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

[Christopher Kubasik]

Sean,

So, just so I'm clear -- I think I know what you're saying -- when you're playing Sim, the Player, via the character, might have emotional responses, sensations, and all -- but wouldn't change is *actions* because of those sensations.  Right?  And whatever he thought or imagined his character was feeling (either emotionally or tactically) again, would be recieved information, but would not engender a strong new tactict or action.

Thus, in the Sim game you're describing, our PCs might be torturing prisoners to get information to save the President, I might feel, via, my character, horrible about it, but I would never take the pictures with my cell phone and post them -- because that's not what that night's game is *about*.  My mission is to save the president.  If I feel bad along the way, say, that's cool and engaging -- but it ends there.

Whereas in Nar play, what I *do* in response to those sensations -- what actions my character takes (or doesn't take) -- is what Nar play is all about.

Thus, both Nar and Sim play involve recieving these kinds of emotional and tactile bits of data, but Nar play then asks the player to output actual decisions of consequence due to the recieved bits of emotional and tactile data.

Is there where we are?  Because this makes perfect sense to me.

(And let me add quickly, even in Nar play, there might be a period of simply recieving which would look a lot like Sim as the PC's moral view begins to shift.  But the utter potential that anything my change drastically at any moment in terms of the PC's behavior and agenda -- a live, exposed wire at all times -- is what makes it Nar and not Sim.  Yes?)

Christopher

[Ben O'Neal]

Actually, I was under the impression that Nar play could be undermined by the presence of the other modes, an impression I got from this thread. In turn, the other modes can be undermined by the presence of Nar, depending on how these all impact the overall focus of play.

To clarify, play can involve all sorts of "typically narrativist" elements, and can indeed address premise through moral issues, but at the same time, if the major focus of play is exploration of character and setting (or system and winning), then the game may well be Sim or Gam.

For example, in my game, Scarlet Wake, players can advance one of their stats only by introducing a dilemna, which must be clearly explained as to why it is a dilemna, through the emotions that the situation invokes for the character. In addition, the character's choices are then subject to adjustment based on that dilemna (they may continue with the kill or leave the target be). So we have both moral issues being addressed and the potential for differential outcomes according to said issues. But does this make Scarlet Wake Narrativist? IMHO, not at all. Is it drifting? Maybe, but I'd argue no, because the goal of the dilemna is not to address the moral issues at hand, but to increase a stat. On one level, it would appear to be narrative, but superordinately, it is very gamist.

This example can be extended to Sim play too, in that a given character may well explore issues of moral importance in a deep and meaningful way, and may make many decisions based on this exploration of morality, but if the overall goal is to explore this for the sake of experiencing another reality, and not for the sake of the moral issues themselves, then play is still Sim. So in a sense you can have a highly Sim game where play is about exploring the reality of being a character exposed to moral dilemnas, but so long as the superordinate goal of play is the exploration of that reality, and not of the morals themselves, then it isn't narrativism.

At least, that's my understanding of how G, N, and S can fit together. And this, to me, makes sense as to how you can have any given story explored in any of the modes.

So to use the terminology being thrown around here so far: emotional bits of data can be used in the input, output, and throughput of all the modes, but it is the goals for doing so which affects mode.

I hope that makes sense (I'm still very new to this GNS thing, so I could be completely full of shit).

-Ben

[Jack Spencer Jr]

I think the focus on emotion is a little baby/bathwater or something like that. I find it odd that Christopher posted this because something similar was cooking up for me, although I might not have posted it. Let me see if I can present my views, which are pretty much just a slightly different perspective on what Christopher said.

In a story, things must happen.

OK, that may need a bit of explanation. First of all, I'm with Christopher in that "narrated series of related events" is an inadequate definition. Second, there's when things happen and when things actually happen.

