Narrativist Catalyst

[Valamir]

Actually I think Narrativist gaming works quite well in a main character / supporting cast fashion. Since the point is to jointly craft an effective story you shouldn't have any worries about "my guy not being as important as your guy".

Whoah...I completely disagree. Metal Fatigue (real name unknown) is right. Each and every player character is a protagonist in a Narrativist game. And by that I mean, each player authors through gameplay a thematic statement on the game's Premise with their character. Sidekicks and other supporting cast character types don't do that.

I can't agree with that.  First there's a difference between supporting character and "extra".  They don't hand out Oscars for extras, they do for supporting roles.  Often times the supporting characters make the movie.  There are also plenty of opportunities for subplots and such where each character can have their impact moments.

But to me Narrativist play takes its cues from the literary defintions of story (as opposed to the "sequence of related events" definition).  In literature I think you'll find the single hero stories outnumber the multiple main characters by a wide margin.

You don't need to be the leading role to have a thematic impact.

[Seth L. Blumberg]

Because of the way the Trial and Annotations are created, some NPC's, and character relationships with NPC's would also be on the table. I'm thinking a GM might be able to take those NPC's and map them provisionally onto the Dramatica character types, creating a full set of candidates for the Impact, Antagonist, Contagonist, Reason, Emotion, Sidekick and Skeptic roles for each player character protagonist, informed in this decisionmaking by the conflict exposed in the player character's Trial and Annotations.

The problem here is that Dramatica defines "Protagonist" in a very different way than Ron does. What Ron calls a protagonist, Dramatica calls a "Main Character"; the "Protagonist" (in Dramatica terms) is an Overall Story character embodying specific psychological/thematic Elements (namely, Consider, Pursuit, Certainty, Proaction, Knowledge, Actuality, Proven, and Effect). This is a very simple, stereotyped character, and most PCs are not going to fit that mold.

To apply the Dramatica theory of character to a Narrativist game, one would have to analyze which Elements are represented by which character(s), and add NPCs to round out the full complement of 64 Elements (as well as persuading players to delete Elements from their PCs where they've doubled up--Dramatica states that having more than one character with the same Element decreases dramatic tension). Since many of the Elements will only emerge from play, this would only be possible as a mid-course correction, rather than part of a campaign's ab initio design.

[Paul Czege]

Hey,

...one would have to analyze which Elements are represented by which character(s), and add NPCs to round out the full complement of 64 Elements (as well as persuading players to delete Elements from their PCs where they've doubled up...

I think I'd probably go light on this. I think there's the potential that player and GM intuition about story and the functioning of the various roles (the same intuition the player uses when creating the Trial and Annotations) could work in conjunction with each other and inform the handling of player character and NPC during play such that the characters emerge in interesting and functional ways. I think the Narrativist value of Dramatica is more in the arena of how it might help a GM make coarse-level scene-framing decisions than granular-level scenario construction decisions. The "trust the story instincts" part in relation to character handling is where a game has a chance to be collaborative fun, rather than, I dunno, some kind of elaborate calculus.

Paul

[contracycle]

Paul,

I think... probably.  I mean I think the idea that players would fall into that groove, as it were, is at least interesting enough to try.  I'm very intrigued by this idea, think I'll give dramatica another look.  A question: was this your specific intent in WFD?  If not, what would you do?

I see this on their site:
http://www.dramatica.com/theory/tip_of_month/tips/tip0701.html
multiple main characters and the writers voice.

includes:
"One thing to keep in mind is that Main Character throughline in a story is different than the "writer's voice," the choice an author makes in determining how she will relate the story to the audience. In other words, you can choose to describe any event from any throughline from any character in that throughline's perspective in the first (I), second (you/we), or third (he/she/they/it) person's voice."

Arguably, the GM in RPG is doing so only inasmuch as they are framing scenes?  The players will be seeing through the characters eyes, but in a frame selected by the GM.  They also suggest the interlinking of multiple leads could be done by creating multiple documents, one for each character - this would accord with my hunch that each player has their own "story" in that each IS the protagonist or main character from the players perspective.  OK, not necessarily if you are able to detach, but for a lot of people anyway.  Maybe this would be best explored as creating a story/document for each character?  OTOH, the idea of "casting" PC's into "archetypal" roles for a specific story, plus ancillary NPC's, with the GM framing to provide a coherent sotryline/throughline, seams plausible to me too.  Perhaps one document for each character and one for the central throughline, casting the PC's and NPC's as one of the character archetypes for this throughline?  Then the main character in the shared throughline need not be a PC; but each PC would have a throughline in which they were the main character.  I shall investigate further.

[Seth L. Blumberg]

I think the Narrativist value of Dramatica is more in the arena of how it might help a GM make coarse-level scene-framing decisions than granular-level scenario construction decisions. The "trust the story instincts" part in relation to character handling is where a game has a chance to be collaborative fun, rather than, I dunno, some kind of elaborate calculus.

Read pp. 130-140 of the Dramatica book and say what you just said again. I double-dog-dare you.

"Elaborate calculus" forsooth.

[Paul Czege]

Hey Gareth,

A question: was this your specific intent in WFD? If not, what would you do?

Nah, it wasn't anything I'd considered in designing WFD. If I had run WFD a month after I wrote it, I would have done a relationship-map scenario. A few months after that, after reading Sorcerer & Sword, I might have done a bang-driven scenario.

But I can't say I'm not currently tempted to try WFD on a Dramatica-inspired scenario after Scott finishes his Whispering Vault game. It would be fun to write up guidelines for effective scene framing in the game text based on what I'd learned.

Paul