Narrativism: Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury....

[Christopher Kubasik]

... I give you exhibit A.

Hello,

While I am weary of most conversations of gaming these days, I find myself morbidly drawn to arguments about literature and storytelling.  

Now, some might ask, "Who is to say RPGs have anything to do with literature, art or storytelling?"  I would ask, "Who is to say they do not?  Who?  Please, tell me.  Really, I'd love to fucking know who's got the fucking right to get into my face about what my fun is."

I've noticed that most folks who make such arguments tend to say, "Listen, art is something in a museum."  Really. I've read that.  But they never actually define art.

So, let me say this: for me, my working definition of Art is, "What do I honor, and how well do I honor it?"  That is, what matters to me truly and deeply must be the subject of the work, and I must give it my all. Thus, I can give Duchamp props for overturning a toilet and calling it art—because the man was interested in debasing the term Art.  I can then, also, leave him to his joke and get back to my own work, never having to think about his nonsense again.  Because, if somebody is honoring something I don't care about, I say, "Great," and move on.  It's kind of a dodge, but it let's me get back to work without wasting time in a debate I don't care about.

If someone wants to strive toward true storytelling or art with a roleplaying game why not?  If a group of player want to utilize the tools and techniques of dramatic narrative, why not?  RPGs certainly draw on war game elements.  No one criticizes that?  Why not draw on the the craft elements of fiction?  After all, movies draw on the disciplines of playwriting, musical composition and painting to produce a whole effect.  Why not mix and match till you reach the satisfaction you desire?  I cannot sympathize why someone would bemoan the fact I pursue the pleasure I seek.  I think I understand it these days, but I do not empathize with it.  My understanding goes something like this: I don't care what they care about, so I'm looking down on them.  And the truth is, No, I'm not looking down on them.   The truth is worse.  I don't even careabout what they care about when it comes to their definition of "story."  If "Van Helsing" or "The City of Lost Children" can match their definition of "Story" why in God's name would I care?  I'm not looking down on them; I'm not looking at them at all.  And I think this realization, no matter how subtly perceived, drives people into frenzy.

Which brings me to Story.

Story is a bugaboo topic, because everyone knows it when they see it, but many people see very different things.

For some people, "a series of events" forms a story.

You know what?  I'll grant that.  A series of events cobbled together into some sort of shape might well be called a Story.  I'll grant you "Van Helsing" or "The City of Lost Children" are stories using this dull definition.  But I would insist, as a man would has shouted down executives in the middle of story meetings—that it's a crappy story.  This isn't an issue of semantics for me.  This is a matter of dollars and vocation and a deep passion.  Using the too very, and nearly useless definition ,of story "a series of events," most stories will be bad.  And thank god its not the definition most executives and writers in publishing or film making industries use to greenlight projects—or the publishing and film industries would collapse under the weight of a lot of serial events that had no actually narrative purpose.

Many people on this site take a lot of flak for saying that what distinguishes a good story (I would normally say, a "real" story—but, as noted, I'm in generous mood tonight) is the moral dimension.  Without that moral dimension, I would argue, you simply get "a series of events."  And that, as anyone who has heard a ten year old tell a vague summary of a movie, is not a compelling tale.   What makes a tale worth hearing is the prioritization of the moral complication.  If a character's having to make choices, something comes alive on the page or the book.

This does not mean there is not a patina of facts and details to create the illusion of reality.  This illusion provides the frame work for the moral issue to be addressed.  

I decided to address all this tonight because I just came across a review of "The Great Game," a book comparing real life spy craft with the literary versions.  I offer this not because the ideas are new---anyone comfortable with the GNS concept of the term Narrativism will have recognized his already.  But to those lunkheads who think Narrativism is some bizarre chimera made up by Ron Edwards out of the thick of his head.

Here's the introduction to the review:

Frederick P. Hitz spent more than 20 years in the federal government, most of it in the CIA, where from 1990 to 1998 he was the first presidentially appointed statutory inspector general. Such a distinguished bureaucratic career would presumably qualify him for writing a book on spying and fiction, as he has—it is called The Great Game: The Myth and Reality of Espionage. Hitz's strategy in the book is clear: "great works of spy fiction are compared to actual espionage operations." He covers recruitment, tradecraft, assassination, sex, even life after spying, as practiced in the real espionage cases of Penkovsky, Popov, Ames, Hannsen, etc., comparing them to the literary examples in the works of Kipling, le Carré, Greene, Furst, etc.

And here's the end of the paragraph, which, when I read it made me think, "Oh, look, no surprise."

In the end, Hitz reaches the rather uninteresting conclusion that "no fictional account adequately captures the remarkable variety of twists and turns that a genuine human spy goes through." Completely missing the point of fiction, Hitz's conclusion is as limited as the ambition of his book. For the problems that important spy fiction presents to its readers are not about espionage logistics. They are primarily moral.

