Regarding Theme

[Judd]

I don't believe that themes are determined before play.  Themes, to my mind, happen during play.  They happen due to the players' choices.

I played a game of TRoS set in the Italian Renaissance and we were all members or vassals of a family that was nearly exterminated during an inter-family political feud whose roots were spread from the Vatican to the French nobility.

In the end, the game seemed to be less about revenge and more about the monsters that revenge turned us into.  We started the game feeling just and right in our brutality but I think the consensus was that we became as bad as the people who killed our family.

This theme wasn't set before we played, it happened organically, through SA driven play.  We discovered it together and the GM was as delighted to happen upon it as we were.

That said, I think there are games that push us toward a theme but even then there is some room for wiggle, I'd hope.

My Life with Master and Mountain Witch come to mind immediately.  The stats, the dice, everything about those games reinforce a certain set of themes.  However, I still would hope that in player there is room for surprise.  I know the session of each of thoes games I played were rockin' and while we knew where it was going, we didn't know how we were going to arrive.

Hence the fun.

If anyone else has ideas about how themes come out through play and/or stories of how a theme can be set during game prep and come out at the table, go right ahead and give a post about it.

[TonyLB]

I think that the answers created by addressing theme are very different from the questions posed by theme.

In your Italian game I'm guessing that the theme was something like "Can you draw a line between vengeance and justice?" or (in Sorceror-ish terms) "How far will you go for revenge?"

That theme (as a question) existed the moment you started the game.  Your answers, in all their lush and horrific splendor, didn't exist until you created them.

Another group, dealing with the same thematic questions, would give different answers.  They would create a story from which a very different moral would be derived.

Case in point:  I had a group of Dogs who decided that nobody in their town merited punishment.  They saw the common humanity and weakness of all the sinners, and saw the ways in which they had been led where they were through the justified acts of others.  Understanding, they chose to have mercy entirely overwhelm righteousness.

Now that was strange to me, and an experience I value.  Does that mean (to you, the way you think about the words) that they were addressing a different theme than Dogs who punish even the innocent, when it's the only way to save the Branch?

[Judd]

Does that mean (to you, the way you think about the words) that they were addressing a different theme than Dogs who punish even the innocent, when it's the only way to save the Branch?

No, the core theme of the game is still the same.

However, in play you created a new angle on the theme through play.  As it should be.

I think we will find similiar ideas in Luke's BW con scenarios.  They pose thematic questions and leave it to the players to answer them.

[TonyLB]

Okay, so how do you feel that the theme of your Italian game wasn't set before play?

[lumpley]

Here's how I think of it: the game poses a question, play answers it. The game suggests a like family of themes, to which play's theme will belong.

The question the game actually poses probably isn't the one on the back cover, though. "What would you do to get what you want?" not really - the real question is more like "ambition / ruthlessness / arrogance, enacted, leads to ... what?" and the answers are all going to be "arrogance destroys love" and "ruthlessness is the only way to triumph" and "ambition consumes itself." "Do you cut off the arm to save the life?" not really - the real question is more like "what makes a good shepherd?" and the answers are all going to be "a good shepherd befriends her enemies" and "killing sheep makes a bad shepherd" and "a good shepherd lies, like, all the time."

You can see how the actions of the PCs generalize to say something interesting about people.

In Forge terms, the question is the Premise, and answering it is Addressing Premise. Someone, maybe Fang Langford, once suggested "making a thematic statement" as a synonym for "Addressing Premise." My use of "theme" has followed that.

-Vincent

[TonyLB]

Seems to me that we've got The Question, which is set before the game, and The Answer, which can only happen during the game.

For the purposes of this discussion, does "Theme" mean the Question, the Answer or something else entirely?

[Marco]

The artculation of theme is (usually) an exercise in literary criticism: the imaginary events exist and then the analysist comes along and examines the action and formulates the theme or thematic-question.

As such, I'm skeptical about statements of "what the theme really was." I think that you can make statements about what the events were--but a statement of theme (wrt RPGs and fiction) is simply critique (of course when the game sets out to state a theme and articulate through play such as Sorcerer does this becomes a lot more objective--but I think it's a rarer case and I think that even in a focused game the themes that one might derrive from play might, very well, deviate from the focus of the rules even so).

In a game like the TRoS example, the play may center around a dramatic issue in the game world--but it may not even appear to the participants as a question (although the analysis may correctly state it as such). That is: I may decide I'll do whatever it takes to avenge my family and if the circumstances become extreme--but never cross the line of my comfort zone with respect to my fury (i.e. "will you kill an innocent who happens to be in your way?" "hell, yes.") then the Premise question will never, to me as a player, feel like a question.

That doesn't mean it isn't, though. It just means my original set of answers did, in fact, hold up through their execution.

This is what hung me up on the concept of "pre-determined theme." In the literal sense of "actions being decided prior to the start of play," IME, it doesn't exist (and I said as much). In the thread (which I haven't tried to dig up now but it's not that ancient) there was, IIRC, a good deal of agreement and clarification on that point.

That is pre-determined theme in the sense that the glossary might be seen to imply is not (generally what's meant): a pre-determination of PC's actions wrt in-game events isn't what people are talking about (this would mean that either the GM has already determined what the players will do or will enforce it, which does happen or that the players are entirely predictible which also happens but isn't a given).

Neither of these two conditons are what's meant by "pre-determined theme" as it's commonly used here (I'm told, and I agree).

What I'm told is that pre-determined theme means that the players are using some metric other than their own personal take on and their personal stake in an imaginary situation to make decisions on it.

I can buy that--although I wouldn't describe it as 'pre-determined.' Maybe 'externally determined' or something.

As such, I don't think most traditional games themselves pre-determine themes either. I don't think 'theme' is generated before play. Situation is generated before play.

