Topics and GNS

[ethan_greer]

Christopher, we're not talking about what happens at these games. We're talking about Topics, which are a very specific thing.

Bottom line: "Duty" is not a topic, or premise as defined in ye olde GNS essay. A topic is a focused question that raises an issue. It isn't an overarching thematical idea, as you seem to suggest in your first post in this thread. A topic is a question, like, "Is your duty to your wife greater than your duty to your country?"

If you zoom out to anywhere above that question, you're no longer talking about what is defined as a topic.

Does that make sense?

[Christopher Kubasik]

Yes, Ethan, exactly.

But it's what the actual players bring to the actual table with their actual concerns about these actual abstractions that actually frames the topic.

The imaginary events don't frame the topic. The imaginary events are the chess pieces.

What frames the topic is the Players. Not the imaginary events.

Christopher

[Ben Lehman]

Chris --

I'm saying framed with respect to

NOT

framed by

I agree with everything you say.

[ethan_greer]

Now I gotcha.

I was getting hung up on this:

In Story Now, the topic isn't the wife or the country or what have you.

Colored the whole post for me. I was there, spluttering, "But, but, that's what a topic is!" Imagine my bemusement.

Now then, to address your point. I think what you're talking about is actually up a layer in the Big Model, in Exploration rather than in the Creative Agenda where GNS reside. So those actual concerns of the actual people actually playing? They're a factor in all role-playing, not just Nar.

[Ben Lehman]

Here's an interesting little footnote on topics.

I had the hardest time, for a while, coming to grips with the relationship between Gamism with challenge and competition.  Because challenge and competition exist in all modes of play, right, just like they exist in any human social situation.  So, in a Narrativist game, there is this competition to be the one who does it right, and a challenge to see if you can really address that premise.

But, hey.  If you didn't do that, it wouldn't be fun.

For a topic to be a topic, it needs to be addressable; it needs to not have a predetermined ending.  A gamist game, played by good sports, can be fun win or lose.  A narrativist game can't be fun if the players fail to meet the challenge of addressing that topic.

Any topic which can be boiled down to "Do we have fun or not?" isn't really a topic.

Gamism is the only mode of play where challenge and competition are part of the topic, not just part of the general social arena.

*click*

This is tangential to the Chris/Ethan/Me conversation that's going on here.

[ethan_greer]

Yeah, I thrashed at that concept a while back. I started the discussion poorly (no surprise there), but I was pleased with where it ended up.

I dig your conclusion in a big way:

Gamism is the only mode of play where challenge and competition are part of the topic, not just part of the general social arena.

Click, indeed.

[Gordon C. Landis]

Ben,

So, can I change your statement to be "Gamism is the only mode of play where challenge and competition are the key to the topic, not just part of the general social arena"?

Because then, I think (with appropriate substitution) we can use that statement for all the CA's, and your use of "topic" becomes synonomous with (if you'll pardon the OO programming-speak) "specific instantiation of a CA." Which currently has the label Premise for Nar - "premise" was at one point used in this way for all CA's (you could say "Gamist premise", once upon a time), but when it moved (back?) to Nar-specific, I don't recall there being a replacement for the other agenda.  Topic might serve that purpose well - but my main objective here is to make sure your "topic" is positioned where I think it is.  So let me know if I'm missing something.

I'm not sure about the framed with regard to explorative content vs. real people stuff.  I think it would be possible to frame the topic for G, N or S in either way.  And the answer to "resolved via" seems to me to be "always resolved via both" - that's what RPG play is, right?  Real people, engaging in Exploration?  So they have to resolve it via both?

Gordon

[Ben Lehman]

Ben,

Because then, I think (with appropriate substitution) we can use that statement for all the CA's, and your use of "topic" becomes synonomous with (if you'll pardon the OO programming-speak) "specific instantiation of a CA." Which currently has the label Premise for Nar - "premise" was at one point used in this way for all CA's (you could say "Gamist premise", once upon a time), but when it moved (back?) to Nar-specific, I don't recall there being a replacement for the other agenda.  Topic might serve that purpose well - but my main objective here is to make sure your "topic" is positioned where I think it is.  So let me know if I'm missing something.

BL>  My use of "topic" should be read as exactly synonymous with Ron's use of "premise" in the essay "GNS and other matters of Role-playing theory."

Ron prefers "premise" to be strictly applied to Narrativism, and I understand and respect that.

yrs--
--Ben