On the drive home last night, something occured to me about Premise in Narrative play. That is, that it can be layered. This may be old news but I'll explain anyway.

Sorcerer has a Premise It's the question of what price you're willing to pay to get what you want. This is the Premise of the game. However, when actually playing, the group could decide to Explore a different Premise like, say, the healing power of love. Whatever. Their play Premise has little or nothing to do with the Premise of the game itself. In a sense, but in another sense it does.

The Premise of the game, as Ron conceived and wrote it, set up the five elements of roleplaying in a particular way. So when the group address the heal power of love premise, they are doing it within the context of paying a price for power. They may never directly address the main premise, but instead address it when addressing their play premises (premii?)

Yes, that's true, and, yes, it's old news.

A Narrative Premise is whatever question the player is answering. The game can suggest one, but I can't think of one that forces you to answer that and only that premise. Further a player can answer as many questions as can be proposed in a session. So he may be addressing many Narrativist Premises at once.

In fact, Sorcerer is a good example. Because before play begins, the overall Premise is automatically transformed by the players as they decide on the meaning of Humanity. Thus if Humanity is chosen as Sanity, the "What will you do for Power?" uberpremise becomes "How much sanity would you risk for Power?" Then each player making his own character neccessarily defines that even further. Thus if my character is about raising the dead my premise becomes "Is the insanity of being able to raise the dead worth the people who it brings back?" Then in play, this is transformed yet again based on what the character encounters. For example, if he kills someone accidentally the question might become, "Is insanity worse than guilt?"

And meanwhile the player can also, even simultaneously (if he's good), be addressing some other premise about love.

People somewhere along the way got the idea that somehow Narrativist Premise meant some single thing that a particular Narrativist game promotes. But that's just not at all correct. A game can promote adressing certain sorts of questions, but they don't limit the premises as a rule. A Narrativist Premise is simply whatever suitable question the player is having the character address at the moment. And that can be as multivariate as the player is capable of producing in play in conjunction with the other participants.

Mike

I've been thinking about this too. A Narrativist Premise is like a family of Egri-premises. "What would you do for power?" becomes, in play, any of a bajillion possible Egri-premises about power: "pursuing power leads to isolation," "love overcomes ambition," "real power restrains itself," so.

That is to say, in addressing the Premise via her character, the player makes a thematic statement. Which is, yes, old news. I just find it useful to think of a Narrativist Premise as a family, not as a single thing.

Jack wrote: However, when actually playing, the group could decide to Explore a different Premise like, say, the healing power of love. Whatever. Their play Premise has little or nothing to do with the Premise of the game itself. In a sense, but in another sense it does.

lumpley wrote: Jack, am I getting you, or did you mean something different? Did you mean that the group might choose to make thematic statements outside of the Premise's family?

Jack Spencer Jr wrote: What I had meant is that the premise of the game effects any premise that is addressed using that game because this main premise sets into place items of character, system, setting, situation, and color which will inevitably "color" the addressed premise. In effect making it a part of the family, as you had put it.