Narrativism

[jburneko]

Mike (Epoch), as best I can tell without playing with you, your play corresponds to the Simulationist mode in which "story" emerges as a GM-retrofit to essentially laissez-faire player actions that are not particularly plot/story/theme oriented. This would be Narrativist if the players were oriented toward Premise/Theme/etc, but since they (ie the group, collectively speaking) are not, then the priority of play pretty much ends up being Character Exploration and/or Setting Exploration.

This is a bit off topic but this description REALLY struck a cord with me.  This sounds an awful lot like the situation my Deadlands game is in.  I certainly didn't expect my players to switch mindsets overnight.  But as I said, I call a lot of my players Simulationist-By-Habit in that they REALLY do want a story in the Narrativist sense but either a) don't think it's possible through role-playing or b) don't know how to go about it.

I find that the best way to bring the inner Narrativist out a Simulationist-By-Habit is to start with this mode of play and then between sessions when you're just hanging out start talking about their character from a litterary analytical point of view.  If they start looking at you weird then they're genuinely not interested in Narrativism and it's best to back off.  But I find 9 times out 10, the player will really start getting into what you're saying and pretty soon they're bringing up stuff between sessions themselves.  I assume that eventually, they'll start doing this stuff during the session as well.  I'm not quite to this last stage yet.  But quite a number of my players HAVE started thinking about theme and plot and premise between sessions.

Anyway, that was a complete side note that just needed to be said.  Please continue with the discussion as normal.

Jesse

[Paganini]

I think what is meant by "good" here is complete. That is, a story, by definition, has several elements, and much roleplay (and real life) does not contain those elements. I'll go through them here so as to make sense.

This makes the most sense that I've heard. My question still stands though... what would you call *me?* I'm not a simulationist, because accuracy is not my overriding concern. I'm not (usually) a gamist because I don't play with competition in mind. I focus on drama, and on story creation, but not neccesarily with the goal of *completeing* a story. I don't seem to fit... if a complete story is required for narrativism, then I'm not a narrativist, because I don't care if he story is ever finished. Think of me as the gamer equivalent of Robert Jordan times ten. :) It's not the end that's important, it's everything that we do along the way.

This is where much of the confusion about story comes in. A story is not a sequence of events. A story is a sequence of events that are all about one thing, determined ahead of time. While a random, or even pre-plotted, sequence of events may lead to an enjoyable time, and an enjoyable anecdote, without the above elements, it cannot be considered story.

Well, my games are a sequence of events that are all about one thing, so I meet that requirement. But my games are not actively structured in the way that you describe previously (that is, I don't sit down and think about the entire game or campaign from begining to end. I don't schedule turnign points or climaxes, or anything like that. Incorporating literary elements into a story is not a priority in my games, beyond any immediate value that such a construct brings.

[Paganini]

But if your enjoyment comes from "creation of the story at the moment", rather than looking back & saying "yes, that story was good", then that, to me, is narrativism. It's not about creating "classics of literature" or anything like that. It's about "story right now" rather than "thanks to some tricks by the GM & some careful pushing of the PCs into pursuing certain pathways, a good story was played out".

Yeah, this is exactly how I've always felt! But this doesnt' jive with what others are saying about narrativism, in that it requires complete stories, or traditional literary elements. "In the moment story creation" is an exact characterization of my play style.

[Paganini]

That's really great for you, but according to the Bible, a Christian must accept that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, and also must repent of sins. The soul of a Christian is saved not through works, but through faith.

(Note: Whoa. Where did that come from? I've been re-reading the Bible for literary merit. I'm not some sort of nutty religious fellow, and I'm making no condemnation or anything - which is a point I'll bring up again. Hell, I'm not considered a Christian by the Bible.)

Wow. This is totally off topic, but I am really, really impressed. Very few people get this out of the Bible. (This is even true for a lot of people who call themselves Christians.) I *am* a Christian, and I can't tell you how many times I find people who say they're christians, and then go on and on about doing good works. It is extremely unusual, Clinton, to find someone as accurate as you are. Kudos, whether you're a believer or not. :)

[Ron Edwards]

Hey Paganini,

It's not valid to define or recognize your play style, without actually playing with you. Anyone can say, "I'm all about story," or whatever. As demonstrated in the last 48 hours, all manner of confusion was generated by a long-ago post of mine to Mike Sullivan (Epoch), in that he believed I had "classified" him in some way.

I'd like to point out, however, some contradictions in what you've presented. On the one hand, you say that your priority in-play is story creation now, as described by Josh. That would be Narrativist - if by story you are talking about conflict, resolution, and theme. Yet on the other hand, you state that such things are not your priority.

This leads me to conclude that you apparently prioritize "creation of something now" during role-playing, but in terms of my essay that can only be identified as Exploration, what all role-players do (granted, some more than others). Until you are able to identify "what for, in terms of your own actual behavior during play, that's as far as it can go.

