Informed Consent and Premise

[Abkajud]

I'm playtesting a Greek heroic adventure game, The Hellenes, and I've noticed that my players haven't read the rules. They remember everything I tell them out loud, in person, but aside from checking the skill lists, they've barely touched the rulebooks. So, I've had to explain concepts on the fly, in the middle of a session; thankfully, there's nothing too crunchy going on.
In any case, I've been reading old threads about establishing Premise, and I've been worrying like a paranoiac if our play is actually addressing Premise in some way.
Part of the problem is that I never said, directly, "This is the Premise. Go!" I did that for Mask of the Emperor, and my players responded very strongly, both in their character design and in play. I guess I should go back and tell them, "Hey, this is what we're doing," next time we play.

A couple of interesting things have happened in actual play: I've been making the use of conflict resolution more and more transparent, and it's been causing ripples and slightly-dirty looks from my players, but they seem to really like the idea in practice. It reminds me of the Story Now essay's line about 96%ing, rushing through the game to hit the Premise before some role-playing god comes and stops us.
I haven't gotten excited looks, or gleeful faces, or anything like that, but I do get a lot of "What do I want to happen? Okay, cool. But I'm still getting used to being asked this question." One way I've been encouraging this is by giving "teeth" to our conflict rez; exciting, vivid descriptions/ideas merit more dice, and being courageous or noble gives more dice as well, as it "switches on" attributes related to those things.

[Ron Edwards]

That's interesting, because I think that stating Premise too technically and too formally is not productive. When you say "I did that for Mask of the Emperor," what exactly did you do?

... I've been making the use of conflict resolution more and more transparent, and it's been causing ripples and slightly-dirty looks from my players, but they seem to really like the idea in practice. It reminds me of the Story Now essay's line about 96%ing, rushing through the game to hit the Premise before some role-playing god comes and stops us.

I'm not sure I see the connection between these two sentences. Can you help me understand how the one leads to the other?

Best, Ron

[Abkajud]

Hey, Ron!
What was really going on in our play is this: Mask didn't need the super-underscored Premise because the setting itself contains an implicit Premise - when the players make characters, I tell them "The Emperor's opinion of you, good or bad, reshapes the physical world and who you appear to be. And... go!" That's enough to elicit a strong reaction, no question! One player got kind of fussy and announced "I'm playing a character who deliberately leaves her noble house behind, in disgust." The other player decided, "I'm a servant of a nobleman who's actually a sleeper assassin, lying in wait for his chance to strike at the Emperor."

Good stuff, emotionally attached and intense!

And now two things - first, the story-games.com folks have helped me see that I was misreading the rigidity of Premise. This is what I get from reading the Forge articles too literally

Secondly, the connection I was trying to make was: my players are the ones who are afraid of the roleplaying god. The 96% aspect doesn't really apply at all, I realize.

The Hellenes does not, but the intended play contains lots of moral-dilemma situations, stuff that the players can react to and riff on.

I really was coming from a place where I thought I needed an intro paragraph titled "The Premise". I get that that's extraneous and kind of limiting now, yeah.

[JoyWriter]

This is just a stab at but what if your players are just used to fake player authority? What if they are used to playing in super reaction to GM set-ups?

I ask because in Mask of the Emperor, it sounds like one kind of traditional GM role exists in the fiction as the emperor, and so is a little weakened by that encapsulation. Whereas in The Hellenes, the GM's capacity to act as decider for events is weakened again, by splitting that role between multiple gods. Perhaps the players are not yet prepared for creating their own goals, and maybe that should be tied into character creation in some general sense, so people can approach the new situation in stages.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

Here's a really old thread that speaks right to what you're posting and thinking about: No Premise: Dust Devils, The World The Flesh and the Devil, especially about Dust Devils. I ask "what's the Premise," Matt says, "I don't know how to write it," simultaneously with writing one of the finest Premise statements in RPG text history, and then I tell him, "Look, you just wrote it."

I'll try to clarify here that Premise text shouldn't be necessarily analytical or explanatory so much as inspirational. The reader says, "Hey! I see where you're coming from! I can come from there too!" That's why I think it should be embedded strongly in - but not obscured by - the five-components material of Setting, Character, Situation, System, and above all Color.

Best, Ron

[Abkajud]

Hey Ron,
I just posted some more thoughts in the "Mental Wounds" thread in Playtesting; including those mechanics, plus the "Insult" (a sort of uber-Kicker), makes me think that the actual game will focus on the tensions between ego, diplomacy, and duty. Sounds like a Premise to me!

For that matter, I found that Dust Devils thread very helpful, and I can see why you picked it - a "Greek adventure game" is about as broad a topic to cover as "it's a Western. Ready, go!", and I think focusing in on a very powerful and central theme in Greek myth, specifically a theme of interpersonal relationships in Greek myth, would make it a lot easier to get at the "meat" of the subject.

[Ron Edwards]

You've got it. "My work here is done."

Best, Ron