'Narrativism: Story now' essay comments

[Callan S.]

I hope no one minds a post every so often when someone completes their reading of an essay. Obviously it prompts thought and who else am I gunna have a chat with. Anyway, here we go! :)

Again, like the Gamism: Step on up essay, I don't find any particular conflict with the ideas presented, though certainly it expands them in depth, detail and parameters considerably/massively. Though I will say, like the gamism  essay, it took a page or two before it became a fluidly absorbable read, IMO. In the end, this post isn't going to have much omph, as its mostly going to be 'hey, yeah, that's interesting, does that mean this and this?', etc like my one on the gamism essay.

Story Now requires that at least one engaging issue or problematic feature of human existence be addressed in the process of role-playing. "Address" means:
Establishing the issue's Explorative expressions in the game-world, "fixing" them into imaginary place.

Developing the issue as a source of continued conflict, perhaps changing any number of things about it, such as which side is being taken by a given character, or providing more depth to why the antagonistic side of the issue exists at all.

Resolving the issue through the decisions of the players of the protagonists, as well as various features and constraints of the circumstances.

I was wondering if this can be approached also in just a simple 'character exploration through their choices'. When you mention continued conflict, it suggests an overarching emplacement of the issue. I would think that you can do character exploration from a presentation of difficult choices, each choice made reflects the character and don't need to be tied to an overarching issue. Of course, without an overarching issue, what mode your in between each choice may be prone to mode drift (as in, what are we doing when there is no significant choice to be made right now). But regardless, every time a character is presented with a significant choice, its designed to focus on a premise. The bigger the choice, the stronger/clearer the premise is.

But he had to say it himself, with his own use of words like "just" and "genre." I am now convinced, after many such exchanges, that an "experienced" role-player comes to this conclusion only by working it out in his or her own terms and examples.

I find this 'having to work it out alone' interesting for reasons outside of the essay. Yeah, I have nothing to add here, it would only drift the post (and that drift would mostly be waffling), but I wanted to mention it and see if its interesting to anyone else (if it is, feel free to drift the post this way)

Narrativist Premises focus on producing Theme via events during play. Theme is defined as a value-judgment or point that may be inferred from the in-game events. My thoughts on Narrativist Premise are derived from the book The Art of Dramatic Writing by Lajos Egri, specifically his emphasis on the questions that arise from human conundrums and passions of all sorts.

Is the life of a friend worth the safety of a community?

Does love and marriage override one's loyalty to a political cause?

"When offered the sniper rifle or crossbow with KO darts, which do you choose?"

Although this sounds like a tactical gamist choice, I think it fits in there, though it can't easily be an overarching premise. Its kind of an example of isolated character examination through choice, like I mentioned before (sniper = people are just targets, perhaps, while crossbow means I'll risk my own life by getting close enough, to save lives, even those of my enemy, perhaps). Does this still fit for Ron and anyone else, here?

Interesting side question, does equipment owned act like premise, in that its availability forces a choice to be made. Eg, the sniper rifle sort of keeps whispering to you that you could just take that problematic guard out, regardless of how he's probably quite innocent of the operation. Latter it'll whisper about other choices it can facilitate, and even if the PC never picks it up, we learn something about him.

A question on pastiche
Say the premise of die hard is X, and it uses explosives and uzi's to explore it pretty damn well.
Is pastiche where another movie uses explosives and uzi's, as if just having them and using them will be exploring premise X? Or is it more 'In die hard explosives and uzi's were good, so we'll have them and thus achieve the same goodness die hard had'. In other words, porting over the tools to examine the premise, but not the actual premise itself?

I submit that trying to resolve conflicts by hoping that the accumulated successful tasks will turn out to be about what you want, is an unreliable and unsatisfying way to role-play when developing Narrativist protagonism.

