I hope no one minds a post every so often when someone completes their reading of an essay. Obviously it prompts thought and who else am I gunna have a chat with. Anyway, here we go! :)

Again, like the Gamism: Step on up essay, I don't find any particular conflict with the ideas presented, though certainly it expands them in depth, detail and parameters considerably/massively. Though I will say, like the gamism essay, it took a page or two before it became a fluidly absorbable read, IMO. In the end, this post isn't going to have much omph, as its mostly going to be 'hey, yeah, that's interesting, does that mean this and this?', etc like my one on the gamism essay.

Story Now requires that at least one engaging issue or problematic feature of human existence be addressed in the process of role-playing. "Address" means:
Establishing the issue's Explorative expressions in the game-world, "fixing" them into imaginary place.

Developing the issue as a source of continued conflict, perhaps changing any number of things about it, such as which side is being taken by a given character, or providing more depth to why the antagonistic side of the issue exists at all.

Resolving the issue through the decisions of the players of the protagonists, as well as various features and constraints of the circumstances.

But he had to say it himself, with his own use of words like "just" and "genre." I am now convinced, after many such exchanges, that an "experienced" role-player comes to this conclusion only by working it out in his or her own terms and examples.

Narrativist Premises focus on producing Theme via events during play. Theme is defined as a value-judgment or point that may be inferred from the in-game events. My thoughts on Narrativist Premise are derived from the book The Art of Dramatic Writing by Lajos Egri, specifically his emphasis on the questions that arise from human conundrums and passions of all sorts.

Is the life of a friend worth the safety of a community?

Does love and marriage override one's loyalty to a political cause?

I submit that trying to resolve conflicts by hoping that the accumulated successful tasks will turn out to be about what you want, is an unreliable and unsatisfying way to role-play when developing Narrativist protagonism.

From Maelstrom (Hubris Games, 1994, author is Christian Aldridge):
Literal vs. Conceptual

A good way to run the Hubris Engine is to use "scene ideas" to convey the scene, instead of literalisms. ... focus on the intent behind the scene and not on how big or how far things might be. If the difficulty of the task at hand (such as jumping across a chasm in a cave) is explained in terms of difficulty, it doesn't matter how far across the actual chasm spans. In a movie, for instance, the camera zooms or pans to emphasize the danger or emotional reaction to the scene, and in so doing it manipulates the real distance of a chasm to suit the mood or "feel" of the moment. It is then no longer about how far across the character has to jump, but how hard the feat is for the character. ... If the players enjoy the challenge of figuring out how high and far someone can jump, they should be allowed the pleasure of doing so - as long as it doesn't interfere with the narrative flow and enjoyment of the game.
The scene should be presented therefore in terms relative to the character's abilities ... Players who want to climb onto your coffee table and jump across your living room to prove that their character could jump over the chasm have probably missed the whole point of the story.

Before going on, I'll take a quick break to discuss "narration," which is no more and no less than saying what happens in the imaginary events. I want to distinguish saying what happens (narrating) from establishing what happens (currently a non-named concept), because they are often confused. I'm taking the

My call is, you get what you play for. Can you address Premise this way? Sure, on the monkeys-might-fly-out-my-butt principle. But the key to un-premeditated artistry of this sort (cutup fiction, splatter painting, cinema verite) is to know what to throw out, and role-playing does not include that option, at least not very easily. Participants in Ouija-board play do so through selective remembering. I have observed many such role-players to refer to hours of unequivocally bored and contentious play as "awesome!" given a week or two for mental editing.

The fourth is maintaining privacy among the participants about what's important to each one, whether about one's own character or the characters of others. Such play might be thought of as keeping Premise personal and close to the vest. That privacy may detract from others' enjoyment, although see Ouija-board role-playing below for some further thoughts.

In designing a Setting-heavy Narrativist rules-set, I strongly suggest following the full-disclosure lead of HeroQuest and abandoning the metaplot "revelation" approach immediately.

