I get stance, and the actor/author stance distinction has been one of the most fertile ideas I've gotten for thinking about my gaming in a long, long time.

I think I more or less get gamism, simulationism, and narrativism, depending on how they're construed. I get the simple distinction that there are different things people look for in their gaming and I agree that these are three of the big ones.

But I'm just flat-out lost on Premise. Relatively ignorant of GNS, I spotted a conversation on rpg.net a month or two ago where the notion of Premise was being flouted. Ron took the time to explain it to me (thank you again for being cool), and enough of it took that I could see that Ron was talking about something, but I guess I still don't get it.

I was not joking, for instance, when I offered "How far will I go to loot this dungeon of every last copper piece" as a premise. This is a basic moral conflict of dungeoneering - the DM offers carrots, hoping that the players will overextend and, effectively, commit suicide. The players want to get as much as they can, but don't want to die. Will the PC be like the Jamaican mouse who dies inside the coconut because he eats all of it and then can't crawl out through the hole he dug? Will reason triumph, or will greed? How do you know when to say when? What will you risk for power?

Now, you might say this isn't multidimensional enough to support a narrative. Well, often it isn't, I suppose, but there are SOME good dungeon stories.

Or is that the point? There's a kind of basic story that evolves in some dungeon adventures - greed vs. prudence being the example here - and when that happens, a Premise enters. But that Premise isn't at the center of the play, and if it's just the dungeon, its presence is optional?

Maybe. I think though that the conflict between the player and the DM in D&D, which this notion of the Gamble gets at, maybe goes deeper than this. The temptation of greater power and riches is a carrot the DM offers in order to get players to risk themselves; it's essential to the Gamble. But just because it introduces these elements in play, it also seems to introduce a basic sort of narrative element, though not necessarily a very deep one, and one that's coincidental.

But it's still there, so I don't see how the Premise can be constitutive of Narrativist play.

Apologies if this is way off base. I come seeking enlightenment...

Can you imagine in typical D&D play a player sacrificing there character to express the theme "greed kills"*. I think if things like this were going on - the premise being elevated to a greater level on importance than the step on up - then you might be looking at D&D gone gamist (someone posted a fair bit in actual play about narrativist D&D).

The presence or possibility of premise isn't as important is GNS as player engagement with it.

* or, 'heroism is more important that survival', or whatever. What's important is no more levelling up, no more magical weapons, no more monsters to slay instead the satisfaction of a (certain kind of) story well told.

It has ever happened that a traditional D&D player will let his or her character go down in flames to a 'good death', a heroic one at least. It's true that dying to express themes outside of heroism is usually accidental, but not universally so. There is this fatalism about having to die sooner or later, at least in games where the DM is doing his job (at least I think this - otherwise what's really being Gambled?) and killing PCs infrequently, and the good death secures bragging rights.* Of course, what makes for a good death seems like it's at least in part driven by the story.

This is something again though that I understand better in terms of stances. If the player is in Author stance, as opposed to solely the GM, then the player considers what makes the best story, and a good player may well bring a character's career to an end through death or other means in this context. If the player is in Actor stance, then the player considers 'what their character would really do', trying to scrye out their motives by considering them as a person, and this can lead to death sometimes too.

I guess I get that stories have premises, and so in a narrativist game, the premise will be at the center of play. Ian writes that "The presence or possibility of premise isn't as important is GNS as player engagement with it." In this case, maybe my confusion is just that I'm demanding too absolute a character for Premise - it's not the bare fact of its existence - for example, when we play narrativist, surely the quality of our tale is something which we stake before our peers. Rather, it's just that Premise is connected to story, and so if you have a Narrativist situation, the Premise will be front and center.

What confuses me is that (1) it's very hard in any form of role-playing to avoid SOME kind of story being present, and (2) somewhere I got the idea (which now seems to me to be the real source of my error) that Premise is always present in Narrativist play and never present in any other kind of play. If this is false, then there's no problem, except maybe with the over-pointed formulations of GNS I first encountered on rpg.net.


*Anecdote for illustration and mostly entertainment purposes - as when my friend's Penguin Illusionist/Thief used a Ventriloquism spell to project the word "Hastur" into one of those voice-projection devices from Dune when some pirates had us kidnapped and things were looking grim - he knew full well that he was committing suicide, and taking the whole rest of our party, played over several years, along with him - not to mention a major city and five miles of coastline in our friend and DM's (who's now out of gaming, but you can see his amazing web comics at www.e-sheep.com) world. That game is gone almost twenty years now, and half the players in it don't even game any more, but the penguin's player still gets bragging rights when we reconvene.

It occurs to me that the player of the penguin in question is a game designer now himself, and that I might as well plug his site here: www.curiousgames.net. Phantasy Realm he describes as 'a boardgame pushed as far as one can go in the direction of a role-playing game', and Role Playing Game (originally printed art-free on blue paper) is the product of the group of players in question.

Or a shorter response: I do in fact think that in one central, very traditional modality of D&D play, which most D&D rulesets have supported to one degree or another, the GM, acting in Author stance, is trying to get the PCs to bite off more than they can chew and thereby to commit effective suicide, in order to express themes like 'greed kills' or 'idiocy kills' (the DM sitting around chortling about his stupid players), while the PCs, whose players are moving back and forth between Pawn and Actor stance, are trying to live in order to show what they can get away with, or how powerful they are, or how tough they are, etc.

There are people far more qualified to comment on narrativism than me but...

Think of premise as the opportunity required for narrativist play to happen at all. No premise, no narritivist play. However, premise alone will not guarantee narrativist play. For narrativist play to occur, it's not enough for some kind of abstract possibility to be floating around. The players at the table have to grab hold of the opportunity, to produce a theme or some other kind of spin on the original premise.

If the game is set up in such a way that your characters will die, making the most of the choice doesn't really represent narrativism. The choice could be used as easily to generate colour as theme.

As to the GM playing Narrativist while the players play Gamist. It's possible, but a rife with the potential for dysfunction. The risk of (character) death might be good meat for step-on-up but the GM setting out to manipulate the players might represent a breach of social contract.

I'm imagining that they're all playing Gamist - the problem is, how do you characterize Gamism in a Premise-free way. I mean, if the game is just a bunch of set-piece battles, it seems like it's not an RPG any more. But the links between set-piece battles are links of treasure acquisition and power-gaining. One standard way of understanding the 'conflict' between player and DM in D&D, which Hackmaster emphasizes and gloriously celebrates, is that the DM wants the players to keep going past their limits, while the players want to go just far enough to max their gain relative to effort expended. This is a tension that keeps people involved with play. Now granted, many (though not all) of the narratives this produces are dull, and the Goal of play is still to have battles and get power and stuff, so it's very much Gamist play; but it seems like there's still something like a Premise operational.

Hello,

Sean, you wrote,

I offered "How far will I go to loot this dungeon of every last copper piece" as a premise. This is a basic moral conflict of dungeoneering - the DM offers carrots, hoping that the players will overextend and, effectively, commit suicide. The players want to get as much as they can, but don't want to die. Will the PC be like the Jamaican mouse who dies inside the coconut because he eats all of it and then can't crawl out through the hole he dug? Will reason triumph, or will greed? How do you know when to say when? What will you risk for power?

