Narrativism and Judgement

[Victor Gijsbers]

Introduction

Shirley Hawthorn has little contact with her two sisters and even less with her dying father, who was overly critical and quite unsympathetic to her during her youth. Now, as his end is near, she decides, after much hesitation, to visit him. The conversation quickly becomes accusatory, but her father concedes all Shirley's points and confesses that he was foolish. He begs for her forgiveness, so he can die a happy man. Her answer: "No. I cannot forgive you."

This happened in my game last monday. (We were indeed playing the Sorcerer scenario "The Forbidden Tome", with one of the player characters being a sister of Ashley and Michele.) There were no Simulationist reasons to have the scene end this way, nor did it give a Gamist advantage in any way. The player's choice not to have Shirley forgive her father, not even to have her lie about forgiving him in order to grant him a happy death, was - I am inclined to say - narrativist.

But what has been expressed by making that decision? Is the player claiming something that has validity outside of the SIS, and if so, what is it? Is narrativist play partly a search for truth, and if so, what kind of truth?


Premise and Theme in Ron's essay

My starting point will be Ron's essay on Narrativism. "Premise" is defined as a problematic issue (or question) 'addressed' during play. This addressing creates theme. I quote:

Stories are not created by running some kind of linear-cause program, but rather are brutally judgmental statements upon the THIS, as an idea or a way of being. That judgment is enacted or exemplified in the resolution of the conflict, and a conviction that is proved to us (as Egri says), constitutes theme.

What Ron is saying is that the heart and soul of narrativism are 'brutally judgemental statements', judgements - the narrativist player takes a stance towards the problematic issue. She gives an answer, even though it may only be a partial answer. Without judgement, there is no theme.

But judgements imply truth; that is, I can only judge that A is the answer to B if I think that A is true. Ron's theory of narrativism thus implies - if I read it correctly - that the player must give an answer to the question which she believes to be true. She must make a judgement.


The nature of the judgement

I can see at least two possible forms such a judgement could take. It could take the form "under these circumstances, this character would answer the premise like this". Or it could take the form "under these circumstances, the premise should be answered like this". The first is a descriptive answer, the second is a normative answer.

The first of these possibilities looks all too much like a simulationist answer. It concerns what the character would do, which, at least at first sight, seems to be a concern with in-game causality and consistent characterisation, both of which are typical somulationist concerns. But appearances may be misleading.

If we identify the premise of the actual play fragment with which I started this post as "when is reconciliation/forgiveness possible?", then the statement the player made would have been "in this situation, this character would not be able to forgive her father". If this judgement were backed up by a line on the character sheet saying "she will never reconcile herself to her father", it would be a Sim-judgement, if I am allowed to speak that way. But no such line existed. What if the player made the judgement by trying to think like the character, and finding out that she woudl not forgive her father? Would that be simulation of character, or would it be a profound statement on reconciliation and forgiveness?

I suggest that whether the statement is profound or 'merely' simulation hinges on its implicit claim to universality. If the player is just saying that this character would take this action in this situation, the Premise is not really being addressed. But if the player is making a point about human nature by showing that there is a certain kind of situation (not just 'this situation', but 'situations like this') in which a certain kind of person (not just 'this person', but 'people like this') cannot forgive, then premise is being addressed. The player is not saying "Shirley cannot forgive her father, even as he is dying". She is saying "the bitterness over suffered wrongs can be stronger than compassion and pleas for forgiveness - for example, here", or something akin. She is not merely saying something about the SIS, she is saying something about the human condition, about herself and the other players, about us - by following through the internal logic of her character. It is 'simulationist thinking' - "what would this character do?" - transformed into narrative premise by being meant to  be and being interpreted as pointing to a more general truth about humanity.

I have been arguing that the player's decisions have been governed by the internal logic of the character, something normally associated with simulationism. But since the internal logic of the characters is meant to reflect the human condition, insights about the character are insights into human nature, in a way that "my character is a dwarf, so he doesn't listen to the goblin's plea for mercy" is not an insight into human nature.


