... I give you exhibit A.

Hello,

While I am weary of most conversations of gaming these days, I find myself morbidly drawn to arguments about literature and storytelling.

Now, some might ask, "Who is to say RPGs have anything to do with literature, art or storytelling?" I would ask, "Who is to say they do not? Who? Please, tell me. Really, I'd love to fucking know who's got the fucking right to get into my face about what my fun is."

I've noticed that most folks who make such arguments tend to say, "Listen, art is something in a museum." Really. I've read that. But they never actually define art.

So, let me say this: for me, my working definition of Art is, "What do I honor, and how well do I honor it?" That is, what matters to me truly and deeply must be the subject of the work, and I must give it my all. Thus, I can give Duchamp props for overturning a toilet and calling it art—because the man was interested in debasing the term Art. I can then, also, leave him to his joke and get back to my own work, never having to think about his nonsense again. Because, if somebody is honoring something I don't care about, I say, "Great," and move on. It's kind of a dodge, but it let's me get back to work without wasting time in a debate I don't care about.

If someone wants to strive toward true storytelling or art with a roleplaying game why not? If a group of player want to utilize the tools and techniques of dramatic narrative, why not? RPGs certainly draw on war game elements. No one criticizes that? Why not draw on the the craft elements of fiction? After all, movies draw on the disciplines of playwriting, musical composition and painting to produce a whole effect. Why not mix and match till you reach the satisfaction you desire? I cannot sympathize why someone would bemoan the fact I pursue the pleasure I seek. I think I understand it these days, but I do not empathize with it. My understanding goes something like this: I don't care what they care about, so I'm looking down on them. And the truth is, No, I'm not looking down on them. The truth is worse. I don't even careabout what they care about when it comes to their definition of "story." If "Van Helsing" or "The City of Lost Children" can match their definition of "Story" why in God's name would I care? I'm not looking down on them; I'm not looking at them at all. And I think this realization, no matter how subtly perceived, drives people into frenzy.

Which brings me to Story.

Story is a bugaboo topic, because everyone knows it when they see it, but many people see very different things.

For some people, "a series of events" forms a story.

You know what? I'll grant that. A series of events cobbled together into some sort of shape might well be called a Story. I'll grant you "Van Helsing" or "The City of Lost Children" are stories using this dull definition. But I would insist, as a man would has shouted down executives in the middle of story meetings—that it's a crappy story. This isn't an issue of semantics for me. This is a matter of dollars and vocation and a deep passion. Using the too very, and nearly useless definition ,of story "a series of events," most stories will be bad. And thank god its not the definition most executives and writers in publishing or film making industries use to greenlight projects—or the publishing and film industries would collapse under the weight of a lot of serial events that had no actually narrative purpose.

Many people on this site take a lot of flak for saying that what distinguishes a good story (I would normally say, a "real" story—but, as noted, I'm in generous mood tonight) is the moral dimension. Without that moral dimension, I would argue, you simply get "a series of events." And that, as anyone who has heard a ten year old tell a vague summary of a movie, is not a compelling tale. What makes a tale worth hearing is the prioritization of the moral complication. If a character's having to make choices, something comes alive on the page or the book.

This does not mean there is not a patina of facts and details to create the illusion of reality. This illusion provides the frame work for the moral issue to be addressed.

I decided to address all this tonight because I just came across a review of "The Great Game," a book comparing real life spy craft with the literary versions. I offer this not because the ideas are new---anyone comfortable with the GNS concept of the term Narrativism will have recognized his already. But to those lunkheads who think Narrativism is some bizarre chimera made up by Ron Edwards out of the thick of his head.

Here's the introduction to the review:

Frederick P. Hitz spent more than 20 years in the federal government, most of it in the CIA, where from 1990 to 1998 he was the first presidentially appointed statutory inspector general. Such a distinguished bureaucratic career would presumably qualify him for writing a book on spying and fiction, as he has—it is called The Great Game: The Myth and Reality of Espionage. Hitz's strategy in the book is clear: "great works of spy fiction are compared to actual espionage operations." He covers recruitment, tradecraft, assassination, sex, even life after spying, as practiced in the real espionage cases of Penkovsky, Popov, Ames, Hannsen, etc., comparing them to the literary examples in the works of Kipling, le Carré, Greene, Furst, etc.

In the end, Hitz reaches the rather uninteresting conclusion that "no fictional account adequately captures the remarkable variety of twists and turns that a genuine human spy goes through." Completely missing the point of fiction, Hitz's conclusion is as limited as the ambition of his book. For the problems that important spy fiction presents to its readers are not about espionage logistics. They are primarily moral.

The problem is, of course, that Kim is really not primarily about spying. Kipling's book is about a whole set of issues crucial to the British colonial discourse, and the spying in it allows them to come into focus.

Choir. Preaching. Go post this at RPG.NET and await the meltdown. :)

No.

And it's my belief, since lots of people arrive here looking for clues about Nar play, that the article posted will have value here.

Christopher

You've got some interesting points well expressed! While I would love to further discuss with you the notion of narrative (in the literary meaning not the G/N/S meaning) and the various definitions of "Story", I'm afraid that we'd both veer off the gaming topic of The Forge to the point that we'd devolve into exhibitionist mutual onanism.

Or, to put it more colloquially : "Cool!"

Doctor Xero

And as a "hell yeah," and as an annotation, to the other great, all conquering argument that gets trotted out against Ron's definition of narrativism.

"But I've never heard of Lajos Egri!"

So?

Egri was just saying, in his own way, what has been said god knows how many times in god knows how many ways: good stories are about something.

But that phrasing is less than useless in any sort of rigorous discussion. Especially in RPG's, where that can be taken equally to mean "about winning" or "about maintaining suspension of disbelief". So we get to "good stories are about human issues put into crisis." Which is the same damn thing as an Egrian premise. In practice, it's the same thing as Keith Johnstone's establish a routine, then break it, since routine implies values, breaking routine implies a challenge to values.

Never mind where Ron got his favourite expression of it. Stop indulging in reverse appeals against authority and weak ad hominem arguments, address the damn issue. Saying "address premise" or "put human issues into crisis", or replace issues with values or whatever. Get over it, move on.

