Revisiting Relationship Between Humanity and Premise

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Jesse,

You would receive an 'F' from me in my bio/movies course.

I understand that all four outcomes are desirable and "good story" from an authorial point of view. I'm talking about from a sympathetic audience point of view. Think, undesirable outcome = tragety, desirable outcome = comedy or some such.

Author vs. audience? What? No, you're missing it. We're not miscommunicating at all; I understand you perfectly. What you are saying is incorrect. It is demonstrably not the case that people in general "prefer happy endings." Repeating that they do is common, but false; all cinema economics/history argues otherwise.

My point: all of my listed outcomes are audience-friendly outcomes. Themes are not constructed by the author; they result from audience reactions. Themes are not didactic messages "hidden" in stories for enterprising people to dig out. That is a key point that has been mis-taught in American lit for decades.

Your very next sentence demonstrates my point perfectly.

If anything I would probably be happier as an audience member with outcome #1 or #4 just because I'm a sucker for ruin and damnation endings. But from an empathic/sympathetic POV they are undesirable. If WE were Joyce, WE would not want to turn out like #1 or #4.

Whoa. What makes you different or more widely-tolerant than any other audience member out there? Your comment about the empathy/sympathy is incorrect. No one, watching or reading a story, "is" Joyce. No one. It's impossible. What everyone is, you included, is someone who can understand her situation and can grasp why she does or does not end up in a given way. Well-told, any of the outcomes is valid - and I do not mean in terms of literary criticism, or in terms of bogus author-interviews, but in terms of audiences paying money, feeling stuff, getting into it, enjoying themselves, and speaking well of the story to their friends.

Romeo and Juliet comiting suicide is an emotionally undesirable outcome. Romeo and Juliet is not a bad story.

Is that clearer?

In illustrating your fundamental misperception of the issues, yes, it is. Dude, I'm being very harsh on you here, and it's important. Over and over, you try to please people in a very strange way - making things worse (more railroaded, more "sure," more simplistic) in order to accomodate what you perceive as their inability to enjoy the things that you enjoy. This shows up across all your GMing issues that you raise here and, in the last few Adept Press threads you've posted in, I think we've finally cleaned away all the connective tissue to see the tumor.

Why not give people credit for enjoying the same stuff you do? For the same reasons? With the same depth of perspective? With the same insights? With the same (or better!) ability to bring such things into a role-playing situation?

Best,
Ron

[jburneko]

First of all... You teach a bio-movie course?  That sounds really cool.

Okay, back on topic.  

I still feel like I'm being misunderstood.  I don't *think* I'm insulting the general movie going public's intelligence.  I'm not saying people prefer happy endings.  If I am, then I don't know I am.

Let me phrase it as a question.  What exactly is going on when we're sitting at home watching a movie and my girlfriend suddenly sits up, starts throwing popcorn at the screen, yelling, "STUPID WOMAN!  DON'T DO THAT!!!"?

Is she "not getting it"?  No.  Is she some how not enjoying it?  No.  Would she some how prefer it if the woman in the movie REALLY didn't do what she was doing?  No.  Does she think it's a bad story?  No.

But obviously she emotionally disagrees with the choice of the protagonist.  And when those choices lead to equally emotionally distressing outcomes, we either feel a sense of satisfaction (because we saw it coming and were pleased at the protagonists, come uppance) OR sense of uneasy contemplation because (hey, I would have done the same thing and shit, I don't want to be there.  Hmmmm.)

Now, it's time to back up.  BACK WAY UP.

First of all this whole thread started with this:

Premise: Is intellectual knowledge more valuable than other people?
Humanity is... emotional connection to other people.

I saw those coupled together and realized that the question, AS WORDED, is unanswerable via play because the Humanity Definition forces an answer: No.

It was a bit of a semantic game but frankly I'm glad I asked it because it's lead to a lot of interesting questions.

What I think Christopher and Fang and couple other people are trying to tell me is this:

That the real Premise is: "To what degree is intellectual knowledge more valuable than other people?"