4. Sole reliance on deepening and detailing any aspects of Exploration is misguided. The vast majority of attempted Narrativist design is a hunt for the perfect Simulationist design that will ostensibly permit the Narrativist play to emerge, leading to abashedness at best. It's often combined with mistaking an effectiveness-improvement mechanic for a reward system - at this point, the game text simply facilitates High-Concept Simulationist play, and the Narrativist goal is left to Social Contract alone. Various publishing practices, especially a long string of scenario and setting supplememnts, provide the coffin nails.

Noon wrote: I was wondering if this can be approached also in just a simple 'character exploration through their choices'. When you mention continued conflict, it suggests an overarching emplacement of the issue. I would think that you can do character exploration from a presentation of difficult choices, each choice made reflects the character and don't need to be tied to an overarching issue. Of course, without an overarching issue, what mode your in between each choice may be prone to mode drift (as in, what are we doing when there is no significant choice to be made right now). But regardless, every time a character is presented with a significant choice, its designed to focus on a premise. The bigger the choice, the stronger/clearer the premise is.

Hi Jack,

Do you mean this post
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=9839&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=

To which I'd agree. Overarching premise doesn't have to be there. Each choice can have its own premise, and each of those choices don't have to share the same premise. Though obviously overarching premise is a solid technique.

In fact I'd suggest all choices have premise (of some scale) whether you intend them to or not, but that's me just getting complicated. :)

Noon wrote: A question on pastiche

Say the premise of die hard is X, and it uses explosives and uzi's to explore it pretty damn well. Is pastiche where another movie uses explosives and uzi's, as if just having them and using them will be exploring premise X? Or is it more 'In die hard explosives and uzi's were good, so we'll have them and thus achieve the same goodness die hard had'. In other words, porting over the tools to examine the premise, but not the actual premise itself?

It occurs to me that narrativist fears about pastiche are founded on the problem of addressing a given premise with the same tools someone else has used to address it. The fear would be that you're going to end up producing the same themes as the original work did. This produces as effect similar to railroading.

The authority to address premise has been surrendered by the players to an author outside of the gaming group.

[To editorialise for a second here - there's no reason pastiche has to have this effect]

Now if you're playing simulationist - or gamist for that matter - addressing premise is not at stake. So pastiche doesn't carry this risk. Sure, you're use of pastiche might compromise your ability to address premise, but as premise doesn't feature in your creative agenda it's not important.

Pastiche in all three modes can devolve into slavish emulation. A painter could pastiche Dali to create a new work valid in it's own right as well as being a commentry on Dali's style, or he could just create a second rate Dali, or he could create a forgery. All would be pastiche.

Hmm, no, still not quite sure what pastiche is, even with the link.

Is it something like this: One movie starts with a premise, then go's about setting up choices made to address that premise.

The second movie starts with no premise. It instead copies those choices made in the previous one, to reflect the previous exploration of that premise, rather than actually exploring it itself.

So its sort of like trying to make the same choices the other movie characters made, instead of making its own choices which would lead to exploring the premise a different way?

Hey, Callan

I'm sort of confused about Pastiche myself. It seems to be refered to as a substitute for premise. I don't think so. It looks like a technique to me. And it looks like it works if everyone else has seen/read the source material and "gets" the pastiche. Often this brings laughter, even if the use was not humorous. Go figure the human mind. "Dude! 'altering the deal' Just like Darth Vader! That's so cool!" Is it still pastiche if only one person had seen the previous work?

Jack

It's still pastiche if no one has seen the previous work.

Ian Charvill wrote: It's still pastiche if no one has seen the previous work.

Ron Edwards wrote: It means what I'm saying pastiche is: presentation of familiar tropes which convey meaning mainly due to that familiarity with specific past presentations.

Hi folks,

Ian Charvill wrote: The authority to address premise has been surrendered by the players to an author outside of the gaming group.

Now if you're playing simulationist - or gamist for that matter - addressing premise is not at stake. So pastiche doesn't carry this risk. Sure, your use of pastiche might compromise your ability to address premise, but as premise doesn't feature in your creative agenda it's not important.

