Premise has been summed up, most simply as, “What do you do?”, or “What is this game about?”

Looking at Ron’s review of octaNe, and his conparison to Inspectres, it seems to be that the major difference between the two is one of an explicit premise, and an undefined one. In Inspectres, your premise is well defined(ghost-busting), and the stakes are always the same(your business), whereas in octaNe, both are left open to the group to define.

What’s interesting to note, is that the two systems are very similar in terms of what they do(“Conch passing”). Which leads to an interesting observation: premise is about what you’re supposed to do, while system is about what you can do(or how, gamewise, you can do it). System succeeds or fails on its ability to support(what you can do matching up with) what you’re supposed to do. One can say a system isn’t doing its job, when it fails to support premise, “What you’re supposed to do”. Hence GNS.

Which brings me to our title: Premise on a Platter, basically, whether a particular game explicitly states what the premise is, implicitly assumes, or otherwise implies it, or finally, leaves it open for the group to define.

Let’s start with games that explicitly state their premise, or drench enough of the text with it that it can be nothing less than obvious what the premise is. These games are often stated to have a “strong setting” or “good genre”, when in fact, they’re just high on kewl factor and have a solid premise.

That premise can be really thin(“Kill monsters”, “Be a vampire” "Be a trollbabe, do things”), which isn’t a judgement on the quality of the premise, but rather an indication of its strength. On the other hand, the wider the premise gets, the less focused and often the less “catchy” it is(“Explore the universe”, “Do anything!”, etc.) The benefit to a focused, explicit premise is that players can pick up the idea quickly, its easily communicated, and several Social contract issues about play can get solidified real quick.

Second, we’ll go to the opposite, undefined premise, which is often a trademark of “Universal” systems. The strength of these systems is that they claim to be able to support any premise, although how well they do it is another question. The major benefit is that these systems are designed to accomodate several possibilities for play, and are supposed to be used as tools to allow a group to create and play its premise without problems.

The major drawback to undefined premise games is that they lead to big play issues if premise isn’t defined quickly(in or out of play). That is, if neither players nor the GM know what the game is supposed to be about(exploring space, fighting aliens, whatever), none of them can facilitate that happening. I’m going to venture that any game with an undefined premise needs to up front, explicitly state that a premise needs to be formed, and give some guidelines for doing so, in order to successfully operate. Of games that do this, Universalis and The Questing Beast come to mind as two that do this well.

Third, looking at “implicit” or unstated premise games, we find a great deal of our Fantasy Heartbreakers. They say, “You can do anything!” but the system usually supports a premise that’s just left unstated(“Fight monsters” disguised as “Adventuring”). This is some dangerous middle ground to walk on, since it depends on the group “getting it” or not. The Riddle of Steel is a game with an implicit premise, since it highly supports fighting and such, yet doesn’t state, “Here’s what you do!”. In a roundabout way, through Philosophy and Spiritual Attributes, it calls for Premise(in the Narrativist sense), but doesn’t state it openly, which has allowed it to sneak it into some folks play without their knowing*, and in other cases led to major misunderstandings.

Going back to the Inspectres/octaNe issue, I couldn’t really see trying to play octaNe without coming up with some sort of premise, even if its on the spot(“Ok guys, tonight we fight Surf Zombies!”) in order to establish a focus right away, even before character creation. Going the other way around, character creation first, seems to be the equivalent of GURPS character creation without any information about anything and then trying to build a story around a motley crew group, all of whom are built around “God knows what” as a premise.

It seems only obvious that if you say, “Let’s play GURPS” make characters, and try to run from there that you’re going to have problems, but I think octaNe is very much in the same boat, just that it is implicitly assumed, not out and out stated.

There’s a lot of issues here I’d be interested in discussing, which may each earn their own thread, or going to PM, dependiing on how folks feel...

•What are the benefits/drawback/features of explicitly/implicitly/undefined Premise? Is there certain types of play that are supported better by one than another?

