+ Here are some interesting trends which crop up along this spectrum:
+
+ * When the character's judgmental and active presence is established and
+ already in action as play begins, that beginning point is usually the
+ crisis-point for the story in general. Playing Legends of Alyria,
+ Prince Valiant, My Life with Master, and Soap tends toward this end;
+ all of them carry a slight danger of "over before they begin," but
+ they are also the most reliable for immediate Premise-consensus.
+
+ * When the Situation is well-established prior to play and essentially
+ independent of the player-characters, then how they encounter it and
+ become enlisted in its hassles is up for grabs, including when they
+ arrive. The protagonists usually play a catalytic role toward everyone
+ and everything else. Playing Everway, The Dying Earth, InSpectres,
+ Orkworld, The Whispering Vault, and Trollbabe is a lot like this.
+
+ * When the Situation must slowly develop into Premise, play is
+ necessarily extended into multiple sessions. Playing Sorcerer,
+ HeroQuest, Dust Devils, Violence Future, and Over the Edge often
+ proceeds in this fashion, to the extent that the first couple of
+ sessions resemble the first sections of a classical novel rather than
+ a movie or play, and they tend not to show off all of their most
+ satisfying features during single-session demonstration play.
+
+ Not all game designs must fall onto this spectrum explicitly, although
+ play does - I leave the different ways to place playing The Pool,
+ Universalis, and The Riddle of Steel onto the spectrum as an exercise for
+ the reader (hint: there are three answers, one for each game).
+
+ Finally, another subtle enforcer of story structure is the range of
+ possible focus, or specification, for player-characters' abilities. It
+ doesn't surprise me that many Narrativist-facilitating game designs don't
+ distinguish very much among player-characters' abilities (Sorcerer, The
+ Dying Earth, and My Life with Master characters are all pretty much alike
+ within each game, mechanically); when they are so distinguished, however,
+ the differences tend to lock down the range of the potential Premise(s)
+ during play.
+
+ So the most constrained story-structure game design would include Endgame
+ mechanics, an almost-over Situation, and strongly-distinguished abilties
+ (and hence story-roles) among the protagonists; interestingly, I can think
+ of no RPG design which features all three.
+
+ Resolution and reward mechanics
+
+ For Narrativist play, character creation may be considered the first step
+ in or the chassis for the reward and character-change systems. It differs
+ from the similar principle in Gamism in that personal strategy is not an
+ issue, but rather personal emotional agenda about the Premise. What's
+ interesting is that when play includes a focused reward system in
+ Narrativist terms, its numbers and effects are always integrated directly
+ into the event-resolution system.
+
+ One whole category of play, however, does not provide any special
+ connection between the two and usually doesn't include much of a reward
+ system at all. Earlier games of this sort include The Window (partly),
+ Theatrix, Over the Edge, Castle Falkenstein, The World the Flesh and the
+ Devil, and possibly Puppetland. I think Soap, InSpectres, and Universalis
+ represent a development in this category of stronger IIEE-structure, as
+ well as providing a very abstract resolution + reward mechanic, but
+ retaining the Drama emphasis for resolution. These games also feature
+ pronounced GM-sharing as distinct from the earlier ones.
+
+ The other category includes very strong reward mechanics design based on
+ character decisions, with resolution based on Fortune in the Middle in
+ order to preserve Author Stance during those decisions. Example games
+ include Prince Valiant, The Whispering Vault, Zero, The Pool, Sorcerer,
+ Dust Devils, Trollbabe, Legends of Alyria, My Life with Master, HeroQuest,
+ and Orkworld, as well as The Riddle of Steel in a cunning fashion.
+
+ A recent development in both categories is to bring relationships into the
+ game mechanics to a very high degree, as in HeroQuest, Trollbabe, and My
+ Life with Master. Earlier versions of this idea may be seen in Albedo,
+ Lace & Steel, and Pendragon, but its primarily-Narrativist application is
+ recent and very significant.
+
+ Character behavior mechanics
+
+ This topic is potentially rather a sore point among role-players, unless
+ they have experienced play which shows the diverse strong points along the
+ entire spectrum. It concerns how limited characters' behavior may be.
+
+ At one end of this spectrum, there's nothing of the kind: just contextual
+ material that prompts the issues and perhaps a character descriptor here
+ or there. The primary engine for Narrativist play is purely personal
+ fascination with the issues at hand and with working them out. Castle
+ Falkenstein, The Whispering Vault, and Over the Edge are good examples.
+
+ Moving just a little over, characters' behavioral descriptors are
+ required, but they don't have any special role in determining what the
+ character does - except for providing secondary bonuses to some resolution
+ events, as in The Pool and HeroQuest.
+
+ Moving well toward the other end of the spectrum, specific behaviors have
+ generalized consequence mechanics. Sorcerer, Trollbabe, Dust Devils, The
+ Riddle of Steel, and Orkworld are all examples - the characters have free
+ will regarding what to do, but immediate mechanics provide significant
+ effects.
+
+ Far at the other end of the spectrum, behavior is heavily structured, for
+ either or both character-creation and scenario-play. This kind of game
+ often entails playing "against yourself" for the character, and the GM is
+ potentially semi-adversarial, even ruthless, playing both external and
+ internal adversity. Examples include Wuthering Heights, Extreme Vengeance,
+ Violence Future, My Life with Master, Le Mon Mouri, InSpectres, Otherkind,
+ and The Dying Earth. "Schism", "Urge", and other sorcerer/demon
+ combination versions of Sorcerer effectively shift the game's play into
+ this category.
+
+ Procedural diversity: thematic content
+
+ Given that theme arises during Narrativist play, what does it look like,
+ and how limited or well-defined is it? This breaks down into three
+ independent issues, all of which are pretty subtle and deserve more
+ discussion.
+
+ 1. The potential for personal risk and disclosure among the real people
+ involved.
+
+ * High risk play is best represented by playing Sorcerer, Le Mon
+ Mouri, InSpectres, Zero, or Violence Future. You're putting your
+ ego on the line with this stuff, as genre conventions cannot help
+ you; the other people in play are going to learn a lot about who
+ you are.
+
+ * Low risk play is best represented by playing Castle Falkenstein,
+ Wuthering Heights, The Dying Earth, or Prince Valiant. These
+ games are, for lack of a better word, "lighter" or perhaps more
+ whimsical - they do raise issues and may include extreme content,
+ but play-decisions tend to be less self-revealing.
+
+ 2. The depth and profundity of the resulting themes. Counter to my lousy
+ phrasing in GNS and related matters of role-playing theory
+ ([21]http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/1/), "literary merit" of a
+ theme is irrelevant. Themes are indeed important, and I suggest that
+ two broad categories are available: cathartic vs. deconstructive, with
+ the former splitting up into happy-ending, sad-ending, and ambiguous.
+ A related point concerns the range of the possible themes for a given
+ play-instance, from narrow to broad. I'll forego providing game
+ examples as the depth and range of theme rely very greatly on the
+ given play-group's use of the game.
+
+ 3. The humorous content. This is, in many ways, a red herring. I consider
+ "funny" always to be a secondary phenomenon, perhaps modifying theme,
+ or modifying something else entirely. For GNS or other theory
+ purposes, you have to look at the something else and discuss that
+ first. Still, there are a couple of points worth mentioning for
+ role-playing.
+
+ * Is play itself funny, or is the topic of play funny? This is a
+ very complex issue, fully analogous to the endless discussions of
+ fear and suspense in horror role-playing.
+
+ * Is the humor acting to bring participants' emotions closer to the
+ Premise, or to distance them?
+
+GNS crossover issues
+
+ I suggest that historically, two basic Creative Agendas have been
+ perceived for role-playing: 1. Gamist, with the sub-set of Hard Core
+ Gamism; 2. Simulationist, with a sub-set of
+ Simulationist-becomes-Narrativist.
