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Hey Walt,

I want to go back to something you wrote on http://indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1952">the abundance of races in Fantasy RPG's thread:

I shouldnt'a called it "protagonizing setting," I should have used some other term that I then defined as "functionally equivalent to protagonization using the same practical means, but applied to antagonists, setting, situation, or some other meaningful story element."....

The underlying concept by any name remains valid....Not doing the precise equivalent of "deprotagonizing" to Moby Dick is just as important as not deprotagonizing the protagonists....Letting nothing impinge on the player characters' protagonism ultimately leaves them no source of conflict and nothing meaningful to explore except their own inner demons and each other. Which is fine, if your taste runs that way, but not everyone's does, or should.

I think "functionally equivalent," "using the same practical means," and "the precise equivalent" are inaccurate characterizations of how a GM handles antagonists, setting, and situation so they function to protagonize the player characters. I've been struggling with how to make my point, but basically what I'm saying is that managing Moby Dick to have primal significance, and preventing that primal significance from being undermined by an early flaying and harvesting, isn't about protecting Moby Dick. It's about the the character whose protagonism depends on the significance of Moby Dick. A character's protagonism depends on his antagonist, and on his significant foils. If the player of that character were pursuing the harvesting and the system was on his side, I'd let the whale go down; it would be deprotagonising to the character to not do so. Further antagonism and adversity can be delivered to the character after the flaying of the whale by advancing the situation and through creative application of other setting elements. There's always more that can be done to provoke a player to demonstrate additional protagonism in his ongoing handling of a non-undermined protagonist, but once the protagonism of the character has been destroyed there isn't much you can do to bring it back.

This is why a GM's killing of a PC's girlfriend in an attempt to provoke a dramatic response often results in the character's owner being far less interested in the character during subseqent play. The killing of the significant foil deprotagonizes the character. Why is the death of the whale okay and the death of the girl not? It's a hard question, but the answer lies in an understanding of the player as owning his character's support cast, in an understanding of how through character creation and during play a player considers, accepts and rejects conflicts as legitimate components of the character's protagonism, and that it's the GM's job to offer those conflicts, to hint them into existence for the player's consideration, but not to own the process of selection, or the timetable for their resolution.

The very common problem I wanted to address with this post is that once a GM allows himself the luxury of behaving as if he needs to protect the trappings of the game from the player characters, for their own good, it's only a matter of time before the significance of the player characters is entirely authored by the GM. The point I find myself making as well is that when the GM begins to behave as if he makes the determination of which conflicts are legitimate components of the protagonism of the individual player characters, he has removed the player from having ownership of the character's protagonism. You're right that the setting and antagonists need to impinge on the characters, but that's adversity, and it isn't functionally equivalent to the way a player handles a character's protagonism.

Paul

Hello,

I have been following the discussion with interest across several threads, and I'd like to emphasize the following:

- "Protagonizing setting" is an oxymoron. There is a concept worth discussing, and people have been discussing it, but the phrasing (as Walt has said) is abominable and must be replaced by something else.

- Treating a nonhuman object as a character is actually dodging the question. Yes, a wall "resists" its climber; to take it further, yes, a forest or sword may "be a character" in terms of reactions and conflict and so on. But none of these are controversial or difficult to understand relative to a protagonist.

- When a setting, or indeed anything external to the protagonist, contains a lot of emotional oomph, or has the capacity to give the protagonist a really really hard time, the author is faced with a choice: either the protagonist maintains his or her status as such (win or lose is irrelevant) or the protagonist loses some of his or her intrinsic interest in favor of the external element. The classic example is for the villain to be more interesting than the hero, or for (in especially badly-written cases) the hero to fail even to rise to the challenge ("wimping out").

My conclusion thus far is that people are wrestling among all of these issues at once across the discussion, in part because they see an incoherent phrase and must assign (individual) meaning to it, and in part because the issues are indeed interconnected.

Let's parse out the topic for a given post a little more clearly, and treat the issues fairly and separately.

Best,
Ron

Let's parse out the topic for a given post a little more clearly, and treat the issues fairly and separately.