•What tools/techniques work well for establishing premise with a group? Or even for a single GM to come up with(type 2 narrativism anyone)?

•Of the implicit stuff, what makes some of them fly well(TROS) and others fall flat(Heartbreakers)?

•How much does genre contribute/affect towards premise(Dust Devils would be a good case)?

•Same premise, different color, what’s the relationship(Serious Donjon anyone)?

•Setting without premise-key ingredient in a Heartbreaker?

•Premise without Setting(Sorcerer, old Traveller, Draconic, Donjon, Dust Devils)...
Where does it work, where does it fail, and why?

•Stakes as a MacGuffin, or concrete focus for Premise, discuss.

Yeah, this is a big bucketload of issues, but this came about from reading about Aurora’s issues along with octaNe....

Chris


*”We’ve secretly replaced this gamer’s Gamism/Simulationism with Narrativism...Let’s see how he reacts...”

Hi Chris,

I'd like to clarify a few points before starting.

1. I have decided that Ralph was right all along. Using "premise" as a blanket term for "agenda" throughout GNS was a bad idea. I should have just called it "creative agenda" and left it at that, and reserved Premise for the specific creative agenda of Narrativist play. People have probably noticed that the word is absent from the Simulationist essay in favor of "the dream," and it will be absent from the Gamist essay in favor of ... well, of another word.

But for now, OK - we'll stick with the three-layered meaning of the word that I (barbarously) constructed for the current essay.

2. And therein lies this problem: when I say "octaNe has no Narrativist Premise," I do not mean, octaNe has no premise at all, in the broader sense of my essay (which I would now prefer to call creative agenda). Without distinguishing between these two layers, your post becomes meaningless. I can't tell whether you mean ...

a) creative agenda of any kind (which octaNe most certainly has)
b) ethical or moral trouble-point which prompts real people to take sides or at least to enter emotionally into the imaginary conflict's resolution (which octaNe emphatically does not; if it's there, you put it there)

Without knowing which you mean, I can't tell how to respond at all. I think that a lot of people are going to read your post and get all tangled up as they try to apply Narrativist standards for Premise to (e.g.) Fantasy Heartbreakers or other inappropriate games.

3. The issue of undefined Premise within Narrativist play is much easier than people make it. The point of such a game design, in my view, is to facilitate such a Premise being addressed - not necessarily to hand it to you. This is another well-taken point of Ralph's: that a Narrativist-facilitating game design does not always do well to spell out the Premise for you. It's an individual-game issue - for my money, Dust Devils was immeasurably improved by the text stating the Premise up front, Universalis remains a far better game because it does not, and Sorcerer is ideally constructed to force the issue of local Premise construction.

As a related point, I suggest reviewing the text of The Riddle of Steel - I consider it to be very explicit about the Narrativist Premise at hand, at many points in the text. Look at the Philosophy section of the character creation chapter and the "point of play" section in the scenario-prep chapter, as well as the "what's the point of this game" in the FAQ section. Jake is quite blunt in all of them.

4. The issue of undefined Premise in all play is much more serious but also much more simple. Unless that "grab for creative agenda" is there, the game crashes. It's that simple; no one wants to play it. So-called "universal" games (what I call Purist for System Simulationist design) certainly have a creative agenda, as anyone who's pounded a few points and applied a few facing bonuses can tell you.

Best,
Ron

Hi Ron,

To address your points in turn:

1. I'm completely with you on the Premise vs. premise issue. If you want to substitute premise for agenda, creative agenda, or whatever term comes to represent "What you do", that would be fine. Premise on a Platter is completely addressing premise in the sense of "what you do" and not looking at premise in the narrativist sense in any fashion. I simply used the term as I last understood it to being used, and chose not to mix the two "premises" for simplicity's sake.