Well, there it is: "For the problems that important spy fiction presents... are primarily moral."

This implies that the issues that unimportant spy fiction presents might not be.

So, bully for unimportant spy fiction.

Here's another quote:

The problem is, of course, that Kim is really not primarily about spying. Kipling's book is about a whole set of issues crucial to the British colonial discourse, and the spying in it allows them to come into focus.

There are others.  I've quoted the article below.  Check it out.


Am I saying that because some critic at Slate.com thinks along the lines of Narrativism, Narrativism is suddenly justified?  No.  It was justified to me years ago, before I even heard about GNS, when I realized that "a series of events" was a lame ass way of thinking about story.  

I'm quote the review to point out that such an opinion is not some free floating beast drifting around The Forge.  It's accepted fact for those who care about lit and storytelling. And if you don't care about this, fine.  But please, read the review.  I'm quoting it in whole for fear the link would be cut in a few months.  Reading it is a strange mirror where the concerns of Sim and Nar play are contrasted in a completely non-RPG environment.

Which is important to note, by the way, and why Ron sidestepped the threefold's Dramatism.  He needed something new to address something that many RPG folks weren't doing... yet.  But that he, and many other folks, had been striving for but could not find without a new niche being carved out.

Now, here's the trick.  If you're group's already happily addressing issues like this, while floating this on enough simulation to make the moral choices comprehensible—congratualtions.  You're playing Nar.  It truly doesn't matter to me what you play.  Play what you want.  My point is, it's not that big a deal.  If you happen to be playing Nar and didn't know, what the hell could it matter?  You're playing a way that makes you happy.  Hurray!

****

Here's the link to the Slate article: http://slate.msn.com/id/2102347/

Here's the article:

Espionage Lit
The timely anxieties of spy literature.
By Aleksandar Hemon
Posted Monday, June 14, 2004, at 9:21 AM PT

Frederick P. Hitz spent more than 20 years in the federal government, most of it in the CIA, where from 1990 to 1998 he was the first presidentially appointed statutory inspector general. Such a distinguished bureaucratic career would presumably qualify him for writing a book on spying and fiction, as he has—it is called The Great Game: The Myth and Reality of Espionage. Hitz's strategy in the book is clear: "great works of spy fiction are compared to actual espionage operations." He covers recruitment, tradecraft, assassination, sex, even life after spying, as practiced in the real espionage cases of Penkovsky, Popov, Ames, Hannsen, etc., comparing them to the literary examples in the works of Kipling, le Carré, Greene, Furst, etc. In the end, Hitz reaches the rather uninteresting conclusion that "no fictional account adequately captures the remarkable variety of twists and turns that a genuine human spy goes through." Completely missing the point of fiction, Hitz's conclusion is as limited as the ambition of his book. For the problems that important spy fiction presents to its readers are not about espionage logistics. They are primarily moral.

Take Graham Greene's The Human Factor, a book much admired by Hitz. Maurice Castle, a low-level MI6 analyst, became a Soviet spy out of gratitude to a communist who helped smuggle Castle's black lover out of South Africa. His MI6 bosses suspect a spy in Castle's section and consequently kill an innocent colleague of his in cold blood. At the same time, the agency is abetting the apartheid regime and its secret service, the BOSS, in the murky Operation Remus. All around Castle there is systemic moral corruption: In the name of protecting human liberty and life, MI6 and, by extension, Great Britain, systematically violate them. Greene, a Catholic, is interested in the modern situation in which the moral framework of God has been broken by the ideological state, in which someone like Castle, a decent man driven by love for his wife and fellow man, cannot possibly retain his decency. Greene's concern for spies is moral, while his interest in the "twists and turns" of spying is structural: The backdrop of espionage allows him to set up a conflict between a corrupt system and a defeated individual. But all Hitz gets from The Human Factor is the example of a perfect villain in Captain Van Donck, the BOSS boss who tried to imprison and kill Castle's wife; all he can say about the abominable Operation Remus is that "in Greene's eyes this is ample justification for Castle's decision to risk all in one final act of betrayal of British intelligence." The magnitude of the moral disaster inherent in consorting with racist murderers in the name of freedom does not impress Hitz in the least.

Beholden to the peculiarities of "real" espionage cases, Hitz gets overly excited that they are "MORE bizarre, MORE deserving of a place in Ripley's than the fictional accounts," as if the goal of fiction were to be bizarre. He does not understand that the enduring relevance of John le Carré's Cold War novels, for example, is closely related to the looming question of the inherent immorality of spying and the state that sanctions it. In Smiley's People, one of le Carré's greatest novels, Smiley succeeds in taking down his nemesis, the Soviet Überspy Karla, only after he makes the cardinal mistake of caring about his mentally ill daughter. As in The Human Factor, any moral instinct, any responsibility to another human being (rather than the state) is a lethal liability for a spy. Smiley embarks upon a quest for a symptom of humanity in the inhuman Karla, and once he finds it Karla goes down in flames. Smiley's quest provides the structure of the book, so the reader keeps turning pages, hurrying toward a troubling conclusion—the loveless win the Cold War because the smallest traces of warmth are extinguished in them.

