Narrativism sans Directoral Power?

[Paganini]

I've been doing some serious thinking about narrativism over the last couple of weeks, playing in the Synthesis playtest, the Squeam game last night, and just generally reading Forge-y games and posts. :) I have a question / thought that I'd like some feedback on. I know this general idea has come up before, but I don't remember seeing a definitive conclusion. If there is one, someone please point me to the thread.

Anyway, the question is, can you have a narrativist game without giving the players explicit directoral power? My feeling is that the answer is "yes." It seems to me that the traditional "GM controlls setting, players controll characters" paradigm would work, as long as there was a safety net in place for resolving conflicts when the areas of influence overlap. If this is the case, it seems like it would be a pretty trivial matter to "narrify" any existing game, simply by plugging in such a mechanism.

This would allow players to influence the story without using overt narrative mechanics involving obvious directoral power. You're probably wondering "What the heck is he getting at? Why would anyone want to narrify D&D when you can just use the Pool?"

But I was thinking that this could be a really good way to ease a group into narrative gaming. It wouldn't overwhelm them with directoral power (the way I inadvertantly did the other night playing SQUEAM), and it wouldn't be uncomfortably different from what they're used to playing.

What do you think about this?

I have another, vaguely related, idea about directoral power, but I'll post that in a separate thread.

[Ron Edwards]

Nathan (Paganini),

"... can you have a narrativist game without giving the players explicit directoral power? My feeling is that the answer is "yes." "

The answer is indeed Yes. People have been confounding Director stance with Narrativism for way, way too long. I've been saying over and over, Stances are not modes/goals. Hence the presence or absence of Stance cannot define a mode/goal.

But perhaps all that's too abstract. And I also suspect that it comes from a basic puzzlement about Author stance that I think many people aren't copping to.

So basically, to answer your question, Yes. Narrativism does not require Director stance. I'd really appreciate it if, when asked "What is Narrativism," people did not give examples of Director stance as an answer.

As a personal side note, my favored mode of play is Narrativism mainly using Author and occasional strong Actor stances, with only teeny snippets of Director stance tossed in when it seems fun.

Best,
Ron

[Mike Holmes]

Nathan,

I've tried to indicate to you on a couple of occasions, that the level of Directorial power that I have you guy's employing in the Synthesis playtest is more than I would normally allow, or is intended by the Synthesis system. This due to it being a PBEM, which pretty much requires such power to keep it moving, IMO. In fact, the system does not mean to give you any more power than in any "regular" RPG, with the possible exception of players being able to call for Conflict rolls. Which is really just a fomalizatin of a power which players have in most normal RPGs, anyhow, where they would bug the GM and ask for a roll.

I apologise if this has caused any confusion.

Mike

[jburneko]

Hello,

Well, at the risk of being a Me Too post I'd like to throw in a hearty, "Yes" you can do Narrativism without Director Stance.  Like Ron, I much prefer my games to be high Author Stance, low/no Director Stance, sprinkle with Actor Stance to taste.

My only corralary question is, can you do Narrativism without Author Stance?  My gut knee jerk reaction is No.  Narrativism is defined by the metagame game goal of addressing Premise to produce Theme.  Since characters/people don't walk around concious of some Premise definining and guiding their existance it seems impossible to be effective restricting oneself to Actor Stance only.

Jesse

[Walt Freitag]

Since characters/people don't walk around concious of some Premise definining and guiding their existance it seems impossible to be effective restricting oneself to Actor Stance only.

Yet if this were truly impossible, we'd never see stories of literary merit occurring in real life. Known physical reality doesn't allow any real-life "stance" other than Actor.

- Walt

[Paganini]

I apologise if this has caused any confusion.

No, Mike, I understood this, it's just that the huge level of input that you've charged up from us got me thinking about this issue in general. (It wasn't just that though, last night's SQUEAM game kind of brought things to a head, and I've been thinking about the Pool this week as well.) I think I need to reread that section of the essay to remind myself of the difference between author and director stance. :)

[Paul Czege]

Hey Walt,

Real life events aren't stories. My private life isn't a story. When you consider biographies, or literary historical or journalistic writing, what you've got is the end product of a process of selecting, organizing, and presenting a relevant subset of the superset of all possible information that could have been included. The information has been authored, organized in such a way that a theme is presented.

Paul

[Walt Freitag]

Hi Paul,

I think we've been around this before, so I'll try to be brief. I think we just simply disagree on this (which is not surprising, since I know we fall at different points on the fragility-of-story continuum).

I don't believe the events recounted in Into Thin Air requred John Krakauer to inject a theme into the account to make it a story. While Krakauer's work does utilize considerable authorial technique, any retelling of the events alone, with no selection criteria other than causal relevance to the outcome, would exhibit the same theme. All stories require interpretation on the reader's part for the theme to be conveyed; in this case, that's the only point where intepretive ability is required. So if the events themselves aren't a story, any causally coherent recounting of those events is. Therefore I still feel justified in believing that stories of literary merit can occur as the outcome of real life.

In any case, there's nothing to stop game participants from doing the same types of thematic selecting, organizing, and presenting that historians or journalists do. This raises the possibility of using Director or Author stance as needed to do so, while still making all character decisions entirely within Actor stance, and this being effective Narrativism.

- Walt

[Paul Czege]

Hey Walt,

All stories require interpretation on the reader's part for the theme to be conveyed; in this case, that's the only point where intepretive ability is required.

I know where you stand now you...postmodernist!

Seriously though, I don't think either of us want to get into a lengthy debate about postmodernist literary theory, so I'm going to state my position in a relatively non-academic way and then let it drop. Postmodernist theorizing that de-significates the role of the author in communication fails to recognize that people engaged in communication continually check through various means to see that the recipient is accurately getting the message. The presentation of theme in fiction works the same way, with the author hitting his theme through metaphor, symbolism, exposition, dialogue, discredited opposition, etc., successive approximations toward the goal of making sure the reader gets the message.

Paul