An example. (I know some dislike examples from other media, but as Christopher had pointed out, the basic creature under discussion, the story, is similar at it's root in other mediums, I feel it's appropriate.) Vincent Gallo's recent film "The Brown Bunny" was booed out of the Cannes Film Festival. Rogert Ebert has a couple Articles about it here. The import bit is the plot summary. I won't cut & paste here, but in summary, Ebert says that for 90 minutes we watch Gallo drive across country, stop for gas twice, washes his van and stops to ride his motorcycle. Lots of stuff happens, but nothing actually happens.*

So what does it mean when something actually happens? McKee refers to this as a story event and defines it as when a story value reverses it's charge, from positive to negative or from negative to positive. Unless a value reverses its charge, an event does not take place.

In Brown Bunny, towards the end, he finally does find his girlfriend but she reveals something about their relationship. At this point, I assume since I have not seen the movie, a value, their relationship  finally reverses its charge from a hopeful positive to a crushed negative.

Often I have seen this refered to as "rising and falling action" A clunky phrasing and does really illustrate it as well for me as the charge reversal.

This is the driving force of storytelling, both in making things actually happen but also in engaging the audience's interest. Can you believe what just happened? I wonder what's going to happen next!

* I am curious to see this film, but when it's brought back to the US it will be edited so the heck with it

[M. J. Young]

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.

Yes, but for a different reason; more in a moment.

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.

No, this inherently suggests that narrativism is "deeper" and "more" than simulationism; and although you say that's not what you mean, it is what you say.

I would say that the difference between simulationism and narrativism, given character and situation as the focus of exploration in both cases, given the matter of the assassin killing the victim as mentioned above, is here.

[*]To the simulationist, we want to explore what the assassin feels in that situation.[*]To the narrativist, we want to know what the player feels about that.[/list:u]
A simulationist character can wrestle with a moral issue and stay simulationist, because it's part of who the character is and not at any point a reflection of what the player thinks the answer should be. A narrativist character can completely ignore a moral issue and remain narrativist because what matters is whether the player is involved with the issue.

It gets close at times, but the question is still, what are we doing? Are we, as players, addressing premise? Or are we, as players, exploring the beliefs and feelings of some imaginary character?

--M. J. Young

[Jack Spencer Jr]

I'm starting to think that "moral issue" is a bugaboo.  Maybe the term "moral issue" is bad and maybe the term "value" or "story value" would work better?

STORY VALUES are the universal qualities of human experience...

The very presence of story values does not indicate Narrativism. Like the hooker told the young sailor, it's not what you've got, it's how you use it.

Narrativism conforms to story craftsmanship principles. Whether you learn those principles from Egri, McKee or your Aunt Mathilda who used to own a bording house and entertained her guests by spinning yarns. It doesn't matter, really. Most sources since Aristotle have offered more-or-less the same thing. What does matter is that these principles govern play in one way or another and, thus, creates a particular experience. An experience which, hopefully, will have much in common with other storytelling media.

[contracycle]

Narrativism conforms to story craftsmanship principles. Whether you learn those principles from Egri, McKee or your Aunt Mathilda who used to own a bording house and entertained her guests by spinning yarns. It doesn't matter, really. Most sources since Aristotle have offered more-or-less the same thing. What does matter is that these principles govern play in one way or another and, thus, creates a particular experience. An experience which, hopefully, will have much in common with other storytelling media.

Yep. I agree with this fully; and this to me underlies a lot of the confusion about 'story'.  A story IS a 'sequence of events' which is then PRESENTED in a particular, stylised, structured manner.  The difference between 'story' and 'Story' is the presence/role of the Author who turns the sequence of events into a sequence of scenes to evoke emotion.

Herein lies the dilemma for RPG; it is not clear that there is a functional author, and its not clear that one is needed.

[pete_darby]

Something just occured to me with this which comes from, of all things, object oriented programming.

I agree that a story usually has a sequence of events (or a non-sequential number of events), but this isn't the same thing as saying a story is a sequence of events that are presented in a particular way.

To my mind, the events are a "thing" about the story, a vital component along with the characters and dramatic issue in crisis... but to say that the events are the story is missing the difference between a sequence of events and a story.