Unsurprisingly, the spy's quest as a structural metaphor, spying as a literary device, is not unfamiliar to other novelists. Even Kipling's Kim, the first modern spy novel, uses espionage to go after something immeasurably bigger then the technicalities of collecting intelligence. Hitz is aware of the seminal importance of Kim, for his title is an explicit reference to the novel—Kim the little spy was part of the struggle for Central Asia between the Russian and British empires known as the Great Game. Kipling's hero is an Irish orphan growing up indistinguishable from the natives in British India. Kim becomes a challa (pupil) to a Buddhist lama, which, after he is recruited, becomes a perfect cover.

But Hitz doesn't really know what to do with Kim: The tradecraft employed in it has become largely obsolescent, while the narrative is devoid of sex, assassination, or rogue elephants. The problem is, of course, that Kim is really not primarily about spying. Kipling's book is about a whole set of issues crucial to the British colonial discourse, and the spying in it allows them to come into focus. The book is about becoming a perfect British subject, about the ways in which the (moral) project of "civilization" affects an individual psyche. Kim and his lama are pursuing fulfillment, but Kim's quest is about accepting his responsibility toward the Empire and its subjects—Kim is about a white boy's burden. Writing at the height of the British imperial project, Kipling does not see the malady at the heart of the modern state, the malady that for Greene and le Carré has infected everything. They all write about the same British state and the same quest—the difference is that Greene and le Carré write about the moral corruption of the state, the abysmal failure of the quest. In le Carré's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, the character of Lacon, Smiley's political boss says: "I once heard someone say that morality was a method. ... You would say that morality is vested in the aim, I expect. Difficult to know what one's aims are, that's the trouble, specially if you're British." It is easy to imagine Kim, working at the Circus some decades later, downing a bottle of whiskey a day to convince himself that the state he works for has any aims left.

Hitz fails to grasp that the secret services and their spying are "the only real measure of a nation's political health, the only real expression of its subconsciousness," as the disappointed traitor Bill Haydon claims in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Spy fiction taps into that subconsciousness and probes the issues repressed into the dark heart of the state and society. And if Hayden and le Carré were right, then this nation's political health has catastrophically deteriorated, its subconsciousness replete with morbid fantasies of domination. The only good news is that the twists, turns, and lies perpetuated by George "It's-a-Slam-Dunk" Tenet and his bumbling boss, the inherent immorality of the political and intelligence system they embody, might provide enough spy-fiction material for decades to come.

Aleksandar Hemon is a novelist and the author of The Question of Bruno and Nowhere Man.

[Paganini]

Choir. Preaching. Go post this at RPG.NET and await the meltdown. :)

[Christopher Kubasik]

No.

And it's my belief, since lots of people arrive here looking for clues about Nar play, that the article posted will have value here.

Christopher

[Doctor Xero]

You've got some interesting points well expressed!  While I would love to further discuss with you the notion of narrative (in the literary meaning not the G/N/S meaning) and the various definitions of "Story", I'm afraid that we'd both veer off the gaming topic of The Forge to the point that we'd devolve into exhibitionist mutual onanism.

Or, to put it more colloquially : "Cool!"

Doctor Xero

[pete_darby]

And as a "hell yeah," and as an annotation, to the other great, all conquering argument that gets trotted out against Ron's definition of narrativism.

"But I've never heard of Lajos Egri!"

So?

Egri was just saying, in his own way, what has been said god knows how many times in god knows how many ways: good stories are about something.

But that phrasing is less than useless in any sort of rigorous discussion. Especially in RPG's, where that can be taken equally to mean "about winning" or "about maintaining suspension of disbelief". So we get to "good stories are about human issues put into crisis." Which is the same damn thing as an Egrian premise. In practice, it's the same thing as Keith Johnstone's establish a routine, then break it, since routine implies values, breaking routine implies a challenge to values.

Never mind where Ron got his favourite expression of it. Stop indulging in reverse appeals against authority and weak ad hominem arguments, address the damn issue. Saying "address premise" or "put human issues into crisis", or replace issues with values or whatever. Get over it, move on.

[Christopher Kubasik]

Hi Doc,

Well, your discussion may well be on-thread.

Nar play has been defined in that past as a concern for building a story in the "Lit 101" sense of the word -- with premise and theme and the whole shebang.

When reviewer points out that the author of "The Great Game" misses the point of literature by focusing on the spy craft and completely missing the moral issues -- well, that the split between Sim and Nar.  