I'm not so sure about this. Resolving a conflict tells us what the PC thought about passing or failing. Going through each task can help tell us what he thought through each step, through the highs and lows. And although expressing character through choice of task is sometimes problematic (many task choices are so straight forward it shows nothing), some can express character/address premise. I think both methods have their strengths in assisting a narrativist game. But certainly, it would appear to me that conflict resolution hasn't been all that thoroughly explored in past RPG design, overall, and certainly I haven't had much experience of it so it may serve it a lot better. Jeez, how wishy washy of me! :)

From Maelstrom (Hubris Games, 1994, author is Christian Aldridge):
Literal vs. Conceptual

A good way to run the Hubris Engine is to use "scene ideas" to convey the scene, instead of literalisms. ... focus on the intent behind the scene and not on how big or how far things might be. If the difficulty of the task at hand (such as jumping across a chasm in a cave) is explained in terms of difficulty, it doesn't matter how far across the actual chasm spans. In a movie, for instance, the camera zooms or pans to emphasize the danger or emotional reaction to the scene, and in so doing it manipulates the real distance of a chasm to suit the mood or "feel" of the moment. It is then no longer about how far across the character has to jump, but how hard the feat is for the character. ... If the players enjoy the challenge of figuring out how high and far someone can jump, they should be allowed the pleasure of doing so - as long as it doesn't interfere with the narrative flow and enjoyment of the game.
The scene should be presented therefore in terms relative to the character's abilities ... Players who want to climb onto your coffee table and jump across your living room to prove that their character could jump over the chasm have probably missed the whole point of the story.

I find this interesting, in terms of going from an objective world where the chasm has a gap of X meters, to one where its subjective and it revolves around how difficult for a particular PC. The more difficult the jump is, the more it shows us something about the PC, because whatever he's jumping it for must be important to him, if the difficulty is high.

I have to say though, this is problematic. It'll seem odd if jumping it is DC 10 for one guy with a jump skill of 5, and DC 15 for another with a jump of skill of 10. If you have it as a DC of 10, your not going to explore the character with a jump skill of 10, as much as the other guy who's jump skill is 5. In terms of a narrativist game, having higher skill deprotagonises you (somewhat), wouldn't you say? I'd really love to hear thoughts on this, if nothing else in this post.

Before going on, I'll take a quick break to discuss "narration," which is no more and no less than saying what happens in the imaginary events. I want to distinguish saying what happens (narrating) from establishing what happens (currently a non-named concept), because they are often confused. I'm taking the

Just quoting this because the last sentence isn't completed. Shows I was paying attention, too! ;)

My call is, you get what you play for. Can you address Premise this way? Sure, on the monkeys-might-fly-out-my-butt principle. But the key to un-premeditated artistry of this sort (cutup fiction, splatter painting, cinema verite) is to know what to throw out, and role-playing does not include that option, at least not very easily. Participants in Ouija-board play do so through selective remembering. I have observed many such role-players to refer to hours of unequivocally bored and contentious play as "awesome!" given a week or two for mental editing.

Again, I find this mental editing fascinating, outside of the essays topic. I have to wonder if it's some sort of 'It has to have been good, because otherwise I've put so much time into crap. I'll deny this and think until I "find" evidence otherwise' issue. From experience I think this happen in other aspects of the hobby too.

The fourth is maintaining privacy among the participants about what's important to each one, whether about one's own character or the characters of others. Such play might be thought of as keeping Premise personal and close to the vest. That privacy may detract from others' enjoyment, although see Ouija-board role-playing below for some further thoughts.

That should be mentioning the ouija-board above, not below. Now gimme a gold star for paying attention! :)

In designing a Setting-heavy Narrativist rules-set, I strongly suggest following the full-disclosure lead of HeroQuest and abandoning the metaplot "revelation" approach immediately.

This is full disclosure to the players, not PC's, correct? So they can anticipate and use this event time line as a further tool to explore their character, by designing them so the events will force choices? Just wanted some clarification.

