I was just rereading Christopher's description of Biliomania and a very weird thought occured to me. Doesn't defining Humanity simultaneously define the Premise AND Answer it? Obviously, the answer is going to be NO, but watch this reasoning:

Premise: Is intellectual knowledge more valuable than other people?
Humanity is... emotional connection to other people.

Okay, so given the Premise say I want to construct a character who's Theme is YES, intellectual knowledge IS more valuable than other people. BUT given the Humanity defintion, I'm now guaranteed to produce a damnation story.

So what does a theoretical outside observer see while watching/reading this story? He sees the protagonist choose intellectual knowledge over people and be destroyed for it. So the reader goes, "Hmmm... This book is all about how people are more important than intellectual knowledge."

So, now I go the other way. I design a character where the answer is NO, intellectual knowledge is NOT more important than people. Now, given the Humanity I'm practically guaranteed to walk the path to salvation.

Again from the outside audience view they see a protagonist who rejects his "demons" and finds salvation by choosing real people over his intellectual drives. Again the READER sees this as, "Hey, This book is all about how people are more important than intellectual knowledge."

Do you see where I'm coming from?

Given the Humanity defintion there is no way for me to create a story in which I "prove" that Intellectual Knowledge really IS more important than other people because if I set out on that path the Humanity definition will destroy me and an any half-awake audience will see that as demontrationg that the OPPOSITE is the real "message" (Theme) of the story.

It's like Proof By Contradiction.
Assumption: Intellectual Knowledge Is More Important Than People
(Crunch, Crunch, Crunch)
Result: Character is damned. -- Damnation is Bad, So the Opposite must be true.
Conclusion (Theme): Intellectual Knowledge must NOT be more important than other people.

Okay, now that I've stated the same thing three different ways, tell me what I'm missing.

Jesse

Hi Jesse,

Four things:

1) I don't think any story proves anything anyway. It's all an artificial construct to start with, so I could set up a movie like "Signs" and "prove" that faith in god will save your family... But not really. Faith in god saves your family in that movie yes.... But we haven't proven it in the world outside the story.

2) I see the Premise answer as the proof for the character who is answering the question. John Nash proves that for him, people are more important than intellectual knowledge. (Atcually, this fits the movie very well.) Thus, a player playing Sorcerer gets to try out a character who could go either way during the course of play. For my money, it is the experience of playing such a character and identifying with him that's fun. To go through the process of those choices is enjoyable.

3) The premise provides a focus for content, without providing content. So, we can keep moving forward in an organized fashion, and still not know what events will take place. Hell, we don't even know if a character is going to lose his humanity or banish his demon until the last scene. It's the process of story, not the proof at the end, that this is all about. (In my opinion.)

4) One can actually make this quite complex. For example, if I've got a character in BiblioMania who is determined to find the cure to a plague sweeping the earth, but he loses his humanity by murdering his family to get the cure we're left with something trickier.

There's absolutely no reason players can't rig the closer of their Kickers in such a fashion that something new is opened up.

Note that this *is* tricky. The original ending of Minority Report had Tom Cruise's character narrating: "The next year, murders were up 600%" or somesuch. One ending closes the story, the other leaves the premise in the chest of the audience as they walk out of theater. I happen to like the second sort of ending, but most folks like to leave the movie in theater and not have anything floating around inside of them as they head out to their cars. But this too can be done in an RPG.

But, again, finally, I don't like the word Proof in this context. I think Egri is wrong about a few things, and this is one of them. (For a different view, check out Walter Kerr's "How Not to Write a Play" -- which is an absolute refutation of Egri's book by one of New York's late and great theater critics.) However, as a tool for improvsing a story by a group of people, I think it's terrific. But again, not proof. A focus. How does each character answer the question? If a character loses his Humanity in BiblioMania in pursuit of Knowledge, then he's proven that knowledge mattered more than other people to him/. That's all that matters to me.

Christopher

I may be in the minority, but I always though the answer to an Egri-style Premise should be, "I don't know." And you play the game to find your answer.