As far as I can tell, my notion of "story"is exactly the same thing in lit and GNS terms -- that's my point.

(I won't use the word "narrative," in place of "story," which I see as a tool in storytelling, and I believe will only cloud the issue.)

Now, the concerns of storytelling in an RPG are tweaked from say, that of a novel.  But they're also tweaked between a novel and play, a play and a movie, a movie and an epic poem, an epic poem and a fairy tale.  But the issue of moral choices ("Do I share the food my mom gave me with the little grey man who popped out from behind that tree,") is the mark of the stories that matter.  A consistent and thematic treatment of these issues is what makes a work really compelling.  (This is what I love about Nar play -- each Player is answering the tough questions in really different ways.   The exploration of issues is multifaced -- just like having Achilles and Hector and Agamemnon and Priam all jostling for the right way to meet their own desires against the needs of those dying around them.)

So, to me, it's all the same stuff.  It's just out there.

Egri didn't make this stuff up.  

I do wish Ron would stop leaning so heavily on the man, frankly.  He wrote a book about Premise, so yes, it's all clearly explained.  It might even have been an eye opener for Ron.  I don't know.    I do know Egri took them out of plays and laid them out clearly on table.  Which is good.  It's a disected frog.  Good sometimes to look at the guts.  But it's in our tales going all the way back to the Iliad.  To keep giving "credit" to Egri is to suggest, strangely, its his idea.  No.  His idea was to write from Premise.  A bad move, I think, but that's me.  Are moral issues vital for great storytelling?  Yes.  Must it be valued above the other elements of the story?  Yes.   Does the best "carpentry" as a storyteller come from obsessing on the Premise, as Egri suggests a playwright do?  I have my doubts.  An intutive sense of human beings usually leads one to terrfic Premise.  And it comes out more ogranically.  (Which is, by the way, why Players in Nar play don't have to have the Premise taped to their foreheads to produce Nar play.  This kind of storytelling is what human beings *naturally* respond to and are drawn to.  The concern a lot of us have had is that a lot of RPG assumptions about story blow past story with obsession about Plot, getting the world "details" right and so forth -- and thus produced still-born stories.  Yes, it looks like an infant, but it's not ALIVE.  Moral issues make a story ALIVE.)

Gotta go,

Christopher

[ADGBoss]

When reviewer points out that the author of "The Great Game" misses the point of literature by focusing on the spy craft and completely missing the moral issues -- well, that the split between Sim and Nar.  

For most everything that has been said I can only say "sure." I have no qualms or arguments other then feeling under-intellectualized again. :)

I do have a probl;em with the above from two standpoints. The first is that is somewhat strikes me as a Nar is better then SIm statement which may or may not be the case.  I do not have a problem if thats how you feel I would just not agree that one is better then the other.

My biggest beef though is that its seems to imply that Sim lacks, by design, moral issues.  This I would disagree with.  Hitz is right in one regard, that the real life twists and turns are often more bizarre then the fictional ones.  Perhaps he is missing the point of fiction, who knows.

In a Nar scenario you would be questioning the beastliness of the Spy game and making those hard moral choices.  Thats fine, but in a Sim game you LIVE that beastliness. You are the guy killing the ten year old daughter of the Argentinan president.  In Sim you feel the pressure of the trigger, hear the click, hear the puff of the silencer and watch as the red blood stains her dress and tights and flows down on her shoes as she collapses during the easter egg hunt at the White House.  Your not just creating that scene, your living it in fine and terrible detail.

So I would say that moral questions are front and center in Sim as well.

Just my two lunars on the subject. Great article though, thanks Christopher


Sean

[Christopher Kubasik]

Hi Sean,

You actually brought up three points.  I'll respond to them in turn.

First: Nar better than Sim?  Nope.  Not on my watch at least.  I'm baffled how this ever keeps coming up (at least in my posts -- others have been obviously brutal in their comparisons of the two.)  If anyone could come up with a pithy boilerplate I could use as a Sig relieving me of having to cover this time and again, I'd love to hear it.

The second response is to this: "My biggest beef though is that its seems to imply that Sim lacks, by design, moral issues. This I would disagree with. Hitz is right in one regard, that the real life twists and turns are often more bizarre then the fictional ones."

Please note that there's no connection between moral issues and twists and turns and bizarre incidents.  I could make a movie chock full of such things ("City of Lost Children" leaps to mind).  That doesn't mean there's a moral implication of the events at all.  A porn tape is much the same thing.  And any of the Masks of Death videos.  Strangeness, just because its true, doesn't nescesarily offer us anything moral to engage wtih.  It's a fact.  That's all.  