+
+ Oh, I know, people never used the GNS terms for this purpose. But this is
+ how newcomers to the theory often read the terms, indicating their current
+ understanding, and those readings are fully consistent with the
+ explanations of play found in hundreds of game texts. I consider this
+ dichotomy, sub-sets and all, to be badly mistaken, but before I get to
+ that, let's take a look at its cultural results.
+
+ Over time, as I see it, many practitioners and designers correctly
+ realized they were playing and promoting
+ Simulationist-becomes-"Narrativist," in quotes. Those quotes mean,
+ producing stories mainly through front-loading or post-editing, not
+ through protagonist decision-making as run by the players. They mean
+ focusing on story as product as opposed to Narrativist play. Reactions to
+ this latter insight have varied widely, and they include:
+
+ * Abandon the perceived overall mode (Simulationism) entirely for Gamist
+ pastures;
+
+ * Embrace the Simulationism and drop any pretense at story-creation
+ through play, such that story is at most an epiphenomenon to the
+ Exploration, usually of Setting;
+
+ * Embrace the quotes in the "Narrativist" with verve, putting as much
+ effort and sophistication toward metaplot and GM-driven-story as
+ possible;
+
+ * Give up role-playing in disgust with the inability to produce
+ Narrativist play without the quotes;
+
+ * Mute down any particular Creative Agenda, making sure to provide a
+ little Gamist candy, in the interests of group harmony;
+
+ * Drop the quotes around the "Narrativist," which means abandoning
+ Simulationism as a starting point and turning to explicit Narrativism.
+
+ My construction of the modes of play is extremely different. As I see it,
+ one starts with [Exploration]. Now, either prioritize the intensity of
+ imagining some specific content as the agenda of play, which gives you
+ [E[Simulationism]], or develop the Exploration into a further-derived
+ agenda, which gives the choice of [E[Narrativism]] or [E[Gamism]].
+
+ Gamism and Narrativism
+
+ As I've tried to show at various points so far, Gamist and Narrativist
+ play are near-absolute social and structural equivalents, sharing the same
+ range for most Techniques save those involving reward systems. They differ
+ primarily in terms of the actual aesthetic payoff - what's appreciated
+ socially and aesthetically. That difference is extremely marked. Happily,
+ therefore very little if any chance exists for these modes of play to come
+ into conflict with one another - a group simply goes one way or the other.
+
+ From the Introduction section of The Marvel Universe Roleplaying Game
+ (Marvel Entertainment Group, 2003, "Direct Edition," authors not credited,
+ editor is Mark D. Beazley):
+
+ Style of Play
+
+ You can play Marvel in a variety of styles, based on whatever you're
+ interested in. Most roleplaying games tend to fall somewhere between two
+ styles of play that we call "Clobberin' Time" and "Power and
+ Responsibility." And for one-on-one play, there's always "Brawling," a
+ style unique to this game.
+
+ Power and Responsibility
+
+ ... players spend a great deal of time on things like character
+ development, morality, thoughts and goals ... They care about the other
+ people in their lives, like girlfriends or boyfriends, aunts, sidekicks,
+ and non-Super Hero friends. ... there's more to this style of play than
+ busting things up.
+
+ Clobberin' Time
+
+ ... players don't spend much time on their characters' lifestyles. They
+ concentrate on action and plenty of it.
+
+ Together, the players and the GamesMaster decide what style of game they
+ want to play. There is nothing more frustrating than a GamesMaster who
+ runs a "Power and Responsibility" style game for a bunch of "Clobberin'
+ Times" players. ...
+
+ Brawling
+
+ ... allows players to answer age-old questions: who would win in a fight,
+ the Thing or the Hulk? [further examples] ... two players can sit down
+ with their characters and fight against each other without needing a
+ GamesMaster.
+
+ I can always quibble. I think the above text adheres a little too closely
+ to the mistaken dichotomies presented earlier, with the concomitant red
+ herring of combat vs. no combat. But it's flawless in terms of caring
+ together about what's up, and about socially constructing and reinforcing
+ what's up. And the key point for me is that the same game system is usable
+ alternatively for Narrativist or Gamist (or Hard Core Gamist) play, rather
+ than simultaneously. Also, the text includes very little mention of or
+ attention to Simulationist play per se. Enjoying "being a Marvel hero" in
+ this game is not Simulationist at all, but merely the foundational
+ Explorative expectation for either of the two focused options.
+
+ Whether the Gamist and Narrativist modes may be played "congruently" is
+ controversial (see Congruence in the glossary). I remain skeptical.
+
+ The grim epiphany: Narrativism and Simulationism
+
+ This section supercedes the section "El Dorado and Drift" in my essay
+ "Simulationism: the Right to Dream"
+ ([22]http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/15/).
+
+ I'll begin by identifying a very common misconception: that if enjoyable
+ Exploration is identifiable during play, then play must be Simulationist
+ or at least partly so. This is profoundly mistaken: if you address
+ Premise, it's Narrativist play. Period. If the Exploration involved, no
+ matter how intensive, hones and focuses that addressing-Premise process,
+ then that Exploration is still Narrativist, not Simulationist.
+
+ That's why Feng Shui and Hong Kong Action Theater are hard-core,
+ no-ambiguity Simulationist-facilitating games including their explicit
+ homage to specific cinematic stories, and that's why The Dying Earth
+ facilitates Narrativist play, because its Situations are loaded with the
+ requirement for satirical, judgmental input on the part of the players.
+
+ "El Dorado" was coined by Paul Czege to indicate the impossibility of a
+ 1:1 Simulationist:Narrativist blend, although the term was appropriated by
+ others for the blend itself, as a desirable goal. I think some people who
+ claim to desire such a goal in play are simply looking for Narrativism
+ with a very strong Explorative chassis, and that the goal is not elusive
+ at all. Such "Vanilla Narrativism" is very easy and straightforward. The
+ key to finding it is to stop reinforcing Simulationist approaches to play.
+ Many role-players, identified by Jesse Burneko as
+ "Simulationist-by-habit," exhaust themselves by seeking El Dorado, racing
+ ever faster and farther, when all they have to do is stop running, turn
+ around, and find Vanilla Narrativism right in their grasp.
+
+ However, what about subordinate hybrids? Simulationist play works as an
+ underpinning to Narrativist play, insofar as bits or sub-scenes of play
+ can shift into extensive set-up or reinforcers for upcoming Bang-oriented
+ moments. It differs from the Explorative chassis for Narrativist play,
+ even an extensive one, in that one really has to stop addressing Premise
+ and focus on in-game causality per se. Such scenes or details can take on
+ an interest of their own, as with the many pages describing military
+ hardware in a Tom Clancy novel. It's a bit risky, as one can attract
+ (e.g.) hardware-nuts who care very little for Premise as well as
+ Premise-nuts who get bored by one too many hardware-pages, and end up
+ pleasing neither enough to attract them further.
+
+ Historically, this approach has been poorly implemented in role-playing
+ texts, which swing into Simulationist phrasing extremely easily, for the
+ reasons I describe in "Simulationism: the Right to Dream". You cannot get
+ emergent Narrativist play specifically through putting more and more
+ effort into perfecting the Simulationism (which requires that the
+ Narrativism cease), no matter how "genre-faithful" or "character-faithful"
+ it may be. I consider most efforts in this direction to become reasonably
+ successful High-Concept Simulationism with a strong slant toward
+ Situation, mainly useful for enjoyable pastiche but not particularly for
+ Narrativist play at all.
+
+ The key issue is System. Narrativist play is best understood as a powerful
+ integration and feedback between character creation and the reward system,
+ however they may work, in that the former is merely the first step of the
+ latter in terms of addressing Premise. Whereas the usual effect in
+ High-Concept Simulationist play is to "fix" player-characters
+ appropriately into the Situation for purposes of affirming the
+ story-as-conceived, especially in terms of varying effectiveness at
+ specific task-categories, and reward systems in these games are usually
+ diminished and delayed to the point of absence. Games which stumbled over
+ this issue include Fading Suns and Legend of the Five Rings, both of which
+ require extensive Drifting to achieve even halting Narrativist play
+ despite considerable thematic content.