Think of Premise as an unstable, intriguing, values-charged issue which a fictional situation has invoked. At this point, the situation is not resolved. The emotional attention is focused and ready. Upon resolution, wham-bo, a Theme gets constructed on the spot. Its content relies wholly on (a) the nature and circumstances of the resolution, which must involve character decisions; and (b) the actual values of the real person constructing the Theme.

Narrativist play absolutely relies upon establishing such a Premise and upon hitting those decision/resolution points during play. That is why its tagline is Story Now, just as the one for Gamism is Step On Up and the one for Simulationism is The Right to Dream. However, I must emphasize the "Now," rather the "Story." That's the key element.

Sean,

Don't conflate Premise with Story. All games produce Story, in retrospect. The idea of Narrativism is Story NOW, not Story Later, with the focus upon Premise (be that a spoken Premise or an unspoken one) being played to...that is, the decisions have real, actual meaning RIGHT NOW in Story terms, rather than afterwards ("Oh look what a cool story we made" vs "Oh look what a cool story we're making").

Now, in your example, the player choosing to sacrifice his character for a really meaningful ending to that character's existence...that's an instance of Narrativism in play, though it would not make the whole game Narrativist.

EDIT: Damn, cross-posted with Ron. Morality was the next thing I was going to touch on regarding Premise, but I still have some thoughts regarding that might be interesting in regards to engagement and meaning of game elements to players.

More later, or I'm going to be late.

(BTW, I'm the guy Ian mentions who posted all about his Narrativist 3E game in Actual Play...I don't have enough time before leaving for work to look up the threads, but you should be able to find them with the Forge's Search function, and the newer ones have links back to the olders ones writ in them.)

To back up a step, one needs to alter the normal dictionary definition of "Premise".

"a proposition on which an argument is based", or translated to game terms "the set up which establishes the purpose for playing".

All games have such a set up, and at one point we used the word premise to refer to the GNS elements of the game. We've since switched to Creative Agenda for this use, because this use of "premise" was getting confusing with the Big P version of Premise Ron's talking about above.

So discard the typical answer you might give based on the dictionary definition to the question "whats the premise". ALL games have one of those.

The Premise Ron's talking about, is specifically what makes a premise a Narrativist Premise.

The answer is really "Situation of moral ambiguity with consequences that the player, through the actions of their character, must choose between"

That moral ambiguity is the key. If there's obviously a right answer it isn't a good narrativist premise. Importantly "right and wrong" here must mean morally right or wrong. Not simply correct or incorrect, live or die, profit or don't, succeed or fail.

Choosing to risk ones life to get more gold isn't a moral choice, its a simple matter of weighing pros and cons. Choosing to risk (or sacrifice) someone ELSES life to get more gold...now that's something to work with.

Okay, I have some RL work to do here, so I can't make a detailed reply to this now. It seems to me that one thing that needs to be going on to make a Premise in this sense is that the characters themselves need to be conflicted somehow; D&D characters need not be conflicted. It seems to me though that there is some question whether this is true; it depends on Identification with the character. The conflict that comes from Identification (which might be based on Actor stance, but might also just be based on having Gambled and won with that character several times in the past) is wanting to preserve the character vs. wanting to win again.

It's not totally clear to me yet that this is amoral. Greed is a vice, and Prudence a virtue, according to some. And the reason that the Dying Earth RPG keeps coming up as a contrastive in my thought is that there the characters are even more short-term goal-oriented, and even less moral, than D&D characters: the difference is that there's an explicit attention to Style and in some cases Story which D&D obviously doesn't emphasize. I'm not sure there's a proper Premise in Dying Earth play, and yet it seems to me to be highly narrativist in character.

But anyway, maybe some other people can pile on me and show me the error of my ways in the meantime. I'll try to get back to this tonight.
Thanks for both of your time and I will consider what you say in more detail when I have leisure at a later hour.

Hello,

The conflict that you are talking about can arise in several ways through play; remember that part of Narrativist play is establishing the Situation in question, not just receiving it fully-formed. Most of the discussions on the HeroQuest forum demonstrate that people have processed this point to varying degrees.

Character-centric conflict is indeed straightforward. You can find it explicitly built into Sorcerer and Zero. In games/play of this sort, the setting tends to "grow" into and around the characters' conflicts through play itself. Climactic moments tend to lead to changes in the characters' actual concepts. That's why the back-story and Kickers (in Sorcerer) should have a dynamic interaction through the first few sessions of play - the localized Premise doesn't really grow into a usable shape until that happens.

Setting-centric conflict is very similar, just reversed. You can find it explicitly built into Castle Falkenstein and HeroQuest. The setting, essentially, is unstable and bound to change; there are too many compromises and explosive blind-spots built into the existing power structure. The characters may start quite sketchy ("I'm a Hungarian duellist!") but tend to become extremely committed to a personal take on the situations they encounter - and to visit that personal take upon the setting, changing it.

Starting out with Situation-centric conflict is both easier and trickier - because it doesn't need that "growth" period through play, but it also locks in the concepts much tighter. You can find it in Prince Valiant, The Dying Earth, InSpectres, and My Life with Master.

The Dying Earth is an interesting case that deserves discussion of its own. But just as one doesn't dive directly into (e.g.) disturbance edge-effect dynamics when discussing basic ecology, I think I'd like to be sure that the bog-standard Gamist and Narrativist definitions and applications are all set for you first. What matters at this point is that you see that your "characters must experience conflict" is (a) correct and (b) potentially brought about in several different ways.

Best,
Ron

Holy shit Ron,

Breakthrough. All of the uncertainties about Nar Premise that I knew the "proper" answer to, but was unsure of the "why," just went click click. Everything just fell into place.

Finally.

That's it. Just thought I'd let you know.

Regards.

Makes me happy.

Best,
Ron

It's not totally clear to me yet that this is amoral. Greed is a vice, and Prudence a virtue, according to some.

My problem here is that I'm thinking about something too hard, or too inflexibly, or both.


I think what's hanging me up is the strict implication (existence of premise => narrativist play). I don't think that's valid.


Premises can arise anywhere. Here's a radical example. 19th century chess - the chess of Anderssen and Blackburne, as well as Morphy, though his technique was better - is often called Romantic. The games are these (usually) flawed little tactical masterpieces, involving huge sacrifice of material ending in mate. The theme is mind over matter, the triumph of reason over brute force, the accomplishing of much with little means. The games are morality plays, of a certain kind.


Now, if you go looking for this kind of play today, even at the local master level, you will get flat-out squashed unless you are really really good. You have to pick your spots; play good chess first, take the complications when they're there on the board. But still, people love sacrificial games; and part of the reason is that they have this paradoxical character - a kind of narrative. And some of the really great players - Kasparov, Fischer, Tal come to mind - of modern times are able to generate this kind of play when the board permits it, and that's one reason that these masters are so beloved of chess enthusiasts. They create chess with Meaning.


Chess isn't even gamist - it's just a game. But it still has narratives of different kinds. And with the game in front of us, we have a narrative, which has themes, and maybe even sometimes a kind of Premise.

-----------------

But okay, so I'm done with that straw man. Maybe it's not (existence of premise => narrativist play); it's (players explicitly have premise in mind => narrativist play), or maybe (narrativists play => players explicitly have premise in mind). But this doesn't seem true to me either, unless you interpret Premise so broadly as to include things like character conception and psychology (Sim concerns that seem necessary at certain points in narrativist play - or at least sometimes they do, except during those great moments when you ARE your character, whatever the hell those caps mean, because we're still us throughout), the immediate situation, and so forth.