Hi Doc,

Well, your discussion may well be on-thread.

Nar play has been defined in that past as a concern for building a story in the "Lit 101" sense of the word -- with premise and theme and the whole shebang.

When reviewer points out that the author of "The Great Game" misses the point of literature by focusing on the spy craft and completely missing the moral issues -- well, that the split between Sim and Nar.

As far as I can tell, my notion of "story"is exactly the same thing in lit and GNS terms -- that's my point.

(I won't use the word "narrative," in place of "story," which I see as a tool in storytelling, and I believe will only cloud the issue.)

Now, the concerns of storytelling in an RPG are tweaked from say, that of a novel. But they're also tweaked between a novel and play, a play and a movie, a movie and an epic poem, an epic poem and a fairy tale. But the issue of moral choices ("Do I share the food my mom gave me with the little grey man who popped out from behind that tree,") is the mark of the stories that matter. A consistent and thematic treatment of these issues is what makes a work really compelling. (This is what I love about Nar play -- each Player is answering the tough questions in really different ways. The exploration of issues is multifaced -- just like having Achilles and Hector and Agamemnon and Priam all jostling for the right way to meet their own desires against the needs of those dying around them.)

So, to me, it's all the same stuff. It's just out there.

Egri didn't make this stuff up.

I do wish Ron would stop leaning so heavily on the man, frankly. He wrote a book about Premise, so yes, it's all clearly explained. It might even have been an eye opener for Ron. I don't know. I do know Egri took them out of plays and laid them out clearly on table. Which is good. It's a disected frog. Good sometimes to look at the guts. But it's in our tales going all the way back to the Iliad. To keep giving "credit" to Egri is to suggest, strangely, its his idea. No. His idea was to write from Premise. A bad move, I think, but that's me. Are moral issues vital for great storytelling? Yes. Must it be valued above the other elements of the story? Yes. Does the best "carpentry" as a storyteller come from obsessing on the Premise, as Egri suggests a playwright do? I have my doubts. An intutive sense of human beings usually leads one to terrfic Premise. And it comes out more ogranically. (Which is, by the way, why Players in Nar play don't have to have the Premise taped to their foreheads to produce Nar play. This kind of storytelling is what human beings *naturally* respond to and are drawn to. The concern a lot of us have had is that a lot of RPG assumptions about story blow past story with obsession about Plot, getting the world "details" right and so forth -- and thus produced still-born stories. Yes, it looks like an infant, but it's not ALIVE. Moral issues make a story ALIVE.)

Gotta go,

Christopher

Christopher Kubasik wrote:
When reviewer points out that the author of "The Great Game" misses the point of literature by focusing on the spy craft and completely missing the moral issues -- well, that the split between Sim and Nar.

Hi Sean,

You actually brought up three points. I'll respond to them in turn.

First: Nar better than Sim? Nope. Not on my watch at least. I'm baffled how this ever keeps coming up (at least in my posts -- others have been obviously brutal in their comparisons of the two.) If anyone could come up with a pithy boilerplate I could use as a Sig relieving me of having to cover this time and again, I'd love to hear it.

The second response is to this: "My biggest beef though is that its seems to imply that Sim lacks, by design, moral issues. This I would disagree with. Hitz is right in one regard, that the real life twists and turns are often more bizarre then the fictional ones."

Please note that there's no connection between moral issues and twists and turns and bizarre incidents. I could make a movie chock full of such things ("City of Lost Children" leaps to mind). That doesn't mean there's a moral implication of the events at all. A porn tape is much the same thing. And any of the Masks of Death videos. Strangeness, just because its true, doesn't nescesarily offer us anything moral to engage wtih. It's a fact. That's all.

Third, this: "but in a Sim game you LIVE that beastliness. You are the guy killing the ten year old daughter of the Argentinan president. In Sim you feel the pressure of the trigger, hear the click, hear the puff of the silencer and watch as the red blood stains her dress and tights and flows down on her shoes as she collapses during the easter egg hunt at the White House. Your not just creating that scene, your living it in fine and terrible detail."

Okay, Sean, I think I'm about to rock your world on two fronts, so stay with me.

A) you seem to be assuming that in Sim a player "feels" or "responds" more to the incidents of play more than when playing Nar.

No. Simply no. This certainly is not a distiction made in any of the difinitions of the modes. This is up to the group and the unique player -- and has nothing, I mean, nothing -- to do with the mode. Being creeped out, being moved, being brought to laughter or tears is viable via the imagination (visual, emotional and otherwise) of the player doing the imagining and responding. In your example, I could speak those details, and thus respond to them (either as GM or Player) in *any* mode. They're just words. Each group will know whehter they value them or not. But they could be valued in any group. Execpt for one word -- "terrible" Which I'll cover below.

So. No. If you're assuming this, and it certainly seems you are, let it go.

There seems to be some idea that Nar, because it prioritizes Premise, is an intellectual activity. It is not. And I give you Exhibit B: All the world's great dramatic arts. If you're fucking crying at the end of the Trojan Women, if you aren't laughing and crying at the end of Shrek, if you aren't somewhat chilled when Michael closes the door to his office on his wife's face after lying to her about killing his brother-in-law -- then something's gone horribly wrong. These are three Premise rich stories, and the reason they *work* is become the emotional elements work -- not because the set decorators have acurately portrayed the Ruins of Troy, Fairytale Land, or the gangster environs of Las Vegas, Hollywood, New York and Old Italy.

We're sucked in because the Premise is live -- it matters to us. We care. Thus, we're moved.

B) You'll note I emphasized the word "terrible" in my quote from your post. Because that's a *judgement*. A judgement means Premise. If we play an RPG and the GM deliciously describes what you wrote, and we all sit at the table and go, "Cool," and go off to the next assassination, all we're doing is playing out a Michael Bay movie -- lots of attention to visual detail with narry a concern for consequence.

Sorry, my friend. But if the concern for "terrible" and "beastliness" is prioritized, it sounds like your playing Nar. Remember, all those details MATTER to delivering the Premise to an active, live choice: for characters in a book, for audience members at a play, for Players in an RPGs, for all circumstances.