4. Sole reliance on deepening and detailing any aspects of Exploration is misguided. The vast majority of attempted Narrativist design is a hunt for the perfect Simulationist design that will ostensibly permit the Narrativist play to emerge, leading to abashedness at best. It's often combined with mistaking an effectiveness-improvement mechanic for a reward system - at this point, the game text simply facilitates High-Concept Simulationist play, and the Narrativist goal is left to Social Contract alone. Various publishing practices, especially a long string of scenario and setting supplememnts, provide the coffin nails.

I've encountered this illusion before, I think. Typically it goes along the lines of their saying because of X system, they ran this great character examination story. Reading between the lines, however, you can see the system didn't help them, it was all their work. It reminds me of my 'rules that back source' thread a bit here.

Also supplements is misspelled in the last sentence, Word is telling me. :)



Anyway, that’s it. Thanks for the huge amount of work you put into the essay, Ron, it was comprehensive and detailed! It'll help keep future efforts, like that of my own, more on track. :)

[Jack Spencer Jr]

I was wondering if this can be approached also in just a simple 'character exploration through their choices'. When you mention continued conflict, it suggests an overarching emplacement of the issue. I would think that you can do character exploration from a presentation of difficult choices, each choice made reflects the character and don't need to be tied to an overarching issue. Of course, without an overarching issue, what mode your in between each choice may be prone to mode drift (as in, what are we doing when there is no significant choice to be made right now). But regardless, every time a character is presented with a significant choice, its designed to focus on a premise. The bigger the choice, the stronger/clearer the premise is.

This is very similar to the "narrativism is prioritized exploration of deep character" I had posted recently.

[Callan S.]

Hi Jack,

Do you mean this post
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=9839&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=

To which I'd agree. Overarching premise doesn't have to be there. Each  choice can have its own premise, and each of those choices don't have to share the same premise. Though obviously overarching premise is a solid technique.

In fact I'd suggest all choices have premise (of some scale) whether you intend them to or not, but that's me just getting complicated. :)

[W. Don]

A question on pastiche

Say the premise of die hard is X, and it uses explosives and uzi's to explore it pretty damn well.  Is pastiche where another movie uses explosives and uzi's, as if just having them and using them will be exploring premise X? Or is it more 'In die hard explosives and uzi's were good, so we'll have them and thus achieve the same goodness die hard had'. In other words, porting over the tools to examine the premise, but not the actual premise itself?

Hi Callan,

I was struggling with the idea of pastiche myself recently. Here's a good thread about it: Pastiche in Roleplaying. That one did a good job of clarfying it for me.

There's a bit more to pastiche than using elements, or tools as you'd put it, that are evocative of a previous body of work. I'm not sure if I can phrase it well but:

When we say pastiche in addressing Premise (Narrativist play) it means that you are falling back on how the same Premise was originally resolved in other places to guide your Narrativist decisions. The flavor, power, and content of pastiche play relies on the way your theme-producing decisions remind the folks around the gaming table of previous bodies of work in which that Premise was explored.

Which isn't to say it's a bad thing, pastiche, since it's use in the essays and around the fora is meant to be value-neutral. I'm at a loss for a concrete example right now, but hopefully someone else will chime in -- although the thread above does contain  examples enough to get a good handle on the term.

(And, of course, if I completely muddled the whole thing, someone's going to come around and fix it, and I'll have to go to some dark corner to chew my own words for a bit. :-)

- W.

[Ian Charvill]

It occurs to me that narrativist fears about pastiche are founded on the problem of addressing a given premise with the same tools someone else has used to address it.  The fear would be that you're going to end up producing the same themes as the original work did.  This produces as effect similar to railroading.

The authority to address premise has been surrendered by the players to an author outside of the gaming group.

[To editorialise for a second here - there's no reason pastiche has to have this effect]

Now if you're playing simulationist - or gamist for that matter - addressing premise is not at stake.  So pastiche doesn't carry this risk.  Sure, you're use of pastiche might compromise your ability to address premise, but as premise doesn't feature in your creative agenda it's not important.

