[Narrativism essay] Concept & excerpt

[Matt Snyder]

I'm scratching my head a bit, but not for the same reasons. I recall those discussions Mike and Jack are referring to. However, I also have it quite strongly in my head that Ron has ALWAYS said theme is possible in any mode (i.e. Creative Agenda). If that's true, then naturally story, too, must be possible. Of course, I've got no specific discussions to back my memory up. Ron?

[Gordon C. Landis]

Well, it was in the threads linked in my earlier post here, but to call it out specifically, from May 12 2001 (GO archives being essentially lost, that's about as early as we're gonna get - outside the Sorceror mailing list):

No one could possibly dispute that components of story are integral to role-playing, or to wargaming, CCGing, video games, and many other activities once called "adventure gaming."

That does not mean that everyone performs these activities in order to CREATE stories. This "author" approach is only one way to enjoy adventure gaming, and as I said elsewhere, I think it's by no means the most common way. And I certainly do not think it's some kind of "best" way, except as one might decide on a personal level.

Therefore "story-oriented" is a terribly useless term. All role-playing is SORT OF story-oriented - there are characters, there are conflicts, there are causal events that are determined by game-action activities.

Narrativism, as I've defined it, is about MAKING stories on the spot, meaning that, to satisfy the definition, authorial power [GcL note: NOT author-stance]MUST be the driving, causal element of the role-playing experience.

Gordon

[Ron Edwards]

Matt & Gordon are right. The ideas have't changed; I'm just getting better at explaining them without creating new pits for people to fall into.

Look at it this way. I say, "Narrativist play is about making stories, like an author makes stories, or hell, as an author does it, no 'like.' Get it?"

And the person listening provides their own italics, as follows:

"... about making stories."

"... about making stories."

See the difference? If you use the first version, we have just crossed paths at different trajectories, different speeds, different everything, and failed to communicate at all. It's "product oriented."

Use the second version, and at least now we both know we're talking about process. And then we can discuss why front-loading and retro-assembling don't count, which is a whole 'nother discussion right there.

That's been the whole source of the conundrum. Back then, when I said, "non-Narrativist play doesn't make stories" (the kind of text Mike was referring to), the message was often completely lost because of the misplaced emphasis - and the fact that I couldn't figure out why people were doing that, or that they were doing it at all.

Later, I tried to fix it by saying stuff like "thematic" and "literary" and so forth, which didn't work either.

Anyway, I hope that the current version of the concept is going to be a better starting point for a lot of people.

Best,
Ron

[John Kim]

Matt & Gordon are right. The ideas have't changed; I'm just getting better at explaining them without creating new pits for people to fall into.

Look at it this way. I say, "Narrativist play is about making stories, like an author makes stories, or hell, as an author does it, no 'like.' Get it?"
...
Back then, when I said, "non-Narrativist play doesn't make stories" (the kind of text Mike was referring to), the message was often completely lost because of the misplaced emphasis - and the fact that I couldn't figure out why people were doing that, or that they were doing it at all.

As far as I can tell, people were justly confused by this.  Under current definitions, Simulationist play can certainly be all about making stories in exactly the same way that an author may do it.  

Imagine me as an author.  I start by deciding on a theme for my work and only then do I type away at the keyboard making the characters, setting, and plot express that theme.  That is unquestionably authorship.  But if I do the same thing as a player in a game, it is Simulationist under the GNS system -- because I am expressing a pre-determined theme rather than dynamically answering a Premise during play.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi John,

I knew someone was going to say that. It's wrong.

It's also accounted for in my post:

And then we can discuss why front-loading and retro-assembling don't count, which is a whole 'nother discussion right there.

But I'm not going to go further in debating it with you here. I can't say it better than I've said it at some length and detail in the Narrativist essay. That essay is currently in the hands of readers and will be posted soon.

What I will say is this, excerpted from the essay:

The most difficult aspect of writing this essay is the presence of two distinct problematic audiences, neither of which I realized existed when I first wrote System Does Matter.

- Role-players who greatly value the story quality of their transcripts, but don't play Narrativist to make them. It's often painful for them to be, as they see it, relegated to Simulationist play (specifically, Exploration of Situation and sometimes Character). "We create stories too, dammit!"

- Role-players who play Narrativist already, but who think what I'm describing must be harder or more abstract than it is. Since they can identify Exploration of Character and Situation in their play preferences, they think they must be playing Simulationist. "That's Narrativist? But we do that, using a plain old well-known role-playing game - it can't be Narrativist!"