If you were to take out the word "terrible" you'd have a visual description of an assassination -- but no conseuqence. That could be cold-hearted sim, or cold-hearted Gamism ("we're simming being professionals, we do our job, we do it well" without cost to moral consequence in the first case; or "the GM's given us a mission, we've got our skills, our equipment, he's set up the challengs, let's roll.")

Now, in either case there might be mention of consequence... A Player might say, "My guy sheds a tear," (forgive me, its an example to make a point), but anyway, his guy sheds a tear. Like a Michael Bay film, filled with great looking details, it's a detail, and nothing more. It *suggests* there's an issue floating around -- but it's not really valued. What's valued is the stark orange fireballs against crystal blue skies.

Now, because you talked about "feeling" "beastliness" and "terrible" it seems as if you're putting this stuff front and center. Note that what started this thread are spy NOVELS. The characters feel things, the readers feel things with the characters. Feeling is the name of the game.

The question is, what is the Player of an RPG feeling: Pride in Victory over Obstacles? An Imagined sense of feeling really cool being that kind of guy? Or the moral ambivilane of defending a nation while becoming a monster?

Let me know what you think of all this.

It's really important stuff.

Christopher

Sorry, my friend. But if the concern for "terrible" and "beastliness" is prioritized, it sounds like your playing Nar. Remember, all those details MATTER to delivering the Premise to an active, live choice: for characters in a book, for audience members at a lay, for Players in an RPGs, for all circumstances.

Hi Ralph,

....and just a quick addendum...

The LABEL doesn't matter. The BEHAVIOR does. If a group of players is prioritizing those engaging moral/thematic/emotional issues, then they fall in the mode of Narrativism.

As I said at the end of the first post on this thread: Great. If that's what you're doing, great.

Christopher

Just as a note:

Please contact the author *right now* and get permission for posting this. The Forge is a publically accessible archive, and this reposting is in violation of the author's rights, and most likely copyright law.

yrs--
--Ben

Thanks for responding Chris let me kick some stuff back to you

Christopher Kubasik wrote: Hi Sean,
First: Nar better than Sim? Nope. Not on my watch at least. I'm baffled how this ever keeps coming up (at least in my posts -- others have been obviously brutal in their comparisons of the two.) If anyone could come up with a pithy boilerplate I could use as a Sig relieving me of having to cover this time and again, I'd love to hear it.

Please note that there's no connection between moral issues and twists and turns and bizarre incidents. I could make a movie chock full of such things ("City of Lost Children" leaps to mind). That doesn't mean there's a moral implication of the events at all. A porn tape is much the same thing. And any of the Masks of Death videos. Strangeness, just because its true, doesn't nescesarily offer us anything moral to engage wtih. It's a fact. That's all.

Third, this: "but in a Sim game you LIVE that beastliness. You are the guy killing the ten year old daughter of the Argentinan president. In Sim you feel the pressure of the trigger, hear the click, hear the puff of the silencer and watch as the red blood stains her dress and tights and flows down on her shoes as she collapses during the easter egg hunt at the White House. Your not just creating that scene, your living it in fine and terrible detail."

Okay, Sean, I think I'm about to rock your world on two fronts, so stay with me.


A) you seem to be assuming that in Sim a player "feels" or "responds" more to the incidents of play more than when playing Nar.

No. Simply no. This certainly is not a distiction made in any of the difinitions of the modes. This is up to the group and the unique player -- and has nothing, I mean, nothing -- to do with the mode. Being creeped out, being moved, being brought to laughter or tears is viable via the imagination (visual, emotional and otherwise) of the player doing the imagining and responding. In your example, I could speak those details, and thus respond to them (either as GM or Player) in *any* mode. They're just words. Each group will know whehter they value them or not. But they could be valued in any group. Execpt for one word -- "terrible" Which I'll cover below.

So. No. If you're assuming this, and it certainly seems you are, let it go.

There seems to be some idea that Nar, because it prioritizes Premise, is an intellectual activity. It is not. And I give you Exhibit B: All the world's great dramatic arts. If you're fucking crying at the end of the Trojan Women, if you aren't laughing and crying at the end of Shrek, if you aren't somewhat chilled when Michael closes the door to his office on his wife's face after lying to her about killing his brother-in-law -- then something's gone horribly wrong. These are three Premise rich stories, and the reason they *work* is become the emotional elements work -- not because the set decorators have acurately portrayed the Ruins of Troy, Fairytale Land, or the gangster environs of Las Vegas, Hollywood, New York and Old Italy.

We're sucked in because the Premise is live -- it matters to us. We care. Thus, we're moved.

B) You'll note I emphasized the word "terrible" in my quote from your post. Because that's a *judgement*. A judgement means Premise. If we play an RPG and the GM deliciously describes what you wrote, and we all sit at the table and go, "Cool," and go off to the next assassination, all we're doing is playing out a Michael Bay movie -- lots of attention to visual detail with narry a concern for consequence.

Sorry, my friend. But if the concern for "terrible" and "beastliness" is prioritized, it sounds like your playing Nar. Remember, all those details MATTER to delivering the Premise to an active, live choice: for characters in a book, for audience members at a play, for Players in an RPGs, for all circumstances.

If you were to take out the word "terrible" you'd have a visual description of an assassination -- but no conseuqence. That could be cold-hearted sim, or cold-hearted Gamism ("we're simming being professionals, we do our job, we do it well" without cost to moral consequence in the first case; or "the GM's given us a mission, we've got our skills, our equipment, he's set up the challengs, let's roll.")

Now, in either case there might be mention of consequence... A Player might say, "My guy sheds a tear," (forgive me, its an example to make a point), but anyway, his guy sheds a tear. Like a Michael Bay film, filled with great looking details, it's a detail, and nothing more. It *suggests* there's an issue floating around -- but it's not really valued. What's valued is the stark orange fireballs against crystal blue skies.

Now, because you talked about "feeling" "beastliness" and "terrible" it seems as if you're putting this stuff front and center. Note that what started this thread are spy NOVELS. The characters feel things, the readers feel things with the characters. Feeling is the name of the game.