I also want to point out that your interpretation of Simulationism as prioritizing "accuracy" is also badly flawed. My definition has nothing to do with accuracy, but rather with maximal (prioritized) Exploration of one or more of the five listed elements (character, setting, situation, color, system). The historical "tag" for identifying such play is an overriding concern for in-game causality without metagame "interference."

Best,
Ron

[Paganini]

I'd like to point out, however, some contradictions in what you've presented. On the one hand, you say that your priority in-play is story creation now, as described by Josh. That would be Narrativist - if by story you are talking about conflict, resolution, and theme. Yet on the other hand, you state that such things are not your priority.

This leads me to conclude that you apparently prioritize "creation of something now" during role-playing, but in terms of my essay that can only be identified as Exploration, what all role-players do (granted, some more than others). Until you are able to identify "what for, in terms of your own actual behavior during play, that's as far as it can go.

<nods> Yeah, okay. As a matter of fact, when trying to describe my play style to others I've been calling it "story exploration." I don't approach the game as being a complete story, but rather as building a story, scene by scene.

[Epoch]

Hey Paganini,

It's not valid to define or recognize your play style, without actually playing with you. Anyone can say, "I'm all about story," or whatever. As demonstrated in the last 48 hours, all manner of confusion was generated by a long-ago post of mine to Mike Sullivan (Epoch), in that he believed I had "classified" him in some way.

Y'know, in all fairness, I regret even mentioning the little narrativist comment.  It was just a throw-away line that I didn't think too much about -- an attempt to be funny and to empathize with Paganini.

I feel like it overshadowed the rest of my post, which, I thought, had some interesting comments on Narrativism and a nice re-statement of why the Impossible Thing is impossible.

[Marco]

Hi Epoch,

It *was* a good post.

This definition of story also neatly solves your original problem -- why can't players be "creating a story" if they act purely from "within" their characters?  Because, by definition, a story involves meta-world elements (it's more than a series of in-world events).  Thus, if players are to create a story, they must be able to create meta-world elements (even if they do so totally covertly from hidden author stance).

Simply creating a character with a) a back-story and b) an intended arc is a narrative act. It's an act that you, as the player, can play out in a campagin that requires no OOC actions and is something a great many simulationist players do by habbit. The player doesn't create plot elements with director stance and isn't sacrificing immersion (arguable, I guess, but quibbling).

It's also got the prerequisit meta-aspects (the player makes the authorial decision about how the character will 'come of age' (say, first time a friend dies), 'explore a premise inherent in his design' (a Vampire character designed to die or feed off of loved ones), self destruct, etc.).

Is his series of events concerning this character (designed at conception time to address a premise) *not* a story?

In my own wholly subjective opinion, too much Narrativism leads to stories which aren't as interesting as the series-of-events that you get out of less Narrativist play.  

It's also possible to approach a given game (especially a short one) as an exploration (in the meaning of expeirencing) the GM's story. If you've got a fantastic GM you may enjoy acting through his story the same way you would a good book. If this is the case, you might demand all those literary elements of theme, foreshadowing, symbolism, etc.

That's one of the issues I have with the use of "story oriented" to apply to Narrativism. It seems patently and trivially incorrect. A better term would be "Authorial-power oriented", IMO (no one would 'claim' to be Authorial-Power oriented who wasn't).

-Marco

[Epoch]

Hi Epoch,

It *was* a good post.

I feel validated!  :)

Simply creating a character with a) a back-story and b) an intended arc is a narrative act. It's an act that you, as the player, can play out in a campagin that requires no OOC actions and is something a great many simulationist players do by habbit. The player doesn't create plot elements with director stance and isn't sacrificing immersion (arguable, I guess, but quibbling).

I'd say that it is a minimally author-stance act if, as in your example below, the person does something like declare "I'll come of age when my first friend dies."  If it's more of a, "I'm making this character and I suspect that the way I've made him will bias him towards an interesting future, but if it's not, then, oh-well, I'll play my character first and work on interest second," then I'd say it's a pretty Simulationist act.

It's also got the prerequisit meta-aspects (the player makes the authorial decision about how the character will 'come of age' (say, first time a friend dies), 'explore a premise inherent in his design' (a Vampire character designed to die or feed off of loved ones), self destruct, etc.).

Is his series of events concerning this character (designed at conception time to address a premise) *not* a story?

Well, fundamentally, however you design a character, you're going to come into decisions in play.  Someone dies.  Now, do you think, "Hey, someone died, that's a good (plausible) pretext to advance my coming-of-age conception of this character"?  Or do you think, "Hmmm, what exactly was my character's relationship with the dearly departed?  How would that affect him?  Yup, just as I suspected when I designed the character, it'll advance my coming-of-age concept!"

The first is an example of Narrativist (possibly covert Narrativist) play, in my opinion.  The second is Simulationist.

Now, if the results are identical, is it "not" a story?  That's a semantic issue, and, while I recognize that semantics are important in terms of efficient communication, I confess that I have very little patience for them.  I'm happy to call a "story" only something which is created in a certain way, though your suggested term may be better.