That's what the Humanity Score in Sorcerer is REALLY tracking.  It's defintion has already placed more value on the Other People part.  The point of play is to explore the extent of that continumm.  That IS answerable by each player thanks to the Humanity Score.

I get that.  I think I got that before.  I don't think I could have articulated it that clearly before this thread but I think I knew that before.

Flash Forward.

I think fundamentally what you're saying Ron is that I'm allowing my biases and personal preferences for CERTAIN KINDS of stories to interfer with my GMing and that's a conclusion I've been independently coming to for a long while now.

Jesse

[szilard]

First of all this whole thread started with this:

Premise: Is intellectual knowledge more valuable than other people?
Humanity is... emotional connection to other people.

I saw those coupled together and realized that the question, AS WORDED, is unanswerable via play because the Humanity Definition forces an answer: No.

It was a bit of a semantic game but frankly I'm glad I asked it because it's lead to a lot of interesting questions.

To play the semantic game with you, consider a substitution into the premise here so that it reads:

Premise2: Is intellectual knowledge more valuable than Humanity?

I think what you are saying forces your answer to this to be "No. The role of Humanity is to define the valuable, so - given the nature of humanity - the answer has to be in the negative."

...but that is false. Premise2 doesn't pose a nonsensical question. It is a question that not only makes sense, but will define the tension in the game. If the answer was obviously "No," then either:

1) the characters would all pursue humanity and abandon intellectual pursuits whenever there was a conflict

or

2) they would sometimes pursue intellectual knowlege at the expense of humanity, which would be clearly the wrong thing to do.

But the acts in (2) aren't always clearly wrong, therefore the answer to Premise2 is not clearly "No."

Does that make sense?

Stuart

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

To back Stuart up on this one: Sorcerer play is predicated on the idea that it is at least conceivable, in the case of this player-character, that emotional connections among people can be sacrificed. Why? Well, that's part of character creation.

An utterly villainous character spits on the Humanity definition. A more protagonist-worthy character is willing to bend it a little, for something important. What is so damn important to your character that some human connections can maybe be sacrificed a little, to achieve it?

Without answering that question - and automatically, thereby, challenging the absolute primacy of Humanity Definition Uber Alles - the game is unplayable.

To address the question of your girlfriend and the screen, I don't think I want to presume to speak for her in the specific. I will break such behavior down into two categories.

1. The viewer is enjoying "being at the movies" rather than "watching a movie." Since the priority is to interact socially with the real people nearby, that's what he or she does - make a lot of noise, position oneself relative to the characters ("I would never do that"), comment on technical failures of the movie or its narrative assumptions, and so on. Sometimes this is all very good-spirited, and sometimes it's not. But it isn't actually watching the movie in any sense resembling story-stuff.

2. The viewer is verbalizing a form of appreciation of the movie, articulating internal tension that the movie has generated. He or she is engaged, in full, but must express that engagement by identifying the "path not taken" by the character. "No! Don't open that door!", in this sense, is part and parcel of enjoying the character opening the door, and indeed, if the character does not, the person is disappointed.

These two behaviors can be pretty hard to tell apart, although there are several key signs, such as certain pacing details of the behavior, or seeing whether the person can actually recount the basic plot accurately afterwards (many people can tell you why Pulp Fiction was "just a comedy" but cannot articulate the plot, e.g.).

The first behavior is irrelevant to Narrativist role-playing; given that most of the people are committed to this sort of play, such behavior is simply dysfunctional, in the same sense that not caring about "winning" when playing Gamist is literally discourteous to everyone else. The second behavior is, of course, quite welcome and constitutes a lot of the OOC dialogue during many games that I'm in.

Best,
Ron

[jburneko]

I think I need to reflect on all this.  I think Ron is working on some subtle technical level that I'm just not seeing.  So here's one last attempt to articulate what I'm trying to say.

Tragety is not an invalid story-telling technique.  However, no one wants tragety in their life.  The point to reading or watching a tragic story is to witness and understand an example of situations, choices, behaviors and in some sense values that lead to tragic outcomes, so that we may better recognize and avoid those values and choices in our own lives.

Thus a story that ends with a Sorcerer going to 0 Humanity can ONLY serve to illustrate why valuing whatever Humanity was defined as, is so vitally important.