Normative judgements

We will turn to the second possibility: the answer to the premise has the form "under these circumstances, the premise should be answered like this". This presupposes that the premise is overtly or covertly a question about how should act. "Should one forgive the wrongs that have been done to one if the wrongdoer earnestly repents?" "No, in the case of Shirley and her father, one should not forgive."

Now, it is very dubious whether my original example should be construed this way. I doubt whether the player actually believes that forgiveness would have been morally bad. She wasn't saying that Shirley should not forgive her father, but that Shirley did not forgive her father - and through that, she was saying something about the limits of forgiveness. She was not answering a normative premise at all.

But it doesn't seem impossible to play a game in which one adresses a normative premise. If one plays a game of Dogs in the Vineyard game in which the actions of the player characters are actually meant to reflect the players' beliefs about justice - which seems to me the most interesting way to play it - the players are in effect making normative judgements. They are saying: in such a situation, one should act as my Dog acts, for this is the most just way of acting. Here, then, the players are making judgements that are supposed not to describe the human condition, but to describe moral reality. They are stating moral truths. (Whether one believes in moral truths, and if so, what form these take, is a discussion I would like not to get into. Even an emotivist should be able to see a different between the two kinds of judgement I have been talking about.)

Interestingly, the player of a game like this need use no 'simulationist thinking' at all. He does not have to wonder what his character would do, for he is asked to show what he himself would do, or at least believes he should do - using his character as a pawn to act out his decisions.

So, I have indentified two kinds of narrativist judgement, only one of which frees the player from thinking in terms of the internal logic of the SIS. (Although it is, once again, crucial to the first kind that the internal logic of the SIS mirrors that of reality as far as (relevant parts of) the human condition is concerned.) But now I will suggest that one can even have narrativist play without any overt judgements.


Narrativism without judgements

It is well-known that fiction can often give rise to many different interpretations. That the writer may have no clearer conception of what he 'meant' with a story than have his readers. That a story can clearly ask an intriguing and important question without actually answering it. In fact, this is often a sign that one is reading literature instead of pulp.

In Brave New World, a society of happiness is sketched, which is presented mostly through the eyes of its critics and victims. And yet - it is a society where the vast majority of the people is happier than they have ever been. Is the loss of individuality and culture a fair price for the achievement of happiness? The book does not answer this question, it merely asks it in the most vivid, sharp and cruel way possible. (One may disagree with me about the book's neutrality, but whether this is a perfect example or not is not really the question.)

It seems to me that such a neutral attitude towards the game's main premise is often taken in narrativist roleplaying. One can play Sorcerer with the aim to ask the question "how long do the ends justify the means?" as vividly and strongly as possible. And one can remain neutral, one can never say, implicitly or explicitly "here they justify the means, and here they no longer do so". I see no need for the players to have a conviction and prove it. I see no need for them to make a judgement. Asking the question can be the core of narrativist play, and I submit that it can be observed in a lot of actual narrativist play. The result is an ambiguous story that everyone can ponder upon and make up his own mind about.

Egri's claim that

The author's conviction is missing. Until he takes sides, there is no play.

seems to me to be quite untrue. And to be shown to be false by many real movies, plays and books - and roleplaying sessions.


Conclusion

I have tried to argue that there are three ways to answer the question "what judgements does a narrativist roleplayer make when he adresses the premise?".

1. He makes descriptive judgements about human nature / the human condition. This involves what I have deemed it right to dub 'simulationist thinking', which is transformed into narrativist theme by its claim to universality.

2. He makes normative judgements. This involves the character being an extension of the player, a moral representation of the player.

3. He need not make any judgements at all, but can focus on asking the premise again and again without answering it - and still be a narrativist roleplayer.

[TonyLB]

What about "People make these sorts of decisions, for good and sound reasons.  People also make the opposite decision, for good and sound reasons.  Isn't that cool and tragic and miserable and wonderful?  Isn't it human?"  Is that part of your third option, because people haven't resolved their stance on the question, even though they have answered it in one particular case?

[Andrew Cooper]

But judgements imply truth; that is, I can only judge that A is the answer to B if I think that A is true.

What if I answer A to B when I absolutely don't think it's true.  After all, role-playing is the past time where I can make judgements that I think are incorrect and not have the consequences come down on me in reality.