I do understand here that the point of "Story Now!" as a slogan would be to say: whenever you slow down, think about the story first and that Sim-type reflection on your character's psychology only within the context of that, if at all (DERPG is a good case again where that 'if at all' is pretty important, since all DE characters are in a way the same except for the pure-hearted rubes). And good Nar system design will serve this kind of reflection. But I need to work on trying to understand whether Story Now is always Premise Now, because that doesn't seem obvious to me.

In particular, some writers and poets plan too much. Sometimes you know you're in a story and know where it has to go next but don't know where it's going to wind up, let alone what the hell it's all about. But explicitness about Premise would seem to require that you do.

I'd like to apologize to all of you for continuing with my own reflections rather than responding to your points - the feedback is really great, and I will get to those responses as soon as I can. Interpret this if you like as me getting to the point where I can understand those responses. Thanks for your time.

Hi Sean,

Quick point: don't instantly pop "reflection on character psychology" into Simulationist play. That could quite easily be Character Exploration which is then turned to whatever GNS priority you'd like.

Other quick note: the "explicit" issue is probably going to get us into trouble. For GNS talk, the only real evidence of a GNS mode in operation is the social reinforcement around the table, among the people. What gets praised? What gets picked up and developed further from person to person? What gets subtly discouraged? "Explicit Premise" would be observable, in these terms, only by excitement, dialogue, attention, and usage - not by actually verbalizing the Premise itself.

More generally, regarding Premise, it's a matter of requirement, not necessarily cause. Without Premise, no Narrativist play. With it, then maybe Narrativist play - which is to say, if Premise is embraced, developed, and resolved.

Best,
Ron

Story Now doesn't mean and kind of Any-Kind-Of-Story Now, it means Thematically-Charged-Story Now. In other words:

But I need to work on trying to understand whether Story Now is always Premise Now, because that doesn't seem obvious to me.

that is, the decisions have real, actual meaning RIGHT NOW in Story terms, rather than afterwards ("Oh look what a cool story we made" vs "Oh look what a cool story we're making").

But does every story have a premise, stated or unstated? Do people really read novels (or write them) with the premises in mind, or do they take the premises away with them afterwards?

Where is this "Story = Moral Premise" axiom coming from?

Having mentioned exactly the kind of chess discussed above in a post a coupla weeks back, I'm very interested in this conversation.

When put as Sean puts it, I'm wondering: is the spark of Narrativism the existence of people 'grooving' on the question posed by premise over say, grooving on the situation involved?

If that's the case, and I make a "principled" character in a Sorceror game who has a pretty firm line as to what he will do for power--have I avoided narrativist play simply by deciding at the outset how far he'll go (he's bad--but he's not *that* bad)?

Or to make it murkier, let's say there's a scenario that "challenges" how far he'll go (an inncoent will die horribly if he doesn't break his code of ethics) but I as a player, as it turns out, am more engaged by playing out vengance agaisnt the person who put the innocent in danger than the challenge posed by the situation (and say it's simply due to the specifics of the innocent and the challenge--not that I, as a player would NEVER break my ethical stance--just that this challenge didn't happen to engage me the way it all came together during play)--then have I slipped out of Narrativism and into Sim since play, although directed towards the Premise, never resulted in a disturbing/engaging/whatever choice for me as a player that addressed the theme of the game to that point (even though the outcome--the subsequent vengance and climax were satisfying--and, seen in the whole after would be a rocking revenge story)?

I admit I've always been confused by the "Story NOW" motto--during what I'm sure is sim play, I often think "wow, what a cool story we're creating"--and further more I generally expect 'story' (rising action, moving towards climax, followed by deonmunt) at every point of play regardless of whether a visible or consistent theme is involved. I'm not saying Story NOW is false--just that as a slogan, it kinda confuses me.

-Marco

Hello Marco,

Deciding what your Sorcerer character will do before play isn't a decision until it's realized through play itself. At that point, it's a "real" decision, and before that, it was a possibility only. It really doesn't matter how sure you felt at the time.

Whether it's Narrativist or not depends on how emotionally committed you felt - or, to be absolutely clear, how emotionally engaged everyone involved was. (I want the discussion to stay away from single-person, single-experience GNS mode thinking. It's a social and aesthetic issue.)

Your "murky" scenario strikes me as an eminently Narrativist decision. The fact that you drove play toward what you, as a player, were most jazzed by is exactly the sort of "give-away" action I like to cite. By your description, the revenge-story did jazz you, you see.

People should try hard not to think of Premise as a pre-set or verbalized condition of play. That is getting them all tied up in knots.

Best,
Ron

Aspects of my original question here are based on a category error, which some of the responses to that question actually seem to take up. Premise is present in all forms of play, and is not unique to Narrativism.

Or at least this seems to follow from this text (Ron's GNS essay):

"Exploration and its child, Premise

"The best term for the imagination in action, or perhaps for the attention given the imagined elements, is Exploration. Initially, it is an individual concern, although it will move into the social, communicative realm, and the commitment to imagine the listed elements becomes an issue of its own.

"When a person perceives the listed elements together and considers Exploring them, he or she usually has a basic reaction of interest or disinterest, approval or disapproval, or desire to play or lack of such a desire. Let's assume a positive reaction; when it occurs, whatever prompted it is Premise, in its most basic form. To re-state, Premise is whatever a participant finds among the elements to sustain a continued interest in what might happen in a role-playing session. Premise, once established, instils the desire to keep that imaginative commitment going."

---------------

Let's assume that this is in fact what we have been talking about this whole time. Some points:

- The definition clearly allows for multiple premises; there need not be just one thing that sustains interest. Less coherent designs exploit this by having several intriguing elements which players may drift between.

- Attraction to Story is itself a Premise in this sense, which can be defined loosely or tightly, consciously or unconsciously, and does not require prior commitments in the domain of literary theory to untangle.

- If this is so, why have we, where we includes several persons who understand this stuff much better than I do, spent all this time wondering about whether stories had to have a conflict or a moral center, or what a moral center is, etc.? Doesn't matter; leave that to the literary theorists. Or rather, it does matter, but it's not essential to the assessment of Premise. When Ian says "Story Now" means "Thematically Charged Story Now", I don't think that expresses anything more than a preference for a certain kind of story - at the level of understanding Premise, anyway. At the level of narrativism-facilitating game design, though, there is a subtle shift here.

- When you move from game analysis to game design, and you are trying to design a narrativist game, the coherence of the game seems to require that you restrict the space of possible stories to stories of a particular type that you expect your game to create. (It doesn't HAVE to, but if it doesn't, there is the danger of another kind of incoherence: player A wants stories of kind x and player B wants stories of kind y; pouting ensues.) The most straightforward way, maybe the only way, to do this is to figure out a Kind of story, where Kinds can be organized in a variety of ways but are perhaps best organized by Theme, that you want your game to facilitate telling.

- So then: in designing a Narrativist game, which is a particular thing, you're going to have a particular kind of story, and attraction to that kind of story is going to be the Premise of playing the game in Ron's sense above. One category error that I and others posting on this thread have made is to conflate the Themes which determine the kinds of story in question with the Premise that that kind of story is attractive to the player of the game.

No?

If the previous judgments are right, I'd like to go after some text of Ron's a little harder.

