non-narrativist "protagonized" forms of play

[Paul Czege]

Hey Marco,

On the http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=5947">Pre-Breakfast Possibilities thread, you wrote:

The Impossible Thing was (IIRC) created when there was much debate about whether non-narrativist "protagonized" forms of play were possible. I think it has been established they are.

Can you explain to me how this was established? The notion was advanced by Ron on http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?p=48680&highlight=#48680">this thread, but in my mind, pretty much failed when subjected to scrutiny. The litmus test for player character protagonism is active and ongoing investment in the emotional and intellectual endeavors of the character by the audience of other players.

El Dorado and the ImpThing, in my mind, are opposed perspectives on the same condition of dissatisfaction with a gameplay dynamic that fails to produce story.

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?p=7162&highlight=#7162">El Dorado is the  player-originated desire to concern oneself only with staying true to the character, and yet somehow from within this simulationist aesthetic produce the effect of full-blown authoring (i.e. the production of theme and the capturing of audience interest thereby). The problem here is obvious, real life isn't a story; you don't get story/theme without authoring. And no one cares as an audience about a character who isn't contributing to the production of theme. The quest for El Dorado is founded on the misguided hope that if character can just be enacted right, themes aggregate naturally.

The ImpThing, a more GM/Designer-originated hope, recognizes that someone needs to take ownership of theme if there's going to be a story. But it is founded upon the flawed belief that there is a way for the GM to manage themes that will either somehow naturally aggregate the player characters about them, or at least not compromise player ownership of character to the point of player dissatisfaction.

Paul

[clehrich]

Hang on, this might be a lightbulb moment for me.

We have two pseudo-impossible things: TITBB and El Dorado.  By my reading on the Pre-Breakfast Possibilities thread, both of these problems have the same root issue: they involve a slippage of perspective on a game or session, from momentary to "instance" (we've got to get a better term for that).

Thus:

I want the GM to have total "instance" control, and the players to have total momentary control.  I want the cumulative effect to be "story-like." (TITBB)

I want there to be no aparrent "instance" control at all, and the players to have total momentary control.  I want the cumulative effect to be "story-like." (El Dorado)

But in terms of perspective for interpretation, the whole process reveals its illogic:

Seen from entirely within the character's perspective, I want there to be a sense of "story."  Now you're talking impossible -- but true.  Here's why:

If I am going to look from entirely within the character's perspective, that is adopt a 100% momentaristic perspective, then there is no way for me to "step back" to assess the events from an instance-perspective.  Thus there is no way for me to consider the events as "story" in this sense.

By this interpretation, both TITBB and El Dorado are problematic in a practical sense, not in a logical one.  At a practical level, both lay claim to an absolutism of perspective in GM and/or players, but at the same time the propositions are impossible to assess from such an absolute perspective.  No wonder it seems to be an impossibility!

Furthermore, the goals in both cases are going to require that someone bridge the gap.  That is, if you want SOD (susp. of disbelief) or Immersive or whatever play at the momentary perpsective, but you also want there to have been a story when you look back, then someone's going to have to link the two, and it's going to help if that someone is pretty aware of this function.  The trick is that the player commonly does not want to see the man behind the curtain making it happen -- in fact, will react to seeing such very negatively -- but he wants there to be such a man behind a curtain.

The myth, of course, is that it'll all happen naturally without anyone helping it.  This is why everyone who tries is instantly a brilliant novelist, since that whole narrative thing is just a natural human instinct and doesn't require talent or effort of any kind....

[Marco]

Hey Marco,
The litmus test for player character protagonism is active and ongoing investment in the emotional and intellectual endeavors of the character by the audience of other players.

Paul

My understanding was that the test for protagonization was for player-character decisions to have a dramatic effect on the game-world and solutions to proffered delimas.

In the absence of "isms" (illusionism, participationism, railroad-ism--!?) there's nothing that prohibits sim-play from accomplishing this.

But since protagonization isn't a real word and isn't in the glossary, who can say.

-Marco

[Paul Czege]

Hey Marco,

Check the definition of protagonism in my post to the http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?p=48680&highlight=#48680">"this thread" link above. It's from A Handbook to Literature, by C. Hugh Holman and William Harmon:

"The protagonist is the leading figure both in terms of importance in the play and in terms of ability to enlist our interest and sympathy, whether the cause is heroic or ignoble...."[/list:u]The key factor really is audience engagement with the character.

Paul

[Marco]

Sure. In reference to established works of text or film (or oral narration). But we all know RPG's aren't like that. So where do we go from here?

It's another failed metaphore from static fiction that fails messily when applied to dynamic fiction.

Mostly when it comes up it comes up as "deprotagonized" which is vernacular for "the GM took my power away" not "the other players didn't care about my character."

So clearly it's a poor choice of words. For the record, I care little what someone else thinks of my character. I do care about my actions having a deciding result on the game.
-Marco

[Marco]

Also:

Real life isn't a story?

