[Lab] Setting Premise?

[matthijs]

Oh, okay. I thought director stance had to have a direct effect on a character; I misinterpreted "relative". Thanks, Mike.

Now, part of what you're saying doesn't make sense to me. You say:

(...) I'm really not seeing that this has anything to do with the original subject which was just the premise arising from stuff pertaining to the setting in some way. Through whatever agent the player controls in-game.

Well, yeah. This is exactly what I thought I'd been talking about the whole time. I think Paul and Ron have based their comments on Paul's concept of Setting-Premise, while I've been talking about Tim's concept, which seems to be a bit different, and appears to be covered by Director Stance.

Anyway. I'd really like to hear more details from Tim.

(BTW, haven't tried Universalis yet, though I've bought it).

[timfire]

After thinking about comments people have made so far, I believe much of the discussion of character vs. 'setting' is really one of scale. Small scale vs. large scale. You can have a small scale entity (character) antangonize a large scale entity (setting) - Paul's thing. You can have a large scale entity antangonize a small scale entity - Ron's thing. Or you can have large scale entities antagonize each other - my thing. In the end its just entities antangonizing each other.

However, I believe thinking in terms of 'character' vs 'setting' can still hold value. I think that using large scale entities (setting) makes a different thematic statement than using small scale entities (characters). Going back to my "Day After Tomorrow" example, I think that the thematic statement concerning Man's arrogance & Nature that the movie makes probably demanded that nature act out against mankind.

Have you tried Universalis? Stuff like this happens all the time

I figured the type of thing I was describing would probably happen in Uni, if it did in any game.

Now, at this point in the discussion, I'm curious how common all this stuff is. In games that grant large scale directorial power, how common is it for players utilize elements of the 'setting' to make thematic statements?

[Mike Holmes]

Now, at this point in the discussion, I'm curious how common all this stuff is. In games that grant large scale directorial power, how common is it for players utilize elements of the 'setting' to make thematic statements?

Not to be too obvious, but I'd say that they'd make theme precisely proportionally to how much they like to do that sort of thing, and to the extent that the system supports it (not much, actually, in Universalis - you often get a lot of sim).

Which is to say that I think that scale, as you put it, has no effect at all on the tendency to employ narrativism.

Did I post the link to "The Kap" in that previous thread? There's a game that would have promoted setting-based narrativism, because it made the characters expressions of the setting. But that was a specific intent of the design.

Mike