+
+ The more successful primarily-Narrativist, secondarily-Simulationist
+ hybrid designs include Obsidian, to some extent, possibly Continuum if I'm
+ reading it right, and The Riddle of Steel as the current shining light; I
+ also call attention to Robots & Rapiers, currently in development.
+
+ How about the reverse? Can Narrativist play underlie and reinforce a
+ primarily Simulationist approach? I consider this to be a very interesting
+ question, because it's not like Gamism in this regard at all. What happens
+ when Premise is addressed sporadically, or develops so slowly that the
+ majority of play is like those hardware-pages? Whether this is "slow
+ Narrativism" or "S-N-S" or just plain dysfunctional play is a matter of
+ specific instances, I think. But I do want to stress that it's not the
+ "N/S blend" as commonly construed, which is to say, both priorities firing
+ as equal pals.
+
+Dysfunctional Narrativist play
+
+ GNS incompatibility
+
+ It is very easy to spot players who are disinclined toward Narrativist
+ play, but nevertheless want a story to be produced, in a group that favors
+ Narrativist-oriented play. They write up rich and intense characters on
+ paper, but in play, they're paralyzed. They can posture towards one
+ another, and they can defend against attack, and they can spot clues, beat
+ up mooks, and band together against a common threat like nobody's
+ business, but only on the basis of GM cues. In an otherwise Narrativist
+ group, they are black hole voids for addressing Premise, and typically
+ they don't continue playing with that group for long.
+
+ More subtle and more likely to be sustained are Narrativist-oriented
+ participants in largely non-Narrativist games. They practice "stealth"
+ play to get what they want, usually through making suggestions to the
+ authority in the group, often practicing a lot of trade-off negotiation. A
+ skilled stealther can sometimes become a significant co-GM as long as he
+ or she doesn't call attention to the influence. Stealthers tend to do a
+ lot of waiting.
+
+ Less happily, such a player in a game with a strong
+ Simulationist/Situation bent is in big trouble and vice versa, especially
+ when the group is committed to Illusionist Techniques. Illusionism is a
+ widespread technique of play and arguably, textually, the most supported
+ approach to the hobby, as testified most recently by the publication
+ Secrets of Game-mastering (2002, Atlas Games). It relies on Force, as
+ defined earlier in the essay. GMing with lots of covert Force is called
+ Illusionism. I call that the Black Curtain; if the Curtain is drawn, then
+ the players aren't immediately clued in about the presence and extent of
+ the Force itself.
+
+ Force (Illusionist or not) isn't necessarily dyfunctional: it works well
+ when the GM's main role is to make sure that the transcript ends up being
+ a story, with little pressure or expectation for the players to do so
+ beyond accepting the GM's Techniques. I think that a shared "agreement to
+ be deceived" is typically involved, i.e., the players agree not to look
+ behind the Black Curtain. I suggest that people who like Illusionist play
+ are very good at establishing and abiding by their tolerable degree of
+ Force, and Secrets of Gamemastering seems to bear that out as the
+ perceived main issue of satisfactory role-playing per se.
+
+ Producing a story via Force Techniques means that play must shift fully to
+ Simulationist play. "Story" becomes Explored Situation, the character
+ "works" insofar as he or she fits in, and the player's enjoyment arises
+ from contributing to that fitting-in. However, for the Narrativist player,
+ the issue is not the Curtain at all, but the Force. Force-based Techniques
+ are pure poison for Narrativist play and vice versa. The GM (or a person
+ currently in that role) can provide substantial input, notably adversity
+ and Weaving, but not specific protagonist decisions and actions; that is
+ the very essence of deprotagonizing Narrativist play.
+
+ Get just one Story Now player into an Illusionist group, and the game
+ becomes a battlefield for control and story creation. I consider this to
+ be one of the worst instances of high-level GNS incompatibility, because
+ it typically doesn't resolve itself through a clean parting of the ways.
+ As long as the people involved buy into the false notion that Narrativist
+ play is a subset of the Simulationist aesthetic, then the war will not
+ end, as they wave their "integrity of the story" flags at one another in
+ the mistaken belief that they share aesthetic goals.
+
+ It all becomes much clearer when the Gamism-Narrativism similarity is
+ acknowledged. No one in their right mind permits a fully-committed Gamist
+ into a Simulationist-Situation role-playing group, and the same goes for
+ fully-committed Narrativist participants, for the same reasons.
+
+ Ouija-board role-playing
+
+ Here's another outcome for the faulty Simulationist-makes-Narrativism
+ approach. Actually, it's the same phenomenon as
+ Simulationism-makes-Gamism, which I discussed in "Gamism: Step On Up"
+ ([23]http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/21/) as "the bitterest role-player
+ in the world." I consider the Narrativist version to be the "most deluded
+ role-player in the world."
+
+ How do Ouija boards work? People sit around a board with letters and
+ numbers on it, all touching a legged planchette that can slide around on
+ the board. They pretend that spectral forces are moving the planchette
+ around to spell messages. What's happening is that, at any given moment,
+ someone is guiding the planchette, and the point is to make sure that the
+ planchette always appears to everyone else to be moving under its own
+ power.
+
+ Taking this idea to role-playing, the deluded notion is that Simulationist
+ play will yield Story Now play without any specific attention on anyone's
+ part to do so. The primary issue is to maintain the facade that "No one
+ guides the planchette!" The participants must be devoted to the notion
+ that stories don't need authors; they emerge from some ineffable
+ confluence of Exploration per se. It's kind of a weird Illusionism
+ perpetrated on one another, with everyone putting enormous value on
+ maintaining the Black Curtain between them and everyone else. Typically,
+ groups who play this way have been together for a very long time.
+
+ My call is, you get what you play for. Can you address Premise this way?
+ Sure, on the monkeys-might-fly-out-my-butt principle. But the key to
+ un-premeditated artistry of this sort (cutup fiction, splatter painting,
+ cinema verite) is to know what to throw out, and role-playing does not
+ include that option, at least not very easily. Participants in Ouija-board
+ play do so through selective remembering. I have observed many such
+ role-players to refer to hours of unequivocally bored and contentious play
+ as "awesome!" given a week or two for mental editing.
+
+ What I see from such groups is the following:
+
+ * They use a highly customized house-version of a given rules-set,
+ usually AD&D, BRP, or an early edition of Champions; many of the
+ customized details are unrecorded.
+
+ * They employ a personalized set of subtle cues and expectations that
+ arise out of their long-term friendships and habits of play.
+
+ * The satisfaction-moments are rare to the extent of being perhaps a
+ yearly event. "Nothing happened tonight" is typical, but the group
+ believes that you don't legitimately get the cherished moments any
+ other way. Such moments are treasured and carefully repeated among
+ them.
+
+ * Rarely, another person participates and (horrors!) actually overtly
+ moves the planchette, or discusses how it's being moved. That person
+ is instantly ejected, with cries of "powergamer!" and "pushy bastard!"
+
+ * They're socially isolated from other role-players, as their play is so
+ arcane and impenetrable that no one else can easily participate. If
+ they go to cons, they go together, stay together, and leave together.
+ One of them buys a new game that "looks good," and they rarely if ever
+ try it, always rejecting it when they do.
+
+ * They're socially isolated not only from gamers, but from everyone,
+ insofar as their hobby is concerned. Forget social context; it's just
+ these guys, aging, playing their tweaked versions of the game they
+ discovered in high school, reminiscing about that one awesome time
+ when character X did that awesome thing.
+
+ Ouija-board groups vary in terms of how much fun they have, and I'll leave
+ further discussion of the phenomenon to the forums.
+
+ Minor issues within Narrativist play
+
+ The first minor issue is not really a big deal - simply, not everyone is
+ necessarily a whiz at addressing Premise even when they try. If they were,
+ we'd see a hell of a lot more great novels, comics, movies, and plays than
+ we do. Signs of "hack Narrativism" include backing off from unexpected
+ opportunities to address Premise or consistently swinging play into parody
+ versions of the issues involved. I don't see any particular reason to
+ bemoan or criticize this bit of dysfunction; all art forms have their
+ Sunday practitioners.
