Re: Sim has not be discussed as process yet it needs to be s

[Marco]

Hello,

Narrativist play reliably produces story-in-transcript via addressing Premise during play itself.

Some Simulationist play reliably produces story-in-transcript via various agreements or conditions that "put the story in there." Usually the "inserted story" has a fixed Theme as part of its non-negotiable features. Some of these agreements/conditions are done beforehand, some afterward, but not through addressing Premise during play itself.

That's what I've been saying for years now. Very easy. Very painless. I don't see any issues that make it hard.

Best,
Ron

Heya Ron,
Okay, this is a good point for clarafication.

1. I understand "Story After" as a re-write of the game after the fact (which is a bit in conflict with Gloss definition of Transcript and Story, but that's okay--it clearly does happen.) It is, however, a different phenomena than what we are refereing to.

2. What I'm not clear on is how there is a "fixed Theme" with "agreements/conditions are done beforehand." Specifically, I'm not sure what kind of agreements you are imagining.

Let's look at my example to see what I mean:

A group of supers are sent on a mission to rescue a turned Nazi scientist during WW II. His 'capture' will be of great importance to the allied war effort. Along the way of searching for him, they come across various atrocities of his (and may have to fight some). In the end, assuming they overcome the obstacles and don't abandon the mission (both of which are reasonable for the characters) they find him.

An NPC will bring up the question as to whether he should be rescued (or terminated or left to the Nazis).

I had three very reasonable (I thought, Contra disagreed) stipulations about play:

1. The players agreed to play characters who would willingly go on missions for the allied command and wouldn't consider a mission to grab a turn-coat Nazi scientist to be outside of their abilites or responsibilities (i.e. they are not all playing super-medic characters).
2. That the GM did not require the players to be dogmatic (i.e. did not mandate a Super-Patriot disadvantage of some kind for all characters)
3. That the difficulty of the game (both in combat and in clues) was well judged for the group and reliably within their ability to handle.

Now, for groups that I have played with, here are the agreements I see coming into the game:
(a) Agreements to at least begin the mission as laid out by allied high command. That is, the player's won't run off to do aid work in Africa or go AWOL at the start of the game to hunt subversives on the home-front.

(b) I see implicit agreement that the GM is not running a game that a player or players will find in horribly bad taste (i.e. the GM is not attacking someone ethnicity or implilicitly glorifying an idea players really dislike). I assume that everyone is okay with the general content (although they may well find the atrocities very disturbing--they will not become angry at the GM for that).

(c) The GM allows the players to determine their actions. The GM is not going to run PC's as though they were NPC's--has not mandated disadvantages (indeed, they may not even exist in the game system) and the general contract of traditional play is open.

None of these agreements, which are the only ones I am aware of, determine theme. None of them tell me how the Premise Question would be answered during play.

Indeed, I do not know how my group would respond to this (even given some pretty awful atrocities). I would have to play it and find out.

So what additional "agreements/conditions [that] are done beforehand" are you postulating that would exist for this game that would make it Story-Before (?) Sim?

-Marco

[Marco]

If we're all agreed that Big Model definitions are about process and not product, and

We're all agreed that transcript (under Ron's definition) is product,

Then surely it's obvious that whether transcript does or does not contain story (or anything else) is totally irrelevant for CA examination?

And if that's the case, what is this argument about?

This is a genuine statement of confusion.

OK, let me try summarizing, because I think that you haven't quite grasped the thread.  It seems like you and Ron are supporting me and Marco, although you don't seem to realize that for some reason.  The current voice of dissent is contracycle.  (Apologies if I'm misrepresenting anyone here.)  

Marco started this thread arguing exactly what you just said -- that GNS mode is not distinguished by transcript.  Story is a quality of transcript (as defined in Ron's glossary), and transcript is product.  He was arguing against people who claimed that Simulationism can be distinguished by story (i.e. by product).  He was upholding the principle that GNS mode is not distinguished by the transcript or story.  

I completely agree with John. This is how I see it as well. I agree with Chris. I want to understand better what Ron is saying on the point of what  I am calling 'Story Before.' I think that Gareth is proposing a change to the model saying what I understand to be that Sim even when run with story-making techniques will probably lead to a distinguishable transcript if we have an accurate one.