2. And I fully understand that octaNe has a premise in terms of type A, just that communicating it(giving it to players on a Platter, of what to do) isn't say, as focused or explicit as it is in Inspectres. I'm not even looking at type B in this at all.

But what I will say is that while something like CORPS has the creative agenda of "play something in a realistic sense", octaNe has an agenda of "play something in a Psychotronic sense", which by itself, isn't sufficient information for players(including a GM), to grab onto, except as a part of what is necessary for play. While the creative agenda as stated makes a good starting point for finishing premise in terms of "What do you do", the group has to put some work in to make it fully playable.

3.Again, and quite sorry I did not make this clear, but referring to premise as the creative agenda way, not specifically to Narrativist play, I agree that it may not be in a game designer's best interest to hand a creative agenda to a group, but should probably give some form of instruction as to what needs be done to make a playable creative agenda. Again, this has been shown in the everything from Dust Devils, Universalis, Sorcerer, etc.

And oops, you are quite right on Riddle of Steel. Perhaps someone else has another game which works as an example of a game which implicitly gives its creative agenda without openly stating it.

4. I also agree with you on the undefined creative agenda = game crash. What I think is very interesting is that a subtle leap is made for most players in "making setting" to "making creative agenda".

Does that help clear things up for everybody?

Chris

Bankuei wrote: 4. I also agree with you on the undefined creative agenda = game crash. What I think is very interesting is that a subtle leap is made for most players in "making setting" to "making creative agenda".

Hi Jack,

That's a good point, although I think we're skating a bit back-and-forth between discussing unsuccessful design (i.e., which no one plays or people play briefly then quit) and unsuccessful play (i.e., which people do play but are unhappy with, but may not quit).

Chris, I forgot to mention one more important issue: the dice's role in resolution.

In InSpectres, if you roll 1-3, your character's stated goal fails. If you roll 4-6, it succeeds. Now, all the narration-trading and added-snippet-detail rules are secondary to that fundamental authority of the dice. It's a Fortune-in-the-Middle system, yes, but not Fortune-at-the-Beginning.

In octaNe, by contrast, if you roll 1-3, the GM (or whoever else) narrates; if you roll 4-6, you narrate. That's all the dice do, which is why the system is essentially Fortune-at-the-Beginning. We don't really know what the angry squid-person is doing to your character - the narrator gets to say so after the roll. We don't know what your character is trying to do - the narrator gets to say so after the roll.

We've discussed this before in the Random Order Creations forum, and you know that I very strongly advocate playing The Pool like InSpectres and not like octaNe. The Pool lacks the Color elements of octaNe (which Jared just listed) that permit its CS application to function so well; removing resolution-authority from the dice renders The Pool a rather crude and uninteresting round-robin of blather.

I can't emphasize enough that informal Drama mechanics are horrible for Narrativist play; I think that's where both Theatrix and The Window fall down between the games' textual goals and their systems. These sorts of mechanics are much stronger for Simulationist play of the "story" sort that I describe in my Sim essay.

There are two ways to go, from a game like this, if you introduce dice. (1) If the dice operate to organize the Drama mechanics (octaNe), the effect is to make the Sim-style play more reliable. (2) If the dice operate as Fortune-in-the-Middle resolution (InSpectres), the effect is to generate protagonizing adversity and the possibility of protagonized failure, which is the essence of Narrativist play.*

Best,
Ron

* pending certain points and parallels with Gamist play which are in draft at the moment.

I'm new to The Forge.... First post warning.

I can't emphasize enough that informal Drama mechanics are horrible for Narrativist play; I think that's where both Theatrix and The Window fall down between the games' textual goals and their systems. These sorts of mechanics are much stronger for Simulationist play of the "story" sort that I describe in my Sim essay.

Hi there,

And welcome to the Forge!

My first clarification is that I think octaNe uses a formal Drama mechanic, not an informal one. By "formal," I mean some way to understand who says what, and about what. The dice in octaNe are a means to organize these things; they say nothing about resolving the characters' actions or goals.

