On the time of narration

[Johannes]

I'm working on a masters thesis about the narratology of RPGs (see the Please help a student –thread). One of the things that might be of interest is the temporal relation between the act of narration (playing, gaming) and the fictional events that are narrated (what happens in the fictional world of the game).

My question is a simple one: what kind of tempus you use when you tell what your character does or what takes place in the fictional world of the game? Do you say "My guy/I strikes the dragon with his sword." or "My guy/I will strike the dragon with his sword." or perhaps "My guy/I striked the dragon with his sword." or do you use some other forms of speech or combinations, when, why? In other words: do you narrate the events as they happen in the fictional world, before they happen or after they happen?

I have to ask you this because Finnish language (which is my mother and gaming tongue) does not explicitly make a difference between present and future time. Most of the time we Finns of course contextually know wether we are talking about the present or the future but in role-playing the difference is often very hard to make.

[Clay]

The tense we use will depend on when we're using it.  When I'm announcing my intended action, I speak of events that will happen. When the GM is describing the results, he speaks of what did happen, or sometimes what is happening.

For example:

"I get my horse to do a levade (equestrian body-slam) through the attackers, then charge into the stream to rescue the maiden from drowning"

(some rolling and scheming by my GM occur)

"Your horse steps into them and knocks them down, but refuses to step over the bodies."

[Jack Spencer Jr]

This sounds like a nuts-n-bolts English grammar question to me.

I sounds more natural to me to use the present tense. Future tense sounds wrong to me and is clunky anyway. "will strike" vs. "stikes"

Of course the make be alternative methods in various game where using, say, the past tense is how the game functions, but in general I would say that present tense is the default tense with the added note that it would probably "my character/I swing at the dragon" rather than "strikes" because, often, it's the dice that decide if you strike or not.

[M. J. Young]

I disagree, Jack. I think that English users (in my experience) fluctuate between present and future tense, although perhaps not so obviously as they might.

I know that players will say "I hit the enemy", "I climb the wall", and so forth; but they just as commonly say "I'm going to try to pick the lock", "I'll [equals 'I will'] jump across the chasm", or similar near-future constructions. That is, the difference between what I'm doing now and what I'm doing next is, technically in construction, one of present versus future tense, but is in practice used interchangeably in play. Although I haven't really paid much attention to it, I suspect that players have a tendency one way or another (and that my own tendency is to speak in the near future sense of what I'm going to do rather than what I'm doing), but that few are completely consistent either way.

Oh, and I agree with Clay that referee talk is rarely future tense; it's usually present tense (as he suggests) or sometimes past tense: "The orc fell when you hit him, and his companion fled immediately." Player talk is rarely, if ever, past tense, and referee talk is rarely, if ever, future tense, but both will use the present tense interchangeably with the other tense they use.

Anyone?

--M. J. Young

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Johannes,

I think that this issue is related to one of the main sources of confusion during play: what is actually being established, among the group, by a statement of action. Is it a proposal? Or a "fact"? Or a confirmation? Or what?

We discussed this pretty thoroughly a while ago in these two threads:

The four steps of action
What is IIEC?

The term "IIEE" has more-or-less entered the Forge vocabulary through these and later threads. It stands for Intent, Initiation, Execution, and Effect, referring to the character's relationship to the action being performed.

I think this relates to your question because, in English anyway, people often use future tense as a kind of subjunctive - to indicate "maybe" or "let's say," or "what if."

Therefore "I hit the dragon!" is a difficult statement in many role-playing situations - we don't know whether the character is getting ready to hit the dragon, actively engaged in doing so, or has already done so. This vagueness can cause a lot of trouble during play, and some GM styles are practically defined by manipulating the vagueness toward their intended outcomes.

"I will hit the dragon" is a little more specific, in English, but it's idiomatic. Going by the grammar, it looks like future tense - a factual statement regarding the future. However, it's really subjunctive - "I am thinking about hitting the dragon, but I need more information before I confirm that, and if no information is forthcoming, then I am indeed moving to hit the dragon. But I definitely haven't done so yet." This is a bit more useful than the present tense, but it's at best a partial solution to the vagueness of the present tense.

Therefore the real solution is to establish the IIEE content of action-announcements better, both socially and with better-constructed game rules . I think that tense and other grammatical issues in announcing actions in role-playing will be less variable in groups who play this way.

Best,
Ron

P.S. Looks like M.J. and I were thinking right along the same lines - we posted almost simultaneously.

[Matt Wilson]

Johannes:

When discussing literature or art, people are supposed to use present tense. "In Scene 1 of Hamlet the ghost appears." We never say, "Hamlet died," or "the ghost appeared." It implies a certain timelessness to the events and characters.

It doesn't carry over precisely to gaming, but there are similarities. Once everyone at the table knows the outcome (or the narrator has power to declare it) then the scene is described in present tense.