[Sean]

Hi Victor -

I say "this is what I want this guy to do right here", where the situation is thematically laden, which is as I see it one core kind of moment of Narrativist empowerment.

That is different from "this is what this guy would do, right here, based on my understanding of him". That's what you're calling, probably rightly, 'Simulationist' thinking, and in it the player is engaged in the exploratory/theoretical question about what his avatar would do rather than the personal question about what I, the player, the agent who drives the character along, wants him to do.

But it is likewise not akin to saying "the way this guy acts in this situation is the way I would really act in this situation", let alone the Kantian "this is the way all people in relevantly similar circumstances ought to act in this situation". It is like saying that in the real world, but it is hypothetical, imaginary.

Now, there are some cases where we own what we want our guy to do, are rendering a personal moral judgment, and others where we don't, but that's the judgment we want him to make right there, even when we might personally think it's wrong. This is extremely interesting psychologically; when we behave this way in our real lives, taking on the 'player' and 'character' roles ourselves, it's the more general case of what classical philosophers called akrasia, and what Freud called neurosis. Conflict of desires, perhaps. "Why did you want your guy to do that if it's not what you would have done?" Great question for self-understanding. We want this sort of thing all the time though.

The basis of our character's judgment is our own desire for that judgment to be made in the 'world of the story'. Such a judgment might be coming from our own moral constellation, but it might also be coming from some backwater of our psyche that we don't fully own or endorse, but want to get out and look at some more. That's part of what art's all about, letting us get out and look at stuff we don't necessarily fully own, or might be thinking about owning but aren't sure, or really do own maybe but can't admit it to ourself - the process of confronting ourself with the full broad spectrum of our values, desires, conflicts.

The real judgment is our judgment about what we want to happen in the game. This is based on our own psyche, but is also make-believe. The character's action in effect comes down on one side or the other (or both perhaps) of a thematically laden question, and so in that sense can be said to express a moral judgment. But it's not a real-life situation we're facing. We make the judgment "I want it to be part of this make-believe that this character comes down on this side of this morally loaded issue." This connects back to us in all kinds of interesting ways, to be sure, but it's not the same as "I in my particular circumstances come down on this side of this issue" or "Every rational person..."

Sometimes people compare Narrativist roleplaying to the moral equivalent of lion cubs play-fighting around here. Someone in one thread said something like, "I'm probably only going to have a half-dozen really meaningful moral decisions in my life, and by exploring my values through role-playing I think I'm more likely to know myself better and make the right one when the time comes."

You learn something about yourself by deciding to have your character make a certain judgment, but it's not that you necessarily endorse what the character does. It's that something in you wanted the character to do that in that context. That tells you something about what you value, or what you think you might value, or what you're wondering whether you value, or something you thought you valued but now that you actually saw it work out in make-believe you're not so sure any more, etc.

I'm not fully satisfied with the way I put things here but I'm out of time to edit my comments for today.

[pete_darby]

Just for clarification, the Darby Definition of a premise is a human interest question that can only be asked in the general and answered in the particular.

"Is it right to betray a friend to save a community? In this case, yes/no"

The thing is, very often, the player will choose the character to take what they believe is the wrong decision, in order to illustrate that it's wrong, that in making this call, the character is flawed. The player stands in judgement over the character. So while the actions of the character may be influenced, even dictated, by what may be small-s simulationist concerns (if Shirley forgave her father now, it would overturn all the character work that has been done before, it would break the SiS and be rejected by all the other players), that need not be a problem. The concern for the player is "What should she do, what would she do, and how do I judge the consequences of the difference between the two?". IN subsequent play, the actions of the player in manipulating the life of the character will reflect their judgement on the character.

Victor, this doesn't quite fall into any of the three categories at the end of you original post;

1. While the action is simulationist, in rendering judgement on the actions of the character, and focussing on premise rich situations, the play as a whole is narrativist
2. The character is not a moral agent of the player, or at least need not be.
3. Judgements are made, by the player on the actions of their own character.

[Victor Gijsbers]

Thanks for the replies. I'll frist answer Tony, Andrew and Pete, then tackle Sean's reply in a different post.