Whether it probably will or probably will not may be up in the air--but saying that is, IMO, at odds with the model.

-Marco

[Marco]

They result in different transcripts, OR they suffer other known problems.  Probably.  I think.

If you are playing by a Sim contract and you set up Story you run into the classice RGFA objection: the accomodation of story renders the Sim "unrealistic", as where the nominated story villain cannot be killed in the first act regardless of player action.

So what this means in practice is that in order to force play down a constrained path that will output a story in the transcript at the end, the players must be railroaded.  This is all in line with prior discussion of el dorado et al.

I do see what you are stating as a common position--but I don't see the basis for it. In my example:
1. There is no "constrained path" of action. There is a likely and reliable one--but only that.

2. There seems to be no analogue to "the nominated story villain cannot be killed in the first act regardless of player action" in my scenario. Where do you see that coming into play?

So thats problems of play that have been much discussed already.  As to the differing transcripts, this is what I mean.  I have on several occassions mentioned the Hardwired supplement for CP2020 and an event which occurred in ourt playing of this product: the PC's were investigating something and in the process were photographed by an entirely innocent tourist.  they spent several game hours and half a day running to ground everything there was to know about this tourist in order to rule them ourt as some sort of covert surveillance.

All of this would appear in the transcript even though it is totally unrelated to any "story" that might be going on, or even mere plot.  This was a total red herring, a distraction, a dead end, which I had only introduced to keep the world alive, full of people NOT involved with the plot.  If you were a reviewer reading this transcript as a book I'm sure you would find it very poor, totally irrelevant, and the kind of thing that should have been cut before it went to print.

It is my contention that Sim contains these sorts of excursions all the time, not least becuase the CA being served is Explorative, not Narrative.  Therefore I certainly do not expect Sim play to produce a story transcript reliably at all, and the only way I know of to make it reliable is to railroad fearlessly.

This is a good example of players and GM's sort of missing each other but I don't see it as inherently Sim or Nar.

1. It would be perfectly acceptable Sim, for example, for the GM to say "you run a make on the tourist and discover he is exactly that--a tourist. He lives in Ohio. He's a family man."

2. A GM using an illusionistic technique could retroactively declare the tourist and agent and use him to introduce a clue that would've come from somewhere else.

The decision on how to play this out seems to be a matter of technique and not of basic CA.

Finally, I think it is synecdote to think that all Sim must be "realistic" in the rfga sense--according to GNS, Theatrix is Sim as is Call of Cthulhu. Both may contain unrealistic coincidences or cliches (the library will almost always have important clues about the cult) or cinematic dramatic action.

-Marco

[contracycle]

I do see what you are stating as a common position--but I don't see the basis for it.

Fine.  At present, the common position is all I am arguing for.

Because the ultimate objective of this whole position is to come back to Sim to see HOW story can be introduced WITHOUT these sorts of problems.  Thats why I do not want to talk about special cases, and am not trying to lay down an absolute rule.

2. There seems to be no analogue to "the nominated story villain cannot be killed in the first act regardless of player action" in my scenario. Where do you see that coming into play?

I simply do not want to speculate - all you are gibving me is a description of a notional game, and that is far far too hypothetical for anything conclusive to be said, IMO.

I have described two conditions in which the imposition of story can conflict with the sim agenda.  But there is another case in which the ABSENCE of [some kind of] story can cause problems for sim.  

This is a good example of players and GM's sort of missing each other but I don't see it as inherently Sim or Nar.

I said nothing about inherent anything.  It was sim.  I ran it.

1. It would be perfectly acceptable Sim, for example, for the GM to say "you run a make on the tourist and discover he is exactly that--a tourist. He lives in Ohio. He's a family man."

Not under our contract.  I don't see any value in speculating about whatever technique or CA was operational, becuase I was there and can simply tell you - at least, to the best of my ability to self-assess.  It is only meant to be representative of an issue I have seen many people wrestle with.

[Marco]

I do see what you are stating as a common position--but I don't see the basis for it.

Fine.  At present, the common position is all I am arguing for.