+
+ The second is a recent phenomenon: the "do it right" purists, often
+ recently made aware of GNS or other theories, who then get on their fellow
+ participants' cases during play to accord with some theoretical ideal.
+ It's usually accompanied by the fallacy of focusing on one or more
+ Techniques as the "real" Narrativism.
+
+ The third was mentioned earlier, based on the tendency for pre-game
+ preparation to develop Situation so far along the process of addressing
+ Premise, that the participants' input during play essentially delivers
+ only the final moments. I call such play "96%-ing," which can be
+ functional, but it tends to play safe to a degree that undercuts the
+ process.
+
+ The fourth is maintaining privacy among the participants about what's
+ important to each one, whether about one's own character or the characters
+ of others. Such play might be thought of as keeping Premise personal and
+ close to the vest. That privacy may detract from others' enjoyment,
+ although see Ouija-board role-playing below for some further thoughts.
+
+ The final minor problem is to resolve play-Situations rapidly and without
+ developing them much beyond the initial preparatory circumstances: "over
+ before it begins." This typically occurs when people are so floored by the
+ possibility of actually addressing a Premise through play, that they hare
+ off to do so before some RPG god notices and intervenes to stop them.
+ Usually, this sort of play is a short-lived phase as the group builds
+ trust with one another.
+
+ Bad apple Narrativists
+
+ All of this section concerns Narrativist play which is practically
+ guaranteed to be dysfunctional. It's really one thing, but it comes in two
+ versions depending on whether the person in question is acting as GM.
+
+ The non-GM version is the Prima Donna, a devoted Premise-addresser - but
+ what he can't do is share. If a given scene is not about the issue that he
+ cares about, he disrupts things until it is. If his character is present
+ in a scene, then he'll demand center stage until forcibly stopped. He
+ understands protagonism, but won't permit anyone else to have it.
+ Essentially, he's the equivalent of the Hard Core Gamist, but with a
+ significant difference: only one person can do it successfully; it can't
+ even spread through the group. Prima Donnas are obnoxious, selfish, and
+ pushy. Their typical fate is to be removed from a group or to become its
+ GM (often to the present GM's consternation), in which latter case to
+ become a Typhoid Mary.
+
+ What's a Typhoid Mary? Well may you ask. It's a would-be Narrativist GM
+ who uses tons of Force upon the player-characters. He introduces the
+ Premise and is emotionally invested in how the players are supposed to
+ address it, to the extent that he makes their characters' significant
+ decisions for them. Effectively, this means the other people are present
+ only to praise and reflect the GM's ego. Play amounts to "we tell the
+ story, but I'm writing it" - he continually demands that the players
+ appreciate his Narrativist aesthetic, but suppresses the same aesthetic in
+ their behavior. He prioritizes and insists upon Premise-addressing input
+ yet makes it subject to his approval.
+
+ Such play is appallingly unrewarding and is rightly labeled railroading.
+ To sustain it, the Typhoid Mary must exert primary dominance over all
+ aspects of the Social Contract, which is usually not possible among
+ adults. I can think of no more effective means of ensuring that other
+ people never role-play again, than encountering a Typhoid Mary. Also,
+ unsurprisingly, get one Narrativist player with a spine in that game, and
+ it's root hog or die, the worst Force-vs.-Narrativist duel possible - such
+ conflicts have been known to disrupt romances, friendships, and even jobs
+ and marriages.
+
+Narrativist game design
+
+ One reason I presented the big model of role-playing in this essay is to
+ say, game texts are no more nor less than recommendations, manuals, and
+ inspirational materials for play. For such texts to be effective, they
+ need to be clear and inspiring for all the levels in the model. I think
+ that Social Contract always comes first. Most especially for Narrativist
+ play, which has been textually marginalized throughout the hobby's
+ history, the game-rules' focus must expand to social and procedural
+ behavior at the table, not merely the Techniques subsets of scene and
+ conflict resolution.
+
+ What to do
+
+ I wrote a pretty sketchy little game in the early 1990s called "BSL," or
+ Bullshit-Less. You know what my friends said? "You can't read this like
+ you read a game book. To enjoy it, you'd have to play!" Much to my
+ surprise, that was a stone-wall stopping point for them. I had a terrible
+ time coming up with what they'd need to know in order to make that step
+ easily and quickly. I think that whatever a role-player is best at is the
+ last thing on earth that occurs to him or her to write about, and
+ Narrativist-oriented authors are especially in a jam, as they lack
+ precedents and examples.
+
+ Looking over the diversity I listed earlier, I realize that an effective
+ manual or teaching text was Terra Incognita for Narrativist play until
+ very recently. Sorcerer, for example, was not written as a teaching text
+ for a general role-playing audience, although its supplements were. Now,
+ however, we have InSpectres, Dust Devils, My Life with Master, the three
+ Sorcerer supplements, Universalis, Trollbabe, Legends of Alyria,
+ HeroQuest, and more, all representing individual attempts. (I will leave
+ the very interesting question of why Everway failed in this regard to
+ future discussions.)
+
+ So, the goal is to work through the big model, probably from the top down.
+ For a Narrativist-oriented game, the touchpoint throughout should always
+ be, what's the Premise? I think stating it right out in front of everybody
+ is the best way to go, or a version which is easily customized further. An
+ alternative might be to inspire the Premise through
+ Exploration-discussion, but it's risky - doing that usually works only for
+ Situation-based Premise games, like The Dying Earth.
+
+ Let's look at that diversity again. Where does Premise come from? How much
+ do you have to work with, and how much improvisation is involved during
+ play itself? Is the story underway yet, and how close are the
+ decision/crisis points? Where's the spin in the System? Dice? Others'
+ input? Any negotiation/trading? IIEE must be dead bang center with what
+ you're driving at; does the reward system feed back into protagonism?
+ Prompt Endgame? Shift GMing roles? Or what? What does actual play look
+ like, in terms of Ephemera-combinations clustering to create and/or
+ support Techniques?
+
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+ Basic Source of GM Jobs: Story Resolution Behavior Thematic Content*:
+ Content: Premise Distribution Structure: and Reward: Mechanics: Risk factor;
+ Improv among Endings, See spectrum See depth; humor
+ vs. rock participants e.g. in essay spectrum
+ steady in essay
+ Sorcerer Steady Character Spread in Encouraged Connected: Middle High risk High
+ prep, by reward Short term depth Occasional
+ centralized system bonuses humor
+ in play Destiny and
+ goals in
+ Sorc & Sword
+ TROS Steady Character Centralized Varies by Connected: Middle Potential/variable
+ prep Spiritual risk Mild to
+ Attributes medium depth
+ Low/absent humor
+ Universalis Improv Varies Fully spread Varies by Fully Mild to Varies by group in
+ out prep identical none all three
+ (coins)
+ MLWM In Setting Mostly Fixed Connected: Extreme High risk Fixed
+ between centralized endgame Net medium depth Humor
+ consequences as defense
+ = Epilogue
+ HeroQuest Steady Setting Centralized None Fully Mild to Medium risk
+ identical middle Extreme depth Mild
+ but inescapable
+ humor
+ The Steady Situation Centralized Fixed Almost no Mild to High risk
+ Whispering conflict connection none Medium-low depth
+ Vault Low/absent humor
+ The Pool In Varies Mostly Varies by Fully Mild to Low risk, usually
+ between centralized prep identical none Mild if any depth
+ (dice) Humor varies by
+ group
+ InSpectres Improv Situation Partly Fixed Extremely Middle to High risk
+ centralized, conflict connected: strong Medium/fixed depth
+ with Stress and High humor
+ specific resources
+ non-GM input
+ moments
+ Castle Steady Setting Centralized None Almost no Mild to Low risk
+ Falkenstein connection none Low/variable depth
+ Occasional humor
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+ * Yes, this column is highly personal. Please feel free to fill it in
+ with your own assessments based on your play-experiences.