Also, shock, I don't think Humanity has to really mean anything or intersect with the Premise to be an effective force in the game. I kinda dropped the ball in Schism by making Humanity mean something (as Ron suggests in Sorcerer's Soul). In Schism, Humanity is little more than a meter that counts down your character's existence on this planet. It interacts with the game mechanics a little bit here and there (mostly as a control attribute for Clairvoyants) but it's not much more than that. Humanity is just how human you are. Most people are pretty human...

EDIT: Schism may be slightly aberrant in that the Premise isn't some intellectual philosophizing...it's a pretty straight question about what will happen right before your character dies. The circumstances. So it's less...airy? I don't know.

Hi Jesse,

The Humanity/Demon/Premise trinity is the core of Sorcerer, and what makes it fly. I also think that the most important point is summed up with,"How far will you go?", which in a way, also is, "Is it worth it?"

I think there may indeed be several cases where "damnation" is worth it. You can look at Humanity 0 as being the final choice to go over that edge. In 9th Gate, the protagonist decides that knowledge is worth damnation, in Pi, the protagonist turns back at the end. In both cases you have an interesting story that instead of simply answering the question, provokes questions within the audience as to the nature of the premise, making them have to consider where they themselves stand in relation to it.

Of course, you could also run a simple story with a moral ala Faust. But the moral question is intended to run much deeper with a lot more implications than simply Humanity 0 is bad. Consider What Dreams may Come, as one case where the hero decides love is more important than damnation, or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, where Chow Yun Fat's character gives up enlightenment for his love. In both cases the choice is made on the part of the protagonist. In Sorcerer, one can look simply at Charnel Gods as an example where damnation and destruction of the world may save reality itself.

The key point here is to provide 2 options which both have some merit or appeal in the premise. I don't know too many people who can honestly say that Knowledge is worth more than People, although if you can hook the players with the idea, if they buy into the premise that Knowlege might be worth more than people(contact with god? cure for AIDS? the ability to reshape reality?), then you have an interesting story on hand.

The real question comes up in: What does Humanity 0 mean? Damnation in the game sense simply means: Losing control of your character, ending their story, or a major re-write of the character. None of these have to be a bad thing. Consider the Crouching Tiger issue, except define Humanity 0 as enlightenment and Humanity as Attachments to this world. In this case, the hero passes away NOT choosing enlightenment. Humanity, in its vaguest sense, means, "that which makes you human" which can be flaws and vices as much as good things.

When you do this, now damnation itself seems like a potentially attractive option. Which is one way to do it. The other is to make the power given by taking humanity reducing actions worth the cost. A third way to look at it is Humanity(as Ron put it) as a thematic meter, letting you know how close a character is to the end of their story.

Does any of this help?

Chris

Hi Jesse,

You're missing the fundamental point that a Theme is created (= Premise is answered) by a character in action, and the fate of that character. It's not something you say in words in the absence of those fictional events.

What you're saying is what you think the Theme ought to be, in the abstract.

But look ... take Christopher's Bibliomania. I'll make up a character on the spot: Joyce McDougall, the sociology professor who has turned the entire campus into an experiment without anyone realizing it. Her demon is the Parasite that inhabits and animates the now-dead body of her old thesis advisor, who reads and critiques all of her experimental writeups to this day.

Her Kicker? No problem - her brother, an anti-intellectual roughneck, brings by his pal Frank. Frank is a sweaty, grunting, streetwise, ex-con pile o' male danger, and Joyce goes completely off her head about him. The Kicker is specifically that she's finally thrown herself at him, and they're having sex on a half-busted bed in a seedy hotel, and she looks up during the action to see her demon, standing in the doorway, staring at them.

Now. Where's the Premise answered? Nowhere. We don't know what she's going to do, whether it will work out well or badly, what the demon will do, or anything. We don't know what Frank's current plans are, although I certainly hope the GM will make them very criminal and foolish. Will Joyce end up with Frank, or not? If so, will it that be in middle-class heartwarming bliss, or shot dead in some showdow with the cops? Or, wait, is that all secondary and the real question is whether she gets the Nobel Prize? Or ends up with her eyes bugging out of her head as she waits, gun concealed, to shake the winner's hand?

I really don't see how you can perceive Theme to be occurring when we haven't even discovered what precise shape the Premise shakes out into, in order for specific conflicts to arise, during play.

