player character premises

[contracycle]

Hiya,

Just wanted to ask if people are conscious of the character premises brought to the table by players.  I imagine the root concept of a character is/strongly related to the character thumbnail, as it were, the "mighty-thewed warrior" type initial conception.

So, to questions:
- is anyone conscious of these premises?
- have you seen character premises alter during play?
- have you seen any relation between the story premise and the character premises?
- have you altered, or found altered, a story premise in response to character premises?

Umm, I'm sure there are more things I could ask, but that will do for now.

[jburneko]

I REALLY want to respond to this but I'm not entirely sure how.  So, I'll start by saying that I think you're confusing, Premise, premise (I wish we had a different word for this), and Character Concept.  Let me define these clearly as best I can.

premise - This is simply a motivation to play AT ALL.  D&D's basic premise is simply questing for fame, glory and profit.  If you read a game and are confused as to what the characters are supposed to be doing it is because it is lacking a basic premise.

Premise - This applies largely to Narrativists and is esencially derived from its parallel litterary meaning.  A Premise is an issue, usually of moral weight, that the majority of characters are dealing with.  Put simply it is the question in a story that all the characters are trying to answer.

Character Concept - This is largely a set of descriptors or elements of characterization that define how a character is presented.  The Gentleman Thief and The Femme Fatal, are basic Character Concepts.

I think what you are asking is about how and when Character Concepts comes into conflict with Premise and I think that if you examine these concepts from the above definitions you'll discover that they don't have to come into conflict.

First of all I said that Premise is a question that all the characters are trying to answer.  The key here is that the CHARACTERS do not have to be conciously answering the question.  That's why Author Stance is so important to the Narrativist.  It is the PLAYER who is conscious of the question, not necessarily the character.  The PLAYER is authoring an answer through the CHARACTER.

So to some degree, if you are playing a Premise driven game, you are examing the issue, as a player, of how does my Character Concept deal with the given Premise.  If I said that the Premise is LOVE, this says nothing about the various Character Concepts.  The characters can still be Gentleman Theives, Femme Fatales, and Grizzeled Warriors.  It's just that the situations will be asking the players to determine How does the Gentleman Thief react to love?  And so on.

Does this answer your questions?

Jesse

[contracycle]

Not precisely.

I suspect that in the character concept Grizzled Veteran there is an implicit story premise.  In order to be validated as a grizzled veteran, the GV needs an opportunity to demonstrate their grizzledness, and their status as a veteran.  I suspect that by choosing this character, the player is asking/suggesting the GM provide suitable opportunitites for expressing this concept.  This is part of the reward the player is looking for.

I wonder: does the Grizzled Veteran sometimes become the Grizzled Veteran With A Heart Of Gold?  does the initial concept, and character "premise", change with the course of play?  Or at least, has anyone ever noticed this happening.

Several people have mentioned that they have experienced their GM-story Premise altered by events in play.  Could this be because the character "premises" are tending towards a different story, simply by virtue of those character "premises"?  Could it be that for premise X there is an optimum sub-set of character "premises"/types?

Alternatively, could you look over your character "premises" and thus select an appropriate GM-story Premise that merges the implicit charadcter stories?  If you had a Grizzled Veteran and a Femme Fatal, perhaps you can identify certain strong themes: The Soldier/Spy team, The Beautiful Widow and the Man With No Name, The Princess and her Loyal Servant?  Obviously this is going to get harder with a large group of characters.

When I see games talking about how characters might need a good mix of skills and so on, is this not implicitly directing us to a certain sub-set of character types (one from each box, loosely) and hence implicitly a certain story type?  A story about three Street Samurai is going to be different to a story about a samurai, a decker and a fixer.

Any thoughts?

[jburneko]

I think what you're saying is very interesting and I think I 'get' what you're saying but I'm having a very hard time responding to it because you're mixing a lot of things together that I think are working at cross purposes so I will try to break it down into pieces.

