Sources of Narrativism

[Supplanter]

Most narrativist games seem to draw their structural principles from movies and TV. The two most worked out theories of narrativist gaming, Berkman's and Edwards', specifically reference screenplay writing manuals. Even narrativist games based on literary or paraliterary sources tend to reference TV series or movies as models of play. (HW and Dying Earth come to mind.) Relatively few narrative games seem to seriously engage the principles of written source literature on a structural level. (OTE, Sorcer & Sword and Sorcerer's Soul are the obvious examples. The Theatrix campaign Paul Czege has described may be relevant here too.)

For discussion: How might a narrativism grounded in novels and epic poetry differ from a narrativism based on movies and TV? Significantly? Not much? Not at all? In which directions? Is there a fruitful and largely unexplored territory for design to explore?

Best,


Jim

[joshua neff]

Jim--

In one sense, I'd say there's no difference at all--whether you're talking about a novel, a comic book series, a play, a movie, a TV series (in the British sense--finite or infinite), the principles of PREMISE & SCENE-FRAMING still apply. The pacing might be different if you're thinking of a different model (novels usually move slower than movies, with more time spent on characterization, philosophical rumination & discussion, & desription), but the basic foundation is the same. In addition to screenplay writing, Ron's also mentioned comic books as a good source for learning pacing.

In another sense, it would be interesting to use different literary techniques in narrativist RPG play--not just Symbolism, Flashback, Foreshadowing, but, say, the techniques of the Oulipo movement. Use Tarot cards pulled at random during play to determine story structure (& maybe have a game that takes this technique into account & provides mechanics for how players can use Tarot cards to effect the story). Or have the story be iterative, where certain scenes or images or characters repeat themselves at mathematically-determined times. Stuff like that could be hokey as hell & could derail "the roleplaying experience", or it could open up new ways of playing RPGs.

Since I see literature & RPGs as both games (or more specifically, forms of PLAY), I'm constantly on the lookout for new "tricks" & "techniques", & I want to experiment with them. What works? What doesn't? How can RPG collaboration (& the eroded distinction between "author" & "audience") be brought into literature? How can literature techniques & attitudes be brought into RPGs?

Interesting topic, Jim.

[Ron Edwards]

Jim,

One point I'm emphasizing in the rewrite of Sorcerer & Sword is the relationship between game session and the larger unit of story.

If the model is a TV series, then a game session might be equated with an episode. If a comics series (and I think early Champions, pre-4th edition, should be added to your list of direct literary modelling for RPG), then an session might be an issue.

An utterly slavish approach would be silly, of course. In Extreme Vengeance, a "movie" might take up to three sessions to play, but everyone involved has a strong idea of how much content is involved in the usual 105-minute action movie, and that's the content-level they're aiming at.

So how about a novel? What's a "unit" within a novel? Clearly, a "chapter" is a feeble reference, as chapter lengths vary tremendously both within and among books. Instead, we fall back on the concept of "scenes," which isn't much help, and besides it bumps us back to movies and theater.

My rewrite in Sword is addressing this in a lot of ways. I'm looking at the order of game adventures - why should they be in the chronological order of the character's life? I'm looking at the difference between (1) writing a bunch of short stories and then a novella, and then a novel (Fafhrd and the Mouser); and (2) writing a couple of novels and then a bunch of short stories (Elric). I'm looking at the actual punctuation of events across the literature, and I'm convinced that the term "Bang," which is semi-humorous in Sorcerer, is the key.

A Bang means a call for action, action in the broadest sense (including speaking, moving, doing something in any way, up to and including cessation of action). It is a signal for the protagonist to "prove" his or her status, and I think such "proving" occurs throughout a story.

Bangs vary in type: decision to decision, revelation to revelation, locale to locale, confrontation to confrontation ... keep it consistent to type or mix & match them, they define narrative in terms of engaging the audience, informing the audience, and achieving closure with the audience.

