Narrativist LARP (split)

[Eero Tuovinen]

(edit) Peculiar, I didn't notice that this is a revived thread. Or rather, the inside:outside thread is a revival, and fooled me totally. I clearly should go sleep it off.

When it comes to seeing inside : outside as a "highly successful, more pure narrativistic larp" (-Erling), I would be hard pressed to find a single premise for all the different narratives that were in the larp.

No need for a single premise. GNS focuses on single play decisions, so there's no reason why there cannot be localized (temporally, spatially, whatever) premises.

The extreme subjectivity of a larp experience, which we tried to accommodate as larpwrights, meant that the narrative, theme and premise were different for each player. Does that mean classifying it as "narrativst" was wrong, that one-premise-per-player is okay for narrativism, or that G/N/S simply doesn't apply very well to larps?

I'd expect this, really. The main difference storywise between tabletop and larp is in the singularity/plurality of narrative. When you have many narratives like in a larp, you of course would have many themes and premises flying around. Interconnected through actual facts of the play, but free in interpretation.

Anyway, about fateplay: as far as I've understood, skjebnespill (fateplay) is the equivalent of "thoroughframing" as it's called here (couldn't really locate any authoritative threads, but at least Humble Mythologies uses the technique if I remember right). The difference is mainly in how narrative control is shared: skjebnespill is a larp technique used for participationist story planning, while I've yet to see the same on tabletop.

Now, I'd posit that most elements of heavily fateplayed larps wouldn't be very narrativist. Rather I see in them common thematic simulationism, where the writer enforces his own choices of theme. For it to be narrativist there should be no central theme in any given narrative - rather, the theme would emerge through play decisions. Old topic, but...

The above should of course be interpreted with the multilinearity of larps in mind; I'm currently of the mind that GNS can be used in larp analysis, but we cannot use the common assumptions: as there are multiple narratives, there really is no requirement for such coherency as tabletop games require. I could easily see one player playing a game that's planned as narrativist - for his character. The others could very well be bound by role requirements. Such a game would be nar for some and sim for others.

[Ron Edwards]

The above was split from LARP and GNS: Narrativist techniques?

[sirogit]

I think that LARPS have an even more fragmented narrative than what you describe, due to the fact that in a typical LARP the primary imaginary space is not shared, but composed of what you see with your own eyes, which are typically disconnected from any other players most of the time, even in strict "party" sort of scenarios.

I think applying the GNS theories to personal decsisions with no social contract or SIS to speak of dilutes the accuracy and applicability of the theories.

[Eero Tuovinen]

I think applying the GNS theories to personal decsisions with no social contract or SIS to speak of dilutes the accuracy and applicability of the theories.

But surely there is a Social Contract in a larp? The mere fact that people are playing together should be adequate to establish it, would it not? In the same way, the players have a SIS because they agree on at least some factoids of the fictional game world.

Sure, the SIS is porous in that it isn't completely transparent, but instead is comprised by multiple "nodes" of imaginary action in different parts of the physical play area with information lag and complete holes between. I would however still expect that the SIS is communally created and upheld locally, and that's all that matter for GNS. Whether more or less play happens in the heads of individual players doesn't affect the theory as Lumpley would tell you.

For the Social Contract I see only little difference. For players to play together in any meaningful sense they have to play by the same rules.

Overall I find that the central application of GNS is quite valid for a larp. Remember that all higher level analysis GNS is used for depends on certain rules that hold locally. The most important of these is that player decisions always fall into one and only one CA. This is STILL TRUE in a larp. Now, there are other things that are not true, and thus can not be applied to make higher level analysis; as an example, the habit of characterizing entire play groups, games and sessions as falling within a CA: this is only possible because of the coherency principle, which states that the CAs are incompatible because their application causes conflicts within the play group. This is not true when taken to larping; the coherency principle rests largely on the fact that in a tabletop game all players have vested interest in everything that happens; by making incompatible decisions you unavoidably cause disagreement. This doesn't need to be true for a larp, and thus the coherency principle does not exist. That being the case, there is no reason for the same larp to include a multitude of different CAs in the form of different players, game mechanics and actual play decisions. In tabletop the coherency principle holds some really universal assumptions together with an invisible hand, but all this disappears with multiple narratives.

Now, note how the above does not mean that GNS doesn't apply. It just means that we need new modeling, an extended theory to account for what exactly is going on in a larp. I see no dilution in the theory if it's expanded to cover something for which some assumptions have to be switched, while the heart of the theory (the CAs) still hold.

Note that this is a different take from the one I supported last winter. I've come to consider GNS from a psychological angle, and find no reason for it to not apply to larping. The motivations are the same, and the CAs are nothing more than simply motivations for play decisions.