"Not another thread using that damned word." I'll try to be brief.
This is a theory, specifically relating to N play, that may have already been covered (has been to some extent). But I feel the need to state it explicitly, if for no other reason than to be told I'm wrong.
Protagonist: the character in the story who is answering the question posed by premise.
Corralaries:


-There can only be one protagonist per story.
-Answering is not a journey to an end, but an end unto itself.
-Supporting characters may highlight what the Protagonist is doing (either to support or undermine), but they are not in the process of answering the question themselves.
-Two (or more) stories may be set in the same "universe during the same time frame and share casts, but there are no shared protagonists in one story.
-However, a group,nonliving object, etc... may be the protagonist of a story in somewhat experimental stories, but only if treated as a single entity.


(edited once for spelling)

Hello,

Unfortunately, I think your post illustrates a lot of common errors surrounding protagonists and stories in general. I'm afraid I will, this time, go line-by-line.

"There can only be one protagonist per story."

Incorrect, and frankly puzzling. So many exceptions exist, and for so many reasons, as to render this statement flatly left-field.

"Answering is not a journey to an end, but an end unto itself."

This reads like babble to me. A resolution without process is not a story. Also, elements of the process may carry sub-answers, or nuances, with great thematic power. Finally, a given resolution ("answer") may legitimately be, "I don't know."

Again, that statement is so much like babble that I am not even sure whether my points address it. "End" for whom? Writer? Audience? Character?

"Supporting characters may highlight what the Protagonist is doing (either to support or undermine), but they are not in the process of answering the question themselves."

Also incorrect. They may be there for contrast, for example, in which case they are in that process. Some stories do very well with multiple minor characters who are recognized as potential protagonists, with their "lesser" status being a strict function of screen time rather than "importance." (See most John Sayles films, notably City of Hope.)

"Two (or more) stories may be set in the same "universe during the same time frame and share casts, but there are no shared protagonists in one story."

See above. This claim is ... weird. It strikes me as the kind of thing that people repeat to one another, all the while spiralling further and further away from what actually happens in stories.

"However, a group,nonliving object, etc... may be the protagonist of a story in somewhat experimental stories, but only if treated as a single entity."

Anything can be a protagonist as long as the human observer can identify with it.

Best,
Ron

> I'm afraid I will, this time, go line-by-line.

I think the bias against line by line replies is unfounded.

>>"There can only be one protagonist per story."

>Incorrect, and frankly puzzling. So many exceptions exist, and for so many reasons, as to render this statement flatly left-field.

I may be staked for this: What are these examples? Any three will suffice. I'm not trying to be difficult, I'm not challenging the statement just to challenge.
Before you answer, let me illuminte a point. I said story, not work. That movie with two protagonists you saw, may be two seperate stories. Those two stories may be of the same premise, and they may entwine each other.
What you say may be true; I'm okay if I'm wrong. But I want a concrete example. I want to know why this example qualifies as a single story and not the thing I just described.

>>"Answering is not a journey to an end, but an end unto itself."

>This reads like babble to me. A resolution without process is not a story. Also, elements of the process may carry sub-answers, or nuances, with great thematic power. Finally, a given resolution ("answer") may legitimately be, "I don't know."
Again, that statement is so much like babble that I am not even sure whether my points address it. "End" for whom? Writer? Audience? Character?

The end is for the writer. Let me clean up the statement thus:
Answering the question put forth by premise can be an open ended process.
I apologize for the new-age tone in the previous version.

>>"Supporting characters may highlight what the Protagonist is doing (either to support or undermine), but they are not in the process of answering the question themselves."

>Also incorrect. They may be there for contrast, for example, in which case they are in that process. Some stories do very well with multiple minor characters who are recognized as potential protagonists, with their "lesser" status being a strict function of screen time rather than "importance." (See most John Sayles films, notably City of Hope.)

You caught me. This statement is from left feild.

