Purpose vs goal?

[Jack Spencer Jr]

i]seem<

[contracycle]

Hmm, well, I don't think the sim is WITHOUT purpose.  In many ways what intrigues me as a GM is to take players into a mindest they are not normally familiar with and saee how they interact with their environment, in thew terms that the environment sees itself.  My goal, then, is perhaps "insight into the human condition"; by experiencing different (esp. social) reward schemes and sources of legitimacy, I am exploring the interactop of individual and society.  A big chunk of my GMing can be thought of in much the same terms as experimental archeology, with a large and obvious list of caveats.

I have been thinking about this in plot terms, as I have kinda coime to the conclusion that I don't really operate according to a clear premise; and in fact I feel mildly uncomfortable with the idea, expressed by other posters, of "lecturing" my players.  I just want to see what they will do; that is what bakes my biscuit, and to this end I am more drawn to social situations rather than a torturous conflict between characters.

Obviously, this operates contrary to Narrativism, as the experimental nature of the exercise must be adandoned for "good story"... and the gamist aspects are just there to keep us in certain bounds, as I see it.

Anyway, just thoughts.

[Ron Edwards]

Gareth (contracycle),
Your take on GNS in the above post contains much evidence that you may not be understanding it. For one thing, to interpret Narrativist-Premise as preaching is not correct - Premise poses a question or issue, but does not answer it, and in fact places the responsibility for answering it firmly in the hands of the players.

For another, Gamism is not synonymous with boundaries or constraints; all role-playing has them in one form or another.

Jack,
I see your distinction between purpose (the person) and the goal (the behaviors, actually). Again, though I tend to let the former take care of itself. Whatever drives a person toward, say, Narrativist behaviors and decisions during play is his or her business, in my view.

Best,
Ron

[contracycle]

Hi Ron,

I'd be happy to concede any ground on the GNS front, but I'm not sure we are not talking at cross-purposes.

In regards premise, someone else posted a remark to the effect that they felt (rightly or wrongly) that they were in some way making players leap through hoops to prove the GM's, well, premise.  Lajos Egri, who I am reading at the moment, fairly hammers at the idea that the author must a) believe and b) prove their premise in the course of the work; regardless of whether the audience accepts the answer offered by the author, the play itself must procede with the premise as a tacit law of nature.  Further, he remarks that characters embody their own premises, but these are only important.useful inasmuch as they support the central premise.

This presents me with several problems.  Firstly, my objective is much more experimentation than exposition; I am not, or at least would be uncomfortable, setting up a whole game to "prove" my outlook of the world, partly because the immense authorial power I weild prevents anything resembling objectivity.  Secondly, given my rather uncommon political stance, I do not want to be accused of using my games as a pulpit to preach from - which appears implicit if I am to both believe and then prove a premise.  What I'm saying is that I am not sure how to deal with this contradiction.

As for rules, lets say that from my perspective, the rules exist mostly to define the worlds behaviour in a dynamic sense; to provide the cause-and-effect that keeps all the particiapants, player and GM alike, on the same page, as it were.  Frex rules for Humanity or Cyberpsychosis enforce a genre convention on the game space by realising this idea mechanically, rather than as a bit of flavour text.  The imposition of these rules defines the space in which the game occurs, to at least some extent.

[joshua neff]

Lajos Egri, who I am reading at the moment, fairly hammers at the idea that the author must a) believe and b) prove their premise in the course of the work; regardless of whether the audience accepts the answer offered by the author, the play itself must procede with the premise as a tacit law of nature.

Yes, but in an RPG (particularly a narrativist one), the author(s) & the audience are the same--the players (including, but not limited to, the GM).

[contracycle]

players = audience

Right, this is true, and whats more in an RPG I think it would defeat the purpose to subordinate PC premises to the GM's premise.  But I think Egri's central point holds: without some sense of conscious direction, you lose momentum and, umm significance.