The first problem these audiences pose for me is that any point, example, or clarification I make that's specific to one of them is automatically misleading for the other.

The second problem is that, given that I say Not Narrativist to the first, and the second mistakenly says Not Narrativist to me, Narrativism as a label has become incorrectly associated with the narrow space of "how Ron himself plays."

I consider your outlook to represent one or the other of these viewpoints, John. I have no idea which, but long ago I decided that neither of the viewpoints will receive any special consideration from me.

Best,
Ron

[John Kim]

- Role-players who greatly value the story quality of their transcripts, but don't play Narrativist to make them. It's often painful for them to be, as they see it, relegated to Simulationist play (specifically, Exploration of Situation and sometimes Character). "We create stories too, dammit!"
...
The second problem is that, given that I say Not Narrativist to the first, and the second mistakenly says Not Narrativist to me, Narrativism as a label has become incorrectly associated with the narrow space of "how Ron himself plays."

Ron, you are free to define Narrativist however you like.  However, this first set are completely correct when they say they create stories.  They are not Narrativist by your definition -- but you are simply wrong when you say "non-Narrativist play doesn't make stories".   This first set do actively author stories in every way.  They are just deciding on a theme before writing, which is something that many authors do.  

It seems to me that you really want to say something about stories and the importance of them, because it is important to you.  However, you are still struggling with how to express that, and I'm not sure that it is properly covered in a three-way split of gaming goals (i.e. the G, N, and S definitions).  I've made an early stab at tackling the subject with my essay http://www.darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/theory/narrative/paradigms.html">Story and Narrative Paradigms in RPGs, but that is far from definitive.

[Gordon C. Landis]

I thought I'd point out that my posts in this old thread (also linked in my earlier post here) are all about struggling with this very issue - "Sim Story," call it.  I'm pretty sure I now understand the distinction, and why "front-loading and retro-assembling don't count [as Narrativist]," but I go back and forth on whether it's an incredibly subtle distinction that perhaps might-as-well not exist , or a really obvious thing that's very easy to see in play once you know what to look for.

So I look forward to the post-Nar essay discussions,

Gordon

PS - A way to phrase the distinction that seems clever just occured to me(and maybe it's not clever to anyone else - hel, maybe Ron and others will think it's off-base): "It's not just that you and others are responding to pre-established and/or self-created "story" issues and building based on that - it's that you are responding to what they created, right then.  And they are responding to what *you* created, right then.  And so on, in a loop that doesn't end until those involved decide to stop."

[Valamir]

However, this first set are completely correct when they say they create stories.  

Do they? Are they really creating stories?  Or are they really creating pastiche and plot.

Plot does not equal story.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi John,

Nothing you're saying is arguing against any point I'm making. This whole thread is about how stories may be produced through role-playing of all sorts.

Therefore your statement:

... you are simply wrong when you say "non-Narrativist play doesn't make stories". This first set do actively author stories in every way. They are just deciding on a theme before writing, which is something that many authors do.

... has misinterpreted my entire point so badly, from the ground up, that even imagining trying to unravel it for you is exhausting.

It's all in the essay. We'll see what happens when it's posted.

Best,
Ron

[Silmenume]

Based upon my limited understanding of model, I posit the following.

As we are talking about one of the three Creative Agendas, specifically Narativism, what matters is what is expressed in game, not what is intended or prepared by any of the players including the DM.

In discussing the idea of creative priority I will see if applying a little economic theory helps in elucidating this topic.  When a player expresses a creative inclination in doing so he must give up something in the process.  If I chose to read a book the cost of reading that book is the highest valued activity that I did not engage in.  Or to put it another way the cost of expressing the desire to read, by reading, is calculated by determining the next highest valued desire or need that was subverted.  The cost in terms of roleplay is expressed as which agenda isn't vocalized.  The acting out of the Creative Agenda of a player is the search for a meaning that satisfies his desire.

Let's take a VERY short story – A Knight set out, slaying a dragon and saving the princess.

For a player who might be described as expressing himself in a Gamist fashion might he have been motivated by the following -

To be the first player at the table to kill a dragon.
To kill the dragon so as to be able to get EP's so as to pull a head of the other players in level.
To see if the player (not character!) has what it takes to kill the dragon.
To outwit the DM.
To kill the dragon in order to loot the hoard so that the player would then have bragging rights to the best weapon/magic item in the game

For a player who might be described as expressing himself in a Simulationist fashion he might have been motivated by the following -

To experience what it is like to live the life a knight fighting against impossible odds.
To experience what it's like to save the life of another.
To experience what it's like to be in deadly combat.
To experience what it means to operate under the bonds of Chivalry, Duty, etc.