We don't refer to previous game sessions in the present tense, however. Maybe that's because with gaming the story is only true for the moment. If you played the previous game session again, it wouldn't turn out the same, so you can't immortalize it in the same manner.

[Rich Forest]

Hi Johannes,

Interesting question.  I think this thread is already starting to reveal some of the patterns of how we use tense during gaming, and some interesting ones at that.  Of course, I have to add a complication—

What we think we do, and what we really do, might be different.  My instinct is to say, yeah, I tend to use the present tense most of the time.  Is that true?  I think so, but I'm not really sure because I've never recorded a game session and checked.  Now our self-report data may be all you need.  Certainly, it's a fine place to start your investigation.  But if your work is intended to be fairly rigorous, you might need to gather real data, and even then, it'll be hard to start generalizing without a bunch of data, from a bunch of people.  

Here's one more place to start gathering data: the Indie-netgaming group.  I suspect that they have transcripts of some of their games.  I know that this one is available online, and I think some of the members (Paganini, Greyorm, Bob McNamee, others?) could help you out more with this.  This would give you some actual data to analyze.  It's possible that the language use in these games is similar to the spoken language use of the gamers who are represented in the transcripts.  But even then, don't forget that this is a written text, not a spoken one, so the language use in here might be different from the way these folks would use language in a face-to-face situation.  So this is another, additional way to approach your topic, but I would also suggest that it would be insufficient on its own.  This might be good data, and at least would give you a place to start looking at how tense is used in one medium of roleplaying.  Of course, if you do use this data in your paper, you should get permission from the people who are in the transcripts.  Good luck with your paper.  I'll be interested in seeing where you go with it.  

Rich Forest

[Jared A. Sorensen]

I used to write in the present tense but I will not do so in the future.

[Shreyas Sampat]

On the note of games and IIEE:
It occurs to me that there are games that have rules that explicitly or implicitly require a certain kind of narration.  This includes games that have resolution with clear IIEE marking - d20 with its (hazy) Execution mechanic, Torchbearer that describes Intention and Effect - and games that are set in a particular medium, like De Profundis and Wraiths.  These pretty effectively confine their narration in one way or another.

As I've observed it, Intention is the only thing that is talked about in future tense.  The other three can be talked about in past tense, but as M. J. Young points out, all four also use the present tense freely.  That all refers to discussion of mechanically-determined actions.  Unmechanical talk can fall into many tenses, because of the requirements of exposition.

[talysman]

I think the grammar question is a thorny one, because technically english is like finnish: it does not actually have a future tense, at least according to linguistics. what tense is "the train leaves promptly at 6pm"?

the "will" and "shall" forms are modal auxillaries that indicate ideas other than tense ("will" represents intention, "shall" represents necessity.) however, back when the first english grammars were being written, they were patterned after latin grammars -- and latin has a future tense, as do the other romance languages.

so the answer to the original question: my experience with the past tense pretty much matches everyone else; I've never heard anyone narrate their actions in the past tense. it's always either the present tense or possibly the modal auxillaryt forms, which make sense in roleplaying (you are, after all, indicating your intention when you say "I'll open the door slowly" or "Athelar will chop off the miscreant's head!")

tense seems to change for certain kinds of games, however. which game was it that specifies which tense the players and the GM must use? puppetland?

[Andrew Martin]

Tense seems to change for certain kinds of games, however. which game was it that specifies which tense the players and the GM must use? puppetland?

That's right. It's here: http://www.johntynes.com/rl_puppetland_www.html

[Bob McNamee]

The current transcripts of the on-line Universalis game can be found in the Gaming Page section of my webpage.
http://www.geocities.com/bob_mcnamee/html/gaming.htm
It goes by the name of  "Greed for the Great One's Gems"

edited to correct url
Enjoy!

[Johannes]

Hi Rich,

I'm aware of the difference between the ideal and the actual. I will base my paper on actual game discourse which I have recorded. The material is from four groups and six campaigns and it will total about 10 hours of talk. The problem of generalizing is still a big one. I'll probably have to do a case study and treat my findings as such. This of course is not a problem in my field of study (Literary criticism and theory) which is mostly case studies on novels etc. I don't believe that my paper could (or should) cover all actual gaming situations, but I hope that I can provide a model and vocabulary to discuss RPG narration on a more general level and in relation to more traditional types of narration.

I find this question very interesting as well. One of my hypothesis is that during game the players (this includes the GM also) use present tense to indicate that what they narrate is narrated as it happens in the game world. In this case the present tense is used to refer to the present moment of the game world. In his/her speech the player creates a possible world where whatever s/he narrated takes place as s/he narrates.

BUT there is a very important but: The other players must approve to the narrated event (and the new possible world it created) if the game is to maintain its coherence as a narrative text and proceed. Usually the other players approve by continuing to play without questioning the narrated event or saying something like "Yes." or "You do that.".