Okay...although prompted by the "protagonizing setting" conversations, this thread advances two distinct notions for consideration separate from that conversation:

1) That gameplay producing player character protagonism depends on the player having "ownership" of his character's supporting cast. This thread hopes to be a discussion of the nature of that ownership, and how it functions in actual play.

2) That gameplay producing player character protagonism depends on the player having ownership of the process of accepting and rejecting conflicts as legitimate for the character, and over the timetable of the character resolving them. This thread hopes to be a discussion of this notion, and how these two things function in actual play.

Paul

Hi Paul,

QuoteI think "functionally equivalent," "using the same practical means," and "the precise equivalent" are inaccurate characterizations of how a GM handles antagonists, setting, and situation so they function to protagonize the player characters.

Let me narrow this down to just antagonists, and see what some of the implications of your position are.

Let's hypothesize a game system with the following characteristics:
- There is a GM
- Players own individual player-characters
- The GM owns NPC antagonists
- "Ownership" does not necessarily mean complete control over. For example, FitM resolution mechanisms might permit monologues of victory through which a character not "owned" by the narrator could be significantly impacted.
- The GM's system rules for inititating and resolving an NPC's actions are the same, procedurally, as the players' system rules for their PCs' actions.

Your claim appears to imply that in such a system, the player-characters will be deprotagonized because the system permits the GM to portray the antagonists in a manner functionally equivalent to how the players portray the protagonists. This will be avoided only if the GM voluntarily and deliberately constrains his decisions to avoid deprotagonizing the player-characters.

As I understand them, many successful and overtly Narrativist systems fit the description I outlined. Have I just pointed out a fundamental shortcoming in such systems?

There are many other interesting questions raised as well, but I'll stop with this one because the discussion could proceed in interesting directions under either answer.

The underlying issue is that your view of protagonism demands vast continents of elbow room. You permit the GM to, kinda, suggest instances of adversity but it must be up to you to decide the significance of that adversity to your character's protagonism, and pretty much everything else.

Of course, I have no objection to your or anyone else playing that way. What I question is the assertion that playing any other way is deprotagonizing. You appear to be equating absolute unimpinged player ownership of the character's protagonism with the character's protagonism itself.

One more open question, to get at some of the underlying philosophical issues: is it possible for a real person in the real world to be a protagonist? If so, it contradicts your view because no real-world person has anywhere near the degree of protagonizing meta-level control you demand for a player-character, yet somehow they manage to protagonize themselves anyway. If not, it narrows the definition of protagonism to a technicality so specific and so removed from the real-world idea of the life-well-lived on which it might once have been based, as to make protagonism completely optional and expendable as a goal of play.

- Walt

Hey,

In terms of Paul's claim, I tend to agree with Walter. Paul's standards seem so stringent that they almost grade over into "No one plays my character but me, no one moves anyone into my character's purview but me, and my character only walks where I say so." Unless I'm misunderstanding in some way.

However, as for Walt's philosophical question, that raises an issue I've discussed before: life is not a story. People are not protagonists, and events do not have themes. Now, people have been known to think that these are the case, but no one knows whether it's correct. As such, I don't think that Paul's position is falsified byWalt's point.

And as far as RPGs per se are concerned, I suggest that Narrativist play usually permits a certain "bleed" between GM and player power when it comes to non-protagonist characters. It's confusing because very, very few games actually formalize it. This is, in many ways, intimately related to Stance issues and I hesitate to get back into that debate (a huge amount of piffle was generated that way a few months ago).

Best,
Ron

I don't think that the conflict between protagonising setting or antagonist as Ron describes works exactly that way in RPG.  For one thing, the conflict a singular author experiences to privilege either the character or the setting can be seen, in our situation, as determined by mechanical resolution - the GM enacts the "protagonising" behaviour of the setting in mechanical conflict with the protagonising behaviour of the character.  

Maybe we mean "antagonising" setting

I think the point Walt makes about the real world is valid, inasmuch as I think every player does experience their character as the primary protagonist and in a sense the purpose of the GM's attention to character protagonism is to ensure the players get the opportunity to have this perception reinforced.  In this regard I agree that the need for control over environment is unnecessary because response to stimuli can be protagonising, I think, or will be seen as such by the player.