>>"Two (or more) stories may be set in the same "universe during the same time frame and share casts, but there are no shared protagonists in one story."

>See above. This claim is ... weird. It strikes me as the kind of thing that people repeat to one another, all the while spiralling further and further away from what actually happens in stories.

I did not come to this conclusion randomly; I came to this conclusion from observation. Once again, show me an example. I could be wrong, but I want to be proven wrong. Please, don't just say that there are examples, show me the examples.
I hope I haven't come off like a prick by saying that. I'm just trying to get some ducks in a row. I want to make sure they are the right ducks.

Um, this is a circular argument. There can only be one protagonist per story, because stories only have one protagonist.

Whatever. If we use your definition of "work" then RPGs are works, and can have as many protagonists as you like. So, what was the point of your original statement?

Mike

Mike Holmes said:

Whatever. If we use your definition of "work" then RPGs are works, and can have as many protagonists as you like. So, what was the point of your original statement?

amiel (Jeremiah?),

Here's my thought on what's come up so far: your "illuminated point" - that two protagonists may have two different stories - is a HUGE qualifier. If you turn "There can only be one protagonist per story" into "it is always possible to identify a single story associated with a single protagonist" . . . OK, I wouldn't argue with that. A multiple-protagonist story can be seen as multiple stories intertwined, if you want. And there may be value in looking at it that way. Knowing that any story, no matter how many characters/protagonists it contains, can be reduced to a set of relationships among single-character/protagonist stories, sounds like a somewhat interesting analytical method. But that does NOT stop you from ALSO looking at it as ONE story. The overall effect of (to use a probably-familiar e.g.) LotR would be changed if you dropped Aragorn and his story, or Frodo and his story. So the "overall" story of LotR is NOT just Frodo's, or Aragorn's, or anyone else's - it is LotR.

A "work" contains stories, AND is a story. At least, so it seems to me.

My question becomes - where are we going with your definition/theory of Protagonist, in the context of RPGs? What's important here, as a foundation to build on? With that info, I might understand why looking at an individual story per Protagonist matters - but without it, I'm left thinking "lot's of stories (or works, if you prefer) have multiple protagonists - what point is he trying to make?"

Gordon

I put forth the movie Traffic as an example. In that movie you had 3 or 4 distinct stories being told, each had its own protagonists and supporting characters. The way Traffic was filmed made the seperateness of the stories very obvious. Each had its own cinematographic flavor and there was little if any overlap between the stories. They were all related only tangentally around the theme of the failure of the war on drugs. The movie was a single "work" but it contained multiple stories.

I think what is being suggested is that ALL "works" which appear to have mulitple protagonists can really be seen as housing several stories each with its own protagonist but where the seperateness is more subtle and harder to tease out than a movie like traffic. You'll have alot of overlapping characters, alot of shared scenes, etc but ultimately there are seperate stories being told that each protagonist is the protagonist of.

Where I think this come home for us is the idea that player characters are protagonists might not be so cut and dry. Under the above model, one could envision games where I am the protagonist of my story, but "merely" supporting cast for yours. You're the protagonist of your story but supporting cast (or even mostly absent) from mine.

What this leads to is an interesting idea about how the role of the player (especially as it pertains to directoral and authoral power) might be different during scenes where his character is the protagonist of his own story vs. scenes where some other player's character is the protagonist.

amiel wrote: Mike Holmes said:

Whatever. If we use your definition of "work" then RPGs are works, and can have as many protagonists as you like. So, what was the point of your original statement?

Because works that have multiple stories (and therefore multiple protagonist if you accept my argument) break up the stories scene by scene. In other words (if you accept what I'm getting at), there are never two protagonists in the same scene. This would change the way a lot of roleplayingoccurs if accepted.

Gordon C. Landis wrote: Well . . . two stories (and thus two characters, by your reasoning), running at the same time in one work, can "share" a scene. Both characters are in it, it's important to both of 'em . . . two protagonists, same time, best as I can figure.