"Think of Premise as an unstable, intriguing, values-charged issue which a fictional situation has invoked."

You must mean the Premises of particular instances of Narrativist play, not Premise more broadly. Then you go on to write:

"Narrativist play absolutely relies upon establishing such a Premise and upon hitting those decision/resolution points during play."

Maybe. This depends on what literary theory ultimately determines a story to be. My ideas on this are fairly open-ended.

However different things can drive a story at different points. I appreciate Story Now as a corrective to authorial wandering, but as a dogma which says: get the Theme back in here as fast as possible at all times, I just don't agree. It depends on whether the story needs the theme right now. And in the process of writing or storytelling, sometimes the author is flying blind, chasing meaning, developing the theme quite unconsciously. I don't think this is what you're saying, exactly, but this is at least the dangerous misreading that we're flirting with.

Now, in narrativist play of a particular game, like Sorcerer, which has a particular theme, "How far will you go etc.", the application of Story Now will be e.g. to constantly spur the players back to their Kickers and their goals, and the gamemaster to create agonizing conflicts and compromises along the lines of the game's theme. The Premise of playing Sorceror, at least in part, is that that theme attracts you. And I've conceded above that coherent narrative design will probably focus on a kind of story, and that one good way - maybe the best way - to break stories into kinds is by theme. But there's nothing in the nature of narrative at the level of production, at least without additional argument, that requires us to think this is the only possibility; and we also need an additional argument in game design theory to tell us that non-Thematic story-kinds can't provide a good general basis for narrativist games as well.

Sean, I'm left wondering if perhaps you missed the post I made early on in this thread where I attempted to give you some historical context for the use of premise here.

There was a time when premise as a term was applied more broadly than it is now. And for a variety of reasons (as you've inadvertantly stumbled into your self) the multiple useages caused too much confustion. The parts that you're quoting about "premise" above are now referred to as Creative Agenda.

The Simulationist Creative Agenda (or Sim Premise) is now increasingly referred to as "the right to dream. The Gamist Creative Agenda (or Gamist Premise) is now increasingly referred to as "step on up" and the Narrativist Creative Agenda (or Narrativist Premise) is now increasingly referred to as "Story Now".

In the past the word Premise was used to mean Creative Agenda in general and Story Now in particular both. Which is why it was confusing.

Now the term Premise is used less often, and when it is, it generally refers to Narrativist Premise.


Narrativism is defined as that style of play who's Creative Agenda is Story Now...the Narrativist Premise. Story Now means "Thematically Charged". Period. Its a tautological feature of the definition. If you are playing with a Creative Agenda that is not thematically charged. Congratulations. You would be one of many players enjoying the Simulationist or Gamist Creative Agendas.

When Ian says "Story Now" means "Thematically Charged Story Now", I don't think that expresses anything more than a preference for a certain kind of story - at the level of understanding Premise, anyway

Okay - so I got my terminology backwards. This is helpful, and also explains why Ron seemed to be saying two different things at once.

However, there is still a disagreement here - but it is a disagreement not at the level of gaming theory, but at the level of literary theory. If Story Now is the Narrativist Creative Agenda, then Thematic Charge is only essential to it to the degree that Theme is essential to Storytelling.

I have offered the view that Theme may be more essential to the proper design of a good Narrativist play-facilitating system than it is to Narrativism proper.

I may be wrong - as you point out, I was wrong in my use of Premise here, and now need to change some posts, though I'll leave these as is because I think the dialogue is good - but I am not confused, about that particular point at least. (At least in the absence of argument at the level of literary theory, not gaming theory.)

In the earlier posts in this thread, I did confound several ideas. But the two posts before yours no longer confound them in this way, they only use the wrong terminology. The question is whether they express any correct ideas.

Narrativism IN GENERAL should not express a preference for any KIND of story. It should be about roleplaying which focuses on the creation of story and puts that at the front and center of play (Story Now!).

The design of a particular game which facilitates Narrativist play probably should express a preference for particular kinds of story, however: this will be part of what gives that game its integrity and coherence as a game.

If Story Now is the Narrativist Creative Agenda, then Thematic Charge is only essential to it to the degree that Theme is essential to Storytelling.

I have offered the view that Theme may be more essential to the proper design of a good Narrativist play-facilitating system than it is to Narrativism proper.

Narrativism IN GENERAL should not express a preference for any KIND of story. It should be about roleplaying which focuses on the creation of story and puts that at the front and center of play (Story Now!).

Narrativism is a mode of play, which we abstract from certain kinds of gaming situation. Some games facilitate that mode of play, others do not.

Story now! is Narrativism's slogan. It means: story first; direct your play towards the creation of story.

Filling that out depends on what a story is. I don't want to get into that question here. But only on the basis of a belief not only that all stories (or worthwhile stories, etc.) have themes, which I might agree with, but the belief that actual storytelling as a real-time thing is best served in each moment by putting that theme front and center, which I doubt, can you claim that Theme Now or Premise Now is an essential part of that mode of play.

On the other hand, it seems pretty clear to me that selecting a Theme or Premise may be the best way of designing a game that facilitates Narrativist play. In this case, that Theme or Premise is going to have whatever relation to the storytelling that people give it, and will often be central to what that particular game is trying to accomplish.

I don't understand how Simulationist play can focus on the creation of story, except in the sense that if someone already told a story you could try to simulate or 'be in' that very story. That's not focusing on creating story, though; it's focusing on simulating it.

I think that narrowing the scope of the word 'story' lowers the objectivity of the theory (since we're trying to produce stories...) and is unnecessary, since you can just leave that part of the account up to the literary theorists, writers, and rhetoricians anyway. "Whatever a story is, it is the goal of the Narrativist mode of play and design that facilitates that mode to produce it."

Story now! is Narrativism's slogan. It means: story first; direct your play towards the creation of story.

Well, now we know what we disagree on.

I agree that story is present (always or usually) in all forms of gaming - no surprise there. I think your claim about focus is a stretch, though; and I think the definition of Narrativism holds up better and makes more sense without this (to me) artificial restriction.

I will continue to read what you and others have to say about this, though, and I will let you know if or when I change my mind.

I think that narrowing the scope of the word 'story' lowers the objectivity of the theory (since we're trying to produce stories...) and is unnecessary, since you can just leave that part of the account up to the literary theorists, writers, and rhetoricians anyway. "Whatever a story is, it is the goal of the Narrativist mode of play and design that facilitates that mode to produce it."

Ralph, I understand the definition you're using. Without further argument, I don't see any reason to accept it. We're talking about something real here - modes of role-playing activity - and that this whole theory is based on the claim that that activity breaks down into three different modes.

Which means that we have to appeal to the reality of Narrativist play in order to decide how central Premise or Theme are to that creative agenda. It's not something we get to just define in whatever terms seem convenient to us.

You appear to believe that this mode of play always centers around a Theme. On the surface, this claim appears to me incredible. A more restricted claim is that Narrativist play would be better if the Theme was kept more present in mind during story-making decisions in play. That seems prima facie plausible, but not without the discussion in literary theory (about which I know relatively little, BTW) that I'm trying to avoid. An even more restricted claim, with which I happen to agree, would be that putting the theme front and center in a game design that facilitates narrativist play is a good way to design such a game, and a good way to make sure that those who play that game have a shared Creative Agenda.