The question is, what is the Player of an RPG feeling: Pride in Victory over Obstacles? An Imagined sense of feeling really cool being that kind of guy? Or the moral ambivilane of defending a nation while becoming a monster?

Let me know what you think of all this.

It's really important stuff.

Christopher

Christopher,

Interesting post.

Pretend it is a perfect world and I am Joe Gamer. I have put on my computer a few hours before I got run my RPG session with my friends.

What do you want me to walk away from that post with and in a perfect world, how you would like my game, or the way I think about my game, to have altered.

Judd

Hello Judd,

I'm not sure I understand your question. But I'll answer as best I can.

First, I'm not sure there's anything to be taken away from this thread if the game session's only a few hours away -- except, maybe -- if the group is trying out Nar play for their first pre-game prep session or about to have their first play session, it might buck the GM up and maybe help him get Nar better. That is, he might go, "Right. Like in spy stories. It's not about al the stuff. It's about all those choices I'm going to be giving the Players via their PCs."

It also might serve, say, if someone were running a tight Sim game for spies, or federal agents or whatever. And he'd arrive thinking, "Now I'm gonna make a little speech. 'No Angst, tonight guys. Your PCs are professionals. You can feel bad on occassion, play that up if you want. But you've got a job to do. That's what tonight's game is about. You, Tim, you know what I'm talking about. No 'going to the press with the photos off your cell phone.' I've prepped the scenario about doing this assignment for the Agency. We agreed this is what it's going to be about. Let's stick to the assignment.'" And perhaps, especially if Tim takes the intro to heart, the game won't end up with five players looking at Tim for 2 hours as the GM tries to steet him back on track as he plays out his 'moral dilema.'

But the post is about grokking the core difference between Nar and Sim play -- and if the game's only a couple of hours away, I don't know (except the above), what might be applied off the cuff. I mean, by the time the games only a couple of hours away, the track's been laid down, the trains already rolling. Changing direction at this point might lead to a wreck.

Now, as for the specifics of your questions: I don't want your game or the way you thinking about gaming to be altered. I'd have to presume that your game should be altered -- which I don't. I don't know anything about you, your players, your game. How the hell would I know what's best for your game?

So, let my lay out for you *my* ground rules.

I think of people like this: there are the hungry and the sated.

The sated don't need anything new. The sated are curious, if they're curious, in a kind of channel flipping kind of way. They'll touch on things, but aren't really invested in digging at them, cracking shells, gnawing till they can digest a new idea or different perspective. They're content enough with how they're playing. Or, they might be really, really frustrated with how their games play, but are content changing around the pieces of what they already know, looking for the fix with what the know in new combinations to take away that frustration. And that's great.

And then there are the hungry. The hungry are playing RPGs and want something more. Something different. They may be content, they may be frustrated. But either way, they know there's more out there.

This doesn't mean, by the way (still looking for that Boilerplate folks! There's a $1 reward via Pay Pal!) I'm saying they're looking for Nar. Maybe they love building terrific worlds with all cool fantastical logic. And they've got all these stories to run the player through. And the players *love* experiencing and exploring this cool world. Except for one jackass who keep not playing the second undlord of a vor'chta chieftan the "correctly" -- the way the GM has laid out the second underlord of the vor'chta chiefan is supposed to be played because that's what the culture is like. The jackass says he wants to break the tradition and see what that's like. He's blowing the whole game, and the GM's thinking, "There's something here I'm missing." So he ends up at a place like the Forge and starts digging around. And maybe he gets some clues. But the key is -- he NEEDS information.

So, if your Joe Gamer, perfect world or no, I have no idea what you're looking for or what you care about. I post for the people who *are* looking. And since I have no idea what they're looking for, I have no idea what they'll take away. It is my hope that my posts about RPGs are sometimes the morsals that help fill the hungry belly of those looking for information and new perspecives. I get Private Mails thanking me to this effect -- here and at RPG.net -- so I assume somebody's getting something from my posts.

So, what somewhat gets, if anything, depends on what they needed, what they were looking for.

Since I don't believe in generic people, nor perfect worlds, I don't know how to go further with your request.

If I haven't answered what you're after, feel free to open up the question, or make it more specific or whatever you think will help me, and I'll do my best to answer.



Hi Sean,

At this point all I can say is, "Cool."

Well, wait, I'm me. I can always say more.

I might ask, "How are you defining Sim that make you know you're not playing Nar?" I'm not saying you are playing Nar. I'm saying, you seem to be hanging on the Sim label pretty tightly, I don't know why, so I might be missing something. All Sim play I've ever seen seems to depend on the game *not* mattering. That is, for me, one of the "feels" like Sim qualities. No one strays too far from the GM's plot or assumptions about the world, cause that might break the plot or the world. No one breaks "genre convention" cause that might shatter the feel of the game. There's a lovely (and I mean this) a lovely, chinese craftsman-like quality to Sim play where people are really respectful to each other and the traditions of their narrative forefathers.

But -- there's no real surprises. There's nothing that could litterly, fucking bring everyone's expectations for the story or the game crashing to the ground. Their's no true honest to god feeling -- because true honest to god feeling could end with Blood on the Walls. That's when the spy sent to interogate a prisoner takes pictures with his cell phone and posts them on the internet -- and no one saw that coming -- because the player felt something unexpected and acted on it. And everyone at the table is now engaged, or amazed, or fumbling to catch up to a turncoat in the agency. They might side with him, they might not. They might *feel* compelled to bump the PC off -- and everybody would be cool with that. Because we came to the tale saying, "Whatever engages us in these moral complications is where we go."

Because I tell you this: as long as you're "feeling" things, but staying on the "polite path" you're playing Sim -- because you're constantly limiting the feelings and where they might lead. You're emotionally engaged, but only so much. That is, you're making sure to feel correctly. And, um, well, there's a problem with that line of feeling...

So, I need you to tell me which of these two possibilities you're playing by -- cause I can't suss it out. What does Sim mean to you, cause you've baffled me.