Tony

Once you speak about good and sound reasons, I take it that that is a judgement. You're saying: "Look, person A chooses to do B in situation C, and it's so right for him to do so. And look, person D chooses to do the exact opposite, and it too is so very right." And that means that you are saying: "There's no answer to this dilemma, but depending on who is facing it there are all these good and human choices." This is a judgement. I think it falls partly - predominantly - in my first, and partly in my second category. It's a descriptive judgement about human nature in so far as the player recognises that some people make the one choice for these and these reason, and other people make the other choice for other reasons. There is 'simulationist thinking' behind this, which influences what we make the different characters do.

But at the same time, the player is condoning both lines of reasoning, both ways of acting, and celebrating the tragic diversity of human nature. I'm not sure how that translates into actual decision during play, how this judgement is manifested in what you make your character do. Maybe it doesn't? What do you think?


Andrew

Andrew, I'm talking about judgements made by the players, not judgements made by the characters. Sure, you can have your characters make judgements which with you do not agree all the time. But I am trying to find out what kind of judgements - if any - the narrativist player makes when playing. And it is conceptually incoherent to claim that a player makes a judgement with which he himself doesn't agree: you can't judge that A while believing that not-A, I'd say. Judgement implies believe; judgement simply is asserted belief.


Pete

I like the Darby-definition a lot. It is why fiction may be a better vehicle for ethical knowledge than philosophy is. It is why we engage in story telling to answer these questions, instead of engaging in philosophy to do so.

Now, I'm not quite sure what your main point is, so please correct me if I'm reading you wrongly. My first reading is: "sometimes, what is important are not the actions of the character, but the judgement of the player about those actions - which is not expressed in play". In this case, the judgement is in an important sense not part of the game, and I would subsume this case under my case 3. The players are producing a morally engaging text, which they might talk about afterwards, but which does not in itself reflect the judgements of the players.

My second reading, which is probably closer to what you are saying, is: "sometimes, what is important are not the actions of the character, but the judgemenet of the player as expressed by the consequences of the actions he reveals in subsequent narration". In this case, the judgement simply happens later. It becomes apparent only as the game progresses and the sorcerer's choice to bind the demon to save his girlfriend is seen to lead to both his own and his girlfriend's destruction. That is judgement in action: the player reveals his thoughts, and the text expresses them. ("Text" meaning something like "transcript".)

Now, there are two options. This judgement is either descriptive: "this is what would happen", or normative: "this is the just result of such actions, it is the character's desert". So in the first case, the judgement might be "death is stronger than love, and attempts to cheat death in the name of love will fail". In the second case, it might be "one should accept one's fate and not try and cheat death". These two cases map more or less onto my case 1 and 2.

Except for the rather important fact that in the first case, the player is judging not human nature, but the consequences of human nature. And in the second case, his voice of moral judgement is not the character (as it might be in Dogs in the Vineyard), but rather the fictional Universe which gives the characters what they deserve (as could be easily the case in a game of Sorcerer).

Do you think we're getting anywhere along these lines?

[TonyLB]

Victor, I think you've misunderstood me.  I'm saying "Person A can make choice B for good and proper reasons, and Person A can also make choice C for good and proper reasons.  Now we're going to have them actually choose one.  Isn't that right, and true, and human?"

Does that fit with your theory somewhere?

[John Kim]

I have been arguing that the player's decisions have been governed by the internal logic of the character, something normally associated with simulationism. But since the internal logic of the characters is meant to reflect the human condition, insights about the character are insights into human nature, in a way that "my character is a dwarf, so he doesn't listen to the goblin's plea for mercy" is not an insight into human nature.

Well, somewhat predictably, I am going to speak up for internal logic and Threefold Simulationism here.  Your dwarf example is bad Threefold Simulationism, because it is shallow and unrealistic.  

To bring up a contrast -- my character in a part HarnMaster campaign was a priest of Agrik, who is nominally considered an "evil" god.  However, inspired by the GM's work on the http://pages.sbcglobal.net/harn-religion-team/">Harn Religion Team, I got into what he really believed in and how he reflected that.  His behavior -- which bordered on fascist at times -- was a strong moral statement, in my opinion.  