Hi Jeremiah,

I perceive no prickdom; you're asking legitimate questions that deserve real answers. Sorry I took a day to get back to this thread; actually, I was off the Forge nearly the whole time.

The main issue for this thread is that you have set up a self-fulfilling prophecy. If story is defined as having one protagonist, then a multiple-protagonist situation can only be justified as multiple stories, regardless of any causal interactions among them. This is, I think, not a valid argument.

The key is the "causal interaction" among the various protagonists' situations and decisions. If it's a major element of the resolution-conditions for one or more characters, then the whole (or the part containing these two protagonists) must be considered a single story.

Before I get to the examples, let me break down the protagonist issue some more.

1) Protagonism relies on identification. The character must be up to something or reacting to something in a non-Psycho way. Most of the time this is straightforward, but a hint or more-than-a-hint of Psycho-ness is possible, if it's overridden by non-Psycho behavior in the clutch. Hence Riggs in Lethal Weapon is a protagonist insofar as he is not trying to kill himself, and we plug for him when he decides to behave otherwise.

2) The protagonist cannot be a villain, which includes both the Psycho thing mentioned above as well as something more complex. I shall explain a key element of non-Psycho villainy: given a character who can be identified with, he or she may display some tactic or approach to life that involves harming others who have not harmed him, or exploiting others. Schemers, blackguards, crooks, greedheads, and so on are the examples; this is the most common sort of villain. Note that if a protagonist does have some element of this in his behavior, it must be comparatively less than that of the villain(s).

3) A story is composed of (at least) a protagonist and a situation (conflict), in which some confluence of protagonist actions, others' actions, and environmental elements all produce a resolution to the conflict. (Side note: obviously, a non-Psycho villain is a wonderful and coherent way to provide conflict; this issue is worth quite a bit of my time and I won't go into it here.)

Now, if you have more than one such character in what purports to be a single story, how to determine whether it's several stories in one package or a single story with multiple protagonists? I suggest that my "key" above is the only valid criterion. When protagonist-level decisions and actions occur for Character A such that the circumstances and conflict for Character B are changed, thus prompting similarly protagonist-level decisions and actions, then we have a single story with multiple protagonists.

Pulp Fiction is a widely-misunderstood movie, and I hope I can bring it up without invoking knee-jerk reactions regarding the style, the sequence, any details regarding Tarantino as a director, etc. Let's focus on the plain story. Three guys all have a subordinate relationship with a crime-boss guy. They all cope with the question of whether it is "right" to obey his orders without personal judgment being involved. One says "No, it's not" (Butch), one says, "Yes, it is" (Vincent), and the third changes from being like Vincent to being like Butch (Jules). In each case, key interactions among two of them prompt the circumstances of one another's decisions. A lot of people miss the key interactions between Butch and Vincent in this regard; the interactions of Vincent and Jules are of course more obvious. Vincent snubs Butch and arguably cements his determination to defy Marcellus; later, Butch shoots Vincent. Vincent independently demonstrates his subordination by not acting upon his attraction to Marcellus' wife (see the bathroom scene). Vincent and Jules continually argue the key point under the guise of various metaphors; Jules puts aside the gangster life and vanishes from the story. None of the protagonists would have done what they end up doing without that interaction with the others. Their fates illustrate a judgment (Theme) on the Premise: Butch has his freedom, his money, and his girlfriend; Vincent ends up shot like a dog in a cruddy bathroom; Jules has become kind of a Zen Man and has gone to seek virtue (i.e. not harming others gratuitously).

The Brothers Karamazov is a bit more problematic, but it's thematically unified very tightly and I think it qualifies too. It has three protagonists as well: Alyosha, Ivan, and Dmitri, three of the four brothers. The primary conflict is "Who killed Dad," or more specifically, "Did Dmitri kill Dad," or more generally, "Who cares, because Dad was a fuckin' asshole?" They deal with it differently, to say the least, to the extent that three separate philosphical treatises emerge, and their actions in doing so all create circumstances under which the culprit, the bastard fourth brother Smerdyakov, is revealed.