And in my mind, the group is the collective author of the story, and audience, and we're back to Mr Lehrich's work again...

[Paganini]

Gareth I really don't see the dillema you're talking about. An analogy is useful insofar as it goes, and then you drop it. It's not difficult to create a story through play. The techniques are straightforward. If we're satisfied with the end result, why get hung up on trying to conform our entertainment passtime to exactly match a completely different medium? I mean, who cares what the analogue for "author" is when we're playing an RPG? What possible impact could that have on what we collectively imagine?

Jack, I have personally seen Ron say uncounted times that if the term "moral issue" bothers you, you should get rid of it. It's not the Big Deal (TM) of narrativism. M. J. nailed it exactly in his post on sim vs. nar.

Narrativism does not conform to "story craftmanship principles," whatever those might be. What they teach you in school, and what you read in writing manuals, is nothing more or less than observations about *what great writers have previously done.* They aren't rules. They aren't principles. When you read Egri, or Mckee, or Novakovich, or whoever, you are not learning what you must do to become a great writer. You are learning what great writers have done. Great writers do not follow rules when they write. They don't have formulas or fill-in the blank sheets. Heck, they don't even follow the rules of *grammar* consistently, if they feel that breaking a rule would add something. To put it another way, they are artists, not precision scientists. They make it up as they go; they don't follow rules.

If you find some literary technique you read about in a book useful for your RPGs, great. Someone else will do the exact opposite and be just as satisfied - and their game will be just as valid.

Here's the point: Narrativism does not conform to "story craftmanship methods." Writing novels does not conform to "story craftmanship methods." They both are schools of human vagary. They equally and independently conform to *what real people care about.* That's it. That's all there is to it. There is no man behind the curtain. What people care about is what you get.

EDIT: By the way, Gareth, I assume you've read the narrativism article. Do you remember the place where Ron defines story? Or, do you just disagree with that definition? Because as far as I'm concerned, using Ron's definitions clears up all the problems you seem to have.

[Walt Freitag]

A "story"-free definition of Narrativism:

Narrativism is Exploration as a means for particpants' self-expresison about human issues that they regard as morally or emotionally significant.

Does that work for anybody?

I'm close to concluding that recasting the whole Creative Agenda portion of the Big Model in terms of participant self-expression would make it tighter and more comprehensible. Role playing is either a medium of self-expression or it's zilchplay (and hence arguably not role-playing at all). Creative Agenda categorizes the subject of the self-expression: the player's capability, an emotionally significant Premise, or the imagined content itself.

Incoherence is when participants are expressing themselves about entirely different things and consequently judging one anothers' self-expression based on an entirely wrong idea of what it's intended to be about. Hemon's review of Hitz is pure incoherence in action, and as such, is infuriating, interesting and correct as Hemon's views of the literary dimensions of spy fiction might be. As far as I can tell without reading the book itself, Hitz is trying to talk about spies and spying, using spy fiction as a contrasting background in order to exposit real-world espionage. Hemon writes Hitz's book off as a failure because he doesn't address the literary aspects of the spy fiction. It's like faulting an auto repair manual for failing to discuss the impact of mobility on Western society in the 20th century. It's also like one side of any number of pointless Internet flame wars:

"Computers in movies are so unrealistic."

"That's because movies are all about the story. They don't have to be realistic, they have to move the story along in an interesting way."

"Yeah, but real computer stuff is way more interesting than the stuff they make up for the movies."

"Only if you're a pathetic geek like you! The rest of us care more about people and emotions and stuff."

- Walt

[Jack Spencer Jr]

It appears we're hiting that wall again over narrativism and such. Where to begin.

Narrativism is Exploration as a means for particpants' self-expresison about human issues that they regard as morally or emotionally significant.

Does that work for anybody?

Sorry, Walter, no. I'll explain why below.

By the way, Gareth, I assume you've read the narrativism article. Do you remember the place where Ron defines story? Or, do you just disagree with that definition? Because as far as I'm concerned, using Ron's definitions clears up all the problems you seem to have.