What made it an insight into human nature was precisely the fact that I thought through and considered the fictional reality deeply -- rather than simply making summary judgements about what he would do.  

I have tried to argue that there are three ways to answer the question "what judgements does a narrativist roleplayer make when he adresses the premise?".

1. He makes descriptive judgements about human nature / the human condition. This involves what I have deemed it right to dub 'simulationist thinking', which is transformed into narrativist theme by its claim to universality.

2. He makes normative judgements. This involves the character being an extension of the player, a moral representation of the player.

3. He need not make any judgements at all, but can focus on asking the premise again and again without answering it - and still be a narrativist roleplayer.

Here's how I view it.  

1) I can portray my character believably and sympathetically as she makes moral choices.  By doing so, I am making a moral statement to those who are participating (i.e. those who sympathize with her).  This could be in favor of the choices, or it could be portraying her as a victim of circumstances (i.e. these wrong things come out of bad circumstances, not bad people).  

2) I portray my character believably and unsympathetically.  By doing so, I am making a moral statement against her choices.  

3) I can portray my character in a shallow or otherwise unbelievable manner.  In this case, it isn't so relevant what the character's choices are per se.  However, this may be a commentary against the statements in other fictional works whose stereotypes I am using.  

So my #1 and #2 roughly correspond to yours.  But my #3 is different.  I'm not sure if I agree that your #3 (or Tony's "it's so human") is Narrativist, but I'm open to being convinced.  

I think that it's important to note that none of these need involve consciously thinking "I'm making a Narrativist statement".  It is inherently true that by portraying important reality as you see it, you are making statements.  That is, a "claim to universality" is a poor distinction, since the universality of something doesn't come from a label or claim -- but rather from how believable it is.  If a character is deep and believable, then it is universal.  The way to avoid statements is by use of shallow stereotypes and avoidance of moral choices.

[pete_darby]

Pete

I like the Darby-definition a lot. It is why fiction may be a better vehicle for ethical knowledge than philosophy is. It is why we engage in story telling to answer these questions, instead of engaging in philosophy to do so.

Well, I'd call a false dichotomy on that, but then I have a degree in Drama & Philosophy!

Now, I'm not quite sure what your main point is, so please correct me if I'm reading you wrongly. My first reading is: "sometimes, what is important are not the actions of the character, but the judgement of the player about those actions - which is not expressed in play". In this case, the judgement is in an important sense not part of the game, and I would subsume this case under my case 3. The players are producing a morally engaging text, which they might talk about afterwards, but which does not in itself reflect the judgements of the players.

Certainly a possibility which exists, and definitely within the purview of your case 3.

My second reading, which is probably closer to what you are saying, is: "sometimes, what is important are not the actions of the character, but the judgemenet of the player as expressed by the consequences of the actions he reveals in subsequent narration". In this case, the judgement simply happens later. It becomes apparent only as the game progresses and the sorcerer's choice to bind the demon to save his girlfriend is seen to lead to both his own and his girlfriend's destruction. That is judgement in action: the player reveals his thoughts, and the text expresses them. ("Text" meaning something like "transcript".)

Now, there are two options. This judgement is either descriptive: "this is what would happen", or normative: "this is the just result of such actions, it is the character's desert". So in the first case, the judgement might be "death is stronger than love, and attempts to cheat death in the name of love will fail". In the second case, it might be "one should accept one's fate and not try and cheat death". These two cases map more or less onto my case 1 and 2.

Except for the rather important fact that in the first case, the player is judging not human nature, but the consequences of human nature. And in the second case, his voice of moral judgement is not the character (as it might be in Dogs in the Vineyard), but rather the fictional Universe which gives the characters what they deserve (as could be easily the case in a game of Sorcerer).

Do you think we're getting anywhere along these lines?

Certainly, we're getting somewhere, though I'd also be careful where you're drawing this line of "in dogs this, but in sorceror that." Certainly, I can play a Dog that does not represent my own moral beliefs in his, stay true to the character, and express my distaste at what he is doing while continuing to have him do such things. kill puppies for satan is built around characters that (hopefully) have a much different set of values to the players, and encourages players to stand in judgement of their own and other characters.

