Non-silly D&D

[greyorm]

Ok, let's say we're dealing with an unspoken premise, then.
I thought about it quite a bit...what could the unspoken premise be?

I couldn't come up with anything until I compared what all the decisions recently had been about, and I realized that all of them were about family.

The initial game started with one character attempting to redeem himself in his parents' eyes and another striking forth hoping to restore the lost fortunes of her family. More recently, the really intense decisions have been about the importance of clan and family and what you will do or sacrifice to protect and save them.

One of the currently unresolved issues is that of an elven warrior cast out from his people for daring to spare the life of a human intruder in their domain. Again, this is a family issue, and perhaps a redemption one: What would you sacrifice to regain your family's acceptance?

Another unresolved issue is that of the royal princess, the black sheep of the emperor's family, and her quest for acceptance in a male dominated society, especially as it relates to her political station/use and relationship with her father (the Emperor).

(By unresolved, I mean it's there in the background, but has never really been approached in the game, through decisions and choices made in play.)

This is all...very odd.  Odd because I hadn't noticed it at all up until now.
And something else, as well, every character with this theme at work has survived (with the exception of one, and then he was only slain at the player's request, which, even so, actually resolved the family issue).  Those characters who failed to have this as a theme died, often rather quickly.

Hrm...now that's just weird!

(This, however, is why I like the Forge so much!)

[Marco]

I have a question about VN / N / S in the context of greyorm's game (this may be OT--but it's to him and Ron so I'm asking it here):

1. Judging from the other discussions (Intent) it seems that:
a) Narrativist play is indicated by more decisions made that prioritize "story" than those that prioritize "exploration" or "winning."
b) To prioritize "story" that must mean they

Answer/Address the Premise

or

Direct the game towards a satisfying story for the player(s) involved

Now, is it one or the other ... or both? I believe that (a) implies (b) but (b) doesn't imply (a) (if there is no specific premise there can still be a prioritization of story ... but not "Story" in the Narrativist sense).

To put a finer point on it: if there's no premise consciously at work then it's Sim play, yes? The players have emphasis on story but are not consciously supporting a premise.

I mean, if they're playing a good deal in Actor Stance but not addressing any unifying Premise, it's Sim with story prioritized? Or is that a VN mode?

-Marco

[Mike Holmes]

It's both Marco. As defined "Story" in the Narrativist sense means an addressed premise. Your analysis above has a messed up tangle of terms, I hope my response is making sense.

And no, Premise does not have to consciously be present. It just has to be present. Yes, this means that occasionally people will be making these decisions subconciously. And no, you can't tell these occasions from Sim play. Not even the player can. Too bad.

Also, both you and Greyorm keep making a common mistake. You say that the players have to "address the Premise". Not true. They have to "address a premise". Subtle difference. Everyone assumes that the Premise must be the sme for all characters. But it does not. In a game like Sorcerer, the game gives you a single nifty premise to riff on. But a VN game does not. Players each make their own in this case (or they do not in which case they are playing Sim or Gam).

Yes, a player making his own premise up, and addressing it, is Narrativist. So, while it's interesting that Raven sees some commonality in the Premises being addressed in his game, it may just be coincidence (or maybe not, one could speculate on themes being transfered from player to player). Note that even in Sorcerer, each play group refines the premise (by figuring out what humanity is) and then each player willfurther refine that premise in play. Rarely will you find players adressig the exact same theme. And this is a good thing. Otherwise you'd have too many similarities in the stories. The more varied the Premise, the more varied the stories told.

Does this clear anything up?

Anyhow, to predict your next question, Marco, is this very similar to playing a character very closely? Yes, it is very similar. And given that players shift back and forth all the time in mode, a Sim/Char player may also be a Narr player part of the time. In fact they almost certainly are. Remember, these things are not absolute. But they are not the same thing.

Mike

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Marco,

I'm not sure why your second boldfaced sentence is present in your post. It strikes me as a universal goal, not anything specific to Narrativism.

Also, I remain worried about any phrase like "prioritize story." Any role-playing which emphasizes Situation by definition prioritizes story, regardless of GNS mode. Saying "prioritize story" is basically saying "story-oriented," and it carries all the ambiguities and multifarious applications that I laid out in the essay.

I'm pretty happy with the Narrativist mode being defined as "priority = address Premise, in which Premise is an Egri-style protagonist/passion question." The result of such play will ipso facto produce a story, but it's not the only kind of role-playing which can do so.

Best,
Ron

[Marco]

And no, Premise does not have to consciously be present. It just has to be present. Yes, this means that occasionally people will be making these decisions subconciously. And no, you can't tell these occasions from Sim play. Not even the player can. Too bad.

Mike

So any action the character takes that the player thinks will make for a better story is Narrativist and Addressing (a) Premise? If Ron agrees with that, that's interesting.

You were wrong about my next question--but your analysis does shed light on the idea of being able to determine what a GNS decision was by observation.

My next question was: "Why have Premise at all?" If any act to "improve" the story is an act of Narrativist play, why constrict it to Lit 101 style stories (after all, we're not judging Joe's story good and Sally's story bad based on theme ... like a Lit 101 class might).  

Example from Actual Play
We were factory workers in a werid, puritanical "post apocalypse" villiage. After some adventuring we began having "halucinations" or shared dreams where we were cops in a far-future world (and our personas were not our characters).