I take it you mean this:

All role-playing necessarily produces a sequence of imaginary events. Go ahead and role-play, and write down what happened to the characters, where they went, and what they did. I'll call that event-summary the "transcript." But some transcripts have, as Pooh might put it, a "little something," specifically a theme: a judgmental point, perceivable as a certain charge they generate for the listener or reader. If a transcript has one (or rather, if it does that), I'll call it a story.

Well, working through the context of this paragraph, a story has a "little something." Unfortunately this is not defined very well except that it produces a certain response in the listener or reader.

Actually, McKee discusses this a bit. He goes on about how some people can spin a gripping yarn about dropping their kids off for the school bus but another can tell the world's most boring story about how their mother had died over the weekend. This is true. So why? The death of a family member should obviously be a more emotionally profound than getting the nose-pickers on the bus, shouldn't it? Then why is that story better than the other?

Here's the point: Narrativism does not conform to "story craftmanship methods." Writing novels does not conform to "story craftmanship methods." They both are schools of human vagary....

Great writers do not follow rules when they write. They don't have formulas or fill-in the blank sheets. Heck, they don't even follow the rules of *grammar* consistently, if they feel that breaking a rule would add something. To put it another way, they are artists, not precision scientists. They make it up as they go; they don't follow rules.

Some grab bag quotes here, but it looks like we'll have to agree to disagree on this point. I think good storytelling requirtes craftsmanship. You don't. Anything further would derail the thread more than necessary.

[Paganini]

I take it you mean this:

All role-playing necessarily produces a sequence of imaginary events. Go ahead and role-play, and write down what happened to the characters, where they went, and what they did. I'll call that event-summary the "transcript." But some transcripts have, as Pooh might put it, a "little something," specifically a theme: a judgmental point, perceivable as a certain charge they generate for the listener or reader. If a transcript has one (or rather, if it does that), I'll call it a story.

Well, working through the context of this paragraph, a story has a "little something." Unfortunately this is not defined very well except that it produces a certain response in the listener or reader.

Eh? What? I do mean that. But I can't see how you can say it's not defined very well. Did you read the whole paragraph? It's defined very specifically. The "little something" is an in-game decision point (i.e., one that the characters are faced with) that generates an emotional response in the player (the real person). Doesn't get much more precise than that.

Actually, McKee discusses this a bit. He goes on about how some people can spin a gripping yarn about dropping their kids off for the school bus but another can tell the world's most boring story about how their mother had died over the weekend. This is true. So why? The death of a family member should obviously be a more emotionally profound than getting the nose-pickers on the bus, shouldn't it? Then why is that story better than the other?

It's not obvious at all. What do you mean "should?" My emotional responses are my own. I was really moved by the final few scenes in "The Last Samurai." My mom couldn't care less. You're trying to make it way more complicated than it is. It has nothing to do with which story is better. It has to do with whether or not the players care about the decision, at that moment. Period.

Some grab bag quotes here, but it looks like we'll have to agree to disagree on this point. I think good storytelling requirtes craftsmanship. You don't. Anything further would derail the thread more than necessary.

You're not reading me Jack. I absolutely think storytelling requires craftmanship. I'm saying that writing manuals don't tell you how to make a story. They're telling you *how some people have made stories in the past.* The idea that great authors are working inside some kind of established box of "that's what stories are, here's what you do to get them" is ridiculous. I have read countless comments by successfull authors who contradict you. Heck, I personally know several authors who have talked about this very thing.

Plus, even if you are correct in terms of the literary field, I *still* don't see what that has to do with RPGs. This word "Narrativism" was coined by Ron to describe a concept that was not previously formalized. It doesn't have any of this lit-industry bagage you keep trying to associate it with. It is VERY SIMPLE. Stick with that simplicity, and everything is fine.

[Paganini]

OK, let me try putting this a different way.