But yes, judgement of players on their own characters can be expressed through non-diagetic means, either (a)during play or after, expressing the player's reaction to the choices they had the character make, or (b) By exploring the consequences of choices in the SiS.

In (b), very often, the interpretation is defended in sim terms ("well, that's what would happen"), but inevitably, when dealing with a premise style question, the consequences will represent the belief system of the players. If I believe that death is stronger than love, the scenario you sketched out will end in tragedy. If love is stronger than death, it may still (the wife persuades the husband to join her in death), but in a quite different way.

Whatever system you are using, when confronting a premise style issue, the consequences will represent the beliefs of the players, the Egri style premise.

The question that this kind of nar play needs to address is who has the power to dictate the consequences; in "conventional" play, the consequences on the actions of the characters will be the responsibility of the players, and the consequences on the rest of the SiS will be the responsibility of the GM. This limits the ability of each party to address premise, but limitation is not necessarily a bad thing. However, if there is a serious break in concensus among the group , it can lead to a breakdown in the group's vision of a coherent SiS, if the consequences of ethical choices are vastly different in the minds of the players.

But, going back to the original post, I think we can break down the possible methods of judgement as follows:

1. Judgement by character: character as ethical agent of the player judging the SiS
2. Judgement by consequence: SiS as a whole operating as ethical agent judging the actions of the characters
3. Judgement by detatchment: Players directly passing judgement on the SiS, including the characters.

The problem I'm seeing with your first post is that descriptive judgements ("i believe the world to be thus") are more the meat of sim gaming than nar gaming, which is the realm of normative judgements.[/quote]

[Troy_Costisick]

Heya,

Tony wrote:

Victor, I think you've misunderstood me. I'm saying "Person A can make choice B for good and proper reasons, and Person A can also make choice C for good and proper reasons. Now we're going to have them actually choose one. Isn't that right, and true, and human?"

This is interesting to me.  Can we equate Judgement with Choice?  Nar play is not just about making brutal judgements but also brutal choices?  Brutal in the way that it affects both the character and the player.  

Now you can say that making a judgement is, in effect, making a choice- a mental choice between two values.  But I'm really talking about making a brutal choice in-game, not just in your mind.  It's about how the character is used to demonstrait the internal choice-making process. The in-game decision making is the observable part of the judgement.

Peace,

-Troy

[TonyLB]

Judgment in terms of "what is possible?" or judgment in terms of "what is right?"

Because if it's the first then judgment and choice are intertwined by separate variables:  I can judge that the character can either forgive or not forgive, in this situation, and that both are valid options.  Which doesn't imply that I've chosen either.

But if it's the moral thing then judgment is a subset of choice:  Making a judgment is always making a choice, but making a choice is not always making a judgment.

I think my example is judging (and appreciating) that there are multiple things the character could and would do, choosing one of those things, and not necessarily judging whether it's right in any way whatsoever.

I think we may need some temporary vocabulary, as tools for this discussion.

[Eve]

One possibility in favour of the third case: doubt.

Doubt certainly is an important part of human nature and thus exploring doubt can be a prime subject in Nar play. A character in doubt might not experience the consequences of either choice (he might even be used as a vehicle to show the cruelty of having to make this choice), but will be faced with the consequences of his doubt and therewith awaiting nature.

One might argue though, that in terms of the player's choices, doubt is yet an other choice, just as the "real" ones.

[Victor Gijsbers]

Ok, so what we are looking for is an answer to the question: what kinds of judgement, if any, are typical of Narrativist play? Interestingly, the intuitions seem to diverge, which may mean that it is possible to divide narrativist play into a number of interesting subsets that are facilitated by different types of game design. Of course, it may also mean that some of us are confused - that's what we're here to find out. My first post should be read as merely a preliminary attempt to map the field, not as a 'theory' I am here to defend.


Sean

You learn something about yourself by deciding to have your character make a certain judgment, but it's not that you necessarily endorse what the character does. It's that something in you wanted the character to do that in that context. That tells you something about what you value, or what you think you might value, or what you're wondering whether you value, or something you thought you valued but now that you actually saw it work out in make-believe you're not so sure any more, etc.

