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I've noticed that SF is not yet greatly explored by games which favor narrativist play.  In particular, I'm thinking of SF in the tradition of space exploration or space trading.  I know there are some narrativist games that treat this area in a broad, comic book or space opera style.  I'd like to address this in grittier way.

(Please, no suggestions that I change to a simulationist approach; there must be a way to bring narrativism to this traditionally simulationist field.)

I have several literary sources in mind: Andre Norton's Solar Queen Stories, Heinlein's Starman Jones, H. Beam Piper's Federation, and a great number of space sf from the 50s and 60s.  A lesser know source would be Brian Stableford's Star Pilot Grainger series.

The Solar Queen stories provide a general premise: the players are the crew of a tramp freighter trying to make a living on the fringe of explored space.  

Stories involve the exploration of forerunner ruins and contact with  isolated cultures that require careful negotiation.  These all avoid requiring players to come up with hard SF story lines based on an understanding of science.  

Some ideas for mechanics:

EDIT: - A core mechanic where conflict resolution determines who gets to narrate.  Character expertise would give the controlling player special priviliges.

- The ship might be designed with resources the players can draw on (like the Franchise in InSpectres).

- Players might have multiple characters, one from each level of command.  

- A sort of kicker mechanic where players specify an initial challenge for the whole ship.  EDIT: players would create much of the universe as they adventure.

- Rewards would go to enrich the ship - though I wonder if individual development might also be approapriate.

- "research" rolls where a character can NARRATE key details in his area of expertise.

- All player characters are human.  In my source material, alien protagonists are unknown.  In many cases, aliens are so alien humans can only guess at their motives.

- No magic, of course.  Psionics is either non-existant or weak and restricted.

Comments?  Suggestions?

If anyone has an idea how hard SF might be supported in a narrativist game I'd also love to hear 'em.

- Alan

EDITED for clarity.

It sounds intereststing.  Weirdly, from my read, it sounds Gamist or Sim. I don't see what's narrativist about your list of stuff (kickers? That's not exactly a system thing, it's a style thing ...).

Anyway, I like it--but so far I like it as a sim game.

-Marco

I'm getting the same kind of vibe as Marco. You're obviously trying to do something different in a Sci-fi setting, but at the moment it's still sounding Simy.

My suggestion is then, is to consider what the kind of Sci-fi stories you're basing the game on are actually about. And I mean on a slightly deeper level than "spaceships and trading"; What themes and conflicts do you want to explore? If you can get an idea about this, then it will start to lead in a more narative direction.

-Matt

Hi there,

I suggest that stories about adolescents figuring out where they stand in the world are very much along the lines of what you describe. A young person who has to pick sides or otherwise make some hard choices provides the Premise, "What makes a man?" or similar things (tweak gender to taste). Others include "What makes a true friend?" or "What must be put aside as childish?"

The SF in such a case comes in two sorts. At its least important, it's a bunch of trappings, such that the story might as well be set in any tech-setting including modern-day non-fantastical life, but it happens to sport rayguns or starships. At its most important, the setting throws the issues of the Premise into high relief and practically forces the character (by his or her existence in the setting) into action regarding the issue.

Best,
Ron

Not to beat the dead horse. But what you described, players control one or more characters on a starship that explore ruins, negotiate with isolated cultures. This is essentially exploration of setting (ruins), or situation, dealing with an isolated/alien culture.

To make it narrativist you would have to inject some kind of Theme like, Do you have a duty to a Human Society that you never see. Where the crux would be does the character act carefully and prudently to safeguard human societies interests in these things, or does he do what's good for him.

Say your exploring the ruins and find the ancient macguffin device of instantaneous intersteller travel. Do you make it available to all humankind and bring about a new age of exploration, or do you give it up to the shadow goverment military agents that will kill you if you don't, or do you give it to the scientist who thinks he can find god with it. etc.

The Sources you mention, typically focus much less on character than on situation and setting. Which makes them harder to create a Narrativist game around.

HTH

Rob Muadib

Quote from: Ron EdwardsHi there,
A young person who has to pick sides or otherwise make some hard choices provides the Premise, "What makes a man?" or similar things (tweak gender to taste). Others include "What makes a true friend?" or "What must be put aside as childish?"

I agree that much of the source material is about teenagers.  I'd actually prefer to focus on premises for adult characters.  The theme I had in mind might be "What makes an pioneer?"  The dilemma being between the comforts of safety and the rewards of learning/discovery/growth.  Core vs. Fringe.

