Literary Comedy, Answered Premise, and Narrativism

[Walt Freitag]

Brought to a thread from private messages initiated by Tim Alexander:

Hiya Walt,

I was looking through the archives and in the midst of following a few threads I ended up running into your arabian nights game thread:

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=4646

Unfortunately it looks like you never got much of a response to your inital thread, but I wanted to give you a comment. Specifically it sounds to me like the Arabian Nights LARP, and the comedic literary tradition, is best categorized as Sim, supported by Narrativism. The Premise doesn't dominate play, which is why it doesn't fit standard Story Now conventions. The fact that the answer to the question is out there right from the start pretty clearly seperates it from Narrativism in my mind. That said, the substories obviously involved some level of Narrativism on a small scale. It seems to me that you pretty successfully used these smaller Nar plots to drive the overall Sim exploration of character/setting. I find this fascinating in practice; I wouldn't have thought such a combination occured.

Does this resonate at all with what occurred, or am I way off base?

-Tim

Hi Tim,

I could accept everything you suggest, except for one thing, which is the crux of the topic that I wanted to discuss by starting the thread.

Which is that Ron and many others have repeatedly said that Narrativism is completely compatible with comedy. Yet actual play examples of comedic Narrativism have been few and far between. Furthermore, when I look at comedy, whether literary or pop-culture or anywhere in between, it appears that the answers to the Premise questions are always clear (to the audience, not to the characters) at the outset. So consistently so, that I take that as a defining feature of comedy -- and even if it's not a defining feature, it's a universal or darn nearly universal incidental feature.

Of course Shylock's intent to vengefully butcher Antonio is wrong, even though he has legitimate causes for grievance. Of course the shrew Katherine should submit to her rightful husband. (That we so disagree with this notion today is what makes the play distasteful to so many audiences... Shakespeare doesn't leave the answer open anywhere in the play, so "fixing" it by changing the ending doesn't work.) Of course people should be honest, forgiving, and open-minded; the only open question in a thousand date flicks is how circumstances are going to maneuver the characters into being so despite the secondary interests and misunderstandings that lead them astray.

If Ron were to say, "well, in practice, Narrativist comedy is pretty much impossible" I'd accept that as consistent with how Narrativism is defined. But if I accept the assertion that Narrativism is (or should be) conducive to comedy, then I think I have a legitimate complaint that the requirement that Premise questions must be "open" (and if not open, indicate Sim) doesn't actually allow it to be so.

- Walt

Hey Walt,

Now I'm even more disappointed that the thread just dropped off the face of the planet. I think you make a hell of a point and I'd really like to see Ron and the rest respond to it. I wonder though if it's really a semantic point, and that the previous discussions discussing Narrativism and comedy are using the the pop understanding of the term (i.e. funny.) I sort of hope that isn't the case though, I'd like to hear a better explanation because I'm pretty well stuck. I wonder if you'd consider restating your case in a new post and relinking the Arabian nights thread?

-Tim

At which point I suggested posting the PMs as the thread starter, and Tim agreed.

Let me reiterate that the issue is not whether Narrativist role playing can be humorous or contain humorous moments or elements. I'm asking whether it's possible to create stories that resemble traditional and popular comedic forms, given the requirement that the Premise question be "open" in Narrativist role playing.

- Walt

[Ben Lehman]

Comedy is tough with regard to Creative Agenda, in general.

yrs--
--Ben

[contracycle]

Uhh, wibble.

I would like to say though that there has been a strand of thought that comedy is gamism, on the basis that "making people laugh" is a "demonstration of ability and guts".

Theres a fair amount of weight to that argument even if from my perspective comedy seems more akin to premise.  Nevertheless, I raise the point becuase the starting asusmnptions of the question, that comedy is appropriately executed through Narr, might be wrong.

[pete_darby]

Well, as a couple of pieces of evidence on the side of Nar comedy....

Moose in the City

and

The taglines for When Harry met Sally

Especially the latter looks like a pair of rock solid, Nar style premises. Heh, I was going to weigh in with "But the answer to the question of the premise is clear from the outset", but checking the trivia on the movie, it turns out that the happy ending only came in after the first draft. So much for predetermined address of premise in comedy?