Obviously, there is probably little from the theatre which can be ported directly to RPG's for precisely this reason; I guess it comes down to finding techniques for this sort of thing that work in the multiplayer, and perhaps multidirector, environment.  None the less, getting all this stuff is both useful and worthwhile; although I cannot take anything over directly, the points he makes about the significance of premise, rising conflict etc, have been a real eye opener.  I already have my first synopsis written with the tools of Egri and Theatrix, and its miles better than the kind of thing I have been producing to date.

[jburneko]

On 2001-08-14 10:32, contracycle wrote:

Right, this is true, and whats more in an RPG I think it would defeat the purpose to subordinate PC premises to the GM's premise.

I grant that my grasp of Premise is not the greatest but I have to jump in here because this whole thread rang a serious chord with me.

A good story, which is what Narrativists care about, hinges on having a strong Premise on which each individual character builds a Theme.  The idea is to have one Premise and many Themes.  If in your game all the PCs and the GM are working off different Premises then the story has nothing binding it.  It spins off in different directions that have no relationship to each other.

However, a PREMISE is not a moral judgement.  It is a moral question or idea.  For example Love is a Premise.  The GM doesn't have to SAY anything about Love.  In fact to the Narrativist player it's best if the GM doesn't say anything about Love because the whole point is for the player to Author his own Theme on love.  So while one player may be demonstrating that Love is a Bitter Thing another may be showing that Love is an Ideal to Aspire To.   These Themes, which are what carry the judgement, are not dictated by the GM, they are chosen by the players and developed through play and action.

The reason that this whole thread rang true with me is because 'preaching' is exactly what I USED to do until I started reading about Narrativistic Style.  I would come up with an idea, develop some interesting and probably shocking twist on the idea and then design a game to 'prove' my thesis so to speak.  The idea being that the game was esscencially rigged.  Anytime the players took an action that was inaccordance with my thesis they would be successful and advance the plot.  Anytime the players took an action that was against my thesis it would lead them to failure.  This resulted in a few things:

1) I would feel very hollow at the end of each game.  It just didn't have the impact that I was expecting.  And why should it?  The outcome was rigged.  Nothing was said that I didn't already know.  And of course I knew deep down inside I hadn't really 'proven' anything because I was asking a trick question inside a world of my own design.

2) The few players who would work strigently against what ever I was preaching about often ended up with the most interesting characters.  These were the heroes who went out in a blaze of glory fighting for the underdogs cause.  So while those worked for my thesis completed the adventure.  Those who worked against it ended up having more of an impact.

So, I can definitely say that the idea of having a unifying Premise on which each character is allowed to develop there own Theme is NOT preaching.  I know what preaching is and feels like and it does not feel like Narrativism.

Just my thoughts.

Jesse

[joshua neff]

Jesse just said was I was thinking of saying, only better. So I'll shut up now. Except to say I agree with him.

Oh, & to add:
Yes, the GM can come up with the Premise-with-a-capital-P for a narrativist game & tell the players "I have this idea for a run, & the Premise is blah-blah-blah". The players can all say, "Bugger that, I'm not interested, I'd rather play with such-&-such as a Premise". Or they could be as enthused as the GM & say, "Hell, yeah! I'll make a character to push that Premise!"
Another alternative is for the group to get together & collectively ask "What do we want to play?" & together come up with a Premise that everyone is enthused with. It doesn't have to be enforced by the GM to the exclusion of what the players want to do.

[Knight]

I'm interested by jburneko's idea of "preaching" - could I ask for an example from acutal play, to see if it fits the idea I have?

[jburneko]

On 2001-08-14 18:40, Knight wrote:

I'm interested by jburneko's idea of "preaching" - could I ask for an example from acutal play, to see if it fits the idea I have?

Certainly, the most obvious example of my 'preaching' in games is actually in the Castle Falkenstein campaign I have not yet run.  But it was really the game that woke me up to what I was doing BECAUSE it was so obvious.  The design sort of leapt off the page and beat me over the head and screamed: You arrogant bastard, pull yourself together and let the players have a voice.

Castle Falkenstein is a rare gem in that it actually DOES state its central Premise upfront when it talks about the Second Compact.  There is a character in the world who is actually from our own time and therefore has knowledge of where the world is going.  This is a clue that we as players are SUPPOSED to use OOC knoweledge of the real world to enhance the narrative.  But anyway the Premise Castle Falkenstein has built into is: Technological Industrial Progress vs. Golden Era Romance.