+
+ Some food for thought: constraints
+
+ A whole critique of the role of constraint in creativity is probably
+ beyond my powers, but I can't over-emphasize how important it's been in my
+ experiences of design, preparation, and satisfaction in any creative
+ endeavor. For role-playing, I think a designer should consider constraints
+ to be his or her most important ally: elements which, once established,
+ remain fixed and actively inform a whole suite of possibilities for the
+ future. Whether they concern Currency (e.g. Universalis), outcomes of
+ resolution (e.g. Sorcerer, The Riddle of Steel), character creation
+ options, behavioral choices, Setting, or whatever, strikes me as the
+ primary issue for designing games of any kind, and Narrativist goals need
+ them desperately.
+
+ I foresee a whole slew of threads discussing the difference between
+ "restraint" and "constraint," so here I'll only bring up how effective
+ Paul Czege's decision to constrain Setting is for My Life with Master.
+ Once you know "about 1805, central Europe, isolated village," the doors
+ are thrown open to bring maximum creativity to bear on the key issues of
+ the game. For whatever reason, I think that this aspect of the game text
+ makes the rest, especially the tricky wide-open parts like "More Than
+ Human," much easier. By comparison, the designs of Dust Devils and
+ Sorcerer are currently a bit hampered by their wide-open settings, which I
+ now think require a little too much group-based customizing. Or, at the
+ opposite extreme, Trollbabe does provide the Setting constraint, but it's
+ so subculturally focused (you get it or you don't) as to limit access to
+ the game. My Life with Master provides not only the focus, but also a
+ topic which raises the same issues for practically anyone who encounters
+ it. Furthermore, as Paul says, if someone wants to change the setting,
+ they'll do it - but they're able to do so all the better because the
+ textual setting made sense to them.
+
+ Pitfalls of Narrativist game design
+
+ 1. The Timid Virgin. The reasonably successful Narrativist-leaning GM is
+ writing a game, and suddenly experiences a loss of nerve - he visualizes
+ all those other players out there who obviously don't play in this
+ fashion. One result is a kind of "but-but" motorboat effect scattered
+ through the generally Simulationist-reading text: admonishments to keep
+ non-GM participants from screwing up the apparently-Narrativist goals,
+ usually by pleading, scolding, or imposing sudden and apparently
+ out-of-place limits on the players' authority to provide input. Good
+ examples include Little Fears, The Burning Wheel, Fvlminata, and The Dying
+ Earth.
+
+ Another sort of Timid Virgin effect is a full spin toward Force Techniques
+ in isolated spots, which is less schizoid in terms of the reading
+ experience, but perhaps more confusing in the long run. Sorcerer, Everway,
+ Zero, Prince Valiant, and The Whispering Vault all have this bi-polar
+ problem, which I think characterizes many early-to-mid-90s game texts.
+
+ 2. Karaoke. This is a serious problem that arises from the need to sell
+ thick books rather than to teach and develop powerful role-playing. Let's
+ say you have a game that consists of some Premise-heavy characters and a
+ few notes about Situation, and through play, the group generates a
+ hellacious cool Setting as well as theme(s) regarding those characters.
+ Then, publishing your great game, you present that very setting and theme
+ in the text, in detail.
+
+ From Over the Edge (Atlas Games, 1994; author is Jonathan Tweet):
+
+ How to Use the Setting
+
+ When I first played OTE, it was on about ten minutes' notice. I had some
+ notes on major background conspiracies, a few images of various scenes,
+ and a primitive version of the current mechanics. No map, no descriptions
+ of businesses, people, places, or any of the other useful tidbits that are
+ crammed into the previous two chapters. [He ain't kidding, and actually
+ it's the previous four chapters, 152 pages total, in the second edition -
+ RE] Naturally I winged it.
+
+ That night were born Total Taxi, Giovanni's Cab's [sic], Cesar's Hotel,
+ and Sad Mary's, all now landmarks in the Edge. Things just happened. I
+ faked it. Since there's nothing that couldn't happen, anything I dreamt up
+ was OK.
+
+ Now, however, you have a background explaining who, what, where, and when.
+ You're in a completely different situation from where I was back on that
+ first manic evening.
+
+ [The rest of the section concerns converting the reader-GM's in-play
+ mistakes about the canonical setting into opportunities, as well as
+ altering it to taste; the suggestion that he may instead put himself
+ directly into Tweet's improvisational shoes at the outset is, to my eyes,
+ vividly absent - RE]
+
+ [several pages later] Could vs. Should
+
+ ... The first time I played OTE, I had a few pages of notes on the
+ background and nothing on the specifics. I made it all up on the spot. Not
+ having anything written as a guide (or crutch), I let my imagination
+ loose. You have the mixed blessing of having many pages of background
+ prepared for you. If you use the information in this book as a springboard
+ for your own wild dreams, then it is a blessing. If you limit yourself to
+ what I've dreamed up, it's a curse.
+
+ All I see, I'm afraid, is the curse. The isolated phrases "mixed blessing"
+ and "(or crutch)" don't hold a lot of water compared to the preceding 152
+ extraordinarily detailed pages of canonical setting. I'm not saying that
+ improvisation is better or more Narrativist than non-improvisational play.
+ I am saying, however, that if playing this particular game worked so
+ wonderfully to free the participants into wildly successful brainstorming
+ during play ... and since the players were a core source during this
+ event, as evident in the game's Dedication and in various examples of play
+ ... then why present the results of the play-experience as the material
+ for another person's experience?
+
+ 3. Metaplot. From Sorcerer & Sword (Adept Press, 2001, author is Ron
+ Edwards):
+
+ Metaplot. The solution most offered by role-playing games is a
+ supplement-driven metaplot: a sequence of events in the game-world which
+ are published chronologically, revealing "the story" to all GMs and
+ expecting everyone to apply these events in their individual sessions.
+ These published events include the outcomes of world-shaking conflicts as
+ well as individual relationships among the company-provided NPCs involved
+ in these conflicts.
+
+ Metaplot of this sort, whether generated by a GM or a game publisher, is
+ antithetical to the entire purpose of Sorcerer & Sword. Almost inevitably,
+ it creates a series of game products that pretend to be supplements for
+ play but are really a series of short stories and novels starring the
+ authors' beloved and central NPCs. The role of the individual play group
+ in those stories is much like that of karaoke singers, rather than
+ creative musicians.
+
+ Metaplot is central to the design of several White Wolf games, especially
+ Mage; all AEG games; post-first-edition Traveller; AD&D'2, beginning with
+ the Forgotten Realms series; as well as others. Nearly all of them are
+ perceived as setting-focused games, and to many role-players, they 'define
+ role-playing with strong Setting.
+
+ However, neither Setting-based Premise nor a complex Setting history
+ necessarily entails metaplot, as I'm using the term anyway. The best
+ example is afforded by Glorantha: an extremely rich setting with history
+ in place not only for the past, but for the future of play. The magical
+ world of Glorantha will be destroyed and reborn into a relatively mundane
+ new existence, because of the Hero Wars. Many key events during the
+ process are fixed, such as the Dragonrise of 1625. Why isn't this
+ metaplot?
+
+ Because none of the above represent decisions made by player-characters;
+ they only provide context for them. The players know all about the
+ upcoming events prior to play. The key issue is this: in playing in (say)
+ a Werewolf game following the published metaplot, the players are intended
+ to be ignorant of the changes in the setting, and to encounter them only
+ through play. The more they participate in these changes (e.g. ferrying a
+ crucial message from one NPC to another), the less they provide
+ theme-based resolution to Premise, not more. Whereas in playing HeroQuest,
+ there's no secret: the Hero Wars are here, and the more everyone enjoys
+ and knows the canonical future events, the more they can provide theme
+ through their characters' decisions during those events.