Now, the theory: Comedy, for RPG's, is per se CA neutral. It can be the point of competition, it can be the celebrated aspect (I suspect most humourous RPG's work this way, I'm thinking of Ghostbusters, TFOS, Toon), or it can be a tool of address of premise (Moose in the City). But it's like struggle, though far less ubiquitous. It's presence doesn't signal a particular CA.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Some previous discussion occurred in Humor and GNS. I haven't seen any reason to shift my position from what I said there.

Best,
Ron

[Tim Alexander]

Howdy Ron et al,

You said:

Some previous discussion occurred in Humor and GNS. I haven't seen any reason to shift my position from what I said there.

That topic didn't help me at all unfortunately since I see it as getting to an entirely different thing. Walt isn't talking about humor in games being specifically Nar, and I think there's ample evidence that funny works in any CA. Maybe there's more to the other discussion that I'm misreading, but it seems like the core of that thread is humor, not the comic literary form. My question comes specifically from his posit on literary comedy with regard to a Premise that's essentially answered, with the Arabian Nights game as a specific instance of it.

If you could address that specifically I'd be appreciative. At the moment I see this as something that doesn't work for Nar play (to the point of being tautological,) and if that's how you feel I'm good to go. If that's not the case though, I'd love an explanation. I think most of my confusion comes from Walt's assertion that the idea that Nar does literary comedy has been addressed before. If that's misread, or misremembered, or some other mis, then like I mention in the PMs I'm good to go.

Pete, I think that the situation described in the taglines for WHmS could produce great Nar play. I think it's great Premise stuff. However, like I said to Walt in the PMs, I don't see how it's Nar play if as a group you already know that Harry and Sally can indeed still love each other. How do you address the Premise that's been answered? Aren't you just going through the motions?

Thanks guys,

-Tim

[pete_darby]

Well, if we're talking about the literary form of the Comedy then like the Tragedy, the definition gets pretty teleological, which is the bane of role-playing (or is it? New thread!).

Frex, if we're Nar playing When Harry..., we don't know that Harry & Sally will end up together. We're in the same position as Nora Ephron & Rob Reiner when they were writing (and re-writing) it. In fact, from what I recall of the film, the tension of will they won't they is still there throughout most of the film, probably becasue of that first draft where the answer is "no". Now, in terms of literary comedy, we don't know if what is being produced is a comedy until it's done, if we're nar playing. Just as we don't know if a book, play or film is a (literary) comedy until we've finished it.

Or, we could take the opinion that comedy is structural, and that the audience can spot the structure early on to determine whether this is a comedy (and thus can predict the ending). Again, in a Nar game any (literary) structure will be emergent from the pacing and methods of address of premise, rather than imposed by a teleological authorial hand.

What I'm strugging to say (now that I think I've grokked the question) is that nar play is not guaranteed to return any particular recognisable literary or dramatic structure, but should return some sort of structure through emergence (rising from the problem - complication - resolution structure inherent in address of premise).

As a wider question, can we have Nar play when the answer to the premise is pre-agreed? I think if that's the case, the wrong question has been asked!

Less flippantly, I fall back onto my definition of a good premise, which is a question that can only be posed in general terms, and answered in specific terms. So the answer can be "yes, for these people", or "yes, for now". Look at Harry and Sally again: the answer may be "yes, for now", but I don't see that lasting or being particularly happy in the long run... And once more, while the first draft was certainly funny, and would have been giving off the same signals that the shooting script did until the end, it confounds the definition of comic by having the protagonists not get together.

I remember from an earlier discussion of playing a Nar game with a hero who would never be flexible in his adress of the premise of the game. No matter what dilemmas were put to the character, whatever the cost to himself or others, he would stick ot those principles. My response was that we'd just got a pretty neat definition of tragedy right there. And even going into it knowing that the response would be predictable, the situations where the response was tested wouldn't be, the fallout from those decisions wouldn't be... and right there we have the missing part of Nar from the scenario. Nar is in the address of premise not only in the actions of characters, but also the consequence. Actions with no consequence have no ethical (or dramatic) interest. So the player of the tragic hero knows what the hero will do, but not what will happen because of that.