Let's take Dumas' The Three Musketeers, too, which illustrates some of the possible diversity. D'Artagnan is the protagonist; his concerns in life are easy to identify with and his wit and fighting competence are both directed by a value system (a rather complex one). I think that Porthos and Aramis are definitely supporting characters, as their escapades tend mainly to back up or complicate D'Artagnan's situations. However, Athos grades toward being a co-protagonist, for exactly the same reasons that D'Artagnan is one. He might not get all the way there, as his conflict is nested wholly within the larger one, but almost. In Twenty Years After, this effect is greatly heightened and I consider this book to have two full protagonists.

And finally, a couple of buddy movies which illustrate the two sides of the line.

In Some Like It Hot, the two protagonists face exactly the same problem (threatened by the gangster Spats), but (even though they stay together as a "team"), each one develops a different and independent resolution that doesn't rely on the other's decisions. So I'll call this a movie with two separate stories, albeit "touching" one another.

In Lethal Weapon (first movie only), the one protagonist's problem is that he's suicidal and needs a way to channel his wackiness positively; the other's problem is that his daughter has been kidnapped by furniture-chewing assholes. They solve both their problems in an entirely-intertwined fashion, in the "changing one another's circumstances" way I describe above. Hence I'll call this a movie with one story, with two protagonists.

All comments are welcome.

Best,
Ron

Traditional literary and film theory will forever break down when it comes to RPGs because from Aristotle on down, the tools of critique were designed for a paradigm that contained 1) author-actors-audience as distinct from one another and 2) plot, mood, conflict, theme as author-produced elements that must be conveyed via characters/actors to
reader/audience. These two elements are assumed in those media.

RPGs, in which the "player" serves as author, actor, and audience within each scene are not constrained to one protagonist/one story/one goal/one premise (regardless of the game's supported GNS priorities).

For RPGs, my personal definition of protagonist is a character (likeable or not) attempting to achieve an objective or objectives and engages the player group during their attempt. By engages, I mean that the character's personality, motives and actions which reveal themselves as the character attempts to achieve its goal/goals interest and entertain all the players. Typically, PCs are protagonists rather than NPCs but not all PCs are protagonists. A "party" might have only 1 protagonist and a bunch of sidekicks and tag-alongs or each character might be a distinct protagonist with their own agenda.

Frankly, in literary criticism, people argue to this day over "the"
definition of a "story", so I'm not going anywhere near that debate. :)

Ron Edwards wrote:
The key is the "causal interaction" among the various protagonists' situations and decisions. If it's a major element of the resolution-conditions for one or more characters, then the whole (or the part containing these two protagonists) must be considered a single story.
Ron

Where I think this come home for us is the idea that player characters are protagonists might not be so cut and dry. Under the above model, one could envision games where I am the protagonist of my story, but "merely" supporting cast for yours. You're the protagonist of your story but supporting cast (or even mostly absent) from mine.

What this leads to is an interesting idea about how the role of the player (especially as it pertains to directoral and authoral power) might be different during scenes where his character is the protagonist of his own story vs. scenes where some other player's character is the protagonist.

Gordon C. Landis said:

Ron Edwards wrote:

The key is the "causal interaction" among the various protagonists' situations and decisions. If it's a major element of the resolution-conditions for one or more characters, then the whole (or the part containing these two protagonists) must be considered a single story.
Ron

Thank you Ron - that's exactly what I was trying to get at in saying an important shared scene. Except your version actually makes sense.

When Valamir says Quote:

Where I think this come home for us is the idea that player characters are protagonists might not be so cut and dry. Under the above model, one could envision games where I am the protagonist of my story, but "merely" supporting cast for yours. You're the protagonist of your story but supporting cast (or even mostly absent) from mine.