But sometimes there is a conflict and some or all of the other players object ("This is stoneage – you cannot do that", "According to the optional rule on p. NN of Rules Companion NN you must test XYZ to do that." etc.) this results in a disagreement which interrupts the narrative. The disagreement is then resolved in some manner. The resulting negotiations can involve about anything: the rules,, die rolls, the source material, common sense, informal conventions... but in the end it comes to the social relations and power of the players. Who will have his/her way and who will step back. The GM usually has the power to rule in these situations but GM power is not the only power involved. Some people are dominating and can have their way more often than others and weaker players can team up and some players like some other player more then others and so on. Its important to note that the GNS-goals and premises and stance are at work here.

After the negotiation (negotiation might be too diplomatic word for some situations, like very strong GMs) the possible world created in the narration of the first player is either approved after all, changed, or rejected. This results in a new consensus (forced or voluntary) of the game world (approved or changed) or just continuing play from the point before the narration of the first player (rejected). The game world however is not strictly speaking the same any more even if the possible world of the first player was rejected by the group – one of its features is now that whatever the first player was trying to do is (at least conditionally) impossible.

To sum up: First there is a consensus of the game-world (which is also a possible world, Ryan uses the term TAW – text actual world). Then a player suggest that another possible world (which s/he narrates) should become the game-world. The group then decides whether they approve or not. This happens in the actual world of our everyday experience and its not part of the narrative (fictional) discourse of the game-text.

Making the decision can involve the use of game mechanics and their interpretation and negotiations among the players – most often the decision however takes the form of a silent agreement. After the decision has been made new consensus of the game-world emerges which is to say that new possible world has become the game-world. When we look back at the whole process of konsensus-suggestion-approval-konsensus we see that the group has produced a state-event-state-sequence typical to all narrative plots. This tempts me to see the described process as the minimum narrative unit of RPGs.

The point of the use of tense is that present tense was used to refer to events that took place in a possible world other than the consensus game-world as the events took place. The present tense referred to the present moment but not the present moment of the game-world I suppose another way to put it is to say that the player narrated the event as something that should or might happen in the game-world.

I know that my view differs from the IIEE-model and I'd like to hear what you think of all this brainstorming. IMO my model is more general and incorporates more factors of the actual gaming situation and its context than the IIEE-model, but it still fits the GNS-theory and does not contradict it. This line of thinking would also incorporate RPG theory to the general theory of narrative fiction. As I said this is still brainstorming and I might be wrong so I appreciate all criticism and comments.

Thanks to all who have provided me with insights and potential sources. I hope the discussion will go on.

[Johannes]

Our group tends to use present tense in the manner I described above: to refer to events thet are taking place in a possible world.

The Finnish present tense is used in a future sense when the PCs (or the players) plan their activities. As far as I understand it's not used to narrate happened (or happening) game events. There are of course misundertandings when using the present tense like this. Players don't always know whether something happened or was just planned. Example:

Player 1: Lets walk into the castle and see what's going on.
Player 2: Yeah! What is going on there?
GM: You arrive at the gate and there's a guard. [So I'm not going to tell you what's going on in the castle. You must get past the guard first.]

The GM understands Player 1's line as planning the actions. Player 2 understands it as executing actions. I'm having hard time translating this nuance into English so ask for better explanation if you need one. (Sorry)

Past tense is rare and it's mostly used to refer to events that have already been narrated in the game. I don't think that players discussing previous events really belongs here. It's like discussing a movie you have seen with your friend and not like seeing the movie for the first time.

Sometimes howevert he past tense is used to narrate events for the first time. This occurs when a player wants to narrate something that took place before the present momen of the game. I hope this example clarifyes what I mean:

GM: So you have spent the night in the town and hit the road around noon.
Player: I went to the market in the morning and bought some food for us.
GM: The road is dusty and there's little traffic...

[Le Joueur]

Hello Johannes,

Welcome to the Forge.

The other players must approve to the narrated event (and the new possible world it created) if the game is to maintain its coherence as a narrative text and proceed. Usually the other players approve by continuing to play without questioning the narrated event or saying something like "Yes" or "You do that."

This sounds like The Lumpley Principle as denoted by Ron Edwards (either Vincent or Ron can better explain it than I).  I found most of my game design on concepts like this, but take it a step farther than traditional American midwestern gaming.  Instead of arbitration handled solely by a 'gamemaster,' each denoted entity within the imaginary construct of 'the game' is associated with its own proprietor (as described in my model of gaming).  The 'direction' the game takes while being literally a 'group decision,' there is usually some centralization of 'pressure' (as I described in my article about leadership).  These are a couple of issues seldom dealt with in the 'approval of narrated events' as far as I've seen.

I hope these links help you clarify what you'd like to discuss and give your thoughts a starting point to build to bigger and better things.  Good luck on the writing.

Fang Langford