My character in the cop world acosted a perp who fired a gun at him and missed. I had my character menacingly cross the floor and snatch the gun from the terrified robber (our characters were "Legendary Police").  

My character did it because he'd never seen a gun that could hold more than one shot and realized the perp was out of ammo (I explained to the group).

I had my character do that because I knew it would be cool--I knew the gun had more than one shot and the robber *might* blaze away at my character--but I guessed, correctly, that a high PRE (this was Hero) combined with the perp knowing he probably couldn't kill me with one shot, and being obviously scared of me, etc. would allow me to do it safely.

In otherwords, that decision (like almost every other I make in play) was both in character and for the promotion of story.

It *did not* AFAIK address a premise. It simply made for good copy (the audience feels the stress realizing the character is blithely walking into danger), the author(s) (the GM and I) realize the story will be cool if the ploy works for the wrong reasons (he's terrified of the cop--not that he's out of bullets). And later, when the character finds out what a magazine is, he gets to play out going pale and weak-kneed.

But it didn't address premise (btw: the whole game was played that way--playing to the camera. The future world was a VR sim of a post-modern TV shows just like the "gray industrial world" was a VR sim of someone's messed up idea of a utopia--there was a great theme of playing to an audience subtly built into the game).

-Marco

[Marco]

Hey Ron,

The second sentence was there because if the player is primarily making decisions that are supposed to "improve the story" (whatever he thinks that means) as opposed to "acting in character" or "winning."

Is that considered Narrativist or is it just sim-play exploring situation? If at a cross roads of decision the player chooses something that may be a definitive loss, and uses out of character knowledge, to have something he thinks is cool but not related to a Lit 101 style Premise, is that a Narrativist decision? If that happens a lot, is that Narrativist play?

-Marco

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Marco,

I think the thread topic's been hijacked, so brace yourself for some possible splitting. Not sure yet, though.

Anyway, most of your questions are revealing some basic difficulties that should be addressed as such.

1) I'm not too concerned with what the player did because it was "supposed to" do something. A lot of your GNS musings from other Actual Play threads have this difficulty: "I did X, and I did it because of Y.
So it was [whatever]." I'd rather focus on the X, and a series of X's over the course of the session, rather than delve into the Y.

2) "Improve" the story is still another of those difficult story-oriented phrases. I can't do much with it except to suggest, "Address Egri-style Premise" instead. Furthermore, to combine this with #1, I'm not speaking in terms of verbalized-to-self, internal intent, but rather with what the player actually said and did over the course of the session.

"I threw my dice at Billy, giggled incessantly through the session, and told all those ass-lick jokes because I wanted to improve the story." That's an extreme example, but it really is the case that someone can do anything and feel/claim that it was "for the story."

3) You asked,
"If at a cross roads of decision the player chooses something that may be a definitive loss, and uses out of character knowledge, to have something he thinks is cool but not related to a Lit 101 style Premise, is that a Narrativist decision?"

The answer: I don't know, because I'm not getting the information I need to hazard even the beginnings of a judgment. All I have is the loss, the OOC knowledge, the cool, and the lack of a Premise.

You suggest extending it to multiple moments of play. OK, then I can say, definite lack of Premise throughout multiple moments ... h'm, I'll take that series of moments as an "instance" and surmise "not Narrativist," anyway.

(I remain uncertain, by the way, whether by Lit-101 style Premise you are really according with my description of an Egri-style Premise. All of this post assumes that it does - but don't take that as me endorsing your terminology. If you turn out to mean something else by Lit-101 style Premise, later, then this all becomes dishwater.)

The "loss" and the OOC stuff really doesn't have a thing to do with that surmise at all. Bear in mind that the Sim-mode doesn't require "in-character" play, and that losses during Gamist play may occur for all sorts of reasons, some of them strategic.

Best,
Ron

[greyorm]

"Durn Topic Bandits! I'll git em and learn em a lesson er two!!"

Ron, would I be correct if I were to say, "A Kicker is an Egri-style Premise." ?

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Raven,

It can be. Depends on how explicit it is. I think it doesn't really "mature" into an Egri-style Premise until at least halfway through the first session, maybe not until the second. It takes that long for the Kicker to be "rounded out" in terms of how it relates to everything else going on in the game (to whatever extent it does) and also for everyone to see what the player-character's emotional take on the matter is. Once these are more established, then an Egri-style Premise is at work.

In Sorcerer, some Kickers are pretty lightweight as written and that's not always a bad thing; it may indicate that the player is willing to let lots "come to light" about it during play and doesn't want to pre-play. The more I trust a player to act on the Kicker, the more lightweight the Kicker that I'm comfortable with.

Best,
Ron

[JMendes]

Hey, :)

What is a kicker?

What is Egri?

Cheers,

J.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

A Kicker is a rules-technique from my game Sorcerer, in which part of character creation requires a scene or situation which has recently changed the character's life/decisions dramatically. Players write the Kickers, not the GM. Play begins with the character dealing with the Kicker. There are many, many threads on the Forge discussing Kickers; the most recent example is in Actual Play from Jake Norwood's Fvlminata game, in which he used the Kicker technique.

Lajos Egri is the author of a book called The Art of Dramatic Writing, which is referenced in my essay and was highly influential on my ideas about Narrativist role-playing (or more accurately, provided some vocabulary that helped me articulate my long-standing ideas). If you haven't read my essay "GNS and related matters of role-playing design," I think you'll find it very interesting.

Best,
Ron