For a player who might be described as expressing himself in a Narrativist fashion he might have been motivated by the following -

The idea of creating a story about a Knight slaying a dragon and saving the princess.
To overtly and expressly explore what it means to operate under the bonds of Chivalry, Duty, etc., and to what extent is one willing to hold to those ideals.

In both the Gamist and Narrativist agendas the players set out with certain meta-game goals in mind.  This shows up in roleplay when a decision is made where the player subverts internal causality to pursue an out of character goal.  A Gamist makes a decision that is out of character to pursue his competitive, meta-game goal.  A Narrativist makes a decision that subverts internal causality to pursue the meta-game goal of story creation and/or staying focused on the premise question.  Does this mean that Simulationists have no goal?  No.  The Simulationist desires to experience the life of the character, hopefully in a fashion that is exciting and interesting.  The interesting thing is that exciting and interesting fashion of experiencing things leads to exciting and interesting stories.  The important thing to remember is that the Simulationist does not enter into a game with the number one priority of creating a story; it's just that the game, by virtue of exploring character and situation automatically leads to story creation.  In other words the player is NOT going to subvert or trade off internal causality for the sake of story creation.  One could have a Simulationist game that is heavy in the Exploration of Situation, but as long as internal causality is not breeched by the players (this excludes the DM) to pursue story then the game is Simulationist.

Aure Entaluva,

Silmenume

[Ron Edwards]

Hi,

Oooh, that's almost there, S. I'll quibble.

The important thing to remember is that the Simulationist does not enter into a game with the number one priority of creating a story; it's just that the game, by virtue of exploring character and situation automatically leads to story creation.

The difficulty with that analysis is that it focuses on intention and motivation as explanatory variables.

Just as importantly, your "automatically" is very tricky, because in practice, the Simulationist process of play has no mechanism whatsoever to permit this to happen.

a) Sim-story arising "automatically" is very much like people who want to write novels by ... I'm sure there's a technical name for it ... enacting the fictional events through some kind of internal-cause logic, without "interference" from the writer. I consider it a vast waste of time.

b) Sim-story works very nicely when Situation is locked and loaded prior to play, in the sense that most Call of Cthulhu games I've played have been so locked. The player-characters' decisions and actions are essentially taken as mildly wiggly pieces to fit into the existing puzzle.

c) Sim-story also works nicely, although it takes a lot of skill, when the GM constantly retro-fits and re-interprets events of a session just played to give them protagonist-like significance. The players discover how "important" they were in the next session.

But none of them involve protagonist decision-making during play itself to be a function of author-involvement in the developing story.

Best,
Ron

[Jack Spencer Jr]

a) Sim-story arising "automatically" is very much like people who want to write novels by ... I'm sure there's a technical name for it ... enacting the fictional events through some kind of internal-cause logic, without "interference" from the writer. I consider it a vast waste of time.

I am curious. Why, especially after careful qualifying that no style or mode of play is better than another, is this a waste of time?

[Lxndr]

Because in that instance, he's not talking about a style of play, he's talking about a way of writing stories.  At least, that was my interpretation.

[John Kim]

The Simulationist desires to experience the life of the character, hopefully in a fashion that is exciting and interesting.  The interesting thing is that exciting and interesting fashion of experiencing things leads to exciting and interesting stories.  The important thing to remember is that the Simulationist does not enter into a game with the number one priority of creating a story; it's just that the game, by virtue of exploring character and situation automatically leads to story creation.  

Just a note that I am answering this in a separate thread which I called http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=9104">Simulationism Revisited.  I would say you are talking about something distinctly different than a GNS mode per se, which I term "Immersionism" (following the Scandanavian adaptation of my rgfa Threefold FAQ, by Petter Bockman).  Followups to that thread.

[Troy_Costisick]

Heya,

When I read the transcript, Ron, I said to myself "Sounds Narrativist, but where's the system?"  Then I kept reading and understood.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I see it as one cant make a judgement about a recounting of events in a session/adventure without knowing specifics of the System (in this case Technics and Rules) and how the players used them.  Right?

Peace,

-Troy