At least that's why *I* watch tragic movies.  And when someone tells me, "I don't like 'sad' movies", I tell them the above.

Now, whether you ARGEE with the story's "argument" or not is an entirely different matter.

Jesse

[Mike Holmes]

Given those definitions (and I'm not saying I agree or not), then the "right "way to play is to either author a comedy or a tragedy. Yes, Humanity defines morality for purposes of the story. But if people didn't break with morality then we wouldn't have tragedies.

So, the question of the theme of play is "wither comedy or tragedy" in the most simple terms. See how the question has not been answered until play happens?

"Killing is bad" is not a theme. "Choosing to Kill even when you know it's bad" is a theme, as is "Choosing not to kill because you know it's bad."

Mike

[clehrich]

Yes, Humanity defines morality for purposes of the story. But if people didn't break with morality then we wouldn't have tragedies. ...
"Killing is bad" is not a theme. "Choosing to Kill even when you know it's bad" is a theme, as is "Choosing not to kill because you know it's bad."

There is a third option, of course, which is "choosing to kill, even though you know it's bad, in the name of the good."

It seems to me that if Humanity is defined in absolute terms, then it's got little to do with Humanity.  Not that it's unplayable, of course, but the problem Stuart is having seems to be that a fixed definition of Humanity leaves relatively few options.  I'd agree --- but I also think that as the absolute definition intersects with the Premise of the game, the question is going to become how a broader conception of Humanity is reconceptualized in the face of an absolute.  That's what I was saying about Faust: if you define Humanity absolutely, his claim is essentially that the most human thing is to transcend Humanity, which unfortunately puts his soul in Hell.  Thus the tragedy.

[Christopher Kubasik]

Hi guys,

Some of this stuff is beginning to run like rising waters over the banks of my own little brain. But I will respond to Jesse's point:

Jesse, somewhere in that statement of yours, that we watch tragic events to learn from them and avoid that behavior is the rub Ron's been goin' after you about in this thread.  I can't explain it much more clearly than Ron did, so I'll just use an example.

Oedipus Rex is a tragedy.  There is no "lesson" to be learned.  In fact, I saw a lovely production here in L.A. and there was a Q&A with High School students afterward.  The teacher, almost despeately, pleaded with the cast: why couldn't the play offer up some way out for Oedipus from his fate?

Well, cause it doesn't.  In the structure of that play, that's life.

Is Oedipus Rex a bad play.  Um.  No.

We don't (or, at least, I don't) go to plays or movies or read fiction to learn how to live.  I read for the complexity of life.  I don't presume most writers -- who's job it is to hook me with a tale -- really have that much wisdom about life they can cram into 90 minutes while doing everything else a story has to do.

Your assumption that we're doing stories to learn how to be better, to avoid mistakes... I don't know how else to say this but to say, "Not me."

You want the sorcerers in BiblioMania to point, one way or another, as a positive or negative example of behavior.  This, in fact, might not be possible.  And, if I'm lucky, the players might come up with beautifully wrought complications that lead to true tragedy (which is not the same thing as a "sad" ending.)  We'll see.  But I certainly don't expect them to be more moral people by the time the story is over.  

It would, however, be cool if they were more complex people when all was said and done.

Hope you can make the game.

Take care,
Christopher

[jburneko]

Christopher,

I would argue that the lesson of Oedipus Rex is, "Dude, sometimes there ain't no way out!"  It's a fatalistic story telling us that sometimes we just have to "suck up" our Destinys.  The best we can do is keep our arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times and hope that when the ride comes to a complete stop the Gods have chosen to favor us.

Minority Report tells us exactly the opposite.  Minority Report says that we ARE the masters of our own destiny's and that right up until we actually pull the trigger we DO have the power to choose.

As I said, you don't have to AGREE with what the story is "proving" or illustrating.  That's why we all need to still be able to think and analyze and we can't just go to the movies or read books and have life all sorted out for us.

Hey Mike!  So far you've made the best case.  I totally understand what you're saying.  It's that spectrum thing I keep bringing up.

