Topic: Egri and Nar vs. Sim
Started by: Alfryd
Started on: 11/16/2010
Board: First Thoughts
On 11/16/2010 at 12:14am, Alfryd wrote:
Egri and Nar vs. Sim
I can't recall the exact thread, but I was thinking recently about some comment Ron made when trying to 'daignose' a given player's general CA. I think the general gist was 'I'll talk about speaking to the players, rather than speaking to the characters, because that's the only way that makes sense.' This, in turn, led me to think about how Sim-inclined players are the most likely to talk about their characters as if they were independant agents with minds of their own. And this, in turn, leads me to quote, admittedly quite selectively, from Lajos Egri.
Introduction to The Art of Dramatic Writing wrote: Without seeing your play we can tell you what was wrong with it: it had no clear-cut premise. And if there is no clear-cut, active premise, it is more than possible that the characters were not alive. How could they be? They do not know, for instance, why they should commit a perfect crime. Their only reason is your command, and as a result all their performance and all their dialogue are artificial. No one believes what they do or say.
You may not believe it, but the characters in a play are supposed to be real people. They are supposed to do things for reasons of their own.
The more the dramatist reveals, the better the play. The more you can reveal of the environment, the physiology and the psychology of the [character], and his or her personal premise, the more successful you will be.
...The premise is the conception, the beginning of a play. The premise is a seed and it grows into a plant that was contained in the original seed; nothing more, nothing less. The premise should not stand out like a sore thumb, turning the characters into puppets and the conflicting forces into a mechanical set-up. In a well-constructed play or story, it is impossible to denote just where premise ends and story or character begins.
Everything in existence is closely related to everything else. You cannot treat any subject as though it were isolated from the rest of life.
(Emphasis mine.) The characters are "real people"? They do things for "reasons of their own"? You cannot treat any subject in isolation, or engineer 'mechanical setups'? The more details you reveal, the better? Now, I'll be damned if that doesn't sound an awful lot like the classic Sim aesthetic to me.
Of course, Egri then goes on to give a long example of Rodin destroying the hands of his sculpture of Balzac due to their 'standing out' from the composition, saying:
Neither the premise nor any other part of a play has a separate life of its own. All must blend into an harmonious whole.
-which seems mildly contradictory. It's hard to reconcile the idea of characters acting on the basis of independant motives with 'not having a life of their own,' and any amount of experience with Nar play quickly proves that 'mechanical setups' are an absolute necessity in creating Bangs. But therein lies the problem- theme, by it's nature, is an aesthetically pleasing but statistically improbable sequence of coincidences. A good writer can disguise this fact by distributing the unlikelihood as evenly as possible over the course of the story, so that no single link in the chain of events seems jarringly implausible- but the unlikelihood is there nonetheless.
I think that what Egri is actually talking about when he says the characters have 'reasons of their own' is something closer to Author stance than to Actor stance, if we're using Forge parlance. The thing is, I don't see how this a difference in kind rather than a difference in degree.
I mean, even casual observation shows audiences are clearly willing to overlook some pretty gaping logical loopholes in a story as long as the basic narrative thrust is strong- even when, in many cases, they're consciously aware of the gaps. But here, Egri is talking about being very scrupulous when it comes to the integrity of the setting and even the physical biology of the characters.
This brings me to an excerpt from one of the site essays that, to be blunt, I find quite difficult to parse-
Narrativism: Story Now wrote: I'll begin by identifying a very common misconception: that if enjoyable Exploration is identifiable during play, then play must be Simulationist or at least partly so. This is profoundly mistaken: if you address Premise, it's Narrativist play. Period. If the Exploration involved, no matter how intensive, hones and focuses that addressing-Premise process, then that Exploration is still Narrativist, not Simulationist...
However, what about subordinate hybrids? Simulationist play works as an underpinning to Narrativist play, insofar as bits or sub-scenes of play can shift into extensive set-up or reinforcers for upcoming Bang-oriented moments. It differs from the Explorative chassis for Narrativist play, even an extensive one, in that one really has to stop addressing Premise and focus on in-game causality per se...
If a Creative Agenda refers to the general, overall, large-scale pattern of play, rather than to what's happening in any given moment or interval during a given session- which I understood was emphatically the case- then I really don't know what to make of this statement. If the bits or sub-scenes in question are acting as setup or reinforcement for upcoming Bangs, then why is this not addressing Premise? And if Premise-addressing play is still Narrativist regardless of the depth or extent of Exploration present, how is this not 'just Narrativism'? I mean, honestly, what's the dividing line here?
I can buy the concept of a Sim/Gamist hybrid on the basis that Gamism can get along just fine in the total absence of Exploration (i.e, in Hard Core form,) but by the same token that would make, well, all Narrativist play a 'Sim hybrid'. A story that was totally abstract wouldn't be about anything. I think this goes some way to explaining the historical view of play being broken down into Sim-becomes-Nar play and Gamism-becomes-Hard-Core (with Hard Core being, in many ways, a separate CA unto itself.) The mere fact that N & S neccesarily share some degree of Exploration, while G and S do not, probably means that casual observers tend to lump them together.
In this respect, I think this contrasts with the observation of Gamist/Narrativist symmetry- that Sim and Nar are actually 'joined at the hip' in a way that isn't true of Sim and Game, and particularly if one concedes that Exploration of Character is neccesary (though insufficient) for Nar play to occur. (If little or no attention is paid to character motivations, you can't have moments of drama- i.e, Bangs- where those motives come into mutual conflict.)
Anyways, this post has already rambled on long enough for an OP. Can anyone shed some light on this?
On 11/16/2010 at 1:10am, Ron Edwards wrote:
Re: Egri and Nar vs. Sim
Hi Morgan,
I'm all for this sort of talk, as you might imagine, but your post needs some adjusting for Forge purposes.
1. Gotta have some actual play. Most especially because you're in danger of caricaturing "those Sim players," but on general principles too.
2. And ... then to move the thread to, you guessed it, Actual Play. First Thoughts isn't for this stuff (and yeah, I know the little blurb is misleading; that didn't work out).
Best, Ron
On 11/20/2010 at 1:57am, Alfryd wrote:
RE: Re: Egri and Nar vs. Sim
Ron- Sorry for the delay in replying- my internet access is a bit intermittent at the moment. Uh... do you want me to cite some actual play right here, and then have a mod move the thread, or start a new thread over entirely?
On 11/21/2010 at 12:28pm, Alfryd wrote:
RE: Re: Egri and Nar vs. Sim
I will take that as a tentative 'start new thread, yes'. Not looking to be irksome, was just unclear on procedure. *holds up hands*
On 11/22/2010 at 8:54pm, Eero Tuovinen wrote:
RE: Re: Egri and Nar vs. Sim
Continuing in this thread would actually be a pretty typical course. Ultimately it doesn't matter, of course - the point is not in etiquette, but in the spirit of the case.
I also find this an interesting topic, and I'd be happy to talk about how character integrity is essential to narrativism and how narrativism is not at all about creating a story. But let's look for that actual play example first, I want to hear what sort of simulationistic play experiences you have had.