InSpectres, by contrast, as well as The Pool (if it's played as I describe above, more like InSpectres and less like octaNe), uses a Fortune mechanic in which narration must include the dice's authority.

OK, so the real issue is formal vs. informal Drama mechanics.

THE WINDOW
The Window provides Three Precepts which are very explicitly about the importance of "story" during play. Nearly all resolution in the game is handled through Drama, with the dice apparently being used rarely. Furthermore, the times when the dice are used and the effect of their outcome is under full GM control in terms of further Drama (i.e. interpretation and narration).

I consider this an informal Drama mechanic because the game actually provides no usable basis for what is said when, by whom, and what for. If I am a player, and I say, "Cariel wings his chakram at the lead orc!" then, do we roll? Don't know, game doesn't say. Can the GM respond, "Wait, there are two orcs, both racing at you guys. If you take out just one, then the other is gonna have a free shot at you." Or did he have to say that before I announced my action, or else it doesn't count? Did my announcement mean that the chakram is in the air already, or does it mean that the intent is merely Plan A in Cariel's mind? Or ...?

In other words, informal Drama mechanics don't clarify when and how adversity is occurring. Adding a "roll dice when necessary" rule (as The Window does) doesn't help much.

THEATRIX
This game is trickier for two reasons: (1) I am going on reading the text and play-reports rather than my own experience with it, and (2) the text provides several different resolution systems, some based on Karma (evidently the default). Check out the discussions in Theatrix in action, Transparency again, Advice for a new Theatrix director, and Drama like your cold feet under my covers, for some of the points that gave rise to my comments above.

I may be completely mistaken, but as far as I can tell, the rules in Theatrix leave the crucial decisions of play (what we call "IIEE" around here, especially, as well as scene-framing) up to the GM.

PUPPETLAND
This game is fully Drama-based, but both the GM and the players are constrained to specific ways to speak during the single hour of play. The GM may only speak in past tense, and the player may only speak in present tense, in character.

GM: "The puppets saw that the ship was burning! The sails had been rendered to ashes, scattering across the surface of the Lake of Milk and Cookies."

Player: "Jeepers! It's time, then - I must take this balloon and send it up as a signal to Judy's agents! I hope they get here before the Nutcrackers do."

Surprisingly, this simple constraint produces some amazing effects in play which keep everyone on track about what's happening, when, and who can say what about what to do next.

I hope all of the above clarifies my points about octaNe and makes more sense out of my above post.

Best,
Ron

bowlingm wrote: I'm new to The Forge.... First post warning.

Can you say what you mean by "informal Drama mechanics"? Specifically, can you point to specifics in The Window and Theatrix, since I've at least read these games' rulebooks. I'm vaguely familiar with InSpectres and octaNe from reading The Forge forums... but what are the "informal Drama mechanics" in octaNe and/or in InSpectres?

In my newbie-ness, I'm still stuck trying to understand the difference between Narrativist play and "Simulationist play of 'story'" And whether systems can encourage one or the other.

Ron,

Thanks for the welcome and quick answer!

A few more clarifying questions... Although, I'm going to use examples from Theatrix (which I played once back before it hit store shelves), which you have only second-hand experience with...

Statements. Players are allowed to make statements about the world, that are assumed to be true from their perspective. They can also spend plot points to make them a reality. I'm not even sure if this is a drama mechanic at all, since it could certainly be used for non-dramatic purposes. But the implied intent seems that this is a mechanic for allowing players dramatic input. Would this be formal or informal? The plot point expenditure seems to be formal since it wraps a rule around it.

Automatic Successes Players can activate a descriptor with a plot point to guarantee success at an action. But, if I remember right, the GM still narrates that success. So, is this a drama mechanic? Formal or informal? What if the plot point also allowed narrative control like The Pool's MOV. Would that then be a formal drama mechanic?