Ok: no game is "real life." (cue circular discussion until one of us changes our terms)

Story is most of the problem--when I set up situation as a GM, I am creating my story. You can argue that "it's not a story," but that won't really go anywhere. Having written stories, I know that the feel is identical (to me). If you take the word story out and replace it with more specific things:

contuning event or atmospheric patterns that would be called "themes", action building to an exicitng climax (for the audience), a decision point decided by the players, and a termination that the players say is "satisfying" are all entirely possible in the Simulationist mode. As far as I'm concerned, that's story. YMMV but it's all freaking semantics at that point. (Ron describes this as story as an outcome--something I'm cool with).

So yes, you can "create story" (in the sense that this word means anything at all--which it basically doesn't--add the as an outcome if you must) with sim-gaming. You can be emotionally involved in a character who is not contributing to a theme (just as you can be emotionally attached to a sports team).

You can get recurring patterns of events or atmosphere (which would be called theme in a written work) without taking power away from the characters or players.

It all works so long as you don't read too much into the metaphore.

-Marco

[Ian Charvill]

Are people saying that the key figure in a picaresque can't engage an audiences interest?

Are people also suggesting that a character couldn't be created around a theme or premise and then role-played in a simulationist manner thereby addressing the theme merely by 'being themselves?

[Marco]

Are people saying that the key figure in a picaresque can't engage an audiences interest?

Are people also suggesting that a character couldn't be created around a theme or premise and then role-played in a simulationist manner thereby addressing the theme merely by 'being themselves?

I dunno. I think I *have* created characters with themes and then addressed them. I think it's germaine to the topic but who knows.

-Marco

[Paul Czege]

Dude...

Sure. In reference to established works of text or film (or oral narration). But we all know RPG's aren't like that.

...my games are. The games run by Scott, and Matt, and Tom, and Danielle in our group are. When your character is having a scene, you are very much aware you have an audience. Maybe you can tell because you noticed one of the players sitting forward in his seat when he realized the GM is framing a scene to include your character. Or maybe from hearing one player shush another during your scene. Or often from the suggestions the other players make to you during your scene, how totally dead-on they are in their understanding of your character. When the game is on, you absolutely know that the other players are engaged by the story you're working up with your character.

"Story" might have achieved diluted meaning, but protagonism is protagonism. A character isn't a protagonist unless the audience is hooked by his struggle.

Mostly when it comes up it comes up as "deprotagonized" which is vernacular for "the GM took my power away" not "the other players didn't care about my character."

Hey...I'm the one who coined the word deprotagonize...to describe things about gameplay that undermine the ability of the audience to have emotional and intellectual investment in a player character's endeavors and his struggle with antagonistic forces. Whiff-syndrome mechanics are one such thing; they deprotagonize by making characters into slip-and-fall caricatures of ineffectiveness. But mechanics that kill characters without regard to thematic closure, or that preclude satisfying thematic closure by killing or ruining a character's significant foils are offenders as well.

Paul

[Marco]

I wasn't clear: your games are not pre-established plotlines. They (I assume) grow adapt, and diverge with a variety of inputs (not the least of which may be the random factor of the dice). Your games are not text media. They aren't film media. You say they're pretty close to stagecraft--I can accept that--but I presme there are no scripts. In short, no--these are all still metaphors (as I see it):

Consider the defintion for "protagonist."  When I look it up I get:

"The principal character in a literary work (as a drama or story)"*

There is nothing here that suggest an audience at all structurally. The key element of the word protagonist is to be opposite the antagonist--the focal point of the struggle.

As I see it, that meaning is satisfied by simulationist play.

-Marco

* the rest of the Marriam Webster definitons (which also do not contain the emotional attachment clause):
1 a : the principal character in a literary work (as a drama or story) b : a leading actor, character, or participant in a literary work or real event
2 : a leader, proponent, or supporter of a cause : CHAMPION
3 : a muscle that by its contraction actually causes a particular movement

[clehrich]

See, this issue of audience and "established literary work" strongly suggests to me that the question is really a perspectival one.

From the perspective of an audience, i.e. from a perspective standing outside the events and considering them as parts of a story (in a literary sense), its the context of the events -- front and back -- which makes a given character a protagonist or otherwise.

From the perspective of the character, presumably he is always the protagonist, but the events in question have no literary shape.  That is, one's life does not have a plot -- it just goes on.  After the fact, looking back on a life, one can say that it had certain climactic moments and whatnot, but at the time it's all seen from within.  If what you're doing right now is something that in a story would pretty much necessarily set you up for a horrendous fall, are you going to actually in your life decide to have that horrendous fall happen?  Hell no -- you'll try to get out.

So it seems to me that literary protagonism requires an exterior perspective, not a fully-immersed one.  That's why the question of audience is so important.

[Marco]

See, this issue of audience and "established literary work" strongly suggests to me that the question is really a perspectival one.