You asked if a Character Concept can have story potential built into it and yes it can but mostly as it relates to some Premise.  This is why creating a character around a given Premise is so important.  But I still maintain that a Character Concept is not a Premise.

For example, you mentioned that if you had a Grizzled Veteran you are going to need elements that allow him to display his 'Grizzeledness' and this is true.  More so early on than latter.  The problem is that if all you're doing is throwing in elements that allow the player to exemplify his Character Concept what you have is a portrait and not a story.  A portrait doesn't try to say anything. It doesn't really have a theme, instead it illustrates someone and kind of leaves any judgement up to the reader.

This idea of portrait vs. story came to me when I asked Ron for his thoughts on the movie Pi.  His response was something like, 'Interesting Portrait, not much story.'  Personally, I find Pi a very compelling film and it took me a while to figure out what he was talking about.  In the film we have a 'mad scientist' figure.  The mad scientist Character Concept if you will.  And we see him do Mad Sciency things and in the end... in the end he is driven mad!  So you see, it doesn't really say anything.  It just shows us an interesting portrait of a mad scientist.  Anything we the viewer are to glean about mad scientists is left up to us.  The film itself does not say anything about mad science or mad scientists.  The character never develops a Theme based on any kind of Premise.

So, while you will need elements that illustrate the characteristics of your Character Concept in order for the story to trully be ABOUT that character he needs to be oriented in some direction.  That direction is the global Premise around which all the characters are built.  That is if you're using Premise as a guiding factor for your game at all.

This brings me to the last point where you mention the notion of creating a group of character with a good mix of skills.  I would maintain that by putting the priority of having a good mix of skills first you are placing Premise and there by story second.  By putting the distribution of skills up first you are considering obstacles and challenges which in hindsight may result in something that resembles a story but you are not building a Premise based scenario.

Jesse

[Ron Edwards]

Hey,

I think I see what Gareth's getting at - and my answer is, "Yes."

To break it down a little ...

1) Sticking, for present purposes, with the very specific Narrativist notion of Premise, I see two sub-categories, or maybe approaches. One is the Premise arising out of setting, mainly, such that characters do not START highly "attuned" to that Premise. They get that way through play, by interacting with emotionally charged elements in the setting. The other is the Premise arising out of within-character background and concept, such that the character hits the ground running, and the setting is there pretty much for the character's intensity to shine in.

2) So, given which one (or tendency toward one) in a given game situation, all sorts of changes and developments are possible. Say it's a setting-based Premise situation, and you have the Grizzled Veteran - well, it's only reasonable to expect that the GV will develop and grow into SOMETHING more, over the course of time of interacting with the setting. Or say it's a character-based Premise situation, and this Grizzled Veteran is already highly-nuanced and full of interesting conflict - well, similarly, it's only reasonable to expect that the GV's conflicts will be resolved and deconstructed and otherwise, well, change over time.

(Looking down, modestly, he notes that Sorcerer actually has a mechanic to express this very thing - but then again, Jonathan Tweet did it first in Everway.)

Anyway, I hope some of that lends some support or at least structure for the question at hand.

Best,
Ron

[Ron Edwards]

Oh yeah.

I also wanted to say that the GM prepping for play based on the Premise possiblities among the PCs is VERY effective. I've been doing this for so long that it's hard to remember not thinking in these terms - to the extent that, when a player says, "we need a [fill-in-the-blank]," it makes no sense to me. Whatever they come up with, the story and issues are going to be about, right?

Well, that's mainly for role-playing with character-driven Premise, so it's not that simple. I've also found that great results can come from letting the PCs be reeeal sketchy, and having enough setting-meat to let them grow into it.

Best,
Ron

[contracycle]

OK, well part of the question was aimed at seeing how people employ premise; I seem to be getting two contradictory forms of premise, one being "a game should have a premise, implicit of explicit" and the other that "premise emerges from the players".

The contradiction here lies in the pre-game prep.  I feel I can't go through character creation until I know what the game will be "about", i.e. I have a premise; but if premise emerges from the players, then I need to go through character creation first.  Problem.