Flowcharts for the GM The Drama/Karma resolution focused on flow charts. This would seem to me to be a formal drama mechanic, but since there's no real enforcement, I can see it also as only an informal recommendation.

The reason I'm getting so picky about this, is what I closed my previous post with... I still don't feel like I have a grasp on the difference between narrativist play and simulationist play focused on story/genre. And I think one of my confusion points is that I can't place my experience with Theatrix, back when I was a youngin'. The focus was on telling a story, which I understand is part of all modes of play. But all the players were supposed to be empowered to participate in the act of story generation. Does this make it narrativist or simulationist, yet or is it where it goes from there that is the defining line.

In response to Mike Holmes's post, where he stated the difference is in the premise. What if the premise is not a question, but rather an answer? For example, "Truth, Justic, and blah-blah-blah always triumphs." That's a premise (at least by my understanding of Egri's notion), but it's not a question. So, if that is what the game is about, is it narrativist or simulationist? Or again is this not the defining line.

Or maybe I'm stuck on a defining line instead of it being more of a continuum.

BTW, premise as question and premise as statement (maybe question and answer) is something I hadn't read much about on The Forge, but it seems somehow important in understanding Narrativism along with Egri's notion of premise.

Mike

Hi there!

Great discussion. I'll start with the hind-parts first, if that's OK, because as you have stated, that's really the core issue.

QUESTION OR ANSWER
I've actually run down this issue thoroughly in the past, but the thread is buried too deeply for me to discover quickly. This is a brief re-phrasing.

Egri states his Premises as flat statements for three reasons, in my view. (1) He is discussing the single author faced with a blank sheet of paper, with the goal at hand being a finished script. No one is going to negotiate the completion of the script with him, and no degree of shared improvisation or Fortune-based springboard is going to be involved. (2) The audience will see the finished play, not the process of creation. (3) He is also discussing the outlook of the protagonist relative to the outcome of the events of the story.

When we take the idea to Narrativist role-playing, the medium changes drastically - not only are there multiple authors, but the audience is also composed of these same authors, and their appreciation of the material occurs simultaneously with the significant creative decisions (a.k.a. protagonist decisions). This shift in medium is incredibly important - the Premise's "point" is up for grabs among the group in role-playing, just as it is up for grabs in the author's head for the playwright. In the latter case, the jump to "the point" is swift and hopefully certain; in the former case, the new medium, it is anything but. Therefore, for it to be functional, the Premise must be explicitly re-phrased as a question so that everyone involved has his or her fair crack at it as one of the authors, in terms of decisions and outcomes.

Therefore I think I am remaining true to Egri's principles specifically by re-phrasing the Premise as a question, to make it usable according to the new medium's requirements. I also think that stating "Truth, Justice, and blah-blah-blah always triumphs" would render the principle unusable for purposes of Narrativist play, although a character's belief in such a thing would not - it would be an implicit question ("Does it?"). On the other hand, such a statement would be top-dog mighty handy for a High Concept Simulationist game.

DRAMA
If I'm not mistaken, you are interpreting this term differently from the way I use it in my Big-Ass Model. It doesn't refer to "drama" in the literary or emotional sense; it refers to resolving outcomes in a role-playing game based on dialogue, specifically as opposed to referring to fixed numerical values (Karma) or dice/etc methods (Fortune). The outcomes of any of these systems, which incidentally are combinable, may or may not be "dramatic" in the theatrical/literary sense.

I suggest, in fact, that Narrativist play garners more dramatic impact, rather than less, by incorporating Fortune methods used in a particular sense (called Fortune-in-the-Middle). This suggestion may be based more on my preferences than on theory, however, although I think that Drama mechanics demonstrably need to be organized/formal rather than (for lack of a better word) free-form in order for the necessary adversity to be present during play, for Narrativist purposes.

You are also mixing up narration vs. Drama - the former is merely a means of "cementing" the event into play, and the latter is an out-and-out resolution mechanic.