I wonder to what extent satisfying protagonism is based on the perceptions and reactions of other players as audience?  Complements paid OOC but in play may be a strong source of the sense of having taken centre stage and having made a valued contribution through the character.  This often happens based on player rather than character knowledge... almost like the way an audience gets insight into a villains plots in linear media through cutaways.  Maybe setting could be "antagonised" with mini cutaways to demonstrate the settings experience of the story, so to speak.

This may represent a simplistic way of regarding this issue, but I prefer to think about imbuing setting with inherent conflict.  Taken with a focus on the player-controlled characters as the pivot of that conflict -- together with other story elements the players bring with them, it doesn't seem a question of "protagonizing setting" so much as constructing an environment in which the players are given opportunities to act in ways that cause a ripple of meaningful changes and reactions to that environment.

In terms of player-crafted NPCs who operate in the character's orbit, I disagree that killing them automatically deprotagonizes.  I do think such "orbitals" should be treated with respect by the group, and any death in that circle should be offered as a protagonizing opportunity, not a deprotagonizing one.  The death of Gwen Stacy in the Spiderman comic took the character to far deeper levels, but didn't remove his protagonist status.  Tragedy can empower heroes if the they have the chance to make story-meaningful choices around it.

Best,

Blake

I think far too much weight is being given to a concept that can't possibly be applied to an RPG without major modification.

The reason that protagonists are protagonists in literature is because the author made them that way.  The author focused the spotlight, the author set up "appropriate" adversity, etc, etc.

In an RPG (save the most railroaded ones) there is no single author, ergo there is no cut and dry way to create or even define protagonism.

The concept of a Narrativist game being coauthorship between all players (includeing GM) IMO precludes the use of literary terms like "protagonism" without substantial modification to account for the differences in the medium.

The ONLY way to achieve protagonism the way Paul describes is for the player to stop playing the RPG and instead sit down to write a novel.  Because as soon as authorship begins to be shared among the other Players and the GM somewhere along the line a character IS GOING to get "deprotagonized" in the sense described above.

Ralph,

I agree with you if we are talking about Paul's description, which I think is way too "protected" to be playable - if nothing happens, the character is deprotagonized; if something happens, the character is deprotagonized.

However, I do think that "protagonism" in the literary sense is possible in role-playing; in fact, I know it, because it's a staple of my and others' games. And as I've said many times, and Paul has agreed with me on this, it's all about being (constant) audience and (ad lib) consensual co-authors for one another during play.

Certain game designs are all about this very effect, because they allow formalized "help" in terms of authoring, but not playing, other people's characters. InSpectres is a perfect example, as is The Questing Beast. In the former, for example, I can have my character give a Confessional that assigns "Spunky" to another character, but that player does not have to apply Spunkiness unless they want to.

It's difficult for people who are used to the character being "mine mine mine" and the GM countering with "everything in the world, your character included, is mine mine mine." They are holding onto what they need to let go of, and giving up what they need to hold onto.

Best,
Ron

The issue at hand appears to be a new angle on the Fragility of Story, an area of lengthy unresolved debate in Interactive Storytelling. There are many who maintain that Interactive Storytelling is impossible by any means whatsoever because "Interactive Storytelling" is an oxymoron. The argument is that true Lit-101 Story can occur only when every authorial decision on every level is made correctly, in accordance with either (1) some underlying ideal structure, or (2) an author's holistic vision. This is quite incompatible with interactive participation in the process by anyone else.

Despite my own experiences with role playing games disproving this assertion by counterexample to my own satisfaction, I've tried to respect this view, for three reasons. First, some people whose insights and talents I greatly admire, including some of my favorite authors, are familiar with the counterarguments and still believe their position valid. Second, even though the the theory behind the argument is wrong, the argument itself might still be valid on a practical level. IS is mainly concerned with digital IS, and while a role playing game can achieve what is supposedly impossible, there was and is no guarantee that what human GMs and players can do can be achieved in a computer system. Third, my own subjective personal experiences do not constitute adequate proof by counterexample in a public debate.