Third, this: "but in a Sim game you LIVE that beastliness. You are the guy killing the ten year old daughter of the Argentinan president. In Sim you feel the pressure of the trigger, hear the click, hear the puff of the silencer and watch as the red blood stains her dress and tights and flows down on her shoes as she collapses during the easter egg hunt at the White House. Your not just creating that scene, your living it in fine and terrible detail."

Okay, Sean, I think I'm about to rock your world on two fronts, so stay with me.

A) you seem to be assuming that in Sim a player "feels" or "responds" more to the incidents of play more than when playing Nar.

No.  Simply no.  This certainly is not a distiction made in any of the difinitions of the modes.  This is up to the group and the unique player -- and has nothing, I mean, nothing -- to do with the mode.  Being creeped out, being moved, being brought to laughter or tears is viable via the imagination (visual, emotional and otherwise) of the player doing the imagining and responding.  In your example, I could speak those details, and thus respond to them (either as GM or Player) in *any* mode.  They're just words.  Each group will know whehter they value them or not.  But they could be valued in any group.  Execpt for one word -- "terrible"  Which I'll cover below.

So. No.  If you're assuming this, and it certainly seems you are, let it go.

There seems to be some idea that Nar, because it prioritizes Premise, is an intellectual activity.  It is not.  And I give you Exhibit B: All the world's great dramatic arts.  If you're fucking crying at the end of the Trojan Women, if you aren't laughing and crying at the end of Shrek, if you aren't somewhat chilled when Michael closes the door to his office on his wife's face after lying to her about killing his brother-in-law -- then something's gone horribly wrong.  These are three Premise rich stories, and the reason they *work* is become the emotional elements work -- not because the set decorators have acurately portrayed the Ruins of Troy, Fairytale Land, or the gangster environs of Las Vegas, Hollywood, New York and Old Italy.

We're sucked in because the Premise is live -- it matters to us.  We care.  Thus, we're moved.

B)  You'll note I emphasized the word "terrible" in my quote from your post.  Because that's a *judgement*.  A judgement means Premise.  If we play an RPG and the GM deliciously describes what you wrote, and we all sit at the table and go, "Cool," and go off to the next assassination, all we're doing is playing out a Michael Bay movie -- lots of attention to visual detail with narry a concern for consequence.

Sorry, my friend.  But if the concern for "terrible" and "beastliness" is prioritized, it sounds like your playing Nar.  Remember, all those details MATTER to delivering the Premise to an active, live choice: for characters in a book, for audience members at a play, for Players in an RPGs, for all circumstances.

If you were to take out the word "terrible" you'd have a visual description of an assassination -- but no conseuqence.  That could be cold-hearted sim, or cold-hearted Gamism ("we're simming being professionals, we do our job, we do it well" without cost to moral consequence in the first case; or "the GM's given us a mission, we've got our skills, our equipment, he's set up the challengs, let's roll.")

Now, in either case there might be mention of consequence... A Player might say, "My guy sheds a tear," (forgive me, its an example to make a point), but anyway, his guy sheds a tear.  Like a Michael Bay film, filled with great looking details, it's a detail, and nothing more.  It *suggests* there's an issue floating around -- but it's not really valued.  What's valued is the stark orange fireballs against crystal blue skies.

Now, because you talked about "feeling" "beastliness" and "terrible" it seems as if you're putting this stuff front and center.  Note that what started this thread are spy NOVELS.  The characters feel things, the readers feel things with the characters.  Feeling is the name of the game.

The question is, what is the Player of an RPG feeling: Pride in Victory over Obstacles?  An Imagined sense of feeling really cool being that kind of guy?  Or the moral ambivilane of defending a nation while becoming a monster?

Let me know what you think of all this.

It's really important stuff.

Christopher

[Valamir]

Sorry, my friend. But if the concern for "terrible" and "beastliness" is prioritized, it sounds like your playing Nar. Remember, all those details MATTER to delivering the Premise to an active, live choice: for characters in a book, for audience members at a lay, for Players in an RPGs, for all circumstances.

Spot on.

I've come to the conclusion that many of the self identified simulationists who've drifted through (or stayed) here at the Forge are really closet Narativists who just enjoy having the Exploration dial cranked way up.

As I think back a few years ago to the great "what is Sim" battles, I become convinced that a great deal of the discussion, the hair pulling, and the frustrations was because we had a number of people who were convinced they were Simulationists and that what they did when they played was simulationism.  As a result they'd insist that the definition of Simulationism incorporate what they do when they play.

We had all kinds of bizarre contortions going on trying to define Sim to their satisfaction.  In the end alot of that baggage had to get excised in the Simulationist Essay and probably the biggest reason why that essay is at times quite byzantine to decipher is because it wasn't directed at a general audience but at those select self identified simulationists.

In the end, however, I feel, that most of them weren't really simulationists at all.  They were just wedded to the term (perhaps a carry over from three fold days, or fond memories of their wargaming roots, or whatever).