+
+ In designing a Setting-heavy Narrativist rules-set, I strongly suggest
+ following the full-disclosure lead of HeroQuest and abandoning the
+ metaplot "revelation" approach immediately.
+
+ 4. Sole reliance on deepening and detailing any aspects of Exploration is
+ misguided. The vast majority of attempted Narrativist design is a hunt for
+ the perfect Simulationist design that will ostensibly permit the
+ Narrativist play to emerge, leading to abashedness at best. It's often
+ combined with mistaking an effectiveness-improvement mechanic for a reward
+ system - at this point, the game text simply facilitates High-Concept
+ Simulationist play, and the Narrativist goal is left to Social Contract
+ alone. Various publishing practices, especially a long string of scenario
+ and setting supplememnts, provide the coffin nails.
+
+ 5. Going "no system," especially for IIEE aspects of play, combines the
+ undermining aspects of both of the above two approaches, especially when
+ the author idealizes story as a product rather than Narrativist play as a
+ process. Don't forget, all role-playing has a system; turning it over to
+ "oh, just decide and have fun" merely makes the system crappy and prone to
+ bullying.
+
+ Frankly, un-structured Drama turns out to be ill-suited to Narrativist
+ play. It's clear why people turn to it so consistently; years of suffering
+ through task-resolution systems that fail to resolve conflict, with the
+ attendant Simulationist creep of rules-revisions during the 1980s, is
+ enough to put any aspirant Narrativist off of "rules" and "systems."
+
+ The Window (latest version 1997, author is Scott Lininger) makes a brave
+ attempt at this approach to play:
+
+ You see, after trying what seems like a million different systems during
+ our own series of roleplaying games (perhaps you've seen this, too), we
+ slowly realized that no matter what rules we were using, the interaction
+ between the characters essentially ran the same. No matter what rules we
+ were using, the combat always moved along with the same ultimate effects:
+ it was just a question of how long it took to get there. Even the
+ character creation worked in the same way, or at least was visualized in
+ the same way.
+
+ As it was, our style had become more important to us than the system. We
+ spent many times the creative energy developing the world and our
+ characters than we did figuring up percentages, regardless of the genre we
+ chose. It wasn't the individual stats and skills that made us love our
+ characters, rather it was their actions and their personalities and how
+ they fit into the overall story.
+
+ The only time we really noticed which rules were being used was when they
+ somehow got in the way, as they inevitably did! That was the seed. We
+ decided that it was time for a system that would stay in the background...
+ be invisible as a pane of glass...
+
+ There are plenty of explicit Narrativist goals stated in The Window,
+ especially its Third Precept:
+
+ This is a big idea, though a simple one. It starts with the realization
+ that the actors and the Storyteller are all cooperating toward the same
+ goal: If everyone takes equal responsibility for the quality of the story
+ then all will benefit when it really starts working.
+
+ There are times when a good actor will let go of their own ego and let the
+ story take precedence over their character. There are times when a good
+ Storyteller will allow the actors to narrate scenes. The days of rival
+ camps delineated by a GM screen are over. Though obviously the
+ Storyteller's vision is what creates the seeds of roleplaying, nothing
+ much will grow without the actors' input. An open, out of character dialog
+ about the direction of the story should be maintained so that the
+ Storyteller knows what's working and what's not.
+
+ Strive for originality in all things. Your characters, their actions, and
+ their contribution to the narrative are totally up to you to decide, and
+ the essence of roleplaying is a creative one. Don't allow yourself to fall
+ back on stereotypes, and remember that what you create when you sit down
+ to roleplay is totally unique to you and your group of friends. The story
+ you mutually envision should be your own.
+
+ The Window includes a dice-rolling mechanic, but most of its resolution is
+ handled through Drama, with or without the rolls. Unfortunately, the
+ unstructured-Drama system of the game is anything but invisible - it must
+ be redefined and "referenced" at every moment of play. Contrary to popular
+ belief, it demonstrates the highest Points of Contact of any sort of
+ role-playing. Furthermore, it's the one mode of attempted Narrativist play
+ which fails to prioritize or organize protagonism. It mistakenly asssumes
+ that narration yields Narrativism, and that constraints on narration are
+ necessarily restraints on Narrativist play.
+
+ What's the problem with this? Why am I being so harshly critical? It all
+ goes back to Force - if establishing the IIEE circumstances is under one
+ person's control, without reference to any System features, then scenes'
+ outcomes become the province of that person. Which in turn means that the
+ decisions and actions of player-characters are now details of this one
+ person's decisions. Narrativist de-protagonism is the near-inevitable
+ result.
+
+ 6. Fleeing to Social Contract to solve everything. Some designers,
+ enthralled by the idea that input does not have to be restricted to or
+ filtered through a central person, rely on the hope that everyone feels
+ like contributing extra-protagonist content at any given moment.
+ Unfortunately, this creates a "dead ball" effect in which one must create,
+ on the spot, both adversity and its resolution from whole cloth. People
+ apparently prefer a fair amount of context and constraint in order to
+ provide input instead.
+
+ A related tendency is to rely on restraint, stating or implying that "good
+ players wouldn't do that!" I suggest two alternative approaches: (1) that
+ System provide "rebound" or consequences to make the variety of choices
+ interesting, and (2) stating explict Creative Agenda expectations up
+ front.
+
+ The biggest pitfall of all, though, needs a section of its own.
+
+ The Impossible Thing Before Breakfast
+
+ All right, here we go. This section represents a different angle of attack
+ for me - I'm not discussing System or mechanics design at all, just the
+ "how to role-play" texts. Some of the following games have, in my view,
+ very focused Creative Agenda content in contrast to these sections; other
+ games, not listed or discussed, are comparatively muddled in procedural
+ terms but have crystal-clear "how-to" sections. So this is entirely about
+ the "how-to" text, nothing else.
+
+ From Space: 1889 (1988, GDW Inc, author is Frank Chadwick):
+
+ Each adventure is a story, and the player characters are its heroes, but
+ with an important distinction: Their actions are not determined by an
+ author, but rather by the players themselves.
+
+ [From the chapter "The Referee"]
+
+ ... it is a good idea to conduct as many of the event resolution die rolls
+ as possible yourself and then announce the results. This makes the game
+ seem less mechanical to the players and enables you [to] add a secret die
+ roll modifier here or there to make things come out right without anyone
+ being the wiser. [Elsewhere in the text it is specified that this section
+ applies to critical events for the story - RE]
+
+ From Traveller (1996, Imperium Games Inc., authors are Marc Miller, Lester
+ Smith, Tony Lee)
+
+ The Players
+
+ Like a novel author or an actor in a drama, each player in a role-playing
+ game creates a persona, or character, to portray in the game ... the
+ player responds to the situation of the adventure as it unfolds, deciding
+ what the character would say or do in that situation. They don't just
+ watch the character, they choose the character's options.
+
+ The Referee
+
+ Management of the game is performed by a special player known as the
+ referee. ... Like the director of a movie, the referee judges what can and
+ cannot be accomplished in a particular scene.
+
+ From Tsyk (1996, Propaganda Publishing, author is Serge Stelmack):
+
+ Number Two: The personas are the property of the players.
+
+ Tsyk is not about players versus the GM. It is about the cooperative
+ weaving of a tale that everybody can enjoy. It does not make sense to use
+ the powers of gamemastery to try and dominate the personas, or to be
+ spiteful over their successes in the game.
+
+ Though it is the job of the GM to guide the characters through the
+ adventure, it is always the decisions of the players that dictate the
+ actions of the personas.
+
+ From Agone (2001, Multisim Publishing, authors include Sebatian Celerin,
+ Mathieu Gaborin, Stephane Marsan, Frederic Weil, and others):
+
+ ADVICE TO THE EG
+
+ The role of the Eminence Grise is crucial. He is the balance-keeper of the
+ game. He must prepare - and often create from scratch - thrilling plots
+ and describe the settings and their inhabitants ... In short, he enables
+ the players to live a good heroic-fantasy adventure. He must create a tale
+ in which the players' characters have the lead roles, in which they can,
+ through their actions, bring the story to one end or another.