I've offered two way of having "emotion" in a game above -- one means Nar, one means Sim. Which way are you playing.

But this may not be a matter you need to explore further. And I would respect that.

God speed to all,

Christopher

Chris

I suppose I am a Sim proponnent it's where I feel the most.. comfortable is not quite the word but it works here I guess. I will fall back on one of the things I said: When you engage the Mind you Engage the Soul. Exploration of moral dilemma and emotion is just as (but not more) important in Sim as the exploration pf anything else. Like anything else you CAN leave it aside and ignore it but I think that is certainly ignoring a powerful part of the Character. So I would agree that exploring those things but staying on the "polite path" is how I see Sim.

I will say it might be a hard concept to grasp because moral dilemma and emotion do not equate too well to being on ready made charts.

"I just shot this little girl, I roll a D6... damn I am turned on by this... hmm" well you can put it on a chart but... I think you see my point.

I suppose I see it this way, there is a difference between Exploration and Experience, where Experience is mostly Input with some output but true Exploration is Input, Output, and Throughput where throughput is everywhere in between.


This has been a fairly productive discussion for me so I have no problems exploring more questions as it were.


Sean

Sean,

So, just so I'm clear -- I think I know what you're saying -- when you're playing Sim, the Player, via the character, might have emotional responses, sensations, and all -- but wouldn't change is *actions* because of those sensations. Right? And whatever he thought or imagined his character was feeling (either emotionally or tactically) again, would be recieved information, but would not engender a strong new tactict or action.

Thus, in the Sim game you're describing, our PCs might be torturing prisoners to get information to save the President, I might feel, via, my character, horrible about it, but I would never take the pictures with my cell phone and post them -- because that's not what that night's game is *about*. My mission is to save the president. If I feel bad along the way, say, that's cool and engaging -- but it ends there.

Whereas in Nar play, what I *do* in response to those sensations -- what actions my character takes (or doesn't take) -- is what Nar play is all about.

Thus, both Nar and Sim play involve recieving these kinds of emotional and tactile bits of data, but Nar play then asks the player to output actual decisions of consequence due to the recieved bits of emotional and tactile data.

Is there where we are? Because this makes perfect sense to me.

(And let me add quickly, even in Nar play, there might be a period of simply recieving which would look a lot like Sim as the PC's moral view begins to shift. But the utter potential that anything my change drastically at any moment in terms of the PC's behavior and agenda -- a live, exposed wire at all times -- is what makes it Nar and not Sim. Yes?)

Christopher

Actually, I was under the impression that Nar play could be undermined by the presence of the other modes, an impression I got from this thread. In turn, the other modes can be undermined by the presence of Nar, depending on how these all impact the overall focus of play.

To clarify, play can involve all sorts of "typically narrativist" elements, and can indeed address premise through moral issues, but at the same time, if the major focus of play is exploration of character and setting (or system and winning), then the game may well be Sim or Gam.

For example, in my game, Scarlet Wake, players can advance one of their stats only by introducing a dilemna, which must be clearly explained as to why it is a dilemna, through the emotions that the situation invokes for the character. In addition, the character's choices are then subject to adjustment based on that dilemna (they may continue with the kill or leave the target be). So we have both moral issues being addressed and the potential for differential outcomes according to said issues. But does this make Scarlet Wake Narrativist? IMHO, not at all. Is it drifting? Maybe, but I'd argue no, because the goal of the dilemna is not to address the moral issues at hand, but to increase a stat. On one level, it would appear to be narrative, but superordinately, it is very gamist.

This example can be extended to Sim play too, in that a given character may well explore issues of moral importance in a deep and meaningful way, and may make many decisions based on this exploration of morality, but if the overall goal is to explore this for the sake of experiencing another reality, and not for the sake of the moral issues themselves, then play is still Sim. So in a sense you can have a highly Sim game where play is about exploring the reality of being a character exposed to moral dilemnas, but so long as the superordinate goal of play is the exploration of that reality, and not of the morals themselves, then it isn't narrativism.

At least, that's my understanding of how G, N, and S can fit together. And this, to me, makes sense as to how you can have any given story explored in any of the modes.

So to use the terminology being thrown around here so far: emotional bits of data can be used in the input, output, and throughput of all the modes, but it is the goals for doing so which affects mode.

I hope that makes sense (I'm still very new to this GNS thing, so I could be completely full of shit).

-Ben

I think the focus on emotion is a little baby/bathwater or something like that. I find it odd that Christopher posted this because something similar was cooking up for me, although I might not have posted it. Let me see if I can present my views, which are pretty much just a slightly different perspective on what Christopher said.

In a story, things must happen.

OK, that may need a bit of explanation. First of all, I'm with Christopher in that "narrated series of related events" is an inadequate definition. Second, there's when things happen and when things actually happen.

An example. (I know some dislike examples from other media, but as Christopher had pointed out, the basic creature under discussion, the story, is similar at it's root in other mediums, I feel it's appropriate.) Vincent Gallo's recent film "The Brown Bunny" was booed out of the Cannes Film Festival. Rogert Ebert has a couple Articles about it here. The import bit is the plot summary. I won't cut & paste here, but in summary, Ebert says that for 90 minutes we watch Gallo drive across country, stop for gas twice, washes his van and stops to ride his motorcycle. Lots of stuff happens, but nothing actually happens.*

So what does it mean when something actually happens? McKee refers to this as a story event and defines it as when a story value reverses it's charge, from positive to negative or from negative to positive. Unless a value reverses its charge, an event does not take place.

In Brown Bunny, towards the end, he finally does find his girlfriend but she reveals something about their relationship. At this point, I assume since I have not seen the movie, a value, their relationship finally reverses its charge from a hopeful positive to a crushed negative.

Often I have seen this refered to as "rising and falling action" A clunky phrasing and does really illustrate it as well for me as the charge reversal.

This is the driving force of storytelling, both in making things actually happen but also in engaging the audience's interest. Can you believe what just happened? I wonder what's going to happen next!

