Importance of PC-defined stories in narrativism?

[sirogit]

What's the general opinion on how important for a narrtivist game for the story to be based on actions of the PCs vs. on actions of the NPCS?

Personally, I make a paramount effort so that the story is entirely about the PC's actions, and NPC's reactions are very much in the background. This is going further than the general mantra to have the PC's be the stars of the game, and to have them be in all relevant posistions of the story.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

It's axiomatic for Narrativism that at least one of the player-characters be one of the protagonists for whatever story actually emerges.

To understand that, it's important to see that the procedures of addressing Premise have a very high probability of yielding or resulting in a story. Producing a story is not unique to Narrativism, but its guiding aesthetic is very consistent with doing so. (And I'm not saying a word about how "good" the story is; conceivably, it could really suck and we'd still be talking about Narrativist play.)

What's a protagonist? It's the character in a story with whom the audience member tends to identify, and whose problems are, in fact, a local case of the Premise. It's fair to say that those problems (Situation) prompt the Premise in the audience-mind.

The protagonists' decisions, and those decisions' outcomes, literally constitute the meaty plot of the story. Plot = the protagonist coping with the situation = series of decisions made by the protagonist in a variety of circumstances and possibly constraints.

During Narrativist role-playing, as I say, it's absolutely required that at least one (likely more) of the player-characters be recognizable as a protagonist to all the real people in the role-playing group.

Sometimes a player is very happy to see someone else's character be the protagonist and therefore plays his or her character more as a secondary character, perhaps a sidekick or foil.

Sometimes a GM's character takes on protagonist qualities and the players like that character enough to support that; in such cases, the GM sort of splits into two people during play.

But aside from those circumstances, typically, the default for Narrativist play is that all the player-characters are protagonists - their decisions are the primary drivers of the plot, which is being created at those moments, in that fashion, throughout all of play. The accompanying default is that GM-characters (NPCs) do not have this privileged status, although their behavior certainly may be a big part of the Situation.

And no matter what, at least one player-character must be a protagonist for sure. In Narrativist play, that means that thematically significant decisions must be given free rein for the player. When a GM takes that over, it's called "Force," which is OK in some modes of play, but absolutely intolerable for Narrativist play.

So your question is a dead-bang accurate drive at the very heart of Narrativist play.

Best,
Ron