Because the ultimate objective of this whole position is to come back to Sim to see HOW story can be introduced WITHOUT these sorts of problems.  Thats why I do not want to talk about special cases, and am not trying to lay down an absolute rule.

The problem with the commonly held position is that it's making a mistake: It is confusing a set of techniques and elements of specific social contracts with the Sim CA.

I've no question that one can arrange things in a game so that there would be a non-story transcript or a 'poor story.' That's certainly possible. Evidence shows there are, at least, a lot of Sim players who do want 'a good story.' And I think it is reasonable to phrase this request in the glossary terms (i.e. I think the strength of the glossary is that it's definition encompasses both these Sim requests and Narrative efforts).

But when you introduce TITBB or El Dorado, you are not discussing the commonality of the individual group's choices of techniques or group dynamics.

[Edited: snipped a bunch of unnecessary stuff from previous dialog. ]

I think the answer as to "HOW story can be introduced WITHOUT these sorts of problems" lays in structuring the game as I did: no railroading, no implicity power-struggle, no restraints on character action, and discussion and agreement up front.

That's why I used the example. :)

-Marco

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Do I sense the beginnings of a conclusion, or accord, in this thread? Holy crap.

About "story before," here's how I see it. First, let's leave out plain old railroading and other forms of pre-injected "how it turns out" which violate social contracts or reflect Incoherence. I'm talking about a nice and fun form of "story before" play, i.e. non-Narrativist, i.e. solid story as transcript.

We're playing Call of Cthulhu. We've agreed about when/where (say 1920s New England), about our characters (I'm Herbie Bletz, ace reporter), and about the letter that one of us has received from his cousin, to send us visiting a small town in Vermont.  By "agreed," what I mean is that regardless of who proposed what, but that we're all good with it. Maybe the GM dictated all that stuff, maybe he didn't, whatever.

Here's my real point though - we've also agreed on something else: the "story." We will go up and check out the cousin's situation. We will pry into everything we can, fully knowledgeable (as players) that clues are seeded throughout along with red herrings and traps/risks. We will play our characters as enjoyably ignorant of the Existential Unknown and in fact are relishing how the characters' complacent 1920s can-do Americanism is going to run face-first into the Tentacled Void. By "we," I'm including the GM. He has a part to play in ensuring all this, just as we do.

The Theme is pre-established and known: "Mankind's ideals are flickering little pinpoints in a horrific, insane void." All of us are utterly complicit in bringing that theme into "narrative life."

So we do it! Rock on! We have celebrated Lovecraft as we understand it (or perhaps, which I didn't touch on, as we saw fit to modify it). To have deviated from that Theme would have violated the whole point of being there.

"Story" was already there. What we did during play was logistics, figuring out who gets killed or goes nuts first, relative to what gets learned or displayed, and how that affects the further logistics. We aren't authors so much as dialoguists and assistant directors, often adding intense and perfect details or twists in the context of the known, pre-understood story.

Again, if everyone is on board with this, it's not railroading. It's (as I understand the term) perfect Participation. The story is not authoied in play, but embellished and refined during play, as a given/fixed element of Exploration (shared imagined space).

Marco, how's that sound? Good with that? Please note how different it is from, say, a game in which we agree that the Dogs will go the Vineyard and will deal with the hassles in the towns. In that case, we have no idea what the Themes will be, only that we have problematic components colliding both in the characters and in the immediate setting. Or to use an older example of yours, a game in which we agree that we will climb up the mountain and will try to get back down. Again, in this case, we have no idea what conflicts will arise through our interactions with one another and the travails of the journey, although we are brutally committed to seeing such conflict and resolving it.

I have some comments on "story after" as well, because your paraphrase doesn't quite catch what I was trying to express, but I'd rather make sure that we're understanding one another about "story before."

Best,
Ron

[Marco]

Hello,

Do I sense the beginnings of a conclusion, or accord, in this thread? Holy crap.

Man, almost. We're close!

Okay, I dig the CoC example--but I dig it because I think it's reasonable to assert (for this argument, at least) that CoC has a 'known genre' wherein the PC's are investigators of some mystery.