There's alot of folks out there I suspect who, if asked, would identify themselves as Simulationists, when in reality they're Nar all the way.

[Christopher Kubasik]

Hi Ralph,

....and just a quick addendum...

The LABEL doesn't matter.  The BEHAVIOR does.  If a group of players is prioritizing those engaging moral/thematic/emotional issues, then they fall in the mode of Narrativism.

As I said at the end of the first post on this thread: Great.  If that's what you're doing, great.

Christopher

[Ben Lehman]

Just as a note:

Please contact the author *right now* and get permission for posting this.  The Forge is a publically accessible archive, and this reposting is in violation of the author's rights, and most likely copyright law.

yrs--
--Ben

[ADGBoss]

Thanks for responding Chris let me kick some stuff back to you

Hi Sean,
First: Nar better than Sim?  Nope.  Not on my watch at least.  I'm baffled how this ever keeps coming up (at least in my posts -- others have been obviously brutal in their comparisons of the two.)  If anyone could come up with a pithy boilerplate I could use as a Sig relieving me of having to cover this time and again, I'd love to hear it.

No the problem isn't that I think YOU believe Sim is better then Nar, the problem is as you described it... people coming in new will ask you/us to explain it over and over that there is not a "X is better then Y" but sometimes I think everyobe's expressiveness drifts that way.  I really should have been more clear about that.

The second response is to this: "My biggest beef though is that its seems to imply that Sim lacks, by design, moral issues. This I would disagree with. Hitz is right in one regard, that the real life twists and turns are often more bizarre then the fictional ones."

Please note that there's no connection between moral issues and twists and turns and bizarre incidents.  I could make a movie chock full of such things ("City of Lost Children" leaps to mind).  That doesn't mean there's a moral implication of the events at all.  A porn tape is much the same thing.  And any of the Masks of Death videos.  Strangeness, just because its true, doesn't nescesarily offer us anything moral to engage wtih.  It's a fact.  That's all.  

Agreed. It was more of trying to lead into point three then saying there is a connection between moral implications and twists and turns, so I totally agree with you there.

Third, this: "but in a Sim game you LIVE that beastliness. You are the guy killing the ten year old daughter of the Argentinan president. In Sim you feel the pressure of the trigger, hear the click, hear the puff of the silencer and watch as the red blood stains her dress and tights and flows down on her shoes as she collapses during the easter egg hunt at the White House. Your not just creating that scene, your living it in fine and terrible detail."

Okay, Sean, I think I'm about to rock your world on two fronts, so stay with me.


A) you seem to be assuming that in Sim a player "feels" or "responds" more to the incidents of play more than when playing Nar.

No.  Simply no.  This certainly is not a distiction made in any of the difinitions of the modes.  This is up to the group and the unique player -- and has nothing, I mean, nothing -- to do with the mode.  Being creeped out, being moved, being brought to laughter or tears is viable via the imagination (visual, emotional and otherwise) of the player doing the imagining and responding.  In your example, I could speak those details, and thus respond to them (either as GM or Player) in *any* mode.  They're just words.  Each group will know whehter they value them or not.  But they could be valued in any group.  Execpt for one word -- "terrible"  Which I'll cover below.

So. No.  If you're assuming this, and it certainly seems you are, let it go.

There seems to be some idea that Nar, because it prioritizes Premise, is an intellectual activity.  It is not.  And I give you Exhibit B: All the world's great dramatic arts.  If you're fucking crying at the end of the Trojan Women, if you aren't laughing and crying at the end of Shrek, if you aren't somewhat chilled when Michael closes the door to his office on his wife's face after lying to her about killing his brother-in-law -- then something's gone horribly wrong.  These are three Premise rich stories, and the reason they *work* is become the emotional elements work -- not because the set decorators have acurately portrayed the Ruins of Troy, Fairytale Land, or the gangster environs of Las Vegas, Hollywood, New York and Old Italy.

We're sucked in because the Premise is live -- it matters to us.  We care.  Thus, we're moved.

B)  You'll note I emphasized the word "terrible" in my quote from your post.  Because that's a *judgement*.  A judgement means Premise.  If we play an RPG and the GM deliciously describes what you wrote, and we all sit at the table and go, "Cool," and go off to the next assassination, all we're doing is playing out a Michael Bay movie -- lots of attention to visual detail with narry a concern for consequence.

Sorry, my friend.  But if the concern for "terrible" and "beastliness" is prioritized, it sounds like your playing Nar.  Remember, all those details MATTER to delivering the Premise to an active, live choice: for characters in a book, for audience members at a play, for Players in an RPGs, for all circumstances.