Thus, I wonder if the idea of premise emerging from player behaviour possibly arises from the players developing a premise through the interaction of their characters, i.e. that simply putting characters of a variety of types together starts to develop a dynamic that is itself the "premise" of a story; the story of how these characters interact, in a sense.  This tacit and probably unexpressed premise would interact with any conscious GM-originated premise.  And that lead me to wonder if game-death sometimes occurs not so much due to a clash of play styles and the like, but the fact that some participants my be involved in and expecting a dynamism different to that being generated by other participants; i.e. the individual character and group "stories" are diverging.

In addition, I wonder of the very process of attribute selection - I'm thinking mainly of WoD-style Backgrounds here - should not properly be considered an element of the grand narrative, much like foreshadowing and the initial promise of story direction offered in conventional media.  Frex the good example of the shotgun on the wall, scene in passing in Act 1 in the background, but a major element of Act 3.  To the extent that authors are advised not to include anything that does not drive the plot, raise the tension etc., should character attributes not also fall into this conceptual category?  If a player comes a long with a character with a dependant, is the player not asking/suggesting/demanding that (much like the incidentally observed shotgun) this element of their characters personality become a significant factor in actual play; i.e. should be realised at some later point.

Some of what I am thinking of is based on players heavy on the IC stance; I have more than once found myself thinking that the internal consistency of a given character pretty much demands their death or similar; in the context I have created for them.  The characters "story momentum", one might say, took them "off the map".

If this is the case, then there is an additional tool I can exploit to head this potential off at the pass.  When I present the startup to the players, and we're going through character definition, I might bear in mind that the inter-character dynamic is itself a tacit premise, and both observe and guide this implicit process toward a premise which I feel would support, or at least not challenge, the overall GM-originated story premise which the players mostly experience in Audience stance (I guess).

Furthermore, I think I have seen players alter their "character premises" during play.  I wonder if others have observed this form of behaviour.  I wonder to what extent a GM might intervene in and direct a PC "premise".  Given that most narrative methods distinguish between lead and subsidfiary roles, surely all PC's should be treated as leads in their own story... a story largely defined by the character type, their deviations from type, and the manner in which they are actually played.  Perhaps as a GM I might keep an eye on this too, as a means perhaps of determining whether I am losing them or not.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Gareth,

PART ONE
I'm beginning to see that many people think that Premise means "fixed fate" or "fixed parameters of action" for characters. In that, well, I'm a Character Type X, and we Xes act like "this," so that's what I'll do.

Whereas my entire concept of Premise, for Narrativism, is about FREE reactions to raised questions. Premise in this sense cannot dictate player-character actions - it can define the parameters of a conflict, but not of the decisions and outcomes of that conflict.

Contrast character generation for Vampire - in which playing a Brujah or what-have-you character pretty much determines 80% or more of "how you're supposed to play" - and character generation for Orkworld - in which the Household generally and the character specifically are required to arrive at an individual, local solution to the issue of Trouble.

I consider Orkworld to be very Premise-based and Vampire not to be.

This is why I like to think of Premise in mainly group terms, which is to say, leaving individual (character) (player)responses to Premise open.

Perhaps the problem is confounding "premise" with "genre." The latter is not a very useful word for role-playing, as it blends independent issues of Setting, Premise, and Character Creation into a big glob.

PART TWO
I am not sure what to make of your concern with Premise prior to character creation vs. Premise emerging from character play. I've stated the following points many times:

1) In some games, creating a character brings a Premise into play, due to decisions and commitments made during the character creation process (Sorcerer).
2) In other games, the setting brings a Premise into play, and characters are created in that context (Hero Wars).
3) Combinations of the two range from non-functional (Vampire) to functional (Orkworld).

In all cases, except for the dysfunctional ones, Premise is established very early. SOMEONE, hopefully more than one, in the role-playing group has a very strong idea of it before the first session begins.