That's where I'm headed, right this minute, in terms of RPG theory. The idea is to give thought to how Bangs, game sessions, and stories-as-units interrelate in actual play.

Best,
Ron

[Paul Czege]

Hey Ron,

A Bang means a call for action, action in the broadest sense (including speaking, moving, doing something in any way, up to and including cessation of action). It is a signal for the protagonist to "prove" his or her status, and I think such "proving" occurs throughout a story.

I know what you're saying here, but I'm worried there's room for people misinterpreting the word prove. A Gamist scenario presents challenges to a player character, whose protagonism is in no way a given; the job of the player over the course of the game is to prove and establish character significance. A Narrativist scenario presumes the protagonism of the player character, so each Bang is an opportunity to exemplify that protagonism in some substantial way. It's proving in the context of demonstrating, rather than proving in the context of something that has yet to be established. Agreed?

Paul

[Jack Spencer Jr]

Interesting question with no easy answer.  Too many have been spoiled by television and film, a visual medium, to make it easy to gues what such a game would be like.  Many best selling novels today read like movie scripts.  They are decidedly visual in their prose.  It's like the author is consciously aware that the real money is in selling the movie rights.

In any case, it has a lot to do with the differences in the media.  RPGs are a very visual medium.  As visual as TV or film.  That is, while there may not be props and drawings the GM describes the setting and the primary descriptive sense is visual, so the players build the scene up in their minds eye.

Where this differs from novels I'll try to illustrate with something I read this morning.  It's also sort of a spoiler, so be advised.

I picked up Pierre Boulle's _Planet of the Apes_ the other day because I tend to do things like that.

The book opens, unlike the '68 film with a young couple out flying their space sailing ship where they come across a message in a bottle.  This message is the actual story of Planet of the Apes.  As they started reading, something about the whole situation made be turn to the last page to confirm the twist I had already guessed.  (And you may have, too.  Sorry if I ruined the whole book for you)

My point is this twist would not work in film because the reason it works it because the author purposefully denies us visual information to give us a surprise

Actually this sort of thing probably wouldn't work in RPG no matter what sense it was because at any point, the players can ask the GM for that information.  Film and television can play smoke & mirrors or proper misdirection of the camera lens to achieve a similar effect.  RPG's being interactive do not allow for this sort of thing.

I think, then, that since the stories told in RPGs are indeed uniquely taylored to the medium, separate from television film and literature, I think the example given in games citing TV or film is more acknowledging that more people watch TV than read.

And any influence TV has on RPGs story-wise is probably the same things that literature has in common with television and so on.  These are common storytelling tool that can be applied to any medium.

Or at least I think so.  I may be wrong.

[Knight]

I agree with pblock - RPGs are, at the least, as different from books and film as they are from each other. I think that the similarities are deceptive, and focus on them often causes faulty assumptions.  They're the only starting point we have, but RPGs are still a very young medium and need to develope a vocabulary of their own.

>>
As they started reading, something about the whole situation made be turn to the last page to confirm the twist I had already guessed. (And you may have, too. Sorry if I ruined the whole book for you)
>>

SPOILER SPACE
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They're monkeys, right?
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SPOILER ENDS

[Jack Spencer Jr]

Knight,

Not telling.

Although that'd be an interesting way to do a game.  The actual story is a written document with the novel which is framed by the pro- and epiloge.  Many of the older books, especially so-called genre books (fantasy, sci-fi, horror) used this techinique.

Examples off the top of my head:

Dracula was composed entirely IIRC from diary and journal entries.

Tarnsman of Gor was an account written down by the main character.  As was the second book, being read by his friend.  (haven't gotten to the others.)

I know HP Lovecraft used this device, but not always.

This could be an interesting variant of RPGs, perhaps a style that would work better as a PBM/PBEM PBP sort of game.

Player play out scenes or otherwise arrive at what happened and then write a journal or diary entry recounting the events.

Interesting.  But we should move this over to Indie Design.