In practice, this means that the PC's won't have some other pressing thing going on in their normal life that takes them away from the mystery. It also means that the players, if their characters come up with a seemingly logical reason for things happening, may reasonably expect the GM to up the ante with some tentacles or something (as you indicated, I think).

That's how I'm seein' it--but there's still something I'm not quite clear on. Let me contrast (and you can check me on both):

1. The 'Premise' (or Theme) in CoC seems to me to be "Being a doomed investigative defender of humanity, what do you do?" If the players decide they are not doomed, investigative, or won't defend humanity (choosing something else instead) then the game is going to be a bit unusual. 'Off the rails,' as it were. Maybe even Narrativist (I dunno--this is me thinking as I type).

But okay, so we have some agreements and we know what the general play of the game is gonna be like (you look in the library. You look in the old house. You dig up the grave yard--like that).

So if we have a standing 'genre convention for the game' then I can see how adherence to that could be considered Story-Before. That is: if the PC's cut-and-run (which I have seen) the GM might be all "hey, the town of Black Knot's gonna get sucked into Cthulhu's gullet if you do that." And so I can see how an agreement to do activity X could be considered Story-Before.

2.  But the part I don't get is when you have a scenario like the one I used as an example. In the games I run and play* in there usually is no defined genre--and there, historically, was much (reasonable) argument from players and GM's about departing from 'the nature of the game.'

[ The Ranger and Druid and Thieve's Guild all make powerful entirely game-based statements that in AD&D there's a world outside of the dungeon. I've had those arguments: Simplistic ideas about 'the way to play' did not fly with my group when I made them in middle school. ]

So when we get to a scenario like mine, it seems that it's a lot more like The Dogs Go to the Vinyard than We are doomed, investigative, defenders of humanity.

When we are using a scenario like that, there aren't the context clues that exist before play in order to direct it. The Story-Before: the 'what we're here to do' simply, IME, does not exist. None of the artifiacts of the pre-conditions of play dictate what the players will do when the choice is presented (and it gets presented at the first atrocity encounter and gets turned up a notch every subsequent encounter and may even be dramatically stated in-game at the end).

But that doesn't mean the play will be Narrativist.

But it does mean that the Story will, IMO, be 'NOW.'

Do ya see what I'm sayin'?

-Marco
* Edited to add: I consider the games I've written here Narrativist as far as self-assessment goes--so I'm not claiming "They are Sim." What I'm sayin' is that if we restrict Sim play to "play in which there is a known genre and Thematic expectations up front" that's gonna let out a whole lot of play such as Star Trek where no human alive could authritatively determine what the thematic expectations are simply from knowing the setting and genre.

[John Kim]

I think there is some progress, but still some major differences with contracycle and some minor ones with Ron.  To Marco -- I'd be careful of assuming that the play you describe is GNS Simulationist.  I think before we can adequately discuss the examples, though, we need to agree better on terminology.  I think there's a serious gap in how people are using words.  

Transcript

Transcript, as I have used it, is a full accounting of the imaginary events in actual play.  i.e. There is no editing, embellishing, and re-writing what happened.  If there is no story during actual play, there is no story in the transcript.  This conflicts with contracycle, who suggests that Sim has story only in transcript but not in actual play.  If it wasn't in actual play, how can it appear in transcript?  To get over the conceptual divide, I'd like to suggest three terms:

[*] "Game Log" is the full accounting of EVERYTHING that happened in actual play (i.e. every word spoken, at a minimum).  On chat play, this would be a dump of all channels (OOC, IC, private message). [*] "Transcript" is a subset of game log which includes only imaginary events.  A full transcript includes every word spoken in character and every word of pure description.  It removes any mention of players, dice, and mechanics -- but has no editing of imaginary content. [*] "Re-telling" is how a player would verbally re-tell what happened in the game later, which may include editing, embellishment, and new commentary or description. [/list:u] It seems to me that contracycle is referring to "re-telling".  Thus, a game might not have story in actual play -- and thus not in the game log or transcript.  But when re-told, a story could be made.  