What this leads to is an interesting idea about how the role of the player (especially as it pertains to directoral and authoral power) might be different during scenes where his character is the protagonist of his own story vs. scenes where some other player's character is the protagonist.

Is that where you are headed with this? If so, I think the only dispute is over "absolutes" - certainly, you CAN have only one protagonist per scene, and it may be a very interesting mode of play. But there's no reason you MUST.

I think people (Paul Czege?) might become concerned that a player's "supporting (or absent) character" status/activity would become "deprotagonizing" for their own story . . . which is a very interesting discussion that I think requires substantial Narrativist play to comment intelligently on.

Hey,

I think people (Paul Czege?) might become concerned that a player's "supporting (or absent) character" status/activity would become "deprotagonizing" for their own story...

I think if we're talking in terms of outcomes, that Ralph is describing exactly how Narrativist games play out, at least in my experience. Sometimes, for what might be entirely circumstantial reasons, a PC is entirely absent from the story of another PC. Sometimes a PC plays a supporting role to another, perhaps with their actions and decisions functioning as a counterpoint to the actions and decisions of the other PC, or perhaps as someone loyal who gives good advice. And those are just two examples. There are a myriad other ways that one PC can function as supporting cast for another without being conceptually undercut or suffering corrosion of their own thematic significance. I'm not sure why this stuff might seem like a big issue to people, because in my experience it happens naturally and without pain during play. Hardly "deprotagonizing," this stuff is reminiscent of the best ensemble cast television programs (e.g. The West Wing).

I don't think Ralph is proposing an actual control mechanic, some kind of systematic way of passing the baton of protagonism from one player to another over the course of a game session, with constraints on the actions of those designated as supporting characters. As a player, I might or might not have a problem with something like this, depending on the implementation. If the baton passing hindered players from taking actions of thematic significance with their characters when another character was the designated protagonist, or forced everyone to treat the actions of the designated protagonist as significant despite situational disconnect from the character's thematic core, then I'd have a problem with it.

Paul

Hi Jeremiah,

Down to the genetics, eh? You've come to the right place.

Protagonist = individual coping with a threat to fitness potential (email me for details and definition). This comes in two levels: (1) the "core," or fairly basic threats to maintenance and/or reproduction of self, family, and kin; (2) the social context, which concerns the obligations and reputation issues that might surround a core conflict.

"Psycho" is not a technical term. I used it to indicate an individual whose actions neither directly nor indirectly increase fitness potential. This could be a boring pseudoprotagonist who just plain does do anything (Johnny Mnemonic), or (as I implied) a character, usually a villain, who is a "mad dog" - the serial killers, the abusive perverts, the loose cannons, and the dangerous incompetents.*

That does not include a protagonist who is simply "a bit off," or who deals with problems in ways that do not reflect the social norm. Such a character is usually fitness-increasing (almost always; two notable exceptions exist in film), just in some offbeat way. The quirky geek who gets the girl, the rogue/outlaw who beats the villain at his own game, the crime-boss with a heart of gold, and the high-risk hotrodder, all qualify. We call these characters "psycho" or whatever, but that is just icing, compared to the real freakozoids described above.

Best,
Ron

* I also distinguished it from villains who are much like protagonists, in terms of fitness-potential efforts, but who harm or exploit others in doing so.

To acknowledge Laurel, I agree there's a limit to applying literary tools to RPGs, but so far, it doesn't look like this discussion has reached them. To Paul's comments, it sounds like the only real danger you'd see in "one protagonist" scenes is if a trully great opportunity for another player to demonstrate/illuminate his protagonism arose, it shouldn't be "blocked" by the fact that he's not the current protagonist (and your converse, where we must assume an act is significant/meaningful is it comes from the protagonist.

I think I'm with Paul on the systems question - I'd be interested what Jeremiah (or others) come up with, but I think there's a valuable insight here regardless of system - think about "who's the protagonist here?" It does NOT have to be every PC in the scene. If it IS more than one, that's a good thing to notice and realize you're now juggling two things at once. Something (a system, or even a less than absolute "only the baton-holder is protagonist" thing) that calls our attention to this issue might be worth it.