Contrast that with the comic: especially, in this context, romantic comedy.  In fact, let's dissect the two taglines of When Harry as premises, and how they're addressed in the film.

Can two friends sleep together and still love each other in the morning?

This is especially cute, because it suckers you by saying that they're friends when they sleep together, but potentially lovers after. And the film says that emphatically they do love each other, but they probably can't be friends, per se, any more, as each finds it too hard to stay "friendly" after the intensity of a sexual relationship.

Can men and women be friends or does always sex get in the way?

Apart from the appaling grammar from the IMDB, this is the premise at the heart of the movie, and IIRC repeatedly stated explicitly at a couple of points. And the answer, for this film, is sex gets in the way. Harry is right.

So the premise isn't will they get together or not, but can they stay "just" friends when they're attracted to each other. And throughout the film, they flip and flop in their answers to that, but that the answer is "pre-determined" for the end of the film (which I think it's not, but hey) is irrelevant for the address of premise in each scene.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Pete nailed it. The question that's being asked, in my view, is not taking into account the unique property of role-playing, which is to extend and negotiate the "moment of authorship" in a way which is simply not possible in literature, theater, or cinema.

The "moment of authorship" is best understood as whatever time and events are necessary for a story to exist when, previously, it did not.

By definition, a written and completed story is tautological - Premise and Theme are experientially a solid "object," given the participation of an audience.

In Narrativist role-playing, precisely this "moment" is the socially-reinforced point of play. Premise must be a uniquely identifiable thing during this process, and Theme emerges through interaction and decisions. Furthermore, the audience's role in producing Theme (which in other media occurs later, in a very removed context from the authorship) is in this case simultaneous.

So it seems to me that the whole notion of pointing to, say, a movie or a given literary tradition and identifying its straightforward "the point is embedded in the setup!" content, simply misses the special features of the medium of role-playing.

All this said, maybe I'm totally confused, because none of the above has to do with literary comedy per se. I can't see how comedy has anything to do with the issue.

(And by extension, I also see, if this a problem in some way, why my claim that The Dying Earth facilitates Narrativist play is puzzling to some folks.)

Best,
Ron

[Tim Alexander]

Hey Folks,

I think Pete's post is great, and articulates a lot of stuff about Narrativism really well. The consequences point is an exceptionally good one, and it's what keeps games like MLwM from falling into a similar category to what I'm trying to get at. Moreover Ron's point about the moment of authorship is well taken, but I feel like that's not what, at least I'm, trying to get at. The issue of roleplaying being seperate from both literature and film in spite of having elements of both/either has been pretty well gone over. I think in this case the terminology (Literary Comedy) may have lead us down the merry path and away from my real question by obfuscating the issue.

In speaking to Ron's point, I'm taking care to ground this heavily in an actual instance of play, namely Walt's Arabian Nights LARP. In that instance it strikes me that the top level story play was heavily Sim, where the model (has this term been settled on, is it now Ideal?)  was specifically the predetermined premise and consequence. In retrospect that could look surprisingly like Premise, but falls short of it given the fact that it was already answered, and really the consequences were predetermined as well. (Shaherazade would not be executed.) However, the substories were pretty unabashedly Narrativist, or appear so given the way Walt's described them. This is where my characterization of Sim supported by Narrativism comes in.

Do you feel that's a mischaracterization? If not, I think I'm still on the same page. If so, then I'm still puzzled.

-Tim

[Walt Freitag]

Well, to the extent that any single component of a role playing game can ever be identified with a CA of its own, I'm completely comfortable with the Arabian Nights LARP frame story being described as a "Simulationist element," and indeed, one with a very simple Ideal.

From the point of view of most of the play of the game, though, Shahrazad, Shariyar, and the frame story have never been intended to be, or ever appeared to be, the focus of attention. (This is in very strong contrast to, say, the Master in MLWM.) They serve primarily as color, and do so roughly on the same metagame level as many of the other seminal examples of Color in role playing (such as art in game texts and background music).

The frame-game's primary function is to nudge the players a little bit out of the Actor Stance rut that LARP players are prone to. "I'm going to do X because it could (earn points that would) help Shaharazad" is pretty much equivalent to saying "I'm going to do X because it would be fun to do." The former gives the players permission for the latter. It provides them with a justification that's not really in-character but is not totally out-of-game-world either. As far as the game's overall CA is concerned, the fact that the outcome of "what will happen to Shaharazad?" and/or the answer to the question "do stories have the transforming power to save people from madness?" are foregone conclusions isn't the issue here.