I also think you might consider the following. You wrote:

Given the Humanity defintion there is no way for me to create a story in which I "prove" that Intellectual Knowledge really IS more important than other people because if I set out on that path the Humanity definition will destroy me and an any half-awake audience will see that as demontrationg that the OPPOSITE is the real "message" (Theme) of the story.

Hey everyone,

Thanks for the replies. That cleared up about 90% of my question. The confusion mostly came from me seeing the Premise as being either A or B with no continum in between. Something, I suspected to be the source of my confusion before I event started this thread. Also Ron's statement about the Sorcerer metaverse not being spiritually reliable speaks to my original kneejerk assumption about what a "demon" is; namely that Existance of Demons = Objective Stable Morality.

However, there is still a part of me that squints and goes. Hell, YEAH, those four different outcomes all say the same thing. They just say it differently.

Abstractly speaking #1 and #4 are fundamentally the same and #2 and #3 are fundamentally the same. And since #1 and #4 are emotionally undesirable outcomes and #2 and #3 are emotionally desireable outcomes from an audiance point of view #1, #2 #3 and #4 ALL ultimately communicate the same thing the difference just being positive vs. negative example.

#1 and #4 say DON'T do this because you'll end up like this: Cheaping #1 or Destroying #4 the goal.

#2 and #3 say DO this because you'll be happier: The goal takes on greater meaning or smaller goals take on greater value.

As I say, I can see the DEGREE of difference. The first is a chilling cheaping of the goal while the fourth is the frightening notion that even once the goal ceases to be obtainable she continues to obsessively pursue it.

But all four are abstractly saying the same thing: When you put intellectual pursuits above people you lose out on something and when you put people above intellectual pursuits you're a better person for it.

Jesse

P.S. Yes, I'm exagerating the point, but I see things clearer in exagerations.

Hi all,

One fiction writer's definition of theme is "the author's idea of the right way to face a particular challenge." The theory holds that good fiction revolves around a moral assertion. Characters exist to explore different approaches to the challenge and exist on different positions on the moral scale in relation to the challenge and each other.

In Sorcerer, Humanity tracks this pretty well. Also, defining Humanity, the events that cause it to fluctuate, and the consequences of low Humanity all define the moral scale of the game to be played.

I think Jesse is on to something. At a certain level of abstraction, Humanity, once defined, provides the "answer" to the Premise question.

Here's the kernel of the idea:

Given the Humanity defintion there is no way for me to create a story in which I "prove" that Intellectual Knowledge really IS more important than other people because if I set out on that path the Humanity definition will destroy me and an any half-awake audience will see that as demontrationg that the OPPOSITE is the real "message" (Theme) of the story.

Michael S. Miller wrote:
Note the part I bolded. Such a thing is NOT a given in Sorcerer. The game requires you to define what Humanity means to you.

Hi Jesse,

Sometimes you fascinate me in the extent to which you can talk yourself into something ...

since #1 and #4 are emotionally undesirable outcomes and #2 and #3 are emotionally desireable outcomes from an audiance point of view

Ron Edwards wrote:
Dude ... without need for debate, tagging the outcomes like this is fallacious. All four are represented in the relevant literature and film and myth. All four are cathartic. All four are emotionally desirable. All four are "good story."

Just curious Jesse (and Alan),

Simple question: do you play Sorcerer to 'find the answers?'

So what if all four point to the same answer. When you start, have you already figured out if you're going to do the emotionally desirable or the emotionally undesirable?

More importantly have you already chosen why you shouldn't put intellectualism ahead of humanism (or however you choose to describe it).

So what if all cases prove the same point, what's important is how they do it. Will our hero make that last minute transformation and go from doomed to saved? Sure both outcomes 'prove the same point,' what matters is how they prove it.

It's not the destination that matters, but the road taken.

You seem fond of reductio ad absurdum arguments; try this one. Let's say that Premise/Demon/Humanity of X/Y/Z could lead to two different conclusions and let's make those opposites. One affirms principles society is based on; the other makes the opposite case, that society is pointless. It doesn't really matter what makes these points.

Wouldn't you feel disappointed if society turned out to be pointless?