If I have it right, Paul's perspective is that the player is the actor and the observers are the audience.  I see it as the character is the actor and the player is the audience (i.e. if I'm emotionally attached to my character, that would seem to satisfy the emotional sympathy clause).

But, again, I don't see how an external audience of any sort is necessary for a PC to be a "protagonist." Simply being the recpipent of in-game events makes the player one of the main characters.

Put another way: if you play with a tough crowd who do not find themselves interested in your rendition of your character are you "deprotagonized?" Not the protagonist? If so, basing the definition on things that are outside your control seems a bit murky.

As an observer I might be more struck by the tragedy of an untimely death or more amused or sympathetic to a hero who keeps failing--even if that's not the theme you and the GM think you're working (literary interpertation is not up to the authors, but the audience--what engages them is up to them, not the work's creator).

-Marco

[Mike Holmes]

I'm going to seem to flip-flop midway here, so hold on tight.

Marco, you seem to want to have your cake and eat it too. There are points at which you deny the applicability of Literary Theory above, and then later you yourself invoke it.

Protagonist must become "Jargonized" if it's to have any meaning in the context of RPGs. Or a substitute term used if that's more palatable.

That said, I agree that the Narrativist Agenda has hijacked the jargon on this one. Yes, Paul enumerated these things first. And as such I'm tempted to allow it to go unchallenged. But when making a Jargon term, one ought to choose something that intuitively does not include things it's not meant to include if it can. Now, no movement of a term to Jargon is ever perfect (given the nature of the process), as we've all discovered from the many, many debates about Ron's choice of terms.

But this one is particularly bad, because even in it's Jargonized form, it doesn't seem to convey by it's new definition that which is sought. That being player control of the process of "protagonization". Because, indeed, a PC can be made to seem cool to all onlookers by the GM as well as by the player.

No, this process will not satisfy the Narrativist player. But it can satisfy a lot of players. So, either the definition of Protagonism has to be changed to specifically include player empowerment in the process, or it needs to be allowed to pertain to any participant's creation of protagonism. I'd say the latter is the more intuitive by far. I'd call the former Narrativist Protagonization or possibly Character-Player Protagonization to specify.

Just as "story" is grossly prejudicial in the discussion of Narrativism, so, too, does protagonism seem to me to be. For, if a GM making a PC look good isn't Protagonism, then what is it? And if a character seems cool to just one player, but not the others, isn't he still in some way a protagonist? We can't possibly all agree all the time about what's cool.

Mike

[Marco]

I'm going to seem to flip-flop midway here, so hold on tight.

Marco, you seem to want to have your cake and eat it too. There are points at which you deny the applicability of Literary Theory above, and then later you yourself invoke it.

Mike

I don't think I'm doing that. The text of The Impossible Thing (and much game text) invokes the word "protagonist."

Greyorm says "that means the same thing as author." (I guess, that's how I read him--but I could be wrong.)

Paul says "That neccitates a performance before an audience." (I think)

I pick up the dictionary and read "main character." Aren't the PC's in a sim game the "main characters" of the "story?" (insofar as story *can* be applied--story as an outcome? a simulated -real-life' event that contains story like structure ... whatever)

We can't ditch the term "story" as it applies to Sim-gaming because the whole wide world that doesn't post here *sees* Sim-gaming as a story--and, so far as the metaphore *can* be applied, I think correctly. But we have to allow that the dynamic events that unfold in RPG play are different than traditional media which is delivered as a whole product to the consumer.

-Marco

[clehrich]

Marco,

You said something really important here, that I think gets at the heart of the matter:

Paul's perspective is that the player is the actor and the observers are the audience. I see it as the character is the actor and the player is the audience

I think that distinguishing between these two perspectives too strongly provokes all this confusion.

My point is that "protagonist" is meaningful only in a story.  I don't mean anything fancy by "story" here -- no arcs, structures, etc.  All I mean is that a given person is a protagonist when the events in which he is involved are considered as a story.  I.e., from a distance.

So the potential audience, the people treating events as a story, include: GM, other players, the player in question, random hangers-on, and potentially even other characters (though this would be weird).

The issue in "protagonizing" is simply getting the audience to look at the character in that way.  That's all there is to it.

A big part of the traditional GM's job is to help this happen.  He's the one whose job requires him to look at the events from the outside, and then spotlight the stuff that will make an appropriate sort of story.  So if the group wants a "we do tactically-brilliant things and kill stuff and take loot" story, the GM helps ensure that that sort of story gets told.  This has nothing to do with Narrativism, or GNS at all, is my point.

You could also think about this in Stance terms, precisely because (again) it's not about Stance per se: in strongly-immersed Actor Stance, you have to rely on other players (including GM) to guide protagonism.  In Author or Director Stance, a good part of this is your problem to deal with.

So all "protagonism" is, as I see it, is some character having an important role in the events of a story.  To put it differently, if the audience (which is everyone except the character himself) sees the character as an important actor in a story, then the character is protagonized.