(Hey, man, I love it when it gets hot, and I know you're a stand-up guy. Keep swinging away if what I'm saying isn't working for you. But I'm going to get off for a while now and see what people have to say about all this stuff.)

Calithena wrote: Ralph, I understand the definition you're using. Without further argument, I don't see any reason to accept it. We're talking about something real here - modes of role-playing activity - and that this whole theory is based on the claim that that activity breaks down into three different modes.

Which means that we have to appeal to the reality of Narrativist play in order to decide how central Premise or Theme are to that creative agenda. It's not something we get to just define in whatever terms seem convenient to us.

But I'm going to get off for a while now and see what people have to say about all this stuff.)

Hey Sean,

I think your claim about focus is a stretch, though; and I think the definition of Narrativism holds up better and makes more sense without this (to me) artificial restriction.

You appear to believe that this mode of play always centers around a Theme. On the surface, this claim appears to me incredible. A more restricted claim is that Narrativist play would be better if the Theme was kept more present in mind during story-making decisions in play.

Only if the propositions

All stories have a theme.

The intentional creation of story involves direct attention to theme.

are both true. The first probably is. The second may be as well, but only in a more attenuated sense: in particular, attention to theme in every phase of story-creation (activity aimed at story-creation) may or may not be a good way for authors to think about the creation of their stories.

You're free to define your terms as you like, but as a good Aristotelian, I'm going to hold out for definitions that carve reality at the joints. I can't know whether this one does that unless I know more about stories and how they are created than I do right now.

Sean! Have you read Egri?

-Vincent

Ron Edwards wrote: Hello Marco,

Your "murky" scenario strikes me as an eminently Narrativist decision. The fact that you drove play toward what you, as a player, were most jazzed by is exactly the sort of "give-away" action I like to cite. By your description, the revenge-story did jazz you, you see.

Best,
Ron

The intentional creation of story involves direct attention to theme.

No, I haven't read Egri. The point I'm trying to make though is that we ought to be able to make the points we want to make about Narrativism, as a modality of game-playing involving attention to story-creation, without waiting on the results of the theory of literature or story-creation itself in order to fill that out. Obviously, what we believe about stories and narrative will effect our conception of narrativism, but it seems to me that we ought to be able to separate:

- Narrativism as a mode of game-play

- The views of game design and narrative itself that help game designers produce a game that facilitates narrativist play.

- Advice that helps players realize their goal of playing in the narrativist mode, whether more generally or in the context of a specific narrativist game.

I'm confident that attention to theme or premise is excellent advice for the second of these, at least in the sense that several of the narrativist games I like are designed explicitly around this. It seems to me that we can define the first in terms of story and let the relation of premise or theme to that fall out of our theory of literature. The third one is where I'm stumbling a little: it seems to me that reading Story Now! as Theme Now! (in the sense that the slogans seem primarily to be aimed at addressing the third question) is not Universally good advice for producing stories, though it should certainly be mentioned as one centrally important approach, and is certainly excellent advice in many cases. But for this third question it's not just a matter of what we observe; this is a question about what participants Ought to Do to realize play in the narrative mode.

Marco, thanks for saying that: it's nice to know I'm not just wasting everyone's time, something I live in fear of. Even if I'm completely wrong about all of this, at least there's one other person who's thought process will have been helped by my taking the time to write this stuff.

Let me now make where I'm coming from even more explicit: it is EXCELLENT advice to people trying to learn how to play narrativist, or to play narrativist better, to get them to write kickers, pose thematic questions, adopt premises, and to turn back to those things again and again in play as a way of figuring out where the story is going next.

The question is just where this comes in in the theory. Is it a rational precondition of narrativist play that the participants are doing this? That's what I don't accept. Is it a rational precondition of narrativist play that the behavior of the participants is describable in these terms? Probably so, at least if you take the description over a broad enough time scale. Is it always better in all cases, in all times and in all spaces, for a participant creating a story to have these thematic questions in mind? No, not necessarily - or at least I don't think so.

What I want to resist then is that there are 'kinds' of story which narrativism in general aims at. There ARE kinds of story which particular narrativist games aim at; this is often part of what good Nar design amounts to.

Sean, I didn't get it until I read Egri, but you're right, we oughta be able.

So here's my stab:

There's no "narrativist mode" of play. Nobody's goal is to "play narrativist."

Understand "Narrativism" to be something you get out of play. A product of play, not a way to play. Some people's goal is for their games to give them Narrativism, so they try to set up and play their games in such a way that Narrativism comes out. Some people want Narrativism but don't get it; lots of people get Narrativism without wanting it at all, or without even noticing it. Certainly without ever naming it.

Narrativism means player-authored theme-addressing Exploration. It doesn't matter what mode you play in. Any mode that produces player-authored theme-addressing Exploration gives you Narrativism.

So you're building the definition of Narrativism upside down in your head. There is no "modality of game-playing involving attention to story-creation" in GNS. "Story Now" doesn't define Narrativism, it points to Narrativism, along the preexisting trajectory of Story = Premise = Moral Conflict. Take away that trajectory and you're right, "Story Now" doesn't make any sense, it doesn't point anywhere.

You wrote: The question is just where this comes in in the theory. Is it a rational precondition of narrativist play that the participants are doing this? That's what I don't accept. Is it a rational precondition of narrativist play that the behavior of the participants is describable in these terms? Probably so, at least if you take the description over a broad enough time scale. Is it always better in all cases, in all times and in all spaces, for a participant creating a story to have these thematic questions in mind? No, not necessarily - or at least I don't think so.

Tempest in a teapot, perhaps.

Human behavior is goal-directed, as is the behavior of other living systems. It is a Mystery how this can be, because the behavior of non-living systems is not goal-directed, but happily this is another problem which lies outside the theory of RPGs.

If you want to name the goal Narrativism, rather than the modality of play in which player-behavior can be best described as aiming at that goal, I have no objection. I'm not sure what problem this solves, though, since the presence of goals and the presence of types of behavior which aim at those goals, or is getting frustrated in aiming at those goals, etc. are interchangeable for most purposes.

In fact, I have no objection to much of anything on this thread any more except a certain kind of emphasis, which I find potentially misleading. It misled me, and it may have misled some others on this thread on both sides of 'the' issue. Further, at least part of my revised view here was just a quibble, in that there's nothing wrong with adopting e.g. Egri's theory of story-creation as a way to flesh out what Narrativism means in RPGs.

The only question is whether conscious development of a Theme on the part of player-authors is constitutive of Narrativsim, or play-aiming-at-Narrativism, or whatever. I say no. But as soon as I say that I have to recant most of the implications anyway, since most player-authors will be helped a great deal by thinking about it in this way, and most explicitly Narrativist designs will in fact have such a Theme in place as a matter of internal coherence, whether it is stated explicitly (Sorcerer) or implied by a genre which the game intends to produce new narratives of the type of (Dying Earth).

Sean,

I think you've got it exactly. I'll throw in my own re-statement - I've gone round on a few of these issues myself, in other threads, private messages, and my own abused brain. Others are probably more qualified, but hopefully this is at least helpful.

Yes, the presence or absence of the "goal" to have Nar play (by which I think you are pointing to the "intention" issue that comes up here from time to time) is entirely irrelevant to the assesment of a particular instance of play as Nar. Either the real humans involved end up prioritizing the creation of themed-story during play, or they don't. They may call it Nar play, or exploring another world/character, or just playing an RPG - that's not what matters. What matters is what happens in play - what is observed to occur in that social interaction.