Rather than design an adventure around this Premise and let the players develop their own Theme, I picked a Theme and designed an adventure to illustrate it.  My Theme was: The Benefits of Technology Do Not Outweigh Unknowable Negative Consequences.  I designed my adventure to 'prove' this.

VERY briefly: In my adventure the 'villain' designs a machine that seemingly has AMAZING benefits for mankind with absolutely no negative side effects.  In truth, if the machine is turned on it will destroy the universe.  To key the players into this there exists a 'fringe' group with 'wild speculative nonsense theories' and absolutely no proof.  The last part is key.  There exists no proof in my adventure.  There is no way for the players to EVER obtain proof one way or the other.  In the climax they are asked if they will allow the machine to be used or not.  They will have to make this decision on faith.  Either they choose to use the machine on the basis that they have no proof of bad consequences (the wrong decision in my opinion) or they choose to destroy it and never know the TRUTH (the right decision in my opinion).

The adventure is obviously rigged.  If they turn it on because of the lack of proof I get to laugh and show them the sheet of paper detailing the destruction of the universe and saying, "You unwise fools.  Some risks are just not worth taking."  If they destroy the machine, I get to smile wryly never revealing the truth but resting assured that I know my friends are indeed wise and moral beings.

That's what I meant by preaching.

Jesse

[Ron Edwards]

Frankly, all of you are amazing. This thread is great. It all makes fabulous sense and offers insight to everyone.

Best,
Ron

[FilthySuperman]

Ron said you are all amazing so I say you are too..

:razz:

seriously though, this is a great thread. Kinda makes me self conscious though.. next time I GM a game I'm going to be half concerned with "how" I'm GMing it.
To further extrapolate on the "preaching" comments, ableit changing topic, what about the GM who has a specific story he/she want's to follow and won't be averted? As an example...

Years ago in a Rifts campaign our party was assaulted by a rather large force of coalition nasties. Under normal circumstances we would have been able to defend ourselves, and possibly even prevail without having to retreat. The problem was, our Glitter Boys were both heavily damaged and my character (a crazy) had made an obnoxious roll and was having problems with the local wildlife. (he thought the trees were trying to have a staring contest with him) So we were in essence crippled. What keyed me in to the fact that we were just characters in a rigid storyline (instead of characters creating our own story in this imaginary world) was the fact that
A) we were there. If the GM wanted us dead, that's understandable, if he didn't he should have ditched the encounter, or lightened it.

and
B) Without shuffling for papers or rolling dice, or looking at and sheets.. suddenly a group of 20 SAMAS power armor show up and start fighting along side us and send the Coalition boys packing.
(it's worth mentioning this group leaned heavy towards Gamist, so if you didn't roll it, it didn't happen. i.e.: We were made to roll damage for shooting humans (sdc damage) with rail guns (mdc damage))

The rest of the party (all gamist players) were happy that they got to live on to the next scene and possibly gain even more experience without having to die. For me, it ruined the rest of the game. If the outcome and events were TOTALLY preset then what was the point for my character? He was a man with no further control over his destiny than to either assume or avoid injury and possible death.

Was I wrong? Should GMs completely prewrite an adventure? How much is too much direction? Where is the line between "good story" and "singular plot directing"?

T

[Ron Edwards]

Hey T,

It all depends on whether CREATING a good story is a priority or not. If not, then fine - let the other priorities rule, and let "story" exist only in its most superficial sense, as a series of causal events.

But if creating a good story IS the shared goal at the table, then my claim is as follows:
* The often-repeated roles of the GM as the story author, and of the players as protagonist-movers, are unsound. *

It is flatly impossible for the GM to generate the story and for the players to direct the actions of the protagonists. One or the other has to "give."

The solution I have been touting as "Narrativism" is a pretty damn big topic. It relies on the concept of Premise, on the concepts of player-authorship, and a very different role for the GM (a very big role, but different). Take a peek through some of Jesse Burneko's threads about it; a lot of great stuff is in there.

Best,
Ron