Pastiche in all three modes can devolve into slavish emulation.  A painter could pastiche Dali to create a new work valid in it's own right as well as being a commentry on Dali's style, or he could just create a second rate Dali, or he could create a forgery.  All would be pastiche.

[Callan S.]

Hmm, no, still not quite sure what pastiche is, even with the link.

Is it something like this: One movie starts with a premise, then go's about setting up choices made to address that premise.

The second movie starts with no premise. It instead copies those choices made in the previous one, to reflect the previous exploration of that premise, rather than actually exploring it itself.

So its sort of like trying to make the same choices the other movie characters made, instead of making its own choices which would lead to exploring the premise a different way?

[Jack Spencer Jr]

Hey, Callan

I'm sort of confused about Pastiche myself. It seems to be refered to as a substitute for premise. I don't think so. It looks like a technique to me. And it looks like it  works if everyone else has seen/read the source material and "gets" the pastiche. Often this brings laughter, even if the use was not humorous. Go figure the human mind. "Dude! 'altering the deal' Just like Darth Vader! That's so cool!" Is it still pastiche if only one person had seen the previous work?

[Ian Charvill]

Jack

It's still pastiche if no one has seen the previous work.

[Jack Spencer Jr]

It's still pastiche if no one has seen the previous work.

That really doesn't make sense. How can a previous work be emulated if it has not been seen or, possibly, known to exist?

It means what I'm saying pastiche is: presentation of familiar tropes which convey meaning mainly due to that familiarity with specific past presentations.

emphasis mine

Somehow or other I'm making this more complicated than it is.

[W. Don]

Hi folks,

The authority to address premise has been surrendered by the players to an author outside of the gaming group.

Now if you're playing simulationist - or gamist for that matter - addressing premise is not at stake. So pastiche doesn't carry this risk. Sure, your use of pastiche might compromise your ability to address premise, but as premise doesn't feature in your creative agenda it's not important.

That makes a whole lot of sense to me, Ian.

Since the defining point of Narrrativism is that Premise be addressed in the course of play, then it makes sense to avoid pastiche. Not to say that it isn't fun to do at times, and further might also be used as a counterpoint or lead-in to any non-pastiche authorship that might be going on.

However, I'm with Jack when he says it doesn't make sense to say -- "It's still pastiche if no one has seen the previous work," -- for the same reasons he's given above. I don't see it's possible to surrender your Narrativist authorship to an alternative source outside the group unless you're aware of that source in the first place.

The second movie starts with no premise. It instead copies those choices made in the previous one, to reflect the previous exploration of that premise, rather than actually exploring it itself.

So its sort of like trying to make the same choices the other movie characters made, instead of making its own choices which would lead to exploring the premise a different way?

Looks like you're there, Callan. Unless someone clarifies otherwise, that's pretty much it, I'd think.

One possibly tricky thing to note though: Even if the second movie ends up exploring Premise X the same exact way, if (hypothetically speaking) Movie No.2 was made without any awareness of the way the first movie addressed Premise X, then I don't think pastiche happened.

Of course, to someone who's seen Movie No.1, Movie No.2 will end up as pastiche -- but to the folks who made Movie No.2, their being unaware of Movie No.1 in the first place, makes it impossible for them to make pastiche, at least in their own personal context. It all depends on where the author and audience are situated, and who's point-of-view we're talking about.

(Am I making any sense? Hope it wasn't confusing.)

- W.

[Callan S.]

*snip*

The second movie starts with no premise. It instead copies those choices made in the previous one, to reflect the previous exploration of that premise, rather than actually exploring it itself.

So its sort of like trying to make the same choices the other movie characters made, instead of making its own choices which would lead to exploring the premise a different way?

Looks like you're there, Callan. Unless someone clarifies otherwise, that's pretty much it, I'd think.

One possibly tricky thing to note though: Even if the second movie ends up exploring Premise X the same exact way, if (hypothetically speaking) Movie No.2 was made without any awareness of the way the first movie addressed Premise X, then I don't think pastiche happened.