* I am curious to see this film, but when it's brought back to the US it will be edited so the heck with it

Sean wrote: I think of Sim as a 3D experience, that is incomplete without feeling and emotion. Just because its not listed directly in the Definition and maybe even if the author/authors do not view it, I do not belive you can ever divorce moral dilemma from play. I admit its harder in Sim and Gamism and many people may ignore it exploring that route, but when you engage the mind, the Human mind, you engage the soul, spirits, or the X factor (for you Atheists who believe in neither soul or spirit) and you can never get away from it. If you are the assassin in my example and you shed a crocodile tear and then move onto the next scene of carnage, the next detail without taking a moment to explore or experience the moral and emotional sides, then thats fine but you are missing a level of exploration. On the other hand if you do go deeper I do not think you have to necassarily be going into Nar.

Christopher wrote: The sated are curious, if they're curious, in a kind of channel flipping kind of way. They'll touch on things, but aren't really invested in digging at them, cracking shells, gnawing till they can digest a new idea or different perspective. They're content enough with how they're playing. Or, they might be really, really frustrated with how their games play, but are content changing around the pieces of what they already know, looking for the fix with what the know in new combinations to take away that frustration. And that's great.

And then there are the hungry. The hungry are playing RPGs and want something more. Something different. They may be content, they may be frustrated. But either way, they know there's more out there.

I'm starting to think that "moral issue" is a bugaboo. Maybe the term "moral issue" is bad and maybe the term "value" or "story value" would work better?

Robert McKee wrote:
STORY VALUES are the universal qualities of human experience...

Jack Spencer Jr wrote:
Narrativism conforms to story craftsmanship principles. Whether you learn those principles from Egri, McKee or your Aunt Mathilda who used to own a bording house and entertained her guests by spinning yarns. It doesn't matter, really. Most sources since Aristotle have offered more-or-less the same thing. What does matter is that these principles govern play in one way or another and, thus, creates a particular experience. An experience which, hopefully, will have much in common with other storytelling media.

Something just occured to me with this which comes from, of all things, object oriented programming.

I agree that a story usually has a sequence of events (or a non-sequential number of events), but this isn't the same thing as saying a story is a sequence of events that are presented in a particular way.

To my mind, the events are a "thing" about the story, a vital component along with the characters and dramatic issue in crisis... but to say that the events are the story is missing the difference between a sequence of events and a story.

And in my mind, the group is the collective author of the story, and audience, and we're back to Mr Lehrich's work again...

Gareth I really don't see the dillema you're talking about. An analogy is useful insofar as it goes, and then you drop it. It's not difficult to create a story through play. The techniques are straightforward. If we're satisfied with the end result, why get hung up on trying to conform our entertainment passtime to exactly match a completely different medium? I mean, who cares what the analogue for "author" is when we're playing an RPG? What possible impact could that have on what we collectively imagine?

Jack, I have personally seen Ron say uncounted times that if the term "moral issue" bothers you, you should get rid of it. It's not the Big Deal (TM) of narrativism. M. J. nailed it exactly in his post on sim vs. nar.

Narrativism does not conform to "story craftmanship principles," whatever those might be. What they teach you in school, and what you read in writing manuals, is nothing more or less than observations about *what great writers have previously done.* They aren't rules. They aren't principles. When you read Egri, or Mckee, or Novakovich, or whoever, you are not learning what you must do to become a great writer. You are learning what great writers have done. Great writers do not follow rules when they write. They don't have formulas or fill-in the blank sheets. Heck, they don't even follow the rules of *grammar* consistently, if they feel that breaking a rule would add something. To put it another way, they are artists, not precision scientists. They make it up as they go; they don't follow rules.

If you find some literary technique you read about in a book useful for your RPGs, great. Someone else will do the exact opposite and be just as satisfied - and their game will be just as valid.

Here's the point: Narrativism does not conform to "story craftmanship methods." Writing novels does not conform to "story craftmanship methods." They both are schools of human vagary. They equally and independently conform to *what real people care about.* That's it. That's all there is to it. There is no man behind the curtain. What people care about is what you get.

EDIT: By the way, Gareth, I assume you've read the narrativism article. Do you remember the place where Ron defines story? Or, do you just disagree with that definition? Because as far as I'm concerned, using Ron's definitions clears up all the problems you seem to have.

A "story"-free definition of Narrativism:

Narrativism is Exploration as a means for particpants' self-expresison about human issues that they regard as morally or emotionally significant.

Does that work for anybody?

I'm close to concluding that recasting the whole Creative Agenda portion of the Big Model in terms of participant self-expression would make it tighter and more comprehensible. Role playing is either a medium of self-expression or it's zilchplay (and hence arguably not role-playing at all). Creative Agenda categorizes the subject of the self-expression: the player's capability, an emotionally significant Premise, or the imagined content itself.

Incoherence is when participants are expressing themselves about entirely different things and consequently judging one anothers' self-expression based on an entirely wrong idea of what it's intended to be about. Hemon's review of Hitz is pure incoherence in action, and as such, is infuriating, interesting and correct as Hemon's views of the literary dimensions of spy fiction might be. As far as I can tell without reading the book itself, Hitz is trying to talk about spies and spying, using spy fiction as a contrasting background in order to exposit real-world espionage. Hemon writes Hitz's book off as a failure because he doesn't address the literary aspects of the spy fiction. It's like faulting an auto repair manual for failing to discuss the impact of mobility on Western society in the 20th century. It's also like one side of any number of pointless Internet flame wars:

"Computers in movies are so unrealistic."

"That's because movies are all about the story. They don't have to be realistic, they have to move the story along in an interesting way."

"Yeah, but real computer stuff is way more interesting than the stuff they make up for the movies."

"Only if you're a pathetic geek like you! The rest of us care more about people and emotions and stuff."

- Walt

It appears we're hiting that wall again over narrativism and such. Where to begin.

Walt Freitag wrote: Narrativism is Exploration as a means for particpants' self-expresison about human issues that they regard as morally or emotionally significant.

Does that work for anybody?

Paganini wrote: By the way, Gareth, I assume you've read the narrativism article. Do you remember the place where Ron defines story? Or, do you just disagree with that definition? Because as far as I'm concerned, using Ron's definitions clears up all the problems you seem to have.