Story

According to the glossary "Story" by itself is a quality of transcript -- so a transcript may or may not be a story.  Story is thus a product.  However, the confusing usage is that "Story Now" is used to refer to a particular process.  So what does the "Now" refer to?  It seems to me that in Ron's usage, the time (i.e. "Before", "Now", and "After") refers to when THEME is agreed upon relative to active play session.  I feel this is confusing because story includes more than just theme -- i.e. theme is one quality of story, but not the whole of it.  Even by Ron's glossary definition, story is "an imaginary series of events".  Yet here Ron says:

The Theme is pre-established and known: "Mankind's ideals are flickering little pinpoints in a horrific, insane void." All of us are utterly complicit in bringing that theme into "narrative life."

So we do it! Rock on! We have celebrated Lovecraft as we understand it (or perhaps, which I didn't touch on, as we saw fit to modify it). To have deviated from that Theme would have violated the whole point of being there.

"Story" was already there. What we did during play was logistics, figuring out who gets killed or goes nuts first, relative to what gets learned or displayed, and how that affects the further logistics. We aren't authors so much as dialoguists and assistant directors, often adding intense and perfect details or twists in the context of the known, pre-understood story.

I'd like to discuss this example and Marco's example further, but first we need to establish our terms better.  You seem to be using "theme" and "story" interchangeably here -- i.e. story is nothing more than what the theme is.  Once theme is agreed upon, then you have "known, pre-understood story".  To my mind, this should be more properly called "Theme Before" as opposed to "Theme Now".  

The story, as you yourself define it, is "an imaginary series of events".  Even in your CoC example, prior to play we don't know what those events are.  We might have a contraint on them (i.e. they have to match the known theme), but the events themselves have not been established.  

Let's take this into context of other narrative forms.  Suppose I commission you to write a novel.  I tell you that I want a particular theme: "Mankind's ideals are flickering little pinpoints in a horrific, insane void."  However, I don't give you any other directions.  Obligingly, you write a novel with such a theme.  Now, who is author of that story?  

I guess I would just want a clarification that "Story Before" and "Story Now" are phrases which refer to when theme is agreed upon.  So, more specifically,

[*]"Story Before" refers to a game where theme is agreed upon prior to actual play.  The actual play will result in a transcript with story.  [*] "Story Now" refers to a game where theme is dynamically decided upon during actual play.  The actual play will result in a transcript with story.  [*] "Story Later" refers to a game where no theme is visible during actual play.  There is no story in the transcript.  However, re-telling may create a story with theme.  [/list:u]

[Ron Edwards]

Hi,

This is a reply mainly to Marco's post. I knew I'd probably have to clarify this part, because it relates to a claim John made a bit ago which I didn't think hit the mark.

Yes, it's really easy to explain when we're talking about a known set of genre conventions. That's why I usually take that route.

But the very same points apply when the group is essentially generating its own genre through play as well. As long as the assumption/agreement is to confirm our fixed "stuff," then the "stuff" can be a little patchy, sketchy, or cobbled-together just as easily as it can be unified.

This is where my pastiche argument comes from. Some pastiche is pretty much imitation - like Derleth's Lovecraftian fiction. Some, on the other hand, is patchwork, sort of like "Hey, a Westward Migration pioneer drama, on Mars!!"

People are really good at working with just-introduced material as if it had been assumption all along. If the group is committed to this idea, then their techniques of introducing original or incongruous elements can still support the whole notion of Story Before. It especially works well when one person has the helm, as when a GM presents his whole-cloth setting which gives us (e.g.) samurai elves or cannibal hobbits, although it doesn't absolutely have to.

So the originality or faithfulness of the "genre material" isn't the point. The point (that makes it Sim play, and in this case, story-before) is that everyone's going into the process with the shared idea that the Story Is There, so let's take cues from one another (in some cases the GM, as he's usually at the helm) to Express It. I don't think it's surprising that GMs for groups who play this way are (a) typically always the GM and (b) plan to write their novel based on in-game events one day.

I think this puts us further in agreement, because I am not restricting Sim play to "known genre." What's absent, no matter what, is addressing Premise.

I'm also trying to keep my posts very limited to specific points, so I'll close here. Gentlemen, any fundamental issues with our impending agreement, so far? (Please quell general desires to find and pick at any niggly bits. I really really don't think that serves us right now.)