Of course, to someone who's seen Movie No.1, Movie No.2 will end up as pastiche -- but to the folks who made Movie No.2, their being unaware of Movie No.1 in the first place, makes it impossible for them to make pastiche, at least in their own personal context. It all depends on where the author and audience are situated, and who's point-of-view we're talking about.

(Am I making any sense? Hope it wasn't confusing.)

- W.

Heya,

Well, if the way I'm seeing it is right, pastiche isn't about addressing premise, its about 'addressing' the way another movie/media addressed premise. It's sort of like the premise you want to address is the actual address of premise of the other movie, not the premise of that other movie (brain hurt now?). Except the ways you address a premise aren't really worthy of being called a premise themselves. I guess that's why, if I'm right about what pastiche is, it feels hollow to me.

Also, I think that's still possible even if no one else saw the first move except the guy who's doing this. No one else has to have seen the movie, for this guy to do this complicated thing. Whether people will recognise it as pastiche, doesn't really matter IMO.

[Ian Charvill]

It's still pastiche if no one has seen the previous work.

That really doesn't make sense. How can a previous work be emulated if it has not been seen or, possibly, known to exist?

Sorry Jack, my bad.

I was taking it from the point of view of one person is doing the pastiche - is it still pastiche if only one person in the "audience" gets the pastiche and I was saying it's still pastiche even if no one in the "audience" gets it.

Clearly the person doing the pastiche needs to get it.

[Jack Spencer Jr]

It seems there are two ways to use pastiche. The first is to reference a previous work in some way where referencing the previous work is the desired effect. As noted above, Simpsons uses this sort of pastiche for humorous effect. The second is to simply use an event from a previous work in the absence of another idea of what to do. This second method is what I've come to understand as cliché. When writing, for instance, and you don't know where to go next, the first idea off the top of your head, which is likely to come from all the books you've read or movies you've seen.

Well, I don't want to spend to much time in judgement value on this except to say that the second is OK, but you should strive for the first.

[M. J. Young]

It's still pastiche if no one has seen the previous work.

That really doesn't make sense. How can a previous work be emulated if it has not been seen or, possibly, known to exist?

I know Ian has said what he meant, but I think there's another level to this. My kids know thousands of lines from movies and television shows they've never seen, books they've never read, plays they've never viewed, from Shakespeare to Monty Python, Star Trek to Legend--they know them because I quoted them at some point, but some of those lines I was quoting from hearing them from others before I ever saw them in the original (and some I may still have not seen in the original--I only saw the Spam skit within the past year, and it was on some retrospective of Python documentary).

I know that Clint Eastwood somewhere says, "Make my day", but I don't know what movie that is; my wife hates Eastwood movies, and westerns of all sorts, so I don't see that many of them. But I'm not above using the line as a gag in the right spot.

My youngest right now is running around the house shouting, "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition" because I used it to startle him the other day and he finds it very funny; I know he's never seen that episode, and doubt any of his brothers have.

Pastiche tends to spread through cultural connections. People use it all the time without knowing the origins.

Over on the site discussion forum, someone has started a thread about sims organizations, and Euro raised the question of whether this was a line of role playing that had no connection to Gary Gygax. I think the answer is no, it isn't. As far as I can tell, most of the early computer role playing games were efforts to simulate tabletop play; most of the modern versions trace their inspirations back through each other to that. The fact that the modern practitioners are unaware of the connection doesn't demonstrate that the connection doesn't exist. Most computer role playing gamers who play Dungeons & Dragons-based games are at best confused about the tabletop origin--they think that Dungeons & Dragons is a computer role playing game concept.

I think that pastiche does infiltrate play even in cases where no one--not even the person presenting it--is familiar with the original source. It just comes to them through other uses.

--M. J. Young

[Jack Spencer Jr]

Ah, I see, MJ. SO it's like when people say "we need a bigger boat"