If I were to apply Sorcerer Humanity to the idea, gaining humanity would be expanding one's perspective, while losing it would be capitalizing and re-entrenching of resources.  Heck, one might "summon" equipment, or rescue at the risk of lowering one's Adventurousness.

How's that?

- Alan

PS

Note the changes in my first post:

EDIT: - A core mechanic where conflict resolution determines who gets to narrate.  Character espertise would give the controlling player special priviliges.  

- A sort of kicker mechanic where players specify an initial challenge for the whole ship.  EDIT: players would create much of the universe as they adventure.

- "research" rolls where a character can NARRATE key details in his area of expertise.

Quote from: AlanEDIT: - A core mechanic where conflict resolution determines who gets to narrate.  Character espertise would give the controlling player special priviliges.  

- A sort of kicker mechanic where players specify an initial challenge for the whole ship.  EDIT: players would create much of the universe as they adventure.

- "research" rolls where a character can NARRATE key details in his area of expertise.

I want to do something very similar in my Star Odyssey system, which is intended to simular TV shows with Star as the first word of their title. I managed to get most of the above into just one mechanic, which then later became my Token system. Here's a quote from what I've got so far:

Quote
Discovering people, places and so on through character action and creation by player design. Players create challenges in parts, just as the characters meet them on the shows, and as the audience experiences them. Challenges include at least two problems, one internal to the ship and one external to the ship (may change to include more and for several shows). Players generate challenges to the characters, and the characters piece together the evidence to solve the mystery or cure the problem as the game progresses. No one player knows what the "adventure" will be like, so the entire "episode" is a mystery to all players, just like it is to the characters.

Players start off by creating a crew and the starship they're on, and generate the group/show's motto. There's a common pool of reward tokens in the middle of the group's table. Then players chant the show's motto out loud (this helps to keep players focussed). Then the starship captain character's player proposes an initial problem for the starship crew to investigate. For example, the captain's player states: "Star date 13 05 22 02 21 35, we've been ordered by Star Command to investigate the disappearance of the Star Ship Intrepid in the Vega sector." The player then receives a token from the pool as the player has introduced complications into the character's lives. Players that accept the challenge of being part of the problem also take a token from the pool; this reflects their character's involvement in the challenge.

Note that the starship captain's player has no idea of what's happened to Star Ship Intrepid or what's in the Vega sector. Neither does any of the other players. As the star ship characters request or discover information about Star Ship Intrepid or the Vega sector, the players of the respective divisions on board the star ship creatively generate this information for their characters and fellow players, either announcing it as the ship's computer, or as their character would.

As play proceeds, players brainstorm off the other player's generated information and fit more information into place. As the action seems to be subsiding, players can introduce more complications into their characters lives, gain an award token from the common pool and so gain the player more influence over later events for their character and department.

After the time allocated for the session is about halfway over, the common pool of tokens is removed; the game is half way over now. The players use their gained tokens to resolve the situation they're in through their characters; each resolution costs a token from the player's pool of tokens, and requires character action, and ensures that character's succeed in actions to resolve the problem.

This sounds really exciting Alan! SF worlds that are about exploring (or coping with proximity to) the "unknown" seem great for narrativist play - there's so much room available for all the stuff that players need to create in order to tell their stories.

I was especially pleased with this idea of yours:

Quote- "research" rolls where a character can NARRATE key details in his area of expertise.

I mean hey, if you've gone to the trouble of creating a medical character then its because you want to do all the stuff about crazy alien diseases - why should the GM get all the fun in making this stuff up?

Same with science and engineering - I've got all kinds of technobabble I want to introduce to the game, so why should the gm (or the dice) be the one to tell me what's wrong with the stardrive? I'm meant to be the engineer!

Sounds exciting Alan, please post more!

Quote- The ship might be designed with resources the players can draw on (like the Franchise in InSpectres).

I haven't seen InSpectres, but the ship could provide a good means for filling in the gaps left by character specialisation (on board database that could let a player narrate for a field their character doesnt have for example).

Quote- Players might have multiple characters, one from each level of command.  

Sounds interesting - I've enjoyed the (few) troupe games I've played in. What's the narrativist basis for that? Is it so that if I want my character to go down to the planet, I can justify it by having one of my other characters order him to do it? Or is it to fill gaps in specialisation? eg I want my pilot to fall ill with alien Herpes, so I need to have my doctor character come along and diagnose him?

Quote- All player characters are human.  In my source material, alien protagonists are unknown.  In many cases, aliens are so alien humans can only guess at their motives.