+
+ In our world, the EG would be called a director or storyteller. Indeed, he
+ is simultaneously writer, director, and actor in a play or movie, which
+ improvises itself as hours of gameplay fly by.
+
+ From Undiscovered (2001, Eilfin Publishing, authors include Adam D.
+ Theriault, Antonio da Rosa, Philip Theriault):
+
+ Guiding Your Adventures
+
+ Let the players control their own fate. Although it is your story, you
+ must follow the whims of the characters. It is, after all, their lives
+ they are playing out. The characters must have the freedom to choose their
+ own fates, not just do what the AG tells them to do. It is your job,
+ however, to guide the characters through the story you have created.
+
+ What could any of this be saying? How is Entity A creating the tale,
+ guiding characters through the adventure, judging what can be accomplished
+ in a scene, making things come out right, and "your story" to be
+ reconciled with Entity B being "like a novel author," determining
+ characters' actions, bringing a story to an end, and having the lead
+ roles? As plain explanation, all such text is unmitigated nonsense. It's
+ such nonsense, that personalized readings that themselves make sense are
+ often projected onto it, as what the authors "must obviously" have meant.
+ Two such projections include:
+
+ 1. Players of the protagonists always provide those characters'
+ decisions, especially climactic ones that drive the resolving scenes;
+ the GM-role is there to provide relevant adversity for everyone else,
+ e.g. managing scene framing, Bangs, and pacing.
+
+ 2. The GM has the story decisions, i.e., wields substantial Force.
+ "Story" isn't coming from player decisions at all and may be
+ considered, itself, a piece of Explorative-material input from the GM.
+ Everyone else is providing color and material through
+ pseudo-decisions.
+
+ Both of these are perfectly reasonable approaches to play. Don't mistake
+ your solution as justification for Impossible Thing game text. If a person
+ is stuck in the rhetoric of The Impossible Thing, he tends to seize his
+ personal solution and embrace it like a life-raft, rejecting any
+ examination of the Thing itself.
+
+ No one is safe, apparently. From Maelstrom (Hubris Games, 1994, author is
+ Christian Aldridge):
+
+ What happens in a game
+
+ Characters will have goals they want to attain, and obstacles to overcome.
+ The story that the narrator creates will provide the setting and the plot.
+ In that plot the characters might stumble into adventure accidentally, or
+ become embroiled in international espionage, or choose to seek out fame
+ and fortune as tomb-robbers or pirates. The important point is that the
+ players author the tale through the actions of their characters.
+
+ Gaaaahh! Right there in a book studded with some of the finest applied
+ Narrativist techniques known to role-playing, there it squats, pulsing!
+ Based on the rest of the text as well as my discussions with Aldridge, I
+ know the first "provide the story" in this excerpt indicates adversity;
+ the second ("author the tale") indicates Narrativist protagonism. But
+ without that distinction in mind, reading such explanations is agonizing;
+ one can see the author filling in phrases he is accustomed to seeing in
+ role-playing texts, then, clearly realizing he's written something he
+ didn't mean, correcting himself mid-paragraph, resulting in a
+ contradictory hash.
+
+ As discussed earlier, the issue hinges on the super-big red herring called
+ "the plot, the story." It can mean so many things: - the NPCs' plan to do
+ something, which is irrelevant in GNS terms, as that's merely in-game
+ adversity, a staple of any role-playing. - given the definite article and
+ given a pre-player-decision context, it's absolutely anathema to
+ Narrativist play. - stripped of that article and given a purely post-play
+ context, it means nothing more than story, and is irrelevant for prep for
+ Narrativist play.
+
+ It's also easy to get distracted by the word "GM." A person may have a
+ mental tautology going between "GM" and "power," with a corresponding
+ death-grip on his or her perceived responsibility to perform and
+ entertain. Once the term is understood to be a set of independent roles
+ which may be distributed differently across the participants, then the
+ whole thing becomes a lot easier.
+
+ As far as game design and text is concerned, The Impossible Thing is easy
+ to avoid. All you have to do is be up-front about where and how those
+ GM-roles are distributed. If you're doing a solid Simulationist game with
+ a strong story emphasis via Force, say so and don't bleat about "players
+ control their characters' decisions" (see Call of Cthulhu and
+ Arrowflight). If you're doing a solid Narrativist game, keep Force out of
+ it entirely (see Dust Devils, InSpectres, and My Life with Master).
+
+The hard question
+
+ I suggest that both Gamist and Narrativist priorities are clear and
+ automatic, with easy-to-see parallels in other activities and apparently
+ founded upon a lot of hardwiring in the human mind (or "psyche" or
+ "spirit" or whatever you want to call it). Whereas I think Simulationist
+ priorities must be trained - it is highly derived play, based mainly on
+ canonical fandom and focus on pastiche, and requires a great deal of
+ contextualized knowledge and stern social reinforcement. This training is
+ characterized by teaching people not to do what they're inclined to. No
+ one needs to learn how to role-play, but most do need to learn to play
+ Simulationist, by stifling their Gamist and/or Narrativist proclivities.
+ Such training is often quite harsh and may involve rewards and punishments
+ such as whether the person is "worthy" to be friends with the group
+ members.
+
+ If the typical role-playing preferences among humans are Gamist and
+ Narrativist, then play based on these modes should be easy to pick up,
+ easy to spread, and easy to sell, and I think it is all three. However,
+ since the typical role-playing text and typical training is Simulationist,
+ the net effect is to bump the majority of interested people away from the
+ hobby after first contact, and to consolidate the Simulationist primacy in
+ all evident features of the hobby, as opposed to the potential ones. This
+ is one of several reasons why the hobby remains decidedly fringe.
+
+ So the first question is, how about you? Are you Simulationist-by-habit,
+ which is to say, well-trained to this mode by the first group you
+ encountered? If so, is that what you really want? If so, then excellent.
+ But! If not, if you'd rather be addressing Premise, then you have a lot of
+ habits to break - perhaps even those which, in your mind, originally
+ defined the activity.
+
+ The second, larger question is much like the Gamist one: why role-play for
+ this purpose? Why this venue, and not some more widely-recognized medium
+ like writing comics or novels or screenplays? Addressing Premise can be
+ done in dozens, perhaps hundreds, of artistic media. To play Narrativist,
+ you must be seizing role-playing, seeing some essential feature in the
+ medium itself, which demands that Premise be addressed in this way for you
+ and not another. What is that feature? If you can't see one, then maybe,
+ just maybe, you are slumming in this hobby because you're afraid you can't
+ hack it in a commercial artistic environment. Maybe you even hang with a
+ primarily-Simulationist group, with the minimal levels of satisfaction to
+ be gained among them, because it's safe there.
+
+ But let's say you do answer that question, and hold your head up as a
+ Narrativist role-playing practitioner, addresser of Premise. Fine - now
+ you have to ask yourself whether you can handle artistic rejection. That's
+ right, no one might be interested in you. This is exactly what all
+ aspiring directors, screenwriters, novelists, and other practitioners of
+ narrative artistry face. In which case, you'll have to decide whether it's
+ because your worthy vision is unappreciated and should seek new
+ collaborators, or because your vision is simply lacking. It's not an easy
+ thing to deal with.
+
+ But let's say that's all resolved too, and you are holding the brass ring:
+ successful and fulfilling Narrativist play with a great bunch of fellow
+ participants, fine and exciting content from your and the others' work,
+ and the sense of worthy artistry. Now for the final conundrum: what will
+ you sacrifice to sustain it? Maybe your spouse is tired of the time you
+ spend on this; maybe you and a fellow group member get a little too close;
+ maybe you decide your art would be even better if your best friend's sorry
+ ass was no longer gumming up the group's work. Can you make those sorts of
+ choices? Can you live with the results?