It's also possible to approach a given game (especially a short one) as an exploration (in the meaning of expeirencing) the GM's story. If you've got a fantastic GM you may enjoy acting through his story the same way you would a good book. If this is the case, you might demand all those literary elements of theme, foreshadowing, symbolism, etc.

That's one of the issues I have with the use of "story oriented" to apply to Narrativism. It seems patently and trivially incorrect. A better term would be "Authorial-power oriented", IMO (no one would 'claim' to be Authorial-Power oriented who wasn't).

I agree, or perhaps I agree if you modify that to saying, "Calling Narrativism 'story-oriented' without immediately qualifying it to say that it's a subset of all story-oriented play is patently and trivially incorrect."

[Ron Edwards]

Marco,

You're hacking at a straw man. My essay explicitly states that the term "story-oriented" is too problematic to be used as a definition or description of anything, much less Narrativism. I describe many ways in which "story," sensu lato, may be applied across the various sorts of GNS applications, and I even added to that list on a recent thread. Further discussion of why "story-oriented" causes problems is not raising objections to my definitions, but rather supporting the reasons why I came up with my definitions.

More generally, I should also like to point out that the definition of Narrativism says nothing about foreshadowing, symbolism, or other (often bogus) memorized items from Lit 101. Narrativism relies on (1) a Premise that intrigues the actual humans (because it involves problematic human passions that we can understand and ponder), and (2) addressing it as authors through the actual process of role-playing fictional protagonists' actions. That, and that alone, is the "traditional literary structure" people sometimes refer to.

Best,
Ron

[Marco]

Hey Ron,
Your essay is nicely clear on that point and I wasn't refering to it (what was that you quoted to me about the sun rising and setting?) I responded to this:

"Many a fistey Simulationist who claim they are story oriented and that they don't railroad ..."

Jesse then goes on to explain (with your argument, he says) why they're wrong: 'real-life isn't a story.'

A) the're '_claiming_ to be story oriented' (read: they aren't really)
B) they're wrong (a judgement I think is reminiscient of 20-something WW players in the mid-90's)
C) here's why they're wrong (surprise: they're not Narrativists)

I'm answering that.  

-Marco
[ Edited: more to the point, I'm pointing out that there'll be no confusion, argument, or semantic-debate if the Simulationist's "claim" was responded to by: "Are you into playing with authorial power in order to create and resolve plot?"

The answer would either be 'No--I'm that other kind of story-oriented.' (end of discussion) or 'What are you talking about?' which would then result in productive/educational agreement. ]

[jburneko]

Marco,

I'd like to apologize for the tone of my original post in this thread.  It was hastily written and poorly thought out.  I didn't mean to imply that no story at ALL was a result of the play described.  I only meant to say that I have a hard time trying to convey to more the 'traditional' role-players what I mean when I say I'm into roleplaying as a story-creation medium.

It was more or less a reaffirmation that story-oriented is a useless term.  Because when a Simulationist and a Narrativist say they are story-oriented they mean two different things.  This ties into people I describe as Simulationist-By-Habit.  These people mean story the way a Narrativist does but constantly slam their heads into walls by trying to achieve it using Simulationist asumptions and techniques.  I speak from personal experience.

Jesse

[Ron Edwards]

Wowsers,

Marco, you're absolutely right. I unjustly mistook you for saying erroneous stuff, when you were pointing out how erroneous others were for saying it. That must have been very annoying, and I apologize for that.

Whew!

Best,
Ron

[Paganini]

More generally, I should also like to point out that the definition of Narrativism says nothing about foreshadowing, symbolism, or other (often bogus) memorized items from Lit 101. Narrativism relies on (1) a Premise that intrigues the actual humans (because it involves problematic human passions that we can understand and ponder), and (2) addressing it as authors through the actual process of role-playing fictional protagonists' actions. That, and that alone, is the "traditional literary structure" people sometimes refer to.

I have a related question here. It seems that you often bring up Premise as though it's a defining aspect of narrative play. Is not Premise applicable to other styles, though? For example, in the Identity Crisis thread I believe someone said that Storyteller is primarily a character simulation system, in spite of a lot of story oriented prose. Isn't it the Premise of the game that keeps people buying it? It seems like the Premise is similar to that of Sorcerer... how far do you go before you lose your humanity.

[hardcoremoose]

Isn't it the Premise of the game that keeps people buying it? It seems like the Premise is similar to that of Sorcerer... how far do you go before you lose your humanity.

That's what they tell you the Premise is.  It's actually something more akin to "What would it be like to be vampires, if vampires had this age old society and secretly ruled the world?"

Okay, I'm being a bit smarmy there.  That's actually a totally valid Premise, despite my sarcasm, and I think it does sell books.  Premise is that thing that keeps players playing, and if they're playing the game, they're more likely to buy its supplements (although I think there are alot of reasons people buy games, and some of them are pretty superficial).

To answer your question more directly, Premise is extremely important to any branch of the three fold.  It's that thing that makes you want to play the game - any game of any type - so it must be crucial to all of them.  It gets special attention from the Narrativists, maybe because we lean on it so much, but it's definitely an issue for Gamists and Simulationists as well.

- Scott