Also, I don't see any problem at all with a character changing how he or she relates to the Premise at hand, over time. Again, it's a matter of transforming Premise (question, issue) into Theme (answer, value judgment), and if a character changes over time, then the Themes emerging from his or her actions may change as well.

PART THREE
I agree with you entirely about attribute selection, and as an extension of that, all aspects of character creation. If Premise is a big part of the game's design, then going with the "standard six" or some elaboration of them is absurd.

I suggest that Narrativist RPG design, which by definition relies on coherent Premise, is suited best by attributes OR skills (not both) which relate to the Premise in some way. And yes, that means I think "universal" Narrativist design is impossible and undesirable.

Best,
Ron

[contracycle]

Hiya,

I was not talking about a world-originated character type.  I meant whatever the player thinks of the character as.

[Ron Edwards]

Gareth,

It doesn't matter whether the fixed-character is enforced by the rules or not. I am discussing whether the character is (fictionally speaking) capable of decisions, change, judgment, and actions that mean anything.

[In role-playing terms, of course, I am really asking whether the player is willing and intending to have the character do these things.]

If the character is capable of these things, then he or she offers a good "method" for addressing the Premise - which is no more nor less than to say, he or she is a protagonist.

If the character isn't - whether due to the style of play at hand, or to the rules, or both - then the character is not a protagonist. Such a character might be fun to play, even in a Narrativist context, but would almost certainly be a Watson or other foil-type character.

Overall, I still cannot see the contradiction that you raised earlier. If a Premise arises out of a character concept, that is fine; if it arises out of other story elements (geography, history), that's fine too.

Am I missing something?

Best,
Ron

[contracycle]

on premise and characters

I think that we we are missing each others points is the number of premises that we are dealing with.  In this regard, I am positing that in RPG, with a multi-author structure, there are multiple premises, whereas in more orthodox media there is only a single premise.

Thus, in the Novel, the author introduces nothing which does not contribute to the premise, orders characters in relation to the premise (even if only subconsioucly) and resolves the conflict implicit in the premise over the course of the story.

In a multi-author environment (regardless of whether players are consciously aware of operating in such capacity) it appears to me that there are necessarily multiple premises.  The danger this appears to raise is that even if the premise of the GM-originated "story" is enacted, if the conflict is introduced and resolved, I submit that it may still fail to enage players as the implicit story they are generating is not in fact resolved throught the resolution of the shared conflict.

Firstly, this arises from the perception that players to at least some extent bring a story to the table with their characters.  If the single author is advised to align their cast of characters with the premise of the whole work, then we should recognise that player characters are/often arranged WITHOUT reference to the whole work.  One could make the leap that they are in fact aligned with an implicit "story" that is encompassed within the player character.  This is a premise distinct from any which may run through the overall work, and need not be conscious or deliberate.

Secondly, it may be that even without a context, the selection of character identities, and the fact that by default the players cooperate toward a shared goal, implies that ANY group of characters has a number of "story boilerplates" that would match the variables they have selected.  A story could thus be composed (by a third party, a GM) entirely from the attributes of characters as chosen by players.

Fourth, in line with another thread, I think that setting provides an implicit premise, too.

Thirdly, I suggest that a lot of the confusion about how to use "premise" in RPG might be resolved by recognising that there are multiple and implicit premises running through the material expression of the game you try to run.

there is: the premise implicit in the world (say, the war between elves and humans or whatever), a premise arising from each character, another arising from their synthesis, and another originating from the GM.  

I suggest premise does not operate in RPG the same way it works in linear media because the primary characters cannot be subordinated to the central premise; they are (largely) outside of the GM's control.  Instead, the GM should attempt to find hooks that bind the character premises to the shared prmeise of the scenario they intend to run.