Your remarks are very interesting, especially concerning the fact that we often want the choices of our characters to present not what we ourselves would do, but what we dare not do, what some repressed part of us secretly wishes to do, what we are afraid we might at some time do, and so forth. I think this opens up a whole world of possibilities which I did not explicitely consider in my first post - namely, a whole world of psychological motives for wishing to see the thematically interesting story develop one way or the other.

Now, what kind of judgement is involved when I decide to have my character choose A, because of one of these motives? There is of course the judgement you point out: "I want it to be part of this make-believe that this character comes down on this side of this morally loaded issue". However, this is hardly enlightening. Surely, whenever I add an element to the game world, I have first made the judgement that I want this element to be part of the make-believe. It is this judgement that makes my participation in the game intelligible as action, instead of mere spontaneous movement. But this kind of judgement cannot be typical of narrativist roleplaying, since it is made continuously by each and every roleplayer actively engaged in shaping the SIS.

One might counter that the part of the judgement that does the work is the reference to a morally loaded issue. But this too cannot be the case, for one can identify a moral issue and make a judgement about which side one wants one's character to come down on based on 'simulationist' or 'gamist' criteria. "O, my paladin would never kill an unarmed foe, even if there is a chance he might escape and warn the guards. It's against his code." "O no, I'm not going to kill this unarmed foe, for then I would have an alignment change and that costs XP!" So merely having a choice be about a moral issue is not characteristic of narrativist play. As I already argued, adding that the player choses based on what he wants to happen in the SIS is, well, almost tautological and therefore not characteristic of narrativist play either.

But the kind of judgement that could distinguish narrativist play as you describe it, is the kind that takes the form "if the story were to continue with A, that would strike a chord with something deep within me". Or, dare I say it?, these judgements take the form "if the story were to continue with A, that would really allow me to explore this interesting, half-hidden part of my psyche". Would you agree with this analysis? For if you do, we have reached a strange result: there are modes of narrativist play where Exploration is king... (And that is generally thought to be the defining characteristic of Simulationism.)

And furthermore, this kind of narrativism would have nothing to do with judgements of the kind Egri speaks about, for we do not take sides.

I do not want to jump to these conclusions, but put them forward for general consideration.

[Remko]

One might counter that the part of the judgement that does the work is the reference to a morally loaded issue. But this too cannot be the case, for one can identify a moral issue and make a judgement about which side one wants one's character to come down on based on 'simulationist' or 'gamist' criteria. "O, my paladin would never kill an unarmed foe, even if there is a chance he might escape and warn the guards. It's against his code." "O no, I'm not going to kill this unarmed foe, for then I would have an alignment change and that costs XP!" So merely having a choice be about a moral issue is not characteristic of narrativist play. As I already argued, adding that the player choses based on what he wants to happen in the SIS is, well, almost tautological and therefore not characteristic of narrativist play either.

Vic,
I guess you hit the spot right here... The fact you argue that a paladin in sim would automatically choose before his code...

When that is what people call sim, you could clarify narrativism as judgement based on your characters morals, perspective etc instead based on the morals of a typical character within such a world (not thinking from the individual, but from the thoughts a 'normal' person with that background, profession etc) would have.

Personally, I agree to some point to this description of sim, because you could think of a situation in which a person only wants to portrait a paladin which is tormented by his difficult choices... I would call that player sim, but perhaps that's just my shallow PoV.

So: narrativism is from a personal judgement based on the persons own thoughts and morals, sim as judgement based on the thoughts a 'normal' person would have in such a world.

[Troy_Costisick]

Heya,

I, like you Vic, am here to see what we can discover or learn.  I applaude your latest post and I really dig your palladin example.

One thing I'd like to focus on real quick is the fact that Ron used the word "brutal" to describe the kind of judgements players make.  I'd like to apply that same word to choice.  The choices made in a Nar game must be brutal as well.  To me that means costly.  They must cost things like: a chance to make that same choice twice, character currency, metagame currency, reversal of character advancement, loss of screen time and so on.  Rewards in the game should cover the same fields as well.  The important thing is that each significant judgement/choice both costs and rewards the player.  That makes it brutal (systemwise anyway).

And I think the responsibility for that falls on both the designer and the GM.

Peace,

-Troy