But you're also right that that "pure" analysis really doesn't matter. Because as game designers and/or players, we can go right ahead and say that we want to acheive N, or G, or S, and then look at what the best ways to do so are. All the theory requires is recognition that the intention to acheive something is NOT the same as having actually done so. "It must be Nar because I like Nar and don't like Sim or Game" is nonsense.

Goal/intention does not matter (as in: you can assume it is there, or not - your choice) for categorizing what we see in play. But that does NOT mean goal/intention has no meaning or place in how we use GNS in general. In an earlier post you outline three things that we should be able to seperate (paraphrase - 1) analysis of play, 2) designer intent, 3) in-play tools/techniques), and that seperation looks right to me. Goals/intent are absent (in that they are not part of the analysis, though you can assume they exist somewhere if you want to) in 1), but they are certainly relevant to 2) and 3).

And all that is essentially a re-statement of your last post, as far as I can tell, so . . . let me know if I'm wrong on that,

Gordon

Honestly, what I was struck by, Sean, is that you seem to be approaching the issue bass ackwards -- you appear to be arguing that Narrativism can't just be about "theme-based stories" because stories can exist without theme.

But the problem is that the definition is Narrativism, rather than the reverse -- "Narrativism" is only used to define what actually happens, what is actually observed. That is, "Ok, we see this happening, what should we call it?" rather than, "We have this term, can we apply it to this behavior?"

That's weird, but that's the best way I think I can explain what I'm observing as the problem with your approach.

Gordon - thanks. I have made a lot of mistakes in this thread, but I agree with what you wrote about what I wrote. So we'll see if that holds up.

Greyorm - sorry if my multiple posts have confused you. Remember - the title of this thread was self-indulgent, 'educate me.' Whatever value there is in the thread comes from the similarity of my lack of understanding and the process by which I get to a better understanding to those of other people, and what the argument reveals. I try to be as clear as I can because I find this is helpful.

Responses to what you wrote: I don't know if 'stories can exist without theme'. I'm inclined to say that they can't, actually, but there may be some weird cases that challenge this assumption.

I am saying that Theme and Premise ought only to enter into the definition of Narrativism insofar as they enter into the definition of Story - that they only get into the definition by way of the story-vector.

Saying "the definition IS narrativism" doesn't help anything. I'm disagreeing about the goals of the behavior, but only a little. I'm saying that "Story Now" is a good slogan and all this stuff about Theme and Premise only comes in along with it, as part of a theory of stories, which apparently can be traced back to Egri.

Since stories HAVE themes, probably in all cases that matter, it can be good PRACTICAL advice for the player or game designer to focus on theme as a way to create the story in play or, especially, to create a game that facilitates a certain kind of storytelling. But 'can' doesn't mean 'is'. There may be other ways to achieve the same goal - I don't know.

Look - here's an analogy to my point. There are these recent psychological studies that claim that monkeys and babies have 'the concept of number' because when they're shown physical collections of different numbers of identical objects, they recognize a difference. The 'inference' here is that because the physical situation is properly described as a situation where there's a difference in number, and the monkeys and babies recognize a difference in the physical situation, they recognize a difference in number. This is bullshit, though. All we know they are registering is a difference in visual stimulus - not that they categorize it in terms of number, or 'have a concept of number', or any of that stuff. There is a category error here - mistaking true descriptions of reality for reality itself.

All that's left of my original, confused remarks on Premise, Theme, and Story (and BTW I'm no longer clear that there's any point at which Ron at least makes any statements about any of this I'd call confused - he's very careful and very lucid) is just this point. There is a gap between the claim that Stories have Premises and the claim that being clear about Premise in the present situation is always the best way to make a Story. The first claim is a claim that is correct at the level of description, but the psychological reality of the storyteller may require a variety of different approaches. Or, as Pablo Picasso used to say, "don't talk to the driver."

It's a great advance to realize that gamers have different things they want to realize in play and to encourage gamers to be clear about what they're looking for with one another. Being self-conscious about motives for gaming in the real-world environment is a tremendous step. The miserable gamer can rob his unconscious on behalf of his ego, just like Freud said, by being explicit about the desires he has not been able to express in the context of his past gaming experiences.

But it's a whole other thing - and Freud knew it - to claim that story-making itself always proceeds from this same kind of clarity. Often it doesn't. Ham-fisted application of Premise and/or Theme as a proactive story-making technique is no solution to the problem. These are essential, important, valuable insights that are worth articulating, and even better as correctives during bogdown than they are in general. But they are practical in character, and not absolute driving factors of story-creation in all cases. What gets created can always, or almost always, be described in these terms after the fact, but that's not the same thing, and to think it is is to mistake description for reality.

Hey! I'm 34 years old today and my wife is asleep on the couch, so I've gotten sucked back in to the Forge. It's been fun meeting all of you, and I appreciate the generous donation of your time to my education here. All I can say is I hope that some of you are getting at least a little back out of it, if only a more precise understanding of various sorts of cognitive error a person can make in grappling with GNS. Happy Halloween!

Best,

Sean

Hey Sean,

Calithena wrote: There is a gap between the claim that Stories have Premises and the claim that being clear about Premise in the present situation is always the best way to make a Story. The first claim is a claim that is correct at the level of description, but the psychological reality of the storyteller may require a variety of different approaches. Or, as Pablo Picasso used to say, "don't talk to the driver."

Yeah, I thought that was going to completely bypass you, I wasn't sure it was clear enough or coherent enough. So let's try again, hopefully this time I'll nail it more clearly:

Calithena wrote: There is a gap between the claim that Stories have Premises and the claim that being clear about Premise in the present situation is always the best way to make a Story.

Hey! I'm 34 years old today

Ralph is right that the word "story" is a landmine here. It is one of those words that means nothing precisely because it means everything. I was very surprised that "story now" became the slogan of narrativism, precisely for that reason, and I agree that these terms tend more to obfuscate than to clarify when used the way they have been. At one time we had to say, "Narrativism, which means"; now we have to say, "Narrativism, which means Story Now, which means".

Sean, there's a serious problem with your use of the word "story" in this context; the problem is that it's hard to imagine any form of play that wouldn't produce some kind of story. A travelogue is, in a sense, a story; but it is a particularly simulationist story. An adventure is a story, but it frequently is (or can be) a gamist story, about obstacles overcome and challenges faced. A narrativist story is specifically one in which moral and/or personal issues, questions of right and wrong, are addressed as the central conflict of play. It is not a story in any other sense.

That does not mean that every minute of every game session has to be about that; but it does mean that even when play at this moment is not about that, that is still the thing that looms over play and drives it forward--in the same sense that not every minute of play in gamist D&D is about beating the dragon (or whatever great beast lives in the heart of the present dungeon or ruin), but that dragon still looms over everything and everything is moving toward it.

But if, as Sean wrote: The only question is whether conscious development of a Theme on the part of player-authors is constitutive of Narrativsim, or play-aiming-at-Narrativism, or whatever.

M.J. if you accept that

"The answer is no. Development of a theme on the part of the player authors is constitutive; conscious development is not."

then that's all that's left of my original point, and we agree on the only thing that matters. Although I'd immediately add that you're selling things short in the follow-up, because when you write

"A travelogue is not a narrativist story, unless it diverts far from the path of what was discovered and into moral choices and ambiguities along the way..."