After play you have a transcript of some sort.

That transcript can then be intereperted for theme.

-Marco

[pete_darby]

As a small postscript to Vincent; Firstly, I'm taking theme here to mean a defining thematic statement such as "Love conquers all", "Cheats never prosper", "No good deed goes unrewarded", etc.*

Certainly, you can have a game with a pre-set theme, an answered premise. But not in collaborative play, or co-authored, or however you want to put it.

A lot of genre-fiend sim works this way: if the genre seems to have a set theme or standard answer for premise, and challenging that would break the authenticity of the experience, then it probably won't be challenged.

But in co-authored play (which certainly includes all functional nar play, as well as slices of Sim & Gam), then a pre-answered premise, a pre-set theme isn't the point of the game if it's there (as elaborated here).

*As opposed to theme as a broad aspect of existence we're exploring, such as Love, Death, Power, etc. I know, I'm the only one using it like this, but we're flinging theme around at the moment like the word story, as if we all know what we mean already.

[lumpley]

Hey Marco.

After play you have a transcript of some sort.

That transcript can then be intereperted for theme.

Yep.

That's why I'll sometimes say things like "you can Address Premise without noticing that you've done so." There may be a really obvious theme just sitting there smack dab, but if you don't know what you're looking at, you might not see it. Moviegoers famously have the same problem. "That movie was exciting! but yet I'm unfulfilled," moviegoer says. And I'm like, "yeah, because they screwed up the Premise."

Whether the theme is, y'know, really there in the fiction, or whether it's us critics creating theme whole and after the fact - that's not a question we'll answer here at the Forge. I think that GNS is predicated on theme being really there. I think that anyone who thinks criticism invents theme instead of just identifying theme is going to have real problems with GNS.

Judd, have I strayed far from your question?

-Vincent

[Marco]

Whether the theme is, y'know, really there in the fiction, or whether it's us critics creating theme whole and after the fact - that's not a question we'll answer here at the Forge. I think that GNS is predicated on theme being really there. I think that anyone who thinks criticism invents theme instead of just identifying theme is going to have real problems with GNS.

Judd, have I strayed far from your question?

-Vincent

Well, I'm skeptical of someone who claims they can derrive the perfect thematic question from a complex play with 100% certainty. I mean: I'm pretty sure my desk is objectively there--but my ability to describe it is certainly limited.

Although I say "theme is interepertative" it's not that 'something isn't really there' (the events of play are 'there' in any sense anyone wants to claim) it's that "the way analysist A judged the events might not be the way analyst B judged them"--there's always room for disagreement.

I think it's also possible for a movie to "mess up the Premise" that I liked (and therefore I'm unfufilled) but get another one right that I didn't like so much (although it still counts). I felt this way about the movie Collateral, actually.

-Marco

[Judd]

Judd, have I strayed far from your question?

-Vincent

No, not strayed at all.  I think the word Premise clears it up for me.  Premise is what is built into the game.

Theme comes through play, something you can be sitting there, thinking about the game a bit and realize there was this theme running through the sessions.

Prermise is set by the rules.

Theme is created by creative decisions.

That clears it up for me.  The word Premise makes it suddenly clear.

[lumpley]

Judd, very cool!

Marco, all true.

-Vincent

There's this weird thing going on, unrelated to this thread, I don't like it but it requires me to say: everybody should know that I'm just saying things Ron's been saying all along. He and I agree, but it's more like I agree with him.

[John Kim]

Whether the theme is, y'know, really there in the fiction, or whether it's us critics creating theme whole and after the fact - that's not a question we'll answer here at the Forge. I think that GNS is predicated on theme being really there. I think that anyone who thinks criticism invents theme instead of just identifying theme is going to have real problems with GNS.

Aha.  Well, I am in that category, I think.  I don't think that theme is purely created by the reader/critic except in a few cases.  However, I think they have a role in creating theme.  But I should start earlier.  In any given static work (like books or movies), there are two separate subjective processes: expression and interpretation.  Theme is a subjective matter -- i.e. it is a matter of meaning, not an objective measure like page count.  Taking an image from my narrative paradigms essay:



The author may intend his novel to express a given moral lesson X.  However, the majority of readers may interpret it differently, feeling that it instead expresses moral lesson Y.  For example, they may think that the "bad guy" (in the author's view) is cool and justified.  Now, is the "true" meaning what the author was trying to express -- or is it what the readers read?  If the latter, then which readers are correct?  For example, an Elizabethan audience may have received Shakespeare's works quite differently than a modern audience does.  

I understand this is a typical split of "modernist" vs "post-modernist".  The modernist tends to emphasize the role of the author, and may try to dig deeply into the life of the author to ferret out what the real meaning of a work is.  The post-modern view tends to emphasize the role of the reader in creating meaning.  Dadaist works and Rorschach inkblots are extreme demonstrations of this.  

Within role-playing, this is complicated because there are not two separate processes.  These two mix freely, which is what I am trying to get at in my narrative paradigms and immersive story essays.  

If anyone else has ideas about how themes come out through play and/or stories of how a theme can be set during game prep and come out at the table, go right ahead and give a post about it.

P.S. I had a semi-recent thread http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=14162">How to design System for pre-determined Theme?.

[Ron Edwards]

What John said.

And in agreement with Vincent,

a) This is one of Those Big Questions which are out of the scope of the Forge; people should come up with their own answers or investigate the issue elsewhere.

b) I suggest that themes have some tangible relationship to texts, and if we recall that "text" in role-playing is not the SIS, or a writeup of it, but rather occurs in the actual communicative medium among the humans themselves, then I don't think it's hard to see that themes occur there.

In fact, the whole issue may be easier in the RPG art-form rather than in text, theater, or film, because of the unique author-audience relationship.

Best,
Ron