I also think you might consider the difference between a Drama mechanic and Director Stance; the latter is the "state of play" which includes the player altering the environment of play relative to the player-characters. (Bear in mind that I consider the GM to be one of the players.) Using Drama mechanics does not necessarily include Director Stance, nor does the reverse hold either.

THEATRIX
Let me run down your Theatrix points, in the above terms.

1a. When a player makes a statement about the world that is true/believed from his or her character's perspective, that is nothing more nor less than plain role-playing; it needs no special term except perhaps for Actor Stance if the assertion is followed by a character decision.

1b. When a player spends a Plot Point to bring Thing X into the reality of the game-world, he or she is using Director Stance. However, unless this Thing includes the resolution of a conflict (which I believe is usually not the case), then it is neither Drama, Karma, nor Fortune - these terms only apply to resolution methods.

2. When a player spends a plot point to bring guarantee success, he or she is using a Drama mechanic. However, he or she is not narrating; the GM does. That does not, however, negate the Drama-ness of the mechanic (because neither dice nor fixed-values were involved).

3. Flowcharts for the GM are also Drama mechanics, employed by the GM, if they are employed as a means to resolve conflicts. They are not, as I recall, Karma, because we are not comparing numerical values from one character/thing to another.

Let me know if any of this is startin' to make sense.

Best,
Ron

Ron

Oh! Indeed I had confused terms. I think I have most of the vocabulary straight (mostly due to the glossary in your latest article.) But, the mental connections haven't been fully strengthened. My mind did not connect your use of the word drama with DKF Drama. I was just using drama with its colloquial/everyday meaning.

I went back and read your original statement about "informal Drama mechanics" and simulationism, and I completely see your point, now that I'm connecting up the terminology.

I also think I'm starting to understand my deep-down-confusion. At least I'm connecting it strongly to premise-as-question and premise-as-answer. Hich conept sim, or simulationism of story, is commonly focused on a premise-as-answer, and narrativist play is commonly focused on premise-as-question? Is this anywhere close?

I have a feeling I derailed this thread off topic.

Mike

Hi Mike,

Don't worry too much about derailing, at this point ... the topic rose pretty clearly from the original, and I can always split all this into its own thread if need be.

The good news is:

I also think I'm starting to understand my deep-down-confusion. At least I'm connecting it strongly to premise-as-question and premise-as-answer. Hich conept sim, or simulationism of story, is commonly focused on a premise-as-answer, and narrativist play is commonly focused on premise-as-question? Is this anywhere close?

Hi Mike,

Yep, don't worry about derailing this thread, I pretty much threw out a shotgun effect of ideas...My basic interest is in the communication of creative agenda, and different methods work for different games(including not working).

And Jack, I'm completely with you on the fact that one cannot play a game without a creative agenda, my interest lies in the differences between laying out for people(on a platter), giving them part of it, or tools to make it happen(undefined), implicit(in which its "obvious" to the authors)...

Ron, that's an excellent point about the subtle difference in Inspectres vs. octaNe, and my view has been colored by my play experience of Inspectres, in which I believed it was still "Conch passing" and not success/failure related. Would you attribute your play experience with octaNe primarily to the Drama mechanics, the implicit creative agenda, or both? I'm curious since my experience as has been stated before, is with the Blood & Steel rules, and I put some serious focus on the "What you do" part of it before play.

Chris

Bankuei wrote: Ron, that's an excellent point about the subtle difference in Inspectres vs. octaNe, and my view has been colored by my play experience of Inspectres, in which I believed it was still "Conch passing" and not success/failure related.

Hi there,

Chris, you wrote:

Would you attribute your play experience with octaNe primarily to the Drama mechanics, the implicit creative agenda, or both? I'm curious since my experience as has been stated before, is with the Blood & Steel rules, and I put some serious focus on the "What you do" part of it before play.