Best,
Ron

[Ron Edwards]

John,

Close! Very very close! Without getting into Big Ass Questions that concern any narrative-form art-form ...

1. Yeah, your "Before/During" categories work for me.

2. Let me clarify some aspects of the "After" concept. (This is what I was holding off from before.)

a) Re-telling is certainly one way to get story-after. As a lot of us have observed, people often do this through selective remembering, without even knowing that they do it.

b) However! A very common approach is also more finely-grained - the group members, often under the guidance and example of the helmsman,* do a little revising between sessions of play. This revising might involve how to describe what happened, it might involve fixing stuff that hasn't been presented yet, and it might involve retroactively inserting stuff into what "was also happening," all relative to the session that was just played.

I used to be really good at this. I think it's a core technique for the original presentation of Illusionism by Paul Elliott. You play, then you and maybe a player or two look back over the session and tweak its events a bit ... and alter your prep for the next session (and yes, you do have a prep-outline for the next five to ten sessions, pending tweaks, which you know you'll be doing) ... and maybe trade out a character for another one that fits better given a guess that a player made ... and so on.

The priority of such revision and tweaking and re-interpreting is not "no myth" ... it's specifically to guide things next time in such a way that the original thematic content (over which you feel ownership) is preserved.

This is the kind of play which earns GMs the prized sobriquet of "Amazing Story GM," and "The best GM ever," from players who are astonished that the game produces such a great, coherent, amazing story. Yet the work and attention of story-creation is going on essentially inter-session, in reaction to the decisions players make, rather than being intra-session and climactically expressed by those decisions at the time.

It's still story-after, because "after" is relative to actual play. But it's more piecemeal and dynamic (relative to the next session) than plain old re-telling after all the play is done.

How's that working?

Best,
Ron

* Hey, spoo ... I think that might be a useful term, to describe a certain role about "how well we're playing, what direction should we be going" often taken by a participant. I like it because "the GM" may or may not be the helmsman, and in many cases a GM and a non-GM may compete for that role.

[Bankuei]

Hi Ron,

I used to apply this method of play quite often.  I think a crucial period of play for me was a 2 year long campaign of Feng Shui, which started out in this fashion, and drifted over to Narrativist play as I became more comfortable with adapting in play and the players became more comfortable inject and addressing premise during play itself.

By the way, your Helmsmen term is pretty much what I was aiming for with "The Ball" though I lacked the ability to clearly communicate it.  Thanks for putting in clear words what I had been trying to work out for the last year or two.

Chris

[M. J. Young]

I'm wondering whether we're struggling with this here because there's a sense in which "story before" is not quite possible.

Marco, your example brings to mind one of my own, a Multiverser world called Orc Rising. The core concepts in the world are that this is a post-fantasy world in which elves, dwarfs, and men are settling into the beginnings of a technologically-driven situation, magic has nearly vanished from the world, in the midst of it all the free peoples are gradually coopting the lands that are the homelands of the orcs, and enslaving that race in the name of improving them. Into this I drop my player character, who is a human from our modern world most commonly, usually with some experience in a few other worlds before he came here.

The interesting aspect is that this scenario is fraught with potential premise, but many people who play it ignore or sidestep that and stick to exploring the nature of the world. That is, Orc Rising might be considered front-loaded narrativism, but it only becomes narrativism if the players choose to engage the premise. If they ignore it, or if they explore it without really engaging it in any meaningful way (e.g., exploring how slavery impacts the lives of the orcs without addressing whether it's morally acceptable to enslave them at all--the sociological approach), then they're going to play as simulationists.

So, too, with your scenario, you've created potential premise. If your players find the premise engaging, they become narrativists. If they find the situation interesting without engaging the premise, they become simulationists. (Both relative to play in this instance.)

You can't really frontload story in the same way. You can do so if your group is using illusionism, participationism, or trailblazing (each in a different way), but in those cases narrativism is precluded because the game is about producing the referee's story, thus not about the premise. In bass playing, you can frontload a premise and let the players trigger it. That does not guarantee that the players will engage your premise; further, it is a far cry from frontloading a story.

At least, that's what I'm seeing here.