You seem to be falling for the 'deconstructionist fable.' The idea that abstracting rather than reducing can lead to good results. Well, you know what literature has taught me? There are only one set of answers. If you feel behooved to abstract a game into four results and find that they all 'mean' the same thing, that's good. Isn't there only one lesson to be learned weighing the issues you've presented?

What intrigues us in literature is not what the 'answer' is (I don't think it should come as a surprise¹). We know before we pick up the book who wins. We know before we read the script 'what the point' is. What we don't know is how that will be made manifest; we don't know 'why' it will be true this time.

Y'see, as far as I can tell, every telling of every tale simply gives us answers we already know. What makes the interesting ones interesting is that we don't know how we will be told. You present a classic, yet impenetrable dichotomy. Will the message be demonstrated by someone failing to abide by it being destroyed or by someone following it being redeemed? When you start the game, you can't know.

I think you've abstracted one step too far; thinking that the answer is the point of play rather than the answering. Certainly, if you already know that your character is irredeemable and unavoidably bound for destruction, what's the point in playing? Every character who's so bent on destroying themselves must have at least a noticable chance at redemption or they're pointless. The same is true for the saints; they have to have at least one weak point that might just tip them over or there's nothing to play.

The whole point I've been trying to make with Scattershot's Mystiques and Intrigue is that once the mystery has gone out of it, end it quickly. You're making it sound like 'the answer' is supposed to be the mystery; it isn't. How 'the answer' is given is where the mystery lies. Like the gentleman said, "It isn't where you go, but how you get there that counts."

Fang Langford

¹ The only surprises I've liked fall into two groups (if you must abstract them so much); either I gathered wrong about what 'the real message' was about or I've followed the wrong exemplar. The message is still a welcome one, whether I could have guessed what it was or who was carrying it.

Jesse,

It seems to me that a nifty solution to this is provided by Faust, which is no simple morality tale. You've set up a two-part syllogism:

If (like Faust) I decide that intellectual knowledge is more important than people,

Then I am damned to Hell.

So far, so Faust.

But the whole point about Goethe's Faust at least is that he knows this. He's not selling his soul because he's a bad person, really. He believes that there is something noble, something infinitely human and wonderful, about the search for truth, whatever the cost, and so he believes that one brief flash of truth and knowledge in our truth-empty human world is actually worth Hell. But when the play ends, do we know whether he's right? Not really. If it's done extremely well, Faust is a guy who's simultaneously a true hero, not an anti-hero or something, but is also quite literally damned to eternity in Hell. Was it worth it?

I think setting it up as a strict polarity misses the point. For Faust, humanity is what damns him, because the choice of intellectual knowledge over humanity is precisely part of what it means to be human. If Humanity is defined as prioritizing people over intellect, at the same time it must be recognized that this is a human choice, not a demonic or angelic one. It means nothing to beings from Over There -- they already know the Truth, because they see it every day outside their windows. Faust's tragedy is that he sees that one possible ultimate expression of humanity will also require an absolute choice for inhumanity.

Does that help?

Hi. Just wanted to offer two things.

First, given the set up for BiblioMania, someone might be working like hell to save his child from a life threatening disease -- successfully saving his son but losing his emotional connection with others. This might be viewed as a "heroic" success. And it would be heroic specifically because the rules tagged the growing loss of Humanity along the way. Without the cost to the need, he'd just be a good dad. The conflict makes it compelling.

Second, as to emotionally satisifying for options one through four above... Specifically, number one... Silence of the Lambs ends with Dr. Lector (clearly clarices demon), calling to congratualate her on getting her "real" FBI badge. I don't know if its "good" to form attachments to sociopaths, but in this case it was compelling.

I'm not so concerned about morals as a story teller. I am very concerned about compelling. Notice that's what driving the two points above. The moral issues are the fuel for what's compelling, but ultimately not the shiny car itself.

Christopher

Le Joueur wrote: Just curious Jesse (and Alan),

Simple question: do you play Sorcerer to 'find the answers?'

So what if all four point to the same answer. When you start, have you already figured out if you're going to do the emotionally desirable or the emotionally undesirable?

Hi Jesse,

You would receive an 'F' from me in my bio/movies course.

I understand that all four outcomes are desirable and "good story" from an authorial point of view. I'm talking about from a sympathetic audience point of view. Think, undesirable outcome = tragety, desirable outcome = comedy or some such.