"Story" is a term that is specifically defined in the context of GNS. Setting up a debate over what the word "story" actually means is a red herring in this context. In GNS, a story is a sequence of events that contains one or more decision points in which the fictional characters are faced with a problematic human issue. This is basic in GNS. It's a foundational definition, not a conclusion that's open to argument. This definition might be different from what you think the word "story" should mean. But in the context of GNS, that doesn't matter. If you're gonna talk GNS, you have to use the supplied vocabulary if you want to have any kind of success.  

If the problematic human issue is something that the players find personally compelling, if they're all juiced up about resolving it in the way they want it to resolve, then play is Narrativist. If, instead, the players are interested in ensuring that the problem resolves in the way it logically should, given the established facts of the shared reality, then play is Simulationist. This is what M.J.'s post was about.

The point of Christopher's initial post is that this idea is not some obscure underground notion that just a few wacko game designers have latched onto. The problematic issues that drive narrativist play are the same problematic issues that real people in the real world are moved by. They're the same problematic issues that real authors are using to write compelling novels. They're the same problematic issues that keep people going back to the movie theaters to see the same movie over and over.

Without those problematic issues, you have a series of events that some people may or may not call "story." In the context of GNS, it's emphatically not called story. It's called "transcript."

Basically, people care about what people care about, regardless of whether they're reading it in books, seeing it on film, or creating it during play of an RPG. Now, you can restate this in a lot of different ways. According to Ron, everyone has to do it for himself. But the lexicon that GNS provides developed. The "dilemma" that Gareth refers to does not exist; such literary bagage is not relevant.

[John Kim]

"Story" is a term that is specifically defined in the context of GNS. Setting up a debate over what the word "story" actually means is a red herring in this context.  In GNS, a story is a sequence of events that contains one or more decision points in which the fictional characters are faced with a problematic human issue.
...
If the problematic human issue is something that the players find personally compelling, if they're all juiced up about resolving it in the way they want it to resolve, then play is Narrativist. If, instead, the players are interested in ensuring that the problem resolves in the way it logically should, given the established facts of the shared reality, then play is Simulationist.

The thing is, these aren't exclusive.  Someone can both find an issue personally compelling and want to play out what happens as it logically should.  Indeed, for me a prime attraction of RGFA Simulationism (what Ben dubbed "Virtuality") is the moral depth and complexity.  Now, there are people who aren't interested in moral issues in their games, I think.  However, they are properly defined by not being interested in moral issues -- i.e. they should be thought of as non-moralists or somesuch rather than simulationists. So there are at least two dichotomies here:

1) story logic techniques (i.e. decide where you want the story to go, and then create reasons why it happens that way).
2) cause-and-effect logic techniques (i.e. decide what will happen based on extrapolation from what is known)

and

A) Interested in moral issues
B) Not interested in moral issues

I think these are unrelated dichotomies.  Now, I do think that cause-and-effect will not lead to structured dramatic narrative.  However, it does not strip out moral issues.  Indeed, a great majority of non-realistic story conventions are there to simplify the morality and lessen the moral choices (i.e. make things black-and-white rather than shades-of-grey, and/or arrange neat closure at the end rather than having messy consequences).  

The point of Christopher's initial post is that this idea is not some obscure underground notion that just a few wacko game designers have latched onto. The problematic issues that drive narrativist play are the same problematic issues that real people in the real world are moved by. They're the same problematic issues that real authors are using to write compelling novels. They're the same problematic issues that keep people going back to the movie theaters to see the same movie over and over.  

OK, here I see a subtle switch of topic.  In the previous section you argued that the "moral issues" definition of stories was a GNS-specific thing which was an arbitrary choice.  But here you are are chasing after exactly the red herring that you defined earlier -- i.e. what story means in a larger sense.  

As I currently see it, the "moral issues" definition of story is a misplaced emphasis.  While it is true that all stories have a moral dimension and meaning, that is only one aspect of stories.  It is an important one, but it is also an easy one.  In practice, it is trivial to write a story with a moral -- like the mini-stories of Richard Scarry's "Please and Thank You Book" for kids.  However, it is difficult to write a story with believable characters and plot.  It is difficult to write a story which conveys the emotional experience of the characters.  It is difficult to write a story which vividly paints the setting with its words.  However, the GNS dichotomy asserts that unless you put priority on one aspect of story (moral issues) over all others, then you aren't interested in "story now".

