slouching towards narrativism

[joshua neff]

As some of you know, I've been running a Mage narrative for about a month or so. I slimmed the rules down in order to make it more narrativist, & after listening to Ron talking up Sorcerer at GenCon, I told my players (much to their approval) that I would be trying to make it even more narrativist by incorporating some of Ron's concepts into the game (basically, rolling for conflict resolution rather than task resolution, failures being "bad consequences" rather than the character looking like a dick, & augmentation of successes).
But then we were talking, & two of my players said that while they love what were doing, there's still something missing. & I think I've figured out what it is.
Premise.
Basically, I dropped the ball. I never really thought about what the Premise of the narrative would be, & so subsequently I haven't been pushing it & the story & conflicts haven't reflected it. Instead, what we have is "Josh Presents: a whole lotta weird shit". Which I think I'm pretty good at--but it doesn't really add up to anything. Nothing to grab us. No big payoff.

So, my question is this: Any advice? Is this narrative salvageable? Can I insert & pump up a big ol' grabby Premise, 5 sessions into the run? & if so, how?

[jburneko]

I would like to second this discussion of: How to add Premise AFTER the game has begun.  Because my Deadlands game is in the same state as Josh's Mage game.  My girlfriend kindly pointed out to me that Deadland's implicit premise is The Role of Evil in Good Deeds.  This steming from Heroic Outlaws, Hucksters who contact evil demons to do good deeds and such.

Basically I had been slowly developing each players individual subplot as intermidently interspersed with a lot of one-shots.  But I'd like to drop the one shots and just focus on the sub-plots.  So, I've started setting up my next session to really bring everyone's personal subplots into focus and I've ended up with what Josh sums up as: A Lot of Weird Shit.

So, is there anyway to slowly chisle or sculpt a big blobby game into a lean mean Premise driven machine?

Jesse

[Paul Czege]

Hey Josh, Jesse,

Is this narrative salvageable? Can I insert & pump up a big ol' grabby Premise, 5 sessions into the run?

I would like to second this discussion of: How to add Premise AFTER the game has begun.

I think one of the stumbling blocks you may be coming up against is that in the context of their historical experiences, your players have no reason to believe that they can actually author a thematic resolution to anything. The underlying subtext of campaign is that the purpose of playing is to keep playing. Resolving themes isn't part of the equation. I think you need prove to the players that this underlying assumption just isn't true. And I think you should be aggressive about it. You're more than five sessions into a run. Resolve a Kicker for one of your players in your next session, or if you're not using Kickers, resolve the foundational dilemma of one of the players' character concept. You can definitely do this in one session. Throw in all the right NPC's and make it happen. Take a look at Christopher Kubasik's description of how he  resolved the foundational dilemma of a character in one play session of a Pendragon game; it's in part four of his Interactive Toolkit essays on the RPG.net Oracle:

http://www.rpg.net/oracle/essays/itoolkit4.html

And then let that player reinvent his character. Your players will be slack-jawed at the end of the session, trust me.

Paul

[Uncle Dark]

Can premise be ret-conned?

Hurm, given how much full-blown premise is supposed to guide both PC creation and fleshing out the setting, it might be hard.

Step back and take alook at the wierd shit you've been tossing at the players.  Look for common themes, both in what you present them with and how the players have their characters respond.

What I'm getting at is that there may be an unspoken, covert premise (or the seeds for one) in what has already gone by.  Is there some common theme in how the PCs are approaching their problems?  Do they fall back on certain strategies repeatedly?  Favor some NPCs over others?  Why?

Do the antagonists share any goals?  Methods?  Aspects of presentation (appearance, speech, mode of transit...)

Basically, look at what you have already established in terms of style, symbolism, and tone to see if there are hidden assumptions in there.

Then go to the players and discuss premise with them up front.  Own your mistake, tell them what you've found in your analysis, and ask them what they want to do about it.

It could be that they thought you'd had a premise all along, and that you were just being coy about it.

Lon

[Mike Holmes]

I gotta agree with Lon on this one. Look at what has been interesting to the players in the past runs. Perhaps it has been the wierdness, or violence, or something. Then make a premise out of it. For wierdness (for example), just mix with the Sorcerer premise, and get "How much wierdness can you tolerate to get where you're going?"

Then import a "Weirdness" Madness Meter from UA (completely portable to any game) and you now even have a mechanical means of reinforcing the premise.

Note that I find that it is really difficult to make any premise work for chracters that don't have strong drives. Identify those character drives and use them as premise or to cross-polinate withthe premise. Or, if you've somehow let your players get away with making characters who have no goals, force players to define some. For fun, have an Uber-Directorial power moment where the player gets to define some big change to the game world that gives his character a meaning.

I think that, looked at from the right perspective, you might see injecting premise late as an opportunity to build a premise unique to a group of already developed characters. Might not be easy, but you'll do it.

Mike Holmes

[Mike Holmes]

On 2001-08-14 18:48, jburneko wrote:

So, is there anyway to slowly chisle or sculpt a big blobby game into a lean mean Premise driven machine?

Jesse

Nope, do it with a bolt of thunder.

For example, decide that the premise is "In a good/evil world is it worth taking sides?" Then, after wierdness number one in the next game, have the hidden underground of good come out to the players and ask if the characters would like to join. Whether the characters want to or not, tell them that the underground will watch them and evaluate their activities for the next couple of months to determine suitability. During this time have further wierdness and bad guys show up to get beaten by the characters (and maybe make a counteroffer). The players may succeed, but this places their families and friends in danger. Will the characters continue to be good guys, bad guys, or will they decide that the fight is not for them (and watch the innocents suffer around them)?

And by the end of the session you have a premise. Kinda cliche, the example, but you can see that you can inject premise quickly if you want to. Subtle is actually harder but could be rewarding as well. The problem with subtle is that it takes more time, and by the time it's there, the players may have lost interest (exactly the problem an OTE game I ran).

Mike Holmes

[joshua neff]

Mike, Paul, Lon--

You guys have helped crystallize a lot of stuff in my head & point in some good directions. Thanks.

Taking Paul's advice, we clearly resolved 2 character kickers in the most recent session, & upon further reflection I thought that at least 1 nore character's kicker has, in fact, been resolved. The session went really well (in a number of ways), & I'm much more excited about the future of this narrative than I had been.

I also looked back over my notes & found a small scribble about the main conflict being "madness vs. sanity"--which ties in nicely with Mike's "how much weirdness can you take?" & also with a lot of the reactions the PCs have had to the various weird occurances. So, I think the premise is a lot clearer than I'd thought, & I'll be pushing it more in later play.

Cheers, guys.