If anything I would probably be happier as an audience member with outcome #1 or #4 just because I'm a sucker for ruin and damnation endings. But from an empathic/sympathetic POV they are undesirable. If WE were Joyce, WE would not want to turn out like #1 or #4.

Romeo and Juliet comiting suicide is an emotionally undesirable outcome. Romeo and Juliet is not a bad story.

Is that clearer?

First of all... You teach a bio-movie course? That sounds really cool.

Okay, back on topic.

I still feel like I'm being misunderstood. I don't *think* I'm insulting the general movie going public's intelligence. I'm not saying people prefer happy endings. If I am, then I don't know I am.

Let me phrase it as a question. What exactly is going on when we're sitting at home watching a movie and my girlfriend suddenly sits up, starts throwing popcorn at the screen, yelling, "STUPID WOMAN! DON'T DO THAT!!!"?

Is she "not getting it"? No. Is she some how not enjoying it? No. Would she some how prefer it if the woman in the movie REALLY didn't do what she was doing? No. Does she think it's a bad story? No.

But obviously she emotionally disagrees with the choice of the protagonist. And when those choices lead to equally emotionally distressing outcomes, we either feel a sense of satisfaction (because we saw it coming and were pleased at the protagonists, come uppance) OR sense of uneasy contemplation because (hey, I would have done the same thing and shit, I don't want to be there. Hmmmm.)

Now, it's time to back up. BACK WAY UP.

First of all this whole thread started with this:

Premise: Is intellectual knowledge more valuable than other people?
Humanity is... emotional connection to other people.

I saw those coupled together and realized that the question, AS WORDED, is unanswerable via play because the Humanity Definition forces an answer: No.

It was a bit of a semantic game but frankly I'm glad I asked it because it's lead to a lot of interesting questions.

What I think Christopher and Fang and couple other people are trying to tell me is this:

That the real Premise is: "To what degree is intellectual knowledge more valuable than other people?"

That's what the Humanity Score in Sorcerer is REALLY tracking. It's defintion has already placed more value on the Other People part. The point of play is to explore the extent of that continumm. That IS answerable by each player thanks to the Humanity Score.

I get that. I think I got that before. I don't think I could have articulated it that clearly before this thread but I think I knew that before.

Flash Forward.

I think fundamentally what you're saying Ron is that I'm allowing my biases and personal preferences for CERTAIN KINDS of stories to interfer with my GMing and that's a conclusion I've been independently coming to for a long while now.

Jesse

jburneko wrote:
First of all this whole thread started with this:

Premise: Is intellectual knowledge more valuable than other people?
Humanity is... emotional connection to other people.

I saw those coupled together and realized that the question, AS WORDED, is unanswerable via play because the Humanity Definition forces an answer: No.

It was a bit of a semantic game but frankly I'm glad I asked it because it's lead to a lot of interesting questions.

Hi there,

To back Stuart up on this one: Sorcerer play is predicated on the idea that it is at least conceivable, in the case of this player-character, that emotional connections among people can be sacrificed. Why? Well, that's part of character creation.

An utterly villainous character spits on the Humanity definition. A more protagonist-worthy character is willing to bend it a little, for something important. What is so damn important to your character that some human connections can maybe be sacrificed a little, to achieve it?

Without answering that question - and automatically, thereby, challenging the absolute primacy of Humanity Definition Uber Alles - the game is unplayable.

To address the question of your girlfriend and the screen, I don't think I want to presume to speak for her in the specific. I will break such behavior down into two categories.

1. The viewer is enjoying "being at the movies" rather than "watching a movie." Since the priority is to interact socially with the real people nearby, that's what he or she does - make a lot of noise, position oneself relative to the characters ("I would never do that"), comment on technical failures of the movie or its narrative assumptions, and so on. Sometimes this is all very good-spirited, and sometimes it's not. But it isn't actually watching the movie in any sense resembling story-stuff.

2. The viewer is verbalizing a form of appreciation of the movie, articulating internal tension that the movie has generated. He or she is engaged, in full, but must express that engagement by identifying the "path not taken" by the character. "No! Don't open that door!", in this sense, is part and parcel of enjoying the character opening the door, and indeed, if the character does not, the person is disappointed.