There is, I believe, enough evidence here at The Forge to reduce the basic argument of the theoretical impossiblity of interactive storytelling on the basis of the fragility of story to an argument from ignorance, at least until its proponents familiarize themselves with the developments here. (To their defense, I should also mention that some of the authors holding that position probably formed their opinions on the basis of pathetically crude mid-90's efforts to turn their works into "interactive" computer games.) At that point, if they wish to update their view of the Fragility of Story into the Fragility of Protagonism, I will respect their position as much as or more than ever. I'm hoping Paul will respond to the counterarguments some of us have offered in this thread, because he still might be right.

So, I must respectfully disagree with Valamir's opinion that too much weight is being given to protagonism because it's a concept from literature that must be heavily modified when applied to RPGs.

Protagonism might be a concept from literature, but Protagonization is not. In Lit-101 the process of authorship is a black box. Literature knows only the protagonist, the end result of that process.

Protagonization is all about the process of how a protagonist is authored. This perception of the nature of authoring and Story is, to my knowledge, unique to Narrativist play in RPGs (though I suppose it might have arisen first, haphazardly, in writer's workshops (1)). The Interactive Storytelling people have no notion of protagonization, and no notion of how desperately they need it.

In any case, when it comes to Narrativist play, I don't see how too much weight could be given to protagonism. I do think it's important to keep separate protagonism as a goal in play, and the system-level mechanisms and principles designed to promote that goal. Player ownership of the player-character's protagonism is an excellent way to foster that protagonism, and it's probably the most reliably effective way, but I don't believe it's the only way. Shared protagonization has a lot to offer too. Where Paul sees a slippery slope, I see a dynamic balance. It all depends on one's perception of the fragility of protagonism.

- Walt

(1) Typical search results (Yahoo, in this case):

protagonist: 162,000 hits
protagonism: 1,050 hits
protagonize or protagonise: 96 hits (many with rather bizarre or arbitrary usages, e.g."To the sounds of rattles and bass saxhorns, they protagonize one of the most spectacular and strange processions.")
protagonization or protagonisation: 3 hits
deprotgonize or deprotagonise: 0 hits
deprotagonization or deprotagonisation: 0 hits

Can anyone tell me where the term "deprotagonize" originated? Ron, was it yours?

Hi Walt,

I'm pretty sure that Paul is the "deprotagonize" originator; he and I discussed the issue by phone very extensively before it saw light on the Forge or, probably, back at the Gaming Outpost. This would have been about a year ago, if I'm not mistaken.

Paul, want to confirm or clarify that?

Best,
Ron

Yeah...I coined it...I think initially as a hyphenated word..."de-protagonize."

Paul

Hey,

...if nothing happens, the character is deprotagonized; if something happens, the character is deprotagonized.

I'm coming to think that because this is the raw edge of my current thinking about the process of protagonization that I'm not communicating my notions very well. I think my posts about hosing the player characters when I ran The Pool contradict that I might in this thread be suggesting some super-protected notion of protagonism, but since that's where people are at, let me try again.

I have a friend who has an incredibly annoying conversational trait. He controls conversations by introducing non-sequiturs. We'll be driving somewhere, having a conversation. I'll be responding to some comment he made about relationships or something. And he'll say something out of the blue, "Man, it really kills my self-esteem to think that Van Gogh had already completed most of his life's work at my age." And then suddenly he's in control of the conversation again. This happens over and over while you're talking with him. You can seize control of a conversation with non-sequiturs. A GM can seize control of a player's character with the game-event equivalent of non-sequiturs...by introducing events that are not relevant to the protagonism of the character.

I'm suggesting that protagonism, the quality of a character such that his decisions and actions deliver a theme to an interested audience, doesn't happen if a process of validating conflicts does not reside with the player.