And I think I owe Ron a follow-up PM on the fitness thing - funny how some things becone circular . . .

Gordon

Hey Fang,

The way I have always looked at it is that...each protagonist has their own separate audience, an audience of one: the player of that character. Y'see in all the talk of deprotagonization, I thought it was clear; whether you deprotagonize a character to the other players doesn't really matter, it's whether you deprotagonize the character to its player.

To be completely blunt, I think this kind of revisionism on your part does a disservice to folks who're interested in understanding Narrativism and protagonism. Never once, "in all the talk of deprotagonization" was there the implication by myself or anyone with Narrativist play experience that "audience" meant anything other than the other players. Why would I, or anyone use the term "audience" if we meant only "the player of the character"? Take a look at my second post to this thread if you dispute that I've been anything but consistent on this point. Protagonism is about communication. It's about delivering a meaningful thematic statement to someone else...and that someone else is the other players.

Paul

There's been a lot of talk here about who the protagonist of a scene is or whether or not more than one protagonist can exist in a single scene. The problem I see is that everyone is trying to label the protagonist before the scene is played out and I don't think that's possible in an RPG.

When writing a novel or story, the writer plans out what will happen in the scene before he starts writing. Therefore, he already knows who the protagonist is because he knows what is going to happen. He knows which characters will be deprotagonized/protagonized before the final product is ever read by an audience.

Roleplaying games are inherently different in that the outcome of each scene is not known ahead of time. How can you determine who the protagonist is if you don't know the outcome? Sure, you can label one character as the protagonist, but what happens if the end result of the scene leaves a different character protagonized more? Does the first protagonist remain the protagonist of the scene?

It's my belief that the protagonist can not be determined until the outcome of the scene has been concluded, at which time the scene can be evaluated and the true protagonist will be obvious.

I think some people are making the false conclusion that narrativist roleplaying is somehow the same as writing literature when its not.

Just my 2 cents.

,Matt G.

Paul Czege wrote: Hey Fang,

The way I have always looked at it is that...each protagonist has their own separate audience, an audience of one: the player of that character. Y'see in all the talk of deprotagonization, I thought it was clear; whether you deprotagonize a character to the other players doesn't really matter, it's whether you deprotagonize the character to its player.

To be completely blunt, I think this kind of revisionism on your part does a disservice to folks who're interested in understanding Narrativism and protagonism. Never once, "in all the talk of deprotagonization" was there the implication by myself or anyone with Narrativist play experience that "audience" meant anything other than the other players. Why would I, or anyone use the term "audience" if we meant only "the player of the character"? Take a look at my second post to this thread if you dispute that I've been anything but consistent on this point. Protagonism is about communication. It's about delivering a meaningful thematic statement to someone else...and that someone else is the other players.

Hi Matt,

My concern with allowing happenstance to determine who the protagonist is is that it's one step (or less) away from allowing happenstance to determine whether there is a protagonist at all. Experience in many different media demonstrates that counting on "emergent" Story to arise retrospectively from an interactive plot-generating process doesn't work. That means spontaneous protagonism doesn't reliably occur. If you look back and ask who the protagonist was in retrospect, far too often the answer will be "nobody."

The commitment to protagonism, I believe, must exist a priori, or else the process (any process) will be very unlikely to produce Story. That's why I think protagonization, the process within the process that generates protagonism, is such an overwhelmingly important breakthrough concept.

My concern would be addressed if you have in mind a mechanism that gurantees that one character will become the protagonist of the scene, while leaving the determination of which character up to the game play. (I'm assuming that all the characters are protagonists with respect to the overall Story; the issue is "whose scene" it is -- that is, which character is protagonized in the scene.) But I think this would need to be some active mechanism that locks in on a protagonist during the play of the scene and influences the direction of the scene accordingly, not just a matter of looking back afterwards and deciding based on the course of events alone.