These two behaviors can be pretty hard to tell apart, although there are several key signs, such as certain pacing details of the behavior, or seeing whether the person can actually recount the basic plot accurately afterwards (many people can tell you why Pulp Fiction was "just a comedy" but cannot articulate the plot, e.g.).

The first behavior is irrelevant to Narrativist role-playing; given that most of the people are committed to this sort of play, such behavior is simply dysfunctional, in the same sense that not caring about "winning" when playing Gamist is literally discourteous to everyone else. The second behavior is, of course, quite welcome and constitutes a lot of the OOC dialogue during many games that I'm in.

Best,
Ron

I think I need to reflect on all this. I think Ron is working on some subtle technical level that I'm just not seeing. So here's one last attempt to articulate what I'm trying to say.

Tragety is not an invalid story-telling technique. However, no one wants tragety in their life. The point to reading or watching a tragic story is to witness and understand an example of situations, choices, behaviors and in some sense values that lead to tragic outcomes, so that we may better recognize and avoid those values and choices in our own lives.

Thus a story that ends with a Sorcerer going to 0 Humanity can ONLY serve to illustrate why valuing whatever Humanity was defined as, is so vitally important.

At least that's why *I* watch tragic movies. And when someone tells me, "I don't like 'sad' movies", I tell them the above.

Now, whether you ARGEE with the story's "argument" or not is an entirely different matter.

Jesse

Given those definitions (and I'm not saying I agree or not), then the "right "way to play is to either author a comedy or a tragedy. Yes, Humanity defines morality for purposes of the story. But if people didn't break with morality then we wouldn't have tragedies.

So, the question of the theme of play is "wither comedy or tragedy" in the most simple terms. See how the question has not been answered until play happens?

"Killing is bad" is not a theme. "Choosing to Kill even when you know it's bad" is a theme, as is "Choosing not to kill because you know it's bad."

Mike

Yes, Humanity defines morality for purposes of the story. But if people didn't break with morality then we wouldn't have tragedies. ...
"Killing is bad" is not a theme. "Choosing to Kill even when you know it's bad" is a theme, as is "Choosing not to kill because you know it's bad."

Hi guys,

Some of this stuff is beginning to run like rising waters over the banks of my own little brain. But I will respond to Jesse's point:

Jesse, somewhere in that statement of yours, that we watch tragic events to learn from them and avoid that behavior is the rub Ron's been goin' after you about in this thread. I can't explain it much more clearly than Ron did, so I'll just use an example.

Oedipus Rex is a tragedy. There is no "lesson" to be learned. In fact, I saw a lovely production here in L.A. and there was a Q&A with High School students afterward. The teacher, almost despeately, pleaded with the cast: why couldn't the play offer up some way out for Oedipus from his fate?

Well, cause it doesn't. In the structure of that play, that's life.

Is Oedipus Rex a bad play. Um. No.

We don't (or, at least, I don't) go to plays or movies or read fiction to learn how to live. I read for the complexity of life. I don't presume most writers -- who's job it is to hook me with a tale -- really have that much wisdom about life they can cram into 90 minutes while doing everything else a story has to do.

Your assumption that we're doing stories to learn how to be better, to avoid mistakes... I don't know how else to say this but to say, "Not me."

You want the sorcerers in BiblioMania to point, one way or another, as a positive or negative example of behavior. This, in fact, might not be possible. And, if I'm lucky, the players might come up with beautifully wrought complications that lead to true tragedy (which is not the same thing as a "sad" ending.) We'll see. But I certainly don't expect them to be more moral people by the time the story is over.

It would, however, be cool if they were more complex people when all was said and done.

Hope you can make the game.

Take care,
Christopher

Christopher,

I would argue that the lesson of Oedipus Rex is, "Dude, sometimes there ain't no way out!" It's a fatalistic story telling us that sometimes we just have to "suck up" our Destinys. The best we can do is keep our arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times and hope that when the ride comes to a complete stop the Gods have chosen to favor us.

Minority Report tells us exactly the opposite. Minority Report says that we ARE the masters of our own destiny's and that right up until we actually pull the trigger we DO have the power to choose.