In the first session of the mercenary scenario I ran with The Pool, I framed my girlfriend's old, "proud of his many sons," mercenary character Q'Uasek into a scene where Sgt. Orlicon "Whisper" Von Eldred was giving him a chance to execute one of his sons who'd deserted the company and through cowardice betrayed their position to an undead army. We were using Sorcerer style Kickers, and this first scene was a direct outgrowth of the Kicker she'd written for Q'Uasek. So we had the conversation with her son, where she made it clear that Q'Uasek was torn by the situation, and then she had him go off to a little cemetary to pray. When I got around to her character again, I asked what scene she wanted to have. And she said she wanted a scene with Von Eldred. So I had him come up to Q'Uasek in the cemetary, and she authored Q'Uasek trying to convince Von Eldred that the company shouldn't be killing its own when the situation was so dire, that every man would be needed if any could hope to survive. And when I had Von Eldred agree with her--"You know I've never trusted Savion Cribdoom's leadership of this company..."--you should have seen the expressions on the faces of the other players. They were smiling. I think one of them even said, "Wow." They were interested in Q'Uasek as a protagonist, in what his decisions and actions had to say.

Now imagine if when Q'Uasek went back to the cell for his son he discovered the boy slaughtered by undead Kriedetempek warriors and found himself in a desperate swordfight for his own life.

That would be deprotagonizing. The son is earmarked for a specific conflict. Danielle's actions have approved him for a specific conflict. That's what I mean by "a process of validating conflicts that resides with the player." There is something about how Danielle handled Q'Uasek that approved certain conflicts, and ruled out others like the "death of a son" conflict. I'm interested in discussing how this validation process works. I'm becoming convinced that protagonism doesn't happen without this accord between the players and GM. And I'm beginning to think that "my guy" mode--"my guy would never do that," pointing to the character sheet, "my guy is irritable"--might be responses to a failure of this accord.

Paul

I... think I see where Paul is going with this. I've been pondering deprotagonization a lot lately, (especially as my current DM is bad about it). I've come to the conclusion that I'm not 100% sure what protagonization/deprotagonization means to the forum here in general. I'm going to throw out a few situations from the recent, or not so recent past. Tell me, if you would, if these events are or are not deprotagonizing.

1. Ken Morgan is a 3rd level D&D Ranger/Paladin. She and her group are assaulting a goblin/gnoll fortress. At first things are going well, as the guardians are killed and silenced before alarm can be given, but eventually alarm is given, and we have to face massed and organized resistance. We manage to slaughter most of the goblins before the gnolls get involved... Then it's 4, 6, 10 gnolls.. Then a fighter, mage and cleric, of the human variety. With our levels and our numbers, these soon became overwhelming odds. Ken is being played as the noble paladin to the hilt, saving at least one character's life, and attempting to save another's before both she and the second character are cut down in the front lines. The party is forced to make a withdrawal, but try to parley for the release of the captured... Just to hear that one, Flatrock the lizardman fighter, has been eaten. Neither Flatrock's player nor I got to know our own fates prior to this, nor to affect them. Flatrock is dead. So the party attempts a rescue, and due to circumstances, fail (with the character Ken saved earlier getting eaten by a Carrior Crawler). So the DM announces, as the party is forced to withdraw, that Ken is eaten as well.

Is the above deprotagonizing? I certainly think so. Am I wrong to be particularly unhappy with this result, whereas the rest of the group, (including the players of the other deceased) simply take it as a matter of course?

2. Tiberius Dark, a 11th Generation Vampire of Clan Tzimisce managed, with his share of some money taken in the first story of the Chronicle, buy a strip club called Nacho Mama's. This club became the unofficial headquarters of the Sabbat pack, where they usually rendezvoused at the beginning of the night. Now, on one particular night, they end up, mostly by accident (well, mostly by typical Malkavian unpredictability, same thing) to burn down a club which acted as the temple for a local coterie of Setites. (oops... And this, a few nights after diablerizing their high priest). They return to Nacho Mama's to find that it, too has been consumed in flames. Tiberius stands in shock. The rest of the group attempts to investigate. Tiberius begins to shake. The rest of the pack gets nervous. Tiberius makes, as his last coherent action, an effort to drop his prized Cassul on the ground before taking the Horrid Form, and Frenzying down the street. The player was so upset that he felt incapable of roleplaying the frenzy properly, and handed the character over to the ST. After doing some pretty monstrous things (including using a telephone pole to play bop-a-mole with passing cars (the player's idea), the Malkavian managed to calm him down before heading to the known site of Elysium in a frenzied state. Session ends soon afterward, with Tiberius having to stay with one of the other packmates. Future sessions has him without clothes, most of his possessions (except his Cassul) and without a home. The players take this as an opportunity to introduce a bit of humor into the game (never send a Malkavian into Walmart to do your shopping, unless a mismatched, undersized shirt and a My Little Pony beach towel are your idea of fashion chic)