[Paganini]

Someone can both find an issue personally compelling and want to play out what happens as it logically should.

Yes, of course. That's what "Exploration" is. Ron says pretty much up front that a certain degree of causailty is necessary for suspension of disbelief. Most of the time narrativism will be perfectly plausible. But there will be times when you have to pick one over the other... you prioritize narrativism by having your character make the choice that you want, even if it's out of character, for example. That's why they're two separate creative agendas. It's not that they exist in a perpetual state of mutual exclusiveness; it's that sometimes one will get in the way of the other, and you have to prioritize.

I think these are unrelated dichotomies.  Now, I do think that cause-and-effect will not lead to structured dramatic narrative.  However, it does not strip out moral issues.  Indeed, a great majority of non-realistic story conventions are there to simplify the morality and lessen the moral choices (i.e. make things black-and-white rather than shades-of-grey, and/or arrange neat closure at the end rather than having messy consequences).

Yup. No one has said that you can't have moral issues in sim. Check out M.J.'s post again. You're looking at that fine line between nar and sim where things get a little blurry. Just remember that the deciding factor is what the players are juiced about at the moment of play.

OK, here I see a subtle switch of topic.  In the previous section you argued that the "moral issues" definition of stories was a GNS-specific thing which was an arbitrary choice.  But here you are are chasing after exactly the red herring that you defined earlier -- i.e. what story means in a larger sense.

Sort of. Inside GNS, story is explicitly defined. Outside of GNS you can use whatever terminology you want, I don't care. The important thing is that the GNS-specific idea of theme is not some obscure fringe idea. Regardless of what you want to call it, it's out there juicing audiences and readers just like it juices we role-players.

[contracycle]

I'm going to reply to this briefly now, but I have a more in-depth response that I typed and then decided not to post last night.  But I now think it is indeed relevant after all.

OK, let me try putting this a different way.

"Story" is a term that is specifically defined in the context of GNS. Setting up a debate over what the word "story" actually means is a red herring in this context. In GNS, a story is a sequence of events that contains one or more decision points in which the fictional characters are faced with a problematic human issue. This is basic in GNS. It's a foundational definition, not a conclusion that's open to argument. This definition might be different from what you think the word "story" should mean. But in the context of GNS, that doesn't matter. If you're gonna talk GNS, you have to use the supplied vocabulary if you want to have any kind of success.

Fine, OK.  This was my reposnse to your question about Ron's definition of story.  Sure, for the purposes of articulating GNS, for the purposes of discussing GNS, Ron has given a precise, local definition of what he is referring to.  all good and useful.  However, I do not think that the specific GNS-context use of the story term in any way invalidates any of the other non-GNS uses of the term.

Now, what I'm trying to get at this: the external definition of Real Story - a sculpted phenomenon designed according to certain parameters is, it seems to me, exactly what Chris K was getting at.  And I think this is a good and excellent thing; I think the line between real story and trivial story should be more strongly drawn.

It is not a red herring IMO to pay more attention to the difference beteen real story and trivial story.  Yes, we try to be inoffensive and not tell people that what they are doing is "not real story", but sometimes I think that does indeed have to be said: not least becuase otherwise the trivial storyt people can never take advantage of the formal story knowledge that already exists to make their play better.  I'm saying the rather vague and generous definition of story given in the Narratvism article is too broad and too generous IMO.

A sequence of events is not a story.  A sequence of events can be sculpted into a story.  The difference to me lies in the doing of this during play or post-play.  Story Now, whicl the distinguishing characteristic of Nar, is not the only form of story; non-Story Now behaviours can still benefit from discussion of formal story IMO, even if the raw transcript they produce is still not a story in the formal sense.