+
+ Good luck with it. No one ever claimed that balls-to-the-wall artists were
+ necessarily easy to live with.
+
+Glossary
+
+ The following terms continue the lists at the end of the essays
+ "Simulationism: the Right to Dream"
+ ([24]http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/15/) and "Gamism: Step On Up"
+ ([25]http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/21/), which themselves are
+ additions to the definitions given in "GNS and other matters of
+ role-playing theory" ([26]http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/1/). Which is
+ a polite way of saying go look at all of them, for now. A complete
+ glossary is under way.
+
+ Bangs
+
+ Introducing events into the game which make a
+ thematically-significant or at least evocative choice necessary
+ for a player. The term is taken from the rules of Sorcerer.
+
+ Black Curtain
+
+ My term for the techniques a GM may employ to keep his use of
+ Force hidden from the other participants in the game, such that
+ they are at least somewhat under the impression that their
+ characters' significant decisions are under their control. See
+ Illusionism.
+
+ Blood Opera
+
+ Play in which character generation focuses on potentially
+ irreconcilable differences among at least some of the characters,
+ and in which scenario generation is designed to put as much
+ pressure on these differences (and therefore on unexpected
+ alliances as possible). Notable for high mortality rates among
+ characters, in the manner of Reservoir Dogs. The term was coined
+ by Ralph Mazza, Jake Norwood, and myself after playing an
+ especially masochistic session of The Riddle of Steel during
+ Origins 2003.
+
+ Bob (from Sex & Sorcery)
+
+ Withholding response or otherwise mandating a "rest" in the
+ Premise-addressing action of play.
+
+ Conflict resolution
+
+ A technique in which the resolution mechanisms of play focus on
+ conflicts of interest, rather than on the component tasks within
+ that conflict. When using this technique, inanimate objects are
+ conceived to have "interests" at odds with the character, if
+ necessary. Contrast with Task resolution.
+
+ Congruence
+
+ Term coined by Walt Freitag to describe the theoretical
+ possibility of simultaneous play of different Creative Agendas
+ which, although fulfilling very different needs for their
+ employers, are also mutually supportive between those employers.
+ The existence of sustained congruence remains controversial.
+
+ Cross (from Sex & Sorcery)
+
+ Introducing effects from previous scenes into current scenes,
+ although the scenes do not contain the same protagonists.
+
+ Deprotagonize (Paul Czege)
+
+ To limit or devalue another person's opportunity to establish
+ their character as a protagonist during Narrativist play. Note
+ that this is specific to Paul's use of Protagonism strictly in the
+ limited Narrativist context.
+
+ Egri, Lajos
+
+ the author of The Art of Dramatic Writing (1946); see Premise.
+
+ El Dorado
+
+ Coined by Paul Czege, a term for the unrealizable ideal of
+ consistently addressing Premise through explicitly Simulationist
+ play.
+
+ Force
+
+ Originally called "GM-oomph" (Ron Edwards), then "GM-Force" (Mike
+ Holmes) - Control over the protagonist characters'
+ thematically-significant decisions by anyone who is not the
+ character's player. The Force is an especially good term for this
+ phenomenon, due to (1) its sense of imposed mandate and
+ strength-in-control (not just input), and (2) its parodic Star
+ Wars connotation - whatever you want the plot to be, "use the
+ Force!"
+
+ Ouija-board role-playing
+
+ Coined by me in this essay, a form of Illusionism practiced among
+ all the participants upon one another to conceal both Step On Up
+ and Story Now priorities from one another.
+
+ Pastiche
+
+ An artistic production which relies on invoking pre-existing
+ productions' features for its primary effect; at worst, a simple
+ imitation, but at best, potentially a strong secondary commentator
+ on the original text. Often associated with "fanfic" or other
+ forms of homage.
+
+ Premise (adapted from Egri)
+
+ A generalizable, problematic aspect of human interactions. Early
+ in the process of creating or experiencing a story, a Premise is
+ best understood as a proposition or perhaps an ideological
+ challenge to the world represented by the protagonist's passions.
+ Later in the process, resolving the conflicts of the story
+ transforms Premise into a theme - a judgmental statement about how
+ to act, behave, or believe.
+
+ Prima Donna
+
+ A Narrativist player who engages in Premise-addressing, but will
+ not share screen time or Premise-significant decision-making time
+ with other participants. An extremely dysfunctional subset of
+ Narrativist play.
+
+ Protagonism
+
+ A problematic term with two possible meanings. (A) A
+ characteristic of the main characters of stories, regardless of
+ who produced the stories in whatever way. (2) A characteristic set
+ of behaviors among people during role-playing, associated with
+ Narrativist play, with a necessary equivalent in Gamist play and
+ possible and Simulationist play.
+
+ Railroading
+
+ Control of a player-character's decisions by the GM, or
+ opportunities for decisions, in any way which breaks the Social
+ Contract for that group, in the eyes of the character's player.
+
+ Simulationist-by-habit (Jesse Burneko)
+
+ A form of synecdoche which defines "role-playing" according to
+ certain historically-widespread Simulationist approaches to play."
+ The system's job is to provide the physics of the game-world" is a
+ good example.
+
+ Story
+
+ an imaginary series of events which includes at least one
+ protagonist, at least one conflict, and events which may be
+ construed as a resolution of the conflict.
+
+ Story Now
+
+ a mode, or Creative Agenda, in which Premise is addressed through
+ play. The epiphenomenal outcome for the transcript is almost
+ always a story.
+
+ Task resolution
+
+ a technique in which the resolution mechanisms of play focus on
+ within-game cause, in linear in-game time, in terms of whether the
+ acting character is competent to perform a task. Contrast with
+ Conflict resolution.
+
+ Transcript
+
+ an account of the imaginary events of play without reference to
+ any role-playing procedures. A transcript may or may not be a
+ story.
+
+ Transition (coined by Fang Langford)
+
+ Changing from one Creative Agenda to another through the course of
+ play using rules designed to make that process easy.
+
+ Typhoid Mary
+
+ A GM who employs Force in the interests of "a better story,"
+ usually identifiable as addressing Premise; however, in doing so,
+ the GM automatically de-protagonizes Narrativist players and
+ therefore undercuts his or her own priorities of play, as well as
+ being perceived as a railroader by the players. An extremely
+ dysfunctional subset of Narrativist play.
+
+ Vanilla Narrativism: Narrativist play without notable use of the following
+ techniques
+
+ Director Stance, atypical distribution of GM tasks, verbalizing
+ the Premise in abstract terms, overt rules concerning narration,
+ and improvised additions to the setting or situations. People who
+ typically play in this fashion often fail to recognize themselves
+ as Narrativists.
+
+ Weave (from Sex & Sorcery)
+
+ A GM technique of bringing NPC activities closer to the
+ player-characters and to introduce multiple responses among NPC
+ and player-character actions.
+
+ --------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+ Last updated 29-Jan-2004 09:56:35 CDT
+
+ The Forge created and administrated by [27]Clinton R. Nixon and [28]Ron
+ Edwards.
+ All articles, reviews, and posts on this site are copyright their
+ designated author.
+
+References
+
+ Visible links
+ 1. file:///
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+ 3. file:///donate.php
+ 4. file:///articles/
+ 5. file:///reviews/
+ 6. file:///resources/
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+ 8. mailto:sorcerer@sorcerer-rpg.com
+ 9. http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/1/
+ 10. http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/15/
+ 11. http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/21/
+ 12. http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=8655
+ 13. http://www.darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/theory/
+ 14. http://www.sorcerer-rpg.com/
+ 15. http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/11/
+ 16. http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/1/
+ 17. http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/1/
+ 18. http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/1/
+ 19. http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/1/
+ 20. http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/1
+ 21. http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/1/
+ 22. http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/15/
+ 23. http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/21/
+ 24. http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/15/
+ 25. http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/21/
+ 26. http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/1/
+ 27. mailto:webmaster@indie-rpgs.com
+ 28. mailto:sorcerer@sorcerer-rpg.com