If you were to take out the word "terrible" you'd have a visual description of an assassination -- but no conseuqence.  That could be cold-hearted sim, or cold-hearted Gamism ("we're simming being professionals, we do our job, we do it well" without cost to moral consequence in the first case; or "the GM's given us a mission, we've got our skills, our equipment, he's set up the challengs, let's roll.")

Now, in either case there might be mention of consequence... A Player might say, "My guy sheds a tear," (forgive me, its an example to make a point), but anyway, his guy sheds a tear.  Like a Michael Bay film, filled with great looking details, it's a detail, and nothing more.  It *suggests* there's an issue floating around -- but it's not really valued.  What's valued is the stark orange fireballs against crystal blue skies.

Now, because you talked about "feeling" "beastliness" and "terrible" it seems as if you're putting this stuff front and center.  Note that what started this thread are spy NOVELS.  The characters feel things, the readers feel things with the characters.  Feeling is the name of the game.

The question is, what is the Player of an RPG feeling: Pride in Victory over Obstacles?  An Imagined sense of feeling really cool being that kind of guy?  Or the moral ambivilane of defending a nation while becoming a monster?

Let me know what you think of all this.

It's really important stuff.

Christopher

Ok I fell into the same trap I had suggested you might be in point 1, but I seemed to have been saying Sim is better then Nar. Nope defnitely not. I agree one is not better then the other.

Now for the rest of it.  Your description of the Sim experience above seems very 2D to me. Almost like we;re playing a MMORPG and we experience being assassins, we oo and ahhh at the details, and then move on to more experiences.  I think of Sim as a 3D experience, that is incomplete without feeling and emotion.  Just because its not listed directly in the Definition and maybe even if the author/authors do not view it, I do not belive you can ever divorce moral dilemma from play. I admit its harder in Sim and Gamism and many people may ignore it exploring that route, but when you engage the mind, the Human mind, you engage the soul, spirits, or the X factor (for you Atheists  who believe in neither soul or spirit) and you can never get away from it.   If you are the assassin in my example and you shed a crocodile tear and then move onto the next scene of carnage, the next detail without taking a moment to explore or experience the moral and emotional sides, then thats fine but you are missing a level of exploration.  On the other hand if you do go deeper I do not think you have to necassarily be going into Nar.

Now do the definitions and well hashed out arguments support me? I suppose probably not.  I will say that the emotion and moral dilemma are not front and center, but have equal weight to the smell of cordite and other details.  I would argue however that are there and they are an important part of the exploration.

thought provoking stuff as always

[Edited once for bad... well spelling etc on my part]

Sean

[Judd]

Christopher,

Interesting post.

Pretend it is a perfect world and I am Joe Gamer.  I have put on my computer a few hours before I got run my RPG session with my friends.

What do you want me to walk away from that post with and in a perfect world, how you would like my game, or the way I think about my game, to have altered.

Judd

[Christopher Kubasik]

Hello Judd,

I'm not sure I understand your question.  But I'll answer as best I can.

First, I'm not sure there's anything to be taken away from this thread if the game session's only a few hours away -- except, maybe -- if the group is trying out Nar play for their first pre-game prep session or about to have their first play session, it might buck the GM up and maybe help him get Nar better.  That is, he might go, "Right.  Like in spy stories.  It's not about al the stuff.  It's about all those choices I'm going to be giving the Players via their PCs."

It also might serve, say, if someone were running a tight Sim game for spies, or federal agents or whatever.  And he'd arrive thinking, "Now I'm gonna make a little speech.  'No Angst, tonight guys.  Your PCs are professionals.  You can feel bad on occassion, play that up if you want.  But you've got a job to do.  That's what tonight's game is about.  You, Tim, you know what I'm talking about.  No 'going to the press with the photos off your cell phone.'  I've prepped the scenario about doing this assignment for the Agency.  We agreed this is what it's going to be about.  Let's stick to the assignment.'"  And perhaps, especially if Tim takes the intro to heart, the game won't end up with five players looking at Tim for 2 hours as the GM tries to steet him back on track as he plays out his 'moral dilema.'

But the post is about grokking the core difference between Nar and Sim play -- and if the game's only a couple of hours away, I don't know (except the above), what might be applied off the cuff.  I mean, by the time the games only a couple of hours away, the track's been laid down, the trains already rolling.  Changing direction at this point might lead to a wreck.

Now, as for the specifics of your questions: I don't want your game or the way you thinking about gaming to be altered.  I'd have to presume that your game should be altered -- which I don't.  I don't know anything about you, your players, your game.  How the hell would I know what's best for your game?

So, let my lay out for you *my* ground rules.

I think of people like this: there are the hungry and the sated.  

The sated don't need anything new.  The sated are curious, if they're curious, in a kind of channel flipping kind of way.  They'll touch on things, but aren't really invested in digging at them, cracking shells, gnawing till they can digest  a new idea or different perspective.  They're content enough with how they're playing.  Or, they might be really, really frustrated with how their games play, but are content changing around the pieces of what they already know, looking for the fix with what the know in new combinations to take away that frustration.  And that's great.