All role-playing necessarily produces a sequence of imaginary events. Go ahead and role-play, and write down what happened to the characters, where they went, and what they did. I'll call that event-summary the "transcript." But some transcripts have, as Pooh might put it, a "little something," specifically a theme: a judgmental point, perceivable as a certain charge they generate for the listener or reader. If a transcript has one (or rather, if it does that), I'll call it a story.

Paganini wrote: Here's the point: Narrativism does not conform to "story craftmanship methods." Writing novels does not conform to "story craftmanship methods." They both are schools of human vagary....

Great writers do not follow rules when they write. They don't have formulas or fill-in the blank sheets. Heck, they don't even follow the rules of *grammar* consistently, if they feel that breaking a rule would add something. To put it another way, they are artists, not precision scientists. They make it up as they go; they don't follow rules.

Jack Spencer Jr wrote:
I take it you mean this:

All role-playing necessarily produces a sequence of imaginary events. Go ahead and role-play, and write down what happened to the characters, where they went, and what they did. I'll call that event-summary the "transcript." But some transcripts have, as Pooh might put it, a "little something," specifically a theme: a judgmental point, perceivable as a certain charge they generate for the listener or reader. If a transcript has one (or rather, if it does that), I'll call it a story.

Well, working through the context of this paragraph, a story has a "little something." Unfortunately this is not defined very well except that it produces a certain response in the listener or reader.

Actually, McKee discusses this a bit. He goes on about how some people can spin a gripping yarn about dropping their kids off for the school bus but another can tell the world's most boring story about how their mother had died over the weekend. This is true. So why? The death of a family member should obviously be a more emotionally profound than getting the nose-pickers on the bus, shouldn't it? Then why is that story better than the other?

Some grab bag quotes here, but it looks like we'll have to agree to disagree on this point. I think good storytelling requirtes craftsmanship. You don't. Anything further would derail the thread more than necessary.

OK, let me try putting this a different way.

"Story" is a term that is specifically defined in the context of GNS. Setting up a debate over what the word "story" actually means is a red herring in this context. In GNS, a story is a sequence of events that contains one or more decision points in which the fictional characters are faced with a problematic human issue. This is basic in GNS. It's a foundational definition, not a conclusion that's open to argument. This definition might be different from what you think the word "story" should mean. But in the context of GNS, that doesn't matter. If you're gonna talk GNS, you have to use the supplied vocabulary if you want to have any kind of success.

If the problematic human issue is something that the players find personally compelling, if they're all juiced up about resolving it in the way they want it to resolve, then play is Narrativist. If, instead, the players are interested in ensuring that the problem resolves in the way it logically should, given the established facts of the shared reality, then play is Simulationist. This is what M.J.'s post was about.

The point of Christopher's initial post is that this idea is not some obscure underground notion that just a few wacko game designers have latched onto. The problematic issues that drive narrativist play are the same problematic issues that real people in the real world are moved by. They're the same problematic issues that real authors are using to write compelling novels. They're the same problematic issues that keep people going back to the movie theaters to see the same movie over and over.

Without those problematic issues, you have a series of events that some people may or may not call "story." In the context of GNS, it's emphatically not called story. It's called "transcript."

Basically, people care about what people care about, regardless of whether they're reading it in books, seeing it on film, or creating it during play of an RPG. Now, you can restate this in a lot of different ways. According to Ron, everyone has to do it for himself. But the lexicon that GNS provides developed. The "dilemma" that Gareth refers to does not exist; such literary bagage is not relevant.

Paganini wrote: "Story" is a term that is specifically defined in the context of GNS. Setting up a debate over what the word "story" actually means is a red herring in this context. In GNS, a story is a sequence of events that contains one or more decision points in which the fictional characters are faced with a problematic human issue.
...
If the problematic human issue is something that the players find personally compelling, if they're all juiced up about resolving it in the way they want it to resolve, then play is Narrativist. If, instead, the players are interested in ensuring that the problem resolves in the way it logically should, given the established facts of the shared reality, then play is Simulationist.

Paganini wrote: The point of Christopher's initial post is that this idea is not some obscure underground notion that just a few wacko game designers have latched onto. The problematic issues that drive narrativist play are the same problematic issues that real people in the real world are moved by. They're the same problematic issues that real authors are using to write compelling novels. They're the same problematic issues that keep people going back to the movie theaters to see the same movie over and over.

John Kim wrote: Someone can both find an issue personally compelling and want to play out what happens as it logically should.

I think these are unrelated dichotomies. Now, I do think that cause-and-effect will not lead to structured dramatic narrative. However, it does not strip out moral issues. Indeed, a great majority of non-realistic story conventions are there to simplify the morality and lessen the moral choices (i.e. make things black-and-white rather than shades-of-grey, and/or arrange neat closure at the end rather than having messy consequences).

OK, here I see a subtle switch of topic. In the previous section you argued that the "moral issues" definition of stories was a GNS-specific thing which was an arbitrary choice. But here you are are chasing after exactly the red herring that you defined earlier -- i.e. what story means in a larger sense.

I'm going to reply to this briefly now, but I have a more in-depth response that I typed and then decided not to post last night. But I now think it is indeed relevant after all.

Paganini wrote: OK, let me try putting this a different way.

"Story" is a term that is specifically defined in the context of GNS. Setting up a debate over what the word "story" actually means is a red herring in this context. In GNS, a story is a sequence of events that contains one or more decision points in which the fictional characters are faced with a problematic human issue. This is basic in GNS. It's a foundational definition, not a conclusion that's open to argument. This definition might be different from what you think the word "story" should mean. But in the context of GNS, that doesn't matter. If you're gonna talk GNS, you have to use the supplied vocabulary if you want to have any kind of success.

contracycle wrote:
Now, what I'm trying to get at this: the external definition of Real Story - a sculpted phenomenon designed according to certain parameters is, it seems to me, exactly what Chris K was getting at. And I think this is a good and excellent thing; I think the line between real story and trivial story should be more strongly drawn.