Was the above deprotagonizing? I did not consult with the player before torching his nightclub, and despite his personally being upset over it, he was not upset with me, and the game continued with his character, despite his homeless, clothesless, mostly possessionless status, being the group's unofficial (and later, official) leader.

Let me know if, by your definition, these are deprotagonizing, so that I might be better able to understand the precise meaning of the term. Thanks much.

Lance,

I think that I may have an answer for you for your examples, and I'm actually going to relate it back to GNS.

If I'm understanding the conversation so far, deprotagonization is basically the removal of real significant choices from a player within his GNS slice.  So, for example, a Narrativist player is making story-based choices, and therefore he needs to have the freedom to make those choices.  This includes Paul's example from above.  The player had defined certain story elements (her son, the Kicker, etc.) and therefore needed the freedom to pursue the results of those elements.  Removing that freedom would deprotagonize.

However, the same can be said for the G and S players.  To take a simple example, a player aiming for Exploration of Character in an Unknown Armies game (for example) doesn't need story freedom.  However, he does need the freedom to react emotionally to events and have the results of those emotional reactions to have an effect on events.  So, for instance, in my actual Unknown Armies chronicle, one of the characters was vigorously and violently opposed to violence.  (Go figure.)  She was a calm, innocent woman who would snap when violence threatened those she loved.  During the course of the game, a major NPC was captured and was being questioned.  The NPC threatened the life of someone special to her.  So she killed the NPC.  It was a valid emotional reaction, and therefore she needed the freedom to perform the action.  If I had fudged and kept the NPC alive for my own purposes, that would have been deprotagonizing (from a Sim perspective).

Or let's take a Gamist player.  He needs to have a real possibility of achieving his goal (whatever it is) and therefore freedom from arbitrary obstacles placed by the GM to stop him from his goal.  I can remember my brother running a fantasy game many moons ago, where I was supposed to enter a haunted house.  I wanted to climb through the second-story windows.  He didn't want me to do so, and so he said that there was wood behind the glass that stopped me from getting in.  From a Gamist perspective, that was an arbitrary obstacle that interfered with my free choices to formulate a plan to overcome the stated obstacles.

So, to your examples, then.  Basically, I'm going to say that the answer for each is "It depends".

If Example 1 were being run from a Gamist approach, then I would argue that it was not necessarily deprotagonizing.  An obstacle is introduced (the various monsters), and the characters attempt to execute a plan.  Their plan fails, and they suffer the consequences.  If this is the case, then you can be unhappy that you failed, just like I'm unhappy that I had to flee once while playing Rune.  However, I wouldn't say that it was deprotagonizing.  The fact that your fellow players accepted it seems to indicate that this is the case.  (Now, one could discuss if the strength of the obstacle allowed for any victory at all (remember that a Gamist player requires the possibility of success).  If not, then this becomes deprotagonizing.)

Example 2 seems to me to be a classic case of Exploration of Character.  The outside stimuli are under GM control, but the character's reactions are under the character's control.  In this case, "railroading" outside stimuli (like destroying the night club) is acceptable.  However, defining the character's reaction is not.  The fact that the player, in some way, was able to take the situation and play off of it seems to indicate that he did not feel deprotagonized either.

If, however, Example 2 was being played out Narratively, and the player had defined certain special story-related issues about that night club that were unresolved, and then you destroyed it, removing from the player his ability to resolve the issues that he had established, your actions would have been deprotagonizing.

I certainly hope that I have added clarity and not muddied the waters.