Noon wrote: The second movie starts with no premise. It instead copies those choices made in the previous one, to reflect the previous exploration of that premise, rather than actually exploring it itself.

So its sort of like trying to make the same choices the other movie characters made, instead of making its own choices which would lead to exploring the premise a different way?

WDFlores wrote: *snip*

Noon wrote: The second movie starts with no premise. It instead copies those choices made in the previous one, to reflect the previous exploration of that premise, rather than actually exploring it itself.

So its sort of like trying to make the same choices the other movie characters made, instead of making its own choices which would lead to exploring the premise a different way?

Looks like you're there, Callan. Unless someone clarifies otherwise, that's pretty much it, I'd think.

One possibly tricky thing to note though: Even if the second movie ends up exploring Premise X the same exact way, if (hypothetically speaking) Movie No.2 was made without any awareness of the way the first movie addressed Premise X, then I don't think pastiche happened.

Of course, to someone who's seen Movie No.1, Movie No.2 will end up as pastiche -- but to the folks who made Movie No.2, their being unaware of Movie No.1 in the first place, makes it impossible for them to make pastiche, at least in their own personal context. It all depends on where the author and audience are situated, and who's point-of-view we're talking about.

(Am I making any sense? Hope it wasn't confusing.)

- W.

Jack Spencer Jr wrote:

Ian Charvill wrote: It's still pastiche if no one has seen the previous work.

That really doesn't make sense. How can a previous work be emulated if it has not been seen or, possibly, known to exist?

It seems there are two ways to use pastiche. The first is to reference a previous work in some way where referencing the previous work is the desired effect. As noted above, Simpsons uses this sort of pastiche for humorous effect. The second is to simply use an event from a previous work in the absence of another idea of what to do. This second method is what I've come to understand as cliché. When writing, for instance, and you don't know where to go next, the first idea off the top of your head, which is likely to come from all the books you've read or movies you've seen.

Well, I don't want to spend to much time in judgement value on this except to say that the second is OK, but you should strive for the first.

Jack Spencer Jr wrote:

Ian Charvill wrote: It's still pastiche if no one has seen the previous work.

That really doesn't make sense. How can a previous work be emulated if it has not been seen or, possibly, known to exist?

Ah, I see, MJ. SO it's like when people say "we need a bigger boat"

Since never having seen Jaws I had to go to Google to determine the source of that familiar quote, I'd say that's exactly right.

--M. J. Young

I think it's important to stress that pastiche is stylistic imitation and not just quoting. To pastiche the X-Files it wouldn't be enough to have an FBI agent who investigates the supernatural. You'd have to use stylistic elements - the colour pallette, the anywhere North America anonymity of the urban locations, the torches in the darkness sequences, the skeptic/believer dialectic, the referencing of urban myths/pop conspiracy theory/classic horror movies, and so on. And if you have enough of those elements you don't need the FBI agent - or the supernatural - to have the pastiche.

"We need a bigger boat" is a quote - "We need bigger guns" is Split Second pastiching Jaws.

Now obviously, if you copy enough content, you'll start to pick up stylistic elements as well. Too, pastiche need to be above a certain - and probably audience dependent - threshold or you merely have influence.

But this is The Arts folks - anyone looking to nail an absolute definition of this down is going to end up unhappy.

Ian Charvill wrote: But this is The Arts folks - anyone looking to nail an absolute definition of this down is going to end up unhappy.

Ian Charvill wrote: "We need a bigger boat" is a quote - "We need bigger guns" is Split Second pastiching Jaws.

But this is The Arts folks - anyone looking to nail an absolute definition of this down is going to end up unhappy.

Jack - for what it's worth w/r/t your comments about dropping out.

Both lines are said by cops in response to seeing a monster. Both are darkly comical observations about being ill prepared for facing the monster, which act as tension relievers. Both take similar gramatical forms. Therefore I'd argue that the Split Second line is a direct stylistic imitation of the Jaws.

The reason I'd rule out quoting as a form of pastiche is because it would make the term pastiche so wide as to be meaningless.