And then there are the hungry.  The hungry are playing RPGs and want something more.   Something different.  They may be content, they may be frustrated.  But either way, they know there's more out there.

This doesn't mean, by the way (still looking for that Boilerplate folks!  There's a $1 reward via Pay Pal!) I'm saying they're looking for Nar.  Maybe they love building terrific worlds with all cool fantastical logic.  And they've got all these stories to run the player through.  And the players *love* experiencing and exploring this cool world.  Except for one jackass who keep not playing the second undlord of a vor'chta chieftan the "correctly" -- the way the GM has laid out the second underlord of the vor'chta chiefan is supposed to be played because that's what the culture is like.  The jackass says he wants to break the tradition and see what that's like.  He's blowing the whole game, and the GM's thinking, "There's something here I'm missing."  So he ends up at a place like the Forge and starts digging around. And maybe he gets some clues.  But the key is -- he NEEDS information.

So, if your Joe Gamer, perfect world or no, I have no idea what you're looking for or what you care about.  I post for the people who *are* looking.  And since I have no idea what they're looking for, I have no idea what they'll take away.  It is my hope that my posts about RPGs are sometimes the morsals that help fill the hungry belly of those looking for information and new perspecives.  I get Private Mails thanking me to this effect -- here and at RPG.net -- so I assume somebody's getting something from my posts.

So, what somewhat gets, if anything, depends on what they needed, what they were looking for.

Since I don't believe in generic people, nor perfect worlds, I don't know how to go further with your request.

If I haven't answered what you're after, feel free to open up the question, or make it more specific or whatever you think will help me, and I'll do my best to answer.



Hi Sean,

At this point all I can say is, "Cool."  

Well, wait, I'm me. I can always say more.

I might ask, "How are you defining Sim that make you know you're not playing Nar?"  I'm not saying you are playing Nar.  I'm saying, you seem to be hanging on the Sim label pretty tightly, I don't know why, so I might be missing something.  All Sim play I've ever seen seems to depend on the game *not* mattering.  That is, for me, one of the "feels" like Sim qualities.  No one strays too far from the GM's plot or assumptions about the world, cause that might break the plot or the world.  No one breaks "genre convention" cause that might shatter the feel of the game. There's a lovely (and I mean this) a lovely, chinese craftsman-like quality to Sim play where people are really respectful to each other and the traditions of their narrative forefathers.

But -- there's no real surprises.  There's nothing that could litterly, fucking bring everyone's expectations for the story or the game crashing to the ground.  Their's no true honest to god feeling -- because true honest to god feeling could end with Blood on the Walls.  That's when the spy sent to interogate a prisoner takes pictures with his cell phone and posts them on the internet -- and no one saw that coming -- because the player felt something unexpected and acted on it. And everyone at the table is now engaged, or amazed, or fumbling to catch up to a turncoat in the agency.  They might side with him, they might not.  They might *feel* compelled to bump the PC off -- and everybody would be cool with that.  Because we came to the tale saying, "Whatever engages us in these moral complications is where we go."

Because I tell you this: as long as you're "feeling" things, but staying on the "polite path" you're playing Sim -- because you're constantly limiting the feelings and where they might lead.  You're emotionally engaged, but only so much.  That is, you're making sure to feel correctly. And, um, well, there's a problem with that line of feeling...

So, I need you to tell me which of these two possibilities you're playing by -- cause I can't suss it out.  What does Sim mean to you, cause you've baffled me.

I've offered two way of having "emotion" in a game above -- one means Nar, one means Sim.  Which way are you playing.

But this may not be a matter you need to explore further.  And I would respect that.

God speed to all,

Christopher[/i]

[ADGBoss]

Chris

I suppose I am a Sim proponnent it's where I feel the most.. comfortable is not quite the word but it works here I guess.  I will fall back on one of the things I said: When you engage the Mind you Engage the Soul. Exploration of moral dilemma and emotion is just as (but not more) important in Sim as the exploration pf anything else. Like anything else you CAN leave it aside and ignore it but I think that is certainly ignoring a powerful part of the Character. So I would agree that exploring those things but staying on the "polite path" is how I see Sim.

I will say it might be a hard concept to grasp because moral dilemma and emotion do not equate too well to being on ready made charts.

"I just shot this little girl, I roll a D6... damn I am turned on by this... hmm" well you can put it on a chart but... I think you see my point.  

I suppose I see it this way, there is a difference between Exploration and Experience, where Experience is mostly Input with some output but true Exploration is Input, Output, and Throughput where throughput is everywhere in between.  


This has been a fairly productive discussion for me so I have no problems exploring more questions as it were.


Sean