Game systems in which scene authorship is contested between players during the scene (and in which players own individual protagonist characters) can be said to be already doing this. This should be a valid alternative to systems in which the protagonist is determined in advance (e.g. by determining the main scene framer/author in advance who in turn gets to decide who will be protagonized, with the usual expected decision being the scene owner's own character).

However, I'd be concerned about systems that have neither type of mechanism. Universalis, for example, has contested scene ownership without player ownership of characters (though there is temporary ownership of characters within a single scene, which may be enough). Though I haven't had a chance to play-test it yet, my concern going in is that protagonism could get lost in the shuffle.

- Walt

Hi there,

I agree with Walt's post in full.

Best,
Ron

I think you've made some very interesting points, Walt:

Game systems in which scene authorship is contested between players during the scene

(and in which players own individual protagonist characters)

OK, let's not try and determine actual Protagonism - let's establish (and perhaps even rate) potential Protagonism. In a particular scene, a character can be a protagonist based on what they have at stake - they must have something significant to gain/lose as a consequence of the scene.

In Sorcerer terms, if your Humanity is at stake, you are a potential protagonist in the scene. If you had a larger scale/different system, you might even be able to rate your degree of potential protagonism by how many points of Humanity are at risk. Although . . . I think it'd be safe to say that a charcter at risk of reaching 0 Humanity has a stronger protagonism potential than someone only dropping from 4 to 3, say. Though losing Humanity and NOT being the/a protagonist is probably "deprotagonizing" . . .

Erg - enough stream-of conciousness. In any case, the main thoughts here are "potential" protagonism, something at risk (dare I say . . . fitness?), and an explicit mechanic that lets us know that that is the case. That becomes a tool for managing protagonism in a scene. I in fact have a system in mind that might just do this - so thanks to all in the thread for deepening my understanding in this area.

Gordon

Okay, we've taken the protagonist's DNA. (I very much appreciate the hashing out that's gone on here.)
The protagonist is a person (maybe) who is trying to explore a premise. In Narrative terms, premise is a question to which theme is the answer.
The protagonist is not "psycho" (does not make ineffectual pointless decisions).
It's probably a good idea in Narratavist terms to have a mechanic (like Humanity in Sorcerer) that helps to determine Protagonism. (Note, I'm being Narr exclusive. In my estimation, Sim games don't need a protagonist, and Gamist games' protagonism is best determined at the end). In Narrative play, protagonism is too important to not pay attention to.
Part of the larger definition is involvement by audience. Therefore, player characters ( to use the more "trad" definition) make better protagonists. Is all of this (barring parenthetical statements, regarding modes of play I'm not focusing on in this thread (see the opening post)) pretty much where it's headed?

Hi Jeremiah,

My only quibble is the use of the term "exploring" Premise. I figure you probably used it with a small "e," but just in the interests of keeping the jargon straight, Premise (of any kind) is not Explored, in the sense of Exploration in my essay.

It is generated through play (including but not confined to prep for play) and it is "treated" or "dealt with" through play, producing Theme.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards Said:

My only quibble is the use of the term "exploring" Premise. I figure you probably used it with a small "e," but just in the interests of keeping the jargon straight, Premise (of any kind) is not Explored, in the sense of Exploration in my essay.

It is generated through play (including but not confined to prep for play) and it is "treated" or "dealt with" through play, producing Theme.

Hi Jeremiah,

By "treated" or "dealt with" I am expressing (or trying to express) the same thing - given a situation with characters in it, given a Premise arising from that fictional situation, events get generated through play. Those events are composed of lots and lots of imaginative input, including decisions made by the player-characters and many contextual elements provided by both GM and players. That's what I mean by the Premise being "treated" or "dealt with" - I did not intend to distinguish between the two things as such. I could even toss in a bunch of other semi-synonyms, like "addressed" or "used as a foundation for creative input," or tons of others.

Best,
Ron