1) I'm not denying the existance of spectrum.  Worded as "where do you fall?" Sorcerer's Premise is totally answerable in play.  Worded as a yes/no question the Humanity definition answers it for you.  That's all I've been saying.

2) I'm also not denying that specifics count.  Yes, in terms of details in terms of that spectrum Ron's original four outcomes are all very different.  One is about cheaping the goal, one is about forsaking the greater goal for smaller more obtainable goal, one is about achieving the greater goal without selling out and one is about not recognizing when the goal is no longer obtainable.  These are all different and they all have different emotional impacts.  

Jesse

[Gordon C. Landis]

Hi all,

I'm really enjoying this thread, and I have a bunch o' stuff written up to say about it . . . but I'm not sure it really adds anything.  I'll re-read and edit it just in case it is helpful . . . but first, an acknowledgement: Ron, the two "hard to distinguish behaviors" thing is great, it really brings home a point about OOC talk in a game that I'm gonna have to find a way I can communicate to others.  Very cool.  And Jesse, I think you're on to a fascinating issue here, to which Sorcerer's tools (Humanity) are only one answer.

For me, Premise is unquestionably all about the spectrum.  Even when worded as a yes/no, it's just a pointer to The Big Picture.  In the example "Is intellectual knowledge more valuable than other people?", we're being told the arena of the story is centered on when intellectual knowledge and other people come into conflict.  But the issues that come up in that context are numerous - What are the ways in which these things can come into conflict?  How can those conflicts be resolved WITHOUT harming one side or the other?  What happens when they CAN'T be?  What things do we think people look at when even contemplating gaining one and risking the other?  What particular types of people is this most troublesome for?  Least troublesome?  Most interesting and nuanced?  What are those nuances?  And . . . plenty more.  A pointer is significant (System Matters) - it can result in focusing you on some issues, ignoring others, taking a particular approach, and etc. - but a pointer is not the thing itself (System doesn't Determine).

For what it's worth, that's how I think about the "doing stories to learn" thing, too.   Stories don't/can't do anything but kinda stir up the issues - any learning that happens is up to you.  Some story creators have particular things they WANT you to learn, and some stories TEND to create certain kinds of learning, but the learning and the experience of the story are separate things.  

And the Humanity definition is not about whatever "learning" may happen - what might be learned from the four outcomes is . . . unlimited.  AND (I think this is the important part) what might be experienced during the four outcomes is also unlimited.  Some tragedies, I get to the end of and I feel like Christopher's example teacher - why, why couldn't there have been a way out?  Other's (last time I saw Macbeth) - yup, that's what had to happen.  As Ron says, the Humanity definition exists as a thing whose primacy (and singularity) MUST be challenged.  And what happens from there, no matter how it turns out, is NOT dictated by the definition.

Hey, the very notion that Humanity has a definition is pretty "out there" in my mind - at best, we're just pretending that it does for the purpose of the game.  Is intellectual knowledge more valuable than other people?  Well, that friggin' depends, doesn't it?  I think knowledge about a cancer cure is more valuable than boogeyman-of-the-moment Saddam Hussein.  Would I kill him to get that knowledge?  Torture him?  What if no one would ever know what I did to get the cure?  What if I *thought* no one would know, and then they found out?

Interesting mental exercises . . . but we're talking about Sorcerer.   In Sorcerer, we define this in-game character attribute called Humanity as emotional attachment to others, apply the rules, and see what happens.  Play addresses the Premise, the definition stirs up the issues, but the answers - if there are answers - aren't given by that definition.  You have a character that believes intellectual knowledge is more important than other people, play might well help show how that can be true - with an appropriate story leading to it, any of the four outcomes could help support that notion.  Precisely because "learning" can only be influenced, not dictated, by the experience of (in our case here) play, anything can be learned.  The point of defining Humanity as emotional attachment to other beings is NOT to demonstrate "that prioritizing Intellectual Knowledge over Other Human beings is a BAD idea," it's to see what happens when we start playing in an environment where those kinds of issues come up.