[Ron Edwards]

Paul,

You're correct regarding my use of word "prove" - and I was hoping that usage didn't lead to trouble, as it's not too common. But "illustrate" or "demonstrate" seemed too static, as I wanted the connotation of putting something into action or applying something.

Jack (pblock),
Tarnsman of Gor is an imitation of the Barsoom novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs, who employed the "journal" method in many books. It was a very common device in Victorian and Victorian-esque fiction.

As was mentioned earlier, Castle Falkenstein does its level best to incorporate this mode of writing and thinking into RPG scenario design and character development, although the net effect is "homework" for the players.

Best,
Ron

[hardcoremoose]

I feel obliged to chime in on this discussion.  Yes, there is some shameless self-promotion here.  Sorry about that...it's only my love of medieval literature, and the fact that I consider  RPGs to be a form of literature (or at least a descendant of oral storytelling) that I even bring this up.

I recently attempted just what this post suggested - the creation of a game that owed nothing to a visual medium (okay, maybe it owed something to a certain visual medium - but I can live with a comparison to Wagnerian opera).  The game is called WYRD.

The intent of WYRD was to model a set of rules upon the literature of Dark Ages' Scandinavia: Beowulf (okay, technically it was first written in English, so sue me), Njal's Saga, The Volsung Saga, etc.  At one point I even considered having the players attempt to speak and write passages in the manner of Anglo-Saxon poetry, but not being a scholar of such things, I allowed that to go by the wayside.

And yeah, the term Scene shows up in the game mechanics.

But that aside, I think the game does a pretty fair job of accomplishing my design goals.  The central mechanic successfully emulates a key trait of the tragic hero - his eventual doom.  Characters are not bundles of physical stats and visual cues, but rather Passions and internal motivations.  The game reinforces the players' roles as authors, distinct from their characters, and (hopefully) creates a play structure not unlike that of an epic poem.  And in a nod to Castle Falkenstein, the players must compose their hero's Saga as a matter of play (although the "homework" is substantially less than in CF).

But that's what I think about it; I wrote the damned thing, so my bias can be understood (I hope).  What I'm curious to know is what other people think of it.  Does it accomplish its stated goals?  Does it help bridge the gap between literature and roleplaying, without becoming saddled with the unnecesary stigma of being "cinematic"?  Can it help further this discussion?

If you're of the mind, check out this URL:

http://speardanes.homestead.com/main.html

Take care,
Scott Knipe

[ This Message was edited by: hardcoremoose on 2001-08-01 00:42 ]

[Supplanter]

Cool! I've got my printout of Wyrd and have given it it's first read. It's intriguing for all the reasons you state. There are some parts that puzzle me initially; there also seem to be some things missing. Frex, it refers to a list of passions meant only as an example, but I find no list of passions, exemplary or otherwise, nowheres. I am getting the idea that the HTML is the successor to an earlier print version? On the site I found only the main.html and index.html pages, and no links to anything else.

I very much want to reread it and try it out.

The other narrativist game that owes nothing to screenwriting would seem to be Nobilis. I took the plunge and we had our first character-creation section Wednesday evening.

Best,


Jim

[Ron Edwards]

My horn to toot: and there's Sorcerer & Sword, which deliberately uses the experience of reading pulp adventure fantasy as the model for role-playing. I claim that RPG-fantasy has never tapped into this model.

Best,
Ron

[Supplanter]

My horn to toot: and there's Sorcerer & Sword, which deliberately uses the experience of reading pulp adventure fantasy as the model for role-playing. I claim that RPG-fantasy has never tapped into this model.

Dude! I already mentioned Sorcerer & Sword! All that time hobnobbing with the high and mighty has caused you to lose sight of what's important in life, like an explicit recollection of my every least utterance on this forum...

Best,


Jim

[Ron Edwards]

Dude? Oh, dude! I totally forgot.

Dude, I am so ... you know? I mean, wow. Dude.

Best,
Ron

P.S. Jim and I now flee, shielding our heads from flung shoes.