If there's any Narrativism going on, it's expressed in the play going on in the main game world and the sub-stories (naturally, since that's almost all of the play!) The situations consistenly pit one or more of the game's Virtues against some other goal or desire such as wealth or power. This is built right into the structure and historical context of the game. Accumulating and wielding wealth, power, and alliances are the "standard" ways of achieving goals in this kind of LARP. Using the Virtues is the unusual option specific to Arabian Nights.

Both approaches work. So it would appear that many small Premise-like questions about the Virtues built into situations (in sub-stories as well as in the main level of the game) have open-ended answers. Torn between wealth and Piety, or friendship and concern for the truth (Knowledge?). You can approach the conflict any way you wish, resolve it with no foregone conclusion, and interpret the outcome however you want to. No barrier to Narrativism here.

EXCEPT. There's a big bias built in, because of that frame story. The Virtues are marked by the game system as "important" in a way that other in-game concerns are not. Specifically, accumulation and use of Virtues helps Shaharazad in the frame story. That, and not the predictable outcome of the frame story, is why it might not really be Narr after all (even though I think it is anyhow). The overall game mechanics are stating quite clearly that (not necessarily in every individual case, but overall) the Virtues are what really matters. That's why I regard many of the Premise questions in play (excepting the ones that pit one Virtue against another) as not really "open."

I think I can agree with Ron that "literary comedy" is not the main issue here. It's a more general phenomenon that I happen to have observed in concert with running games resembling literary comedy. Here's my take on it after the excellent discussion in this thread so far:

In Narrativist role playing the Premise question has to be open. That means that if there's a question inherent in the situation whose answer is already known, that question cannot be the Premise question! Some other question must be.

If a genre expectation forces some inherent question to have a foregone conclusion, then that question cannot be the Premise for Narrativist role playing. So if you're doing Hollywood romantic comedy, "is true love more important than [whatever obstacle]? cannot be the Premise, and if you're doing Soviet progaganda films, "Is Socialism better than Capitalism?" cannot be the Premise, and if you're doing B&D fetish porn, "Will a woman find fulfillment by becoming a slave?" cannot be the Premise. In film and other fiction, many of the "masterpieces" of these and other genres are works that examine a different question, some other Premise that's either a significant variation of, or is totally separate from, the genre's "built-in" theme (expected statement). Critics might, for instance, praise a Soviet propaganda film that, in the midst of its inevitable demonstration of the superiority of Socialism, movingly examines issues of generational conflicts of interest within a family. Such works are often said to "transcend their genre." The Story of O does so by using the bog-standard B&D woman-embraces-slavitude scenario to examine the theretofore unexamined effects such a relationship might have on her various "masters."

But must all works of literary merit in film and fiction "transcend their genre"  in that particular way? I don't see any reason to believe so. Egri's notion of Premise does not, as far as I can tell, require that the author be undecided or even open-minded about the Premise statement, either before or during authoring.

That in Narr role-playing the question must be open during authoring is a consequence of the nature of the process (shared authoring via role playing), not of the desired literary merit of the outcome.

A very interesting and fundamental question is suggested by this:

So the premise isn't will they get together or not, but can they stay "just" friends when they're attracted to each other. And throughout the film, they flip and flop in their answers to that, but that the answer is "pre-determined" for the end of the film (which I think it's not, but hey) is irrelevant for the address of premise in each scene.

The question being, why cannot the same be true of Narrativist role playing? That is, why could a pre-determined ultimate answer (established by genre expectations, perhaps) not be "irrelevant" for the successful address of that Premise in each scene? Which bears directly on Tim's question regarding the Arabian Nights LARP.

Why did I connect this line of thought with comedy? Because by and large, an open Premise question is less conducive to creating a reliably comedic outcome or atmosphere.

Moose In The City might be a very interesting counterexample; I'll have to look at it further.