As I said, you don't have to AGREE with what the story is "proving" or illustrating. That's why we all need to still be able to think and analyze and we can't just go to the movies or read books and have life all sorted out for us.

Hey Mike! So far you've made the best case. I totally understand what you're saying. It's that spectrum thing I keep bringing up.

1) I'm not denying the existance of spectrum. Worded as "where do you fall?" Sorcerer's Premise is totally answerable in play. Worded as a yes/no question the Humanity definition answers it for you. That's all I've been saying.

2) I'm also not denying that specifics count. Yes, in terms of details in terms of that spectrum Ron's original four outcomes are all very different. One is about cheaping the goal, one is about forsaking the greater goal for smaller more obtainable goal, one is about achieving the greater goal without selling out and one is about not recognizing when the goal is no longer obtainable. These are all different and they all have different emotional impacts.

Jesse

Hi all,

I'm really enjoying this thread, and I have a bunch o' stuff written up to say about it . . . but I'm not sure it really adds anything. I'll re-read and edit it just in case it is helpful . . . but first, an acknowledgement: Ron, the two "hard to distinguish behaviors" thing is great, it really brings home a point about OOC talk in a game that I'm gonna have to find a way I can communicate to others. Very cool. And Jesse, I think you're on to a fascinating issue here, to which Sorcerer's tools (Humanity) are only one answer.

For me, Premise is unquestionably all about the spectrum. Even when worded as a yes/no, it's just a pointer to The Big Picture. In the example "Is intellectual knowledge more valuable than other people?", we're being told the arena of the story is centered on when intellectual knowledge and other people come into conflict. But the issues that come up in that context are numerous - What are the ways in which these things can come into conflict? How can those conflicts be resolved WITHOUT harming one side or the other? What happens when they CAN'T be? What things do we think people look at when even contemplating gaining one and risking the other? What particular types of people is this most troublesome for? Least troublesome? Most interesting and nuanced? What are those nuances? And . . . plenty more. A pointer is significant (System Matters) - it can result in focusing you on some issues, ignoring others, taking a particular approach, and etc. - but a pointer is not the thing itself (System doesn't Determine).

For what it's worth, that's how I think about the "doing stories to learn" thing, too. Stories don't/can't do anything but kinda stir up the issues - any learning that happens is up to you. Some story creators have particular things they WANT you to learn, and some stories TEND to create certain kinds of learning, but the learning and the experience of the story are separate things.

And the Humanity definition is not about whatever "learning" may happen - what might be learned from the four outcomes is . . . unlimited. AND (I think this is the important part) what might be experienced during the four outcomes is also unlimited. Some tragedies, I get to the end of and I feel like Christopher's example teacher - why, why couldn't there have been a way out? Other's (last time I saw Macbeth) - yup, that's what had to happen. As Ron says, the Humanity definition exists as a thing whose primacy (and singularity) MUST be challenged. And what happens from there, no matter how it turns out, is NOT dictated by the definition.

Hey, the very notion that Humanity has a definition is pretty "out there" in my mind - at best, we're just pretending that it does for the purpose of the game. Is intellectual knowledge more valuable than other people? Well, that friggin' depends, doesn't it? I think knowledge about a cancer cure is more valuable than boogeyman-of-the-moment Saddam Hussein. Would I kill him to get that knowledge? Torture him? What if no one would ever know what I did to get the cure? What if I *thought* no one would know, and then they found out?

Interesting mental exercises . . . but we're talking about Sorcerer. In Sorcerer, we define this in-game character attribute called Humanity as emotional attachment to others, apply the rules, and see what happens. Play addresses the Premise, the definition stirs up the issues, but the answers - if there are answers - aren't given by that definition. You have a character that believes intellectual knowledge is more important than other people, play might well help show how that can be true - with an appropriate story leading to it, any of the four outcomes could help support that notion. Precisely because "learning" can only be influenced, not dictated, by the experience of (in our case here) play, anything can be learned. The point of defining Humanity as emotional attachment to other beings is NOT to demonstrate "that prioritizing Intellectual Knowledge over Other Human beings is a BAD idea," it's to see what happens when we start playing in an environment where those kinds of issues come up.