I'd immediately add, and I think others should add, "as all travelogues of literary merit do." In other words, for a travelogue to be a good story, it needs theme.

----------

There is almost no point of disagreement left in this thread. I accept that all forms of RPGs and much else produce stories, although I deny M.J.'s assertion that 'story' is a useless term due to vagueness; stories, and compelling stories, are real things for which there are related but non-identical theories for characterizing/evaluating and producing, and Theme is one of the terms of said characterization.

Greyorm, your argument was already made by Ralph, Ian, and others: I understand it and do not find that it addresses my point, which has been whittled down through this process quite nicely. I'll try to say more on that later.

Coming in a bit late here, but check this out:

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=4738

It may help out. Basically When Ron & everyone else talks about Premise, it's a local code word for "conflict" in the old LIT101 sense. Egri had a method of looking at handling (both in terms of creating and analysing) conflict in a way that is more developed than your standard LIT101 presentation. Egri recorded his ideas in a book called the Art of Dramatic Writing, using an obtuse, obscure, obfuscatory writing stlye that Ron happens to read the way most of us read normal English. (Yes Ron, I'm talking to *you* boah!) Egri's statements of conflict (he called it Premise... now you know) were complete, in the sense that they included resolution. Ron turned them into questions that demand resolution through actual play.

Basically, at its heart, conflict deals with human values, or the ascription of human values to non-human things. In order for there to be conflict between parties, there must be something in contention - the parties have to *care* about something for it to matter what happens. This is why narrativist games often center around emotional relationships - it's such an easy way to produce narrativist play. And that's basically it. In role-playing, any time the players make it a point to set up, resolve, or otherwise explore such a conflict it's narrativism. Doesn't have to be concious, or constant. A narrativist-facilitating game is one that makes it easy to deal with such conflicts (or, even better, mechanically encourages this). A narrativist game session is one where the thematic question drives play, even though some (maybe even most) of the players' decisions are driven by oher priorities.

Sim priorities are very common in this context; in fact, the reference thread I posted above is on the subject of imbedding premise into a character during creation so that just *playing your character* will address a premise.

So, hope this helps. I want to add one other thing though. Like everyone else has said, "story" is a useless term. It has no useful meaning unless without being locally clarified, because it is so vague. I'm infering from your comments that, when you say "story," you mean "a sequence of events generated by play." And in thta case, I have to take exception to your claim that all good stories require theme. I say BAH! If that's your contention, you've completely missed the point of GNS. You are essentially claiming that the narrativist mode is the only valid way to play. Bah! Bah, bah bah! [1]

A story is "good" if the participants are entertained by producing it. Period. You, Sean, are not the judge of what is acceptable, or desireable, to others. All you can say is what *you* want.

[1] Chris taught me how to do that! ;)

That last sort of comment doesn't help, Pag. We're trying to engage in a theoretical discussion here, so it's a premise on both sides that we're trying to characterize an objective state of affairs. I'm not trying to 'promote' any kind of storytelling, nor any particular kind of play, and if you could demonstrate that I was, I would cede the argument. Your reinterpretation and the conclusions you draw from it are highly uncharitable: I do not hold the positions that you attribute to me.

I don't accept your equation that by 'story' I mean 'sequence of events generated in play'. I would accept that most sequences of events generated by play are stories, and that some of those stories have a theme, premise, conflict, whatever. It's arguable that most of the good stories (qua stories; not qua play sequences, where 'good' means something between 'enjoyable' and 'expressing some of the elements of the game being played to the highest degree') will have one; that's a lit theory discussion I'm trying to avoid. (But note that this is ground I've ceded to my interlocutors to avoid getting into the discussion about what makes for a good story in the first place.)

I think that you know stories perfectly well when you see them, even if there are some vague borderline cases sometimes.

I'll try one more time in my next post to make what I'm saying clear. Thanks for taking the time to talk to me about this stuff.

Calithena wrote: Greyorm, your argument was already made by Ralph, Ian, and others: I understand it and do not find that it addresses my point, which has been whittled down through this process quite nicely. I'll try to say more on that later.

Here's my last, best attempt to say what I've been trying to say.

GNS, as I understand it, is a theory about various modes of play of RPGs, which can in turn be characterized by various goals that the players have in mind. I think it’s a good theory, FWIW, and increasingly find myself thinking about role-playing in its terms.

But theories are not self-contained, except perhaps (though I don’t believe it even there) in mathematics; they are about various things in the world, and GNS is a subtheory of social psychology. We have to be able to identify role-players and role-playing for it even to get off the ground.

Now: you CAN categorize RPG activity any way you want: those who play with pizza in hand, those who play with the old ‘caltrop’ yellow d4’s, those who turn their stories into publishable fiction, those who play out of love for their crusty old uncle. But these categories are boring. We want to know if there is any natural segmentation of the activity, or if there’s no more informative characterization in real terms than ‘role-playing’.

I take it that GNS says that there is; that we can observe players with goals of different kinds, behaving or getting frustrated in behavior aimed at achieving those goals, and that those goals can be specified in informative terms. I agree with this: my agreement is part of why I’m spending my time discussing this. If I didn’t, I’d regard the whole thing as conceptual wanking and ignore it.

Now: when we’re talking about Narrativism, what is the best way to characterize the goals of players who are playing to achieve Narrativist goals?

Ralph, Ian, Greyorm, and others all jump on me at this point and say: “We define Narrativism this way, so it’s a tautology….”; but that is a form of conventionalism. Some scientific definitions are just conventions, but not all: good scientific definitions carve reality at the joints, as Aristotle said long ago. They pick out natural kinds. I think that GNS picks out three natural kinds of human behavior, enduring tropes in the social psychology of RPGing.

(If you’re a die-hard Foucaultian, Kuhnian, Toulminian, or whatever in the philosophy of science, you can stop reading now, because in that case we disagree on basic philosophy, which is so far outside the scope of the present discussion that it makes lit theory seem like core material.)

Greyorm, my ‘bass ackwards’ way of doing things follows from what I believe GNS to be a theory of. I think we can and should build our definition of Narrativism from the ground up, because Narrativism isn’t a desideratum of the theory – play of RPGs with Narrativist goals in mind is observable behavior, part of the theory’s data.

This point ought to be reinforced by M.J.’s answer to my question in the other thread: he claimed that there was no a priori argument for thinking that Gam, Nar, and Sim were all there is – it’s just that every other proposed mode of role-playing behavior has turned out to reduce to one of these. Fine. So once again, the reality of these modes is empirical, not a matter of our definitions.

I claim that the goal of the narrativist player is to tell, or be involved in a joint-authorly kind of way in telling, stories.

At this point M.J. and Paganini claim that ‘story’ is so vague as to be useless. I don’t agree; I also don’t think this is a fertile point for further dispute.

Let’s then turn to examining an argument which has been implicit in certain postings. It goes like this:

(1) All stories have a Premise, or
(1a) All stories that players with Narrativist goals have as their goal to tell have a Premise

(2) Players with narrativist goals have as their goal to tell a Story.

Therefore,

(3) Players with narrativist goals have as their goal the telling of stories with Premises.