--M. J. Young

[Marco]

I have been thinking about this pretty deeply and my thoughts are very much in line with MJ's.

Here is what I have come up with.

I read and re-read Ron's post (on Story Before--I understand, I think, Story After and consider it a different thing--although one I fully accept as real and responsible for some confusion about what may be meant by Story).

Here is what I came back to:

So the originality or faithfulness of the "genre material" isn't the point. The point (that makes it Sim play, and in this case, story-before) is that everyone's going into the process with the shared idea that the Story Is There, so let's take cues from one another (in some cases the GM, as he's usually at the helm) to Express It. I don't think it's surprising that GMs for groups who play this way are (a) typically always the GM and (b) plan to write their novel based on in-game events one day.

Emphasis added.

I believe that in a scenario that has "embeded Premise" (i.e. fully supports Narrativist play, with a GM who is not engaged in trying to control the game) there can be no predictability of player action before the game starts.

If for no other reason than that with real people, they may decide they are engaged by the Premise and make a decision based on how they feel about it (i.e. "go Narrativist")

But even if they don't engage with the Premise question, I don't think play  can be said to be predictable.

Let me explain:

By Story Is There we really mean "Theme Is There" (i.e. we are not talking about Situation). By 'Theme is There' we mean: when there is a premise-question condition of play, there will be guidance as to the 'correct course of action' (from the GM? We think, usually). If the GM is not enforcing a given action (a necessity for a scenario that supports Narrativist play) then that guidance doesn't exist.

Therefore, while I think a lot of the game is reliably predictable (the PC's taking the mission, them going at least part way through), I think it is impossible to know what will happen with any real group.

The core of the uncertainty is, as MJ indicated, the fact that they may decide to play Narrativist and still be comfortably within the parameters set out by the scenario (i.e. the prep-work is still relevant to the action).

Since the scenario as written supports Narrativist play (and assuming the GM will be willing to run it as written) then I think there can not be said to be pre-determined theme.

The players do not know enough to pre-determine what actions they will take in the face of an unknown premise before play starts.

The GM is not determining (and guiding) the players to a given action wrt the premise.

The scenario doesn't require (in any way) a pre-determined answer to the premise.

Even if the players begin play believing a right-answer to the growing premise question is "out there" (will be coming from the GM) they will be wrong. When the climax comes, they will have to make the decison for themselves. It may not be Narrativist play (they may not have any real connection to the Premise quesiton and resolve simply by Exploration of Character, or flipping a coin, or something) but, when it happens, whatever happens, it'll be creation-of-[thematic events that were not pre-determined*]-during-play.

Do we agree on that?

-Marco
* Story.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

In this type of "story is there already" play (which you rightly identify as theme is there already), I am suggesting that the group will arrive at a fixed theme as a "lodestone" for play very early in the process. Either one piece of the many influences will be chosen as the guiding piece (e.g. our "western in space" is expected to be, thematically, a western, specifically a western of a specific kind and very familiar theme), or people will look to the helmsman, if present, for guidelines about what to do when bombarded with all this multi-genre material.

In the latter case, GMs who are skilled in helming in this fashion will ask lots of leading questions, will covertly guide choices by asking "are you sure" when the person isn't supposed to do what they've just announced, and similar stuff.

Remember, I'm not talking about dysfunctional play. The group is complicit with these approaches and with finding their feet (as it feels to them) in knowing what theme we're all going to reinforce.

As you suggest, is this kind of play subject to multiple forms of breakdown? Sure, for all the reasons you describe. I consider it pretty delicate, as far as approaches go. For instance, get one undercover Narrativist in there and you'll see blood spilled and names taken. The other sort of one-genre play is far more reliable. But this sort is at least possible.

Best,
Ron

[Marco]

Hey Ron,

I'm not sure if you were responding to me--but my point was that I thought that in a scenario like mine or MJ's (one with Premise that would support Nar play) then Theme is not there already and therefore it doesn't make sense to call the scenario Story-Before.

I'm not sure if that was clear--I understand what you are saying about a specific type of game, and I'm good with that. But I think it's possible to have Sim that isn't Story-Before or Story-After, as MJ described.

-Marco