The way you define Humanity isn't meaningless, just like the play that leads up to a zero-humanity drop or a Banishing isn't meaningless - it will influence the kinds of stories that result. But it CAN'T determine the moral meaning behind them. Only the human beings involved can do that. At an extreme, a sorcerer dropping to zero humanity, for a particular player at a particular time in a particular story, might demonstrate, for that person, that the Humanity definition is just flat-out fucked up and "real life" ain't like that at all. I think that's why a Humanity definition is helping create an environment where Premise is addressed (maybe even influencing how that's likely to happen), but it isn't also providing a delivered-answer to the issues - 'cause Humanity is a useful, powerful, fun tool in the game play, and answering the Premise is in the realm of the human beings who are playing. Who may just say "hey, that was fun" and move on.

Wow, hard to believe this is the "edited for greater focus" version of my post - I think I better leave it there and see if any of this is helpful at all. Thanks, all,

Gordon

jburneko wrote: What I think Christopher and Fang and couple other people are trying to tell me is this:

That the real Premise is: "To what degree is intellectual knowledge more valuable than other people?"

That's what the Humanity Score in Sorcerer is REALLY tracking. It's defintion has already placed more value on the Other People part. The point of play is to explore the extent of that continumm. That IS answerable by each player thanks to the Humanity Score.

Gosh, I think I agree with Fang.

I'd put it this way:

In terms of morality, yes, humanity answers the Premise. It says, to be moral in this context you have to do xyz.

But morality and theme have causative link per se. In answering the question the player says the character is moral, or the character is immoral. That's part of his theme.

The moral question is answered the same every time. It's moral to be moral. Either the character proves this by being moral, or by being immoral. To use the killing example, "I"ve avoided killing and thus I am moral" or "I've killed, and therefore am immoral."

Theme is just the direction by which the moral is proven.

Mike

Huh, looks like (best as I can tell) I disagree with Fang and Mike. The Humanity definition doesn't seem like a clear moral answer to me - all it tells you is you have to RISK a loss for certain kinds of actions, and that you MIGHT get a gain for certain other kinds of actions. It doesn't take much to construct Sorcerer play where a defined-as-risky-to-Humanity act is in fact possibly a good, moral choice. As far as I can tell, Sorcerer doesn't tell us that "two wrongs can never make a right" - summoning a demon to protect a person (from another demon, say) out of your emotionally connection to them may or may not work out.

But playing that out will address (not answer) the Premise, in no doubt interesting and complex ways.

At least, that's my take,

Gordon

Gordon C. Landis wrote: ...I disagree with Fang.... The Humanity definition doesn't seem like a clear moral answer to me.

Yeah, we've reduced things to an absurd extent in order to make points.

There are other themes one can come up with becaiuse of the randomness of the Humanity mechanic. Things like "It's true! Good things happen to bad people." (- Homer Simpson) That is, if a character does bad things but still manages to pull through, you can have that theme, or the redemption theme, or the lesson learned theme, etc.

Mike

Le Joueur wrote:

Gordon C. Landis wrote: ...I disagree with Fang.... The Humanity definition doesn't seem like a clear moral answer to me.

Even if you reduce the possible 'answers' to the Edwardian Premise to 'yes' and 'no?'

Besides, I wasn't saying that it did; I was saying that perhaps too much abstraction was being employed.

Within the frame of the Biliomancy thing.

The player character is one of a set of twins, both are researching the same thing. David is less driven and has a wife and children; Damian has no ties to the world and is very driven. High-humanity; low-humanity.

During the course of play, David steals Damian's research, causes Damian to suffer from amnesia and swaps identities with him so that the now the world treats Damian as David, and Damian himself thinks of himself as David. Damian - by this point at zero humanity - commits suicide on the evening of 'his' academic triumph, having rescued his brother from his fate.

The player has authored the theme "emotional connections is more important than knowledge" given that his character's brother's life is more important to him than the character's own. It is a tale of redemption on Damian's part (an NPC). The player character ends with zero humanity.

In other words if the player characters humanity is a thing that can be sacrificed for the benefit of others - or for that matter preserved at the expense of others - then the Premise can be addressed contrary to the run of Humanity.

Unless I'm misreading things somewhere.