EVEN GRANTING 1 or 1a, the actual truth of which is not relevant to the point I am making, I STILL THINK 3 HAS A POTENTIALLY MISLEADING AMBIGUITY. Why? Because descriptions of goals are inherently dual-aspected; they can be taken as descriptions of the objective situation, but they can also be taken as descriptions of the way a subject would characterize their situation. And as numerous interlocutors have conceded, THAT reading of 3 is in error.

Let’s say literary theory determines that 1 is true or empirical GNS determines that 1a is true. Again, I have no preconceptions about whether this will happen or otherwise. Would it then be better to encourage players to put premise front and center, consciously – that is, to accept both aspects of (3) as equally true?

This depends on a theory of artistic creation rooted in the same sort of self-aware, clear-about-motives behavior that some of us tend to think real-world decisions ought to be made on the basis of. As a theory of artistic creation, this is highly tendentious. Housman recommends having a pint of beer at lunch and walking in the woods. On the other hand, some people do create this way.

Now, the final point: as a PRACTICAL matter, for game designers and players alike, I’m totally willing to take almost all the force of the above conceptual points back. That is, I think, right now, in the real world of role playing and game design,

(A) Designers who want to design games that facilitate Narrativist play are well-served to design their games around a Premise, as a matter of design coherence, and to help players determine whether that’s the sort of game they actually want to play. If 1 or 1a is true, and if game design is an activity always best served by rational clarity about the ends one is trying to achieve, then this gets elevated to an absolute and not merely a practical constraint.

(B) Players who have Narrativist goals may very well be well served, when play bogs down, by considering what they take to be the Premise of their play, and trying to move the story along an axis determined by it, along with several other things. In fact, this is probably excellent guidance for role-players, based on what I see at the table.

But it is practical advice, not an a priori constraint on Narrativist play from the player's point of view, a matter of the definition, or whatever. And thinking that it is relies on inferring across the equivocation in (3). I don't know what helps people who want to make stories with their role-playing do that best, as a psychological matter. I strongly suspect that many players in many cases will be helped by attention to Premise, but not all in all.

Edit: Whoops! Crosspost!

Edit 2: Hah! I just noticed! This is the Post of the Beast!

Calithena wrote: That last sort of comment doesn't help, Pag. We're trying to engage in a theoretical discussion here, so it's a premise on both sides that we're trying to characterize an objective state of affairs. I'm not trying to 'promote' any kind of storytelling, nor any particular kind of play, and if you could demonstrate that I was, I would cede the argument. Your reinterpretation and the conclusions you draw from it are highly uncharitable: I do not hold the positions that you attribute to me.

I'd immediately add, and I think others should add, "as all travelogues of literary merit do." In other words, for a travelogue to be a good story, it needs theme.

I don't accept your equation that by 'story' I mean 'sequence of events generated in play'. I would accept that most sequences of events generated by play are stories, and that some of those stories have a theme, premise, conflict, whatever. It's arguable that most of the good stories (qua stories; not qua play sequences, where 'good' means something between 'enjoyable' and 'expressing some of the elements of the game being played to the highest degree') will have one; that's a lit theory discussion I'm trying to avoid. (But note that this is ground I've ceded to my interlocutors to avoid getting into the discussion about what makes for a good story in the first place.)

I think that you know stories perfectly well when you see them, even if there are some vague borderline cases sometimes.

Everything is good until you get to here:

Calithena wrote:
I claim that the goal of the narrativist player is to tell, or be involved in a joint-authorly kind of way in telling, stories.

Calithena wrote: I claim that the goal of the narrativist player is to tell, or be involved in a joint-authorly kind of way in telling, stories.

Hello,

Ever get the idea that people are tussling for a brass ring, and when they grab it, they don't notice and keep tussling?

For my money, reading the last six or so posts, everyone wins. The points of contention are beginning to be about phrasing and (unfortunately) etiquette.

So with some firmness, how 'bout everyone take a little while, put aside the "need to rebut - must, must rebut!" and parse out specific and definite concerns that still remain, if any. Then we can have new threads about those things.

Yours for a nice clean forum,
Best,
Ron

Hey guys!

I would agree that the discussion has reached equilibrium. I'll keep reading what people have written and if I come up with something new to say maybe I'll come back with a new thread. In the meantime, thank you very much for your help.

Pag, I don't read the line you quoted the way you read it, but rather than indulging in depth hermeneutics on a bit of text that was mostly present to assauage the concerns of earlier interlocutors anyway, let me just say this: I don't, as a matter of fact, think that there's any one way people ought to game, nor any one kind of story they ought to look for when they're gaming, etc. etc.. If anything I said implied that, then I recant it; but I swear to you I never thought that, and none of my posts were aimed even indirectly at arguing that there is. I apologize if I misread your reply; I assumed that you were putting words in my mouth to set me up as a straw man and then knock me down, a common enough rhetorical tactic. Evidently this is not what you intended, and I apologize for attributing such behavior to you.

Greyorm, I think our disagreement is more straightforward: we're down to bedrock, and I don't think either of us is budging on the basis of what's been said so far. I'll keep reading what all of you have written, and if I find a productive way to take the discussion forward from here, I'll post a new thread.

Thanks for the good thoughts, both of you and all others who took the time to help me out here.

Best,

Sean

I promised I'd be back on Sunday, and here I am. I think perhaps I can shed a last bit of light on this, so I'm going to go ahead and answer Sean's comments to me.

Quoting me, Sean a.k.a. Calithena wrote: "A travelogue is not a narrativist story, unless it diverts far from the path of what was discovered and into moral choices and ambiguities along the way..."

I'd immediately add, and I think others should add, "as all travelogues of literary merit do." In other words, for a travelogue to be a good story, it needs theme.

M. J. - once again, you may consider the comment you quote withdrawn. It wasn't posted even initially as part of any thesis I was advancing - it was there because some earlier posters, criticizing some earlier versions of my claim, had been advancing against me the view that you and Pag are criticizing - that all stories have Theme, Premise, or whatever. The only reason that was even in my post was to defuse discussion of this very issue. In the quotation you and Pag object to I wasn't intending to advance any theory of stories, but rather conceding ground to interlocutors who I thought at the time had such a theory.

I'm sorry for confusing matters. That sentence was no part of any thesis I cared about at any point in this thread, and was only offered as a way to shift the center of argument to what I really cared about. I've explained my position pretty clearly in my last long post; let me just retract everything I said before that for simplicity's sake.

I also apologize for taking up more space in this discussion, but since this was bothering various people so much I wanted to make clear why I said what I said. Recall that earlier I was questioning whether all stories have theme, saying that was a question for lit theory to decide, and I still hold that view; that claim got attacked separately from the other points I made, so I dropped it, hence the offending sentence. Which I have now disavowed. Your counterexample is somewhat persuasive, though the wonder of experience, or the Journey itself, might be offered as a kind of loose 'theme' (though not a conflict) that goes along with any sort of travel narrative. Or not. The point is, I'm not defending that sort of claim here. I do have a very slightly different conception of what Narrativism is about than the majority seems to. But I'd appreciate it if we could just agree to disagree for a while until someone comes up with some genuinely new reasons here: I think you guys are hell of cool, and this fight is not getting us very far right now, and I don't want to be a drag on the community.

Hello,

You see how nice that was? Group hug.

Stern look. Group hug.

This thread's closed, so let's take up the details later. But relevant details, please, no tug-of-war.

Best,
Ron