- Walt

[pete_darby]

Attempting to be brief, in answer to Walt: absolutley, the example I gave of taking a pre-determined "ultimate outcome" of a story can still be Nar, given the freedom of address of premise through action & consequence on an ongoing scene by scene basis.

So the overarching structure, the ultimate answering of the question of the premise, is relegated to colour, or a more specifically than normal stated theme (rather than, say, "friendship" or "romance" as a theme, "The line between friendship and love"), while address of that premise is allowed free reign in each scene.

But to agree with Ron, an ongoing Nar game may at any point, with hindsight, look like literary comedy, or like it will become identifiable with literary comedy, but until the game has reached a conclusion as decided by the participants, it can't be definitively identified as such.

BUT, the participants may well feel that the conclusion has been reached because "this looks like the end" according to criteria from, say, literary comedy. Comedies, generally, end with some variation on "happily ever after", which is another way of saying "we decided to stop telling the story now." I can't find the quotes now, but there are endless quotes on this along the lines of "There are no happy endings: ever after isn't the end."

Tragedies are easier: it tends to stop when the guy's dead, and it's his fault.

[Victor Gijsbers]

Perhaps the answer to the question whether comedy can be a succesful narrativist genre is contained in Pete's statement:

Less flippantly, I fall back onto my definition of a good premise, which is a question that can only be posed in general terms, and answered in specific terms. So the answer can be "yes, for these people", or "yes, for now".

Comedy, this thread supposes, already answers the Premise: the vengeful butchering of Antonio is worng, no matter that he has been grieved, and this is clear from the outset. Because finding an answer to the question posed by the premise is the defining characteristic of narrativist play, it may seem that narrativism and comedy are incompatible. But for a comedy we do not have to answer the premise in specific terms: it is enough if we answer it in general terms. If we play romantic comedy, we only have to state in advance that true love can overcome whatever obstacle we have placed in its way. We do not state in advance by virtue of what properties of the persons involved, or by virtue of what aspects of the situation, or by virtue of whatever else, true love can overcome the obstacle in this specific scenario. As it were, we have to write down "yes" before we start playing, but the elaboration in specific terms behind the comma is what happens during play. And it is in this sense that the premise can be adressed during play: we create the elaboration. Because the answer to the premise is incomplete to the point of meaninglessness without this elaboration, we are definitely engaged in narrativism here.

Does this way of reconciling comedy with narrativism sound plausible?

[pete_darby]

One of the most useful concepts I have when assessing a supposedly pre-determined premise is one of cost.

Will true love conquer racial prejudice? Of course, but at what cost? Loss of family, friends... Is even true love worth that?

The classic is, to my mind, the question at the heart of Sorceror, amongst so many others: "What does it profit a man if he gains the world but loses his soul?" Not, would someone give up their soul for power, but what does it cost them?

Again, a pre-answered premise is not the premise in play, it's colour, or genre expectations: also, I'm not saying this is a fool proof test of Nar, or a method of getting nar blood out of a genre-bound sim stone, but it's a tool I find helpful to get interesting premises out of "pre-determined" questions.

EDIT: because I forgot to say it: Yes, Victor. Absolutley.

[Tim Alexander]

Hey Folks,

Again, a pre-answered premise is not the premise in play, it's colour, or genre expectations: also, I'm not saying this is a fool proof test of Nar, or a method of getting nar blood out of a genre-bound sim stone, but it's a tool I find helpful to get interesting premises out of "pre-determined" questions.

Just to weigh back in here, I think Pete sums it up pretty well. Between Walt's clarification of the Arabian Nights game and Pete's really excellent posts any confusion on my part is resolved.

-Tim

[GaryTP]

Hello,

Pete nailed it. The question that's being asked, in my view, is not taking into account the unique property of role-playing, which is to extend and negotiate the "moment of authorship" in a way which is simply not possible in literature, theater, or cinema.

The "moment of authorship" is best understood as whatever time and events are necessary for a story to exist when, previously, it did not.

By definition, a written and completed story is tautological - Premise and Theme are experientially a solid "object," given the participation of an audience.

Ron, question. As I mulled this over it occured to me that improvisational theatre does what role-playing does. Actors and comedians play off each other in this venue,  often introducing some very surprising twists and turns. In this case, all the actors are collectively adding to, distorting, evolving the story. What do you think?