[TrizzlWizzl]

I agree with contra (big surprise :smile:).  My feeling regarding the concept of "premise" is that there is indeed all kinds of premises all over the place and a GM's 'job' is to weave them together as best he can in order to craft some kind of story out of it.  In linear media the creator or creators have total control over the story and can shape the various premises into a holistic narrative; in RPGs, however, a given 'character premise' is often times out of the GMs immediate control, which means he has to use the tools at hand to get one premise working with another.

My answer to contra's various initial questions would be:
- is anyone conscious of these premises?
I think a character's premise generally becomes known by all players at some point during the game, otherwise there wouldn't much of a reason to have one in the first place (other than, I suppose, the individual player having some kind of internal rationale).  Premise with a capital P isn't too much different... I think it's generally left up to the individual player whether or not others are aware of his Premise, revealing it (perhaps forced to reveal it by the GM in-game) at a point that he feels is relevant to the story.  I suppose I don't see much difference between premise and Premise except for the question mark.  If a character has a premise then, IMO, he inherently has a Premise.

Example: one player in my game created a rogue/cleric who masqueraded has a cleric of a 'good' deity.  His premise was Sneaky Holy Man Who Feels Compelled to do Good Yet be Deceptive While He Does It.  His Premise was "Should I decieve my companions during our quest, even though to do so could effectively bring them to harm?".  One translates into the other with relative ease.  (FWIW the cleric was eventually found out via GM manipulation, which created some great story and character development).

   -have you seen character premises alter during play?
I have.  One of my characters began the game with the premise/Premise of City Girl Uneasy in Dank Dungeon/ "When does keeping your hands clean mean watching your friends die?", which over the course of about 20 or so gaming sessions she transferred nicely to Battle Honed Wizard/ "Why let a few monsters stand in the way of learning ancient secrets?".  I didn't really know where she was going character-wise when she created her character and neither did she.  Through the course of roleplaying we found out... it was pretty fun.

   - have you seen any relation between the story premise and the character premises?
Not so much.  No inherent relation anyway, besides the relations I was able to draw through the creation of appropriate plot hooks and other such devices.  I like to leave that gray area (the relationship between story premise and character premise) up to the player, see where he goes with it.  More often than not we're both pleased with the result.

   -have you altered, or found altered, a story premise in response to character premises?
Interesting question.  Usually I wind up forming my story premise after I ascertain my characters' various premises, so that the overall 'portrait' will encompass the stories my players wish to tell with their characters.

[Blake Hutchins]

Premature though this might be (because I'll start a more detailed thread in the near future), I'm starting a game using The Pool.  In presenting the 3-page description of the fantasy setting, I gave the players the game's premise (ripped directly from an example in Ron's latest essay):  "Is the life of a friend worth the safety of a community?"  I also asked the players to create characters who will hit the ground running, that is, characters who already have some kind of inherent conflict in their stories.  Finally, I'm requiring the players to talk amongst themselves and select a group context that makes sense for their various characters.

What's been discussed as character premise I'd call a character's core conflict.  This is distinct from concept, since a given concept (e.g. "Grizzled Veteran") lends itself to a host of different core conflicts.  Borrowing the idea of Hegelian dialogue, you might call this component the character's Thesis, to be brought into contact with the Antithesis (campaign Premise embodied via story/game obstacles) to produce the Synthesis (resolution and Theme).

Best,

Blake

[edited for style b/c I'm an anal writer-type]

[ This Message was edited by: Blake Hutchins on 2001-10-19 16:03 ]

[Mike Holmes]

Hegelian Synthesis applied to character plot development! I'm ecstatic. I think that I've been looking for this analysis all my life.  :smile:

Mike

[Laurel]

Hey Mike?

On 2001-10-19 16:32, Mike Holmes wrote:
Hegelian Synthesis applied to character plot development! I'm ecstatic. I think that I've been looking for this analysis all my life.  :smile:

This particular thread has me seriously confused, but Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis is something I grokk really well.  In this thread or a new one (whichever is more fitting) could you go into how the idea of Character Premise/Story Premise relationships in Narrative games interrelates with Hegel's dialectic process in more detail?  I think that will help me a whole lot.