A sequence of events is not a story. A sequence of events can be sculpted into a story. The difference to me lies in the doing of this during play or post-play. Story Now, whicl the distinguishing characteristic of Nar, is not the only form of story; non-Story Now behaviours can still benefit from discussion of formal story IMO, even if the raw transcript they produce is still not a story in the formal sense.

Well out of order then:

Paganini wrote: Gareth I really don't see the dillema you're talking about. An analogy is useful insofar as it goes, and then you drop it. It's not difficult to create a story through play.

The techniques are straightforward. If we're satisfied with the end result, why get hung up on trying to conform our entertainment passtime to exactly match a completely different medium? I mean, who cares what the analogue for "author" is when we're playing an RPG? What possible impact could that have on what we collectively imagine?

Narrativism does not conform to "story craftmanship principles," whatever those might be. What they teach you in school, and what you read in writing manuals, is nothing more or less than observations about *what great writers have previously done.*

Great writers… do not follow rules when they write. They don't have formulas or fill-in the blank sheets. Heck, they don't even follow the rules of *grammar* consistently, if they feel that breaking a rule would add something. To put it another way, they are artists, not precision scientists. They make it up as they go; they don't follow rules.

If you find some literary technique you read about in a book useful for your RPGs, great. Someone else will do the exact opposite and be just as satisfied - and their game will be just as valid.

Here's the point: Narrativism does not conform to "story craftmanship methods." Writing novels does not conform to "story craftmanship methods." They both are schools of human vagary. They equally and independently conform to *what real people care about.* That's it. That's all there is to it. There is no man behind the curtain. What people care about is what you get.

Nathan,

I think we're talking past each other. What seems to be the sticking point is the difference between principles and rules. Previously you had lumped the two together as if they meant the same thing. McKee differentiates the two terms with the following:

• A rule says: do this.• A principle says: this works.



(Hopefully this will not degenerate into nitpicking over the definitions of the terms "rule" and "principles" since what I have here should be readily understood without that)

So I don't believe storytelling uses formulas or fill-in the blank sheets. It may not be a percision science, but there is a form to the art. There are principles that can be followed to help with the craftsmanship.

P.S. Gareth, I heartily recommend Story: Sustance, Structure and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee if you haven't read it already. The focus may be on screenwriting, but he covers the principles of story for any medium. Most of your comments are confirmed in this book.

Paganini wrote:

John Kim wrote: Someone can both find an issue personally compelling and want to play out what happens as it logically should.

Yes, of course. That's what "Exploration" is. Ron says pretty much up front that a certain degree of causailty is necessary for suspension of disbelief. Most of the time narrativism will be perfectly plausible. But there will be times when you have to pick one over the other... you prioritize narrativism by having your character make the choice that you want, even if it's out of character, for example. That's why they're two separate creative agendas.

Paganini wrote: You're looking at that fine line between nar and sim where things get a little blurry. Just remember that the deciding factor is what the players are juiced about at the moment of play.

Hey John,

John Kim wrote: But there's no obvious logical link between these two. i.e. I can be juiced by moral issues and still stick to in-character play.

And around and around we go.

Beeg Focking Horseshu

Rather, I think Walt has the right of it. We do all three all the time to some extent, but the problems occur when self expressions forms become visble and abhorent to each other. All play is about persuing moral things, it's just that some play is more concerned with doing so in a way that makes the game universe seem "real."

Nobody's disagreeing here. You're all just pointing out two different phenomena that co-exist. Remember, not mutally exclusive except for the "tell" moments.

Mike

Hey Mike,

Rather, I think Walt has the right of it. We do all three all the time to some extent, but the problems occur when self expressions forms become visble and abhorent to each other. All play is about persuing moral things, it's just that some play is more concerned with doing so in a way that makes the game universe seem "real."

Nobody's disagreeing here. You're all just pointing out two different phenomena that co-exist. Remember, not mutally exclusive except for the "tell" moments.

C. Edwards wrote:
So, yeah, round and round and all that. But maybe for a good purpose.

NOTE: I'm going to continue this in Virtuality and Ouija Boards thread, as it seems to fit better with that topic.

Gareth,

That was... wow. Long. Deep. It's gonna take me a while to digest it. I just want to point out that the "sequence of events" style play is the ret-con kind of simulationism that Ron talks about in one of the essays; I can't remember the exact term he uses.

But, let me see if I'm on the right track here. I said earlier that a certain degree of causality is always required for suspension of disbelief. It seems to me that your point is that the converse is also true: a certain amount of theme is necessary to maintain player interest. That compliments Mike's point abou all modes being in simultaneous operation.

(BTW, Mike's point is basically the same thing I'm saying to John, only stated with a backwards analogy. The way I think of it, none of the Creative Agendas are in operation, most of the time. We're just engaging in the act of play: Exploration. A Creative Agenda evidences itself during play only at exclusive decision points - i.e., playing a certain way stays true to one Creative Agenda, while at the same time invalidating the priority of a different Creative Agenda.)

Jack,

We're cool, then. I'm with the distinction between rules and principles, just as long as we recognize that a principle is like a tool that may be used if you want it. Some people choose to forgo the tools, others choose to invent new tools. I guess that makes a writing book an analogue for a toolbox containing a lot of tools invented by other people.

From your earlier posts, it seemed like you were trying to put narrativism in a box of proscribed techniques. Maybe I just wasn't reading close enough.

John,

The deciding factor for the existence of Story is the choice of PC action. The deciding factor for the existence of Narrativism is being juiced about a particular resolution. Those are two different things.

See, any time a character is faced with a decision of the type I described, theme will be generated. The choice that the character makes will make a statement about value. So you get theme, even if the character always acts completely in-character. Sim play can produce Sory.

The thing about Narrativism is that the player cares about which way the choice is made. The Narrativist player wants the situation to work out a certain way, even if that resolution contradicts the game causality. If that resolution *doesn't* contradict game causality, the prioritization is invisible. We can't tell whether the player wants causality or theme, because both are present. We can only tell when the two become mutually exclusive.

To expand on what Chris said, a creative agenda is not some kind of always on current. Creative agendas are only identifiable in action when they clash, and a person chooses to prioritize one over the other.