Cool, because it could make life much easier for the GM if alien NPCs use different character creation rules and so on. Also game systems where all the NPCs use the same rules as players can get really bogged down when conflict arises (especially in combat).

Also having aliens different from PC's means players could perhaps quickly and easily create (or better yet modify) antagonists themselves when exercising their narrative privliges?

QuoteIf anyone has an idea how hard SF might be supported in a narrativist game I'd also love to hear 'em.

IMO SF is easy in a narrativist game. There was a time when the internet was nothing but porn and star trek - and most of the trek stuff was narrativist email games!

Tony

Just sort of riffing off of some of the idea presented in Tony's post:

Alien cultures could provide a bunch of Nar premise.  For instance, if the PCs are explorer/colonizers, then how do they reconcile their own cultural differences with that of another species?  Do they impose their own beliefs and wipe out an indigenous race, somehow try to mesh them together, or leave the aliens alone entirely?  Of course you could heap on all kinds of duty and honor themes to mix things up for the PCs.  How does one's loyalty to the Galactic Council influence you to treat other cultures?

If you wanted to keep things alien free, then why not introduce biotech?  Lots of human vs. inhuman things going on there.  However, you seem very interested in the exploration aspect of space.  Maybe biotech isn't the way to go.

I also really dig the idea of the scientists, etc getting to make up all their own technobabble through directorial mechanics.

Cool project if you can ever decide on a premise.  There's so much out there, this may prove harder than it seems.

That's a fine Narrativist Premise. The questionis how will the system support it? If it's gooing to be all about the stuff you listed in the first post, you'll get White Wolf syndrome. Where the text says it's suppose to be about one thing (Vampires - Humanity), and it ends up being another in play (Vampire Supers Combat).

Mike

Quote from: Mike HolmesThat's a fine Narrativist Premise. The questionis how will the system support it? If it's gooing to be all about the stuff you listed in the first post, you'll get White Wolf syndrome.

Hi Mike,

I don't understand what your comments refer to.  I just reread my first post and I see all the mechanics I borrowed from InSpectres and other narrativist rpgs.  I don't see how that doesn't support a narrativist approach.  Are we reading the same message?

Perhaps you could go through my first post and bring out a few points as explaination.

- Alan

Very simple. You are confounding Director Stance empowerment with Narrativism. Note how Sorcerer has none of this sort of stuff, and is still Narrativist. What these games have, and your's does not, is some way to focus attention on the Premise.

With InSpectres it's the game structure. There is nothing else to do with InSpectres than to do jobs, and in doing so encounter the sorts of situations where you can talk about the Narrativist Premise of "In what way can a job become absurd in it's requirements of it's human employee."

In Sorcerer, you have the Humanity mechanics which mean that when the character does most anything interesting in terms of the characters presented, he has to address the Premise of "What are the repercussions of power gained through sorcery?"

You have Kickers, but they are just there top present challenges. Sounds Gamist to me. In a Narrativist game they are supposed to thrust a question relative to the premise in front of the character.

Multiple characters, common pool of resources, human characters, and little magic, all miss the point. They do not say anything about your Premise, which above is, "What makes a Pioneer?"

BTW, sounds like a pretty Sim premise from the way it's written. I was interpereting it to mean something like "What are the moral challenges faced by wouldbe Pioneers?" or the like. Which is chock full of Narrativist protential.

Perhaps I am overinterpereting. Perhaps what you really want is a "Pervy" (as in having all sorts of radical elements) Sim game. That would be fine as well. In fact, personally, I'd prefer it.

Mike

Mike,

I think you're right about no mechanic for the Premise.  I realize now that I've put off deciding how the mechanic will work until I clarify what my narrative Premise is.  I think the nature of the Premise will shape the mechanic.

I'm still struggling to find a narrative premise.  I do like Ron's suggestions, and that might create a game all by itself ("Young Atomic Engineers" :) )  However, I would like to find one that can allow adult characters.

How can I refine or expand "What is a Pioneer?" into a good narrativist premise?  "What drives a man to space?"  

I'm open to suggestions.  

- Alan

Too easy, possibly not pertinent to the setting/situation, but just to get the juices flowing, how about, "What does it mean to be human?"

Also known as the "Bicentennial Man" Premise.

Mike

Andrew,

Your original post on Space Odessey actually inspired this whole line of thinking.  I was also reading InSpectres and I thought the same techniques could create a Star Trek rpg.  I did some work on this.  I've posted it in the Memento Mori Forum under
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=40826#40826" >Space Trek .

- Alan