The way you define Humanity isn't meaningless, just like the play that leads up to a zero-humanity drop or a Banishing isn't meaningless - it will influence the kinds of stories that result.  But it CAN'T determine the moral meaning behind them.  Only the human beings involved can do that.  At an extreme, a sorcerer dropping to zero humanity, for a particular player at a particular time in a particular story, might demonstrate, for that person, that the Humanity definition is just flat-out fucked up and "real life" ain't like that at all.  I think that's why a Humanity definition is helping create an environment where Premise is addressed (maybe even influencing how that's likely to happen), but it isn't also providing a delivered-answer to the issues  -  'cause Humanity is a useful, powerful, fun tool in the game play, and answering the Premise is in the realm of the human beings who are playing.  Who may just say "hey, that was fun" and move on.

Wow, hard to believe this is the "edited for greater focus" version of my post - I think I better leave it there and see if any of this is helpful at all.  Thanks, all,

Gordon

[Le Joueur]

What I think Christopher and Fang and couple other people are trying to tell me is this:

That the real Premise is: "To what degree is intellectual knowledge more valuable than other people?"

That's what the Humanity Score in Sorcerer is REALLY tracking.  It's defintion has already placed more value on the Other People part.  The point of play is to explore the extent of that continumm.  That IS answerable by each player thanks to the Humanity Score.

Um...no.

I'm not saying that at all; what I'm saying is, "You're right, Humanity does answer the Edwardian Premise!"  I'm saying by reducing 'the answer' to yes or no, then absolutely Humanity answers it.

You're oversimplifying; there is no "degree" of Premise answer.  The answer is an emphatic yes people are more valuable than intellectual knowledge.  The question is how?  How are people more valuable than intellectual knowledge?  No degrees, no shades of grey, just a simple essay question you seem bent on answering with true or false.

There is simply no way to know how your play will answer the question; unless, as you've done, you assume the answer is a simple true or false.

I'm saying that if you abstract the whole Edwardian Premise to a true or false, then there is no reason whatsoever to even play; the answer is obvious and pretty much given by Humanity.  In fact, I'd say that's the art of choosing Humanity, it does provide that kind of answer; play remains to explore how 'true' is the right answer.

It's the 'how' not the 'true' that you play for, understand?

Fang Langford

[Mike Holmes]

Gosh, I think I agree with Fang.

I'd put it this way:

In terms of morality, yes, humanity answers the Premise. It says, to be moral in this context you have to do xyz.

But morality and theme have causative link per se. In answering the question the player says the character is moral, or the character is immoral. That's part of his theme.

The moral question is answered the same every time. It's moral to be moral. Either the character proves this by being moral, or by being immoral. To use the killing example, "I"ve avoided killing and thus I am moral" or "I've killed, and therefore am immoral."

Theme is just the direction by which the moral is proven.

Mike

[Gordon C. Landis]

Huh, looks like (best as I can tell) I disagree with Fang and Mike.  The Humanity definition doesn't seem like a clear moral answer to me - all it tells you is you have to RISK a loss for certain kinds of actions, and that you MIGHT get a gain for certain other kinds of actions.  It doesn't take much to construct Sorcerer play where a defined-as-risky-to-Humanity act is in fact possibly a good, moral choice.  As far as I can tell, Sorcerer doesn't tell us that "two wrongs can never make a right" - summoning a demon to protect a person (from another demon, say) out of your emotionally connection to them may or may not work out.

But playing that out will address (not answer) the Premise, in no doubt interesting and complex ways.

At least, that's my take,

Gordon

[Le Joueur]

...I disagree with Fang....  The Humanity definition doesn't seem like a clear moral answer to me.

Even if you reduce the possible 'answers' to the Edwardian Premise to 'yes' and 'no?'

Besides, I wasn't saying that it did; I was saying that perhaps too much abstraction was being employed.

Fang Langford

[Mike Holmes]

Yeah, we've reduced things to an absurd extent in order to make points.

There are other themes one can come up with becaiuse of the randomness of the Humanity mechanic. Things like "It's true! Good things happen to bad people." (- Homer Simpson) That is, if a character does bad things but still manages to pull through, you can have that theme, or the redemption theme, or the lesson learned theme, etc.

Mike