Over in Why Should the Narrativist Premise be Pre-Set in Sorcerer? Chris suggested creating a daughter thread on the issue of theme and GNS.

Here's what I take theme and premise to mean in relation to GNS:

Premise is an open moral or ethical concern that can be expressed in the form of a question.
Theme is a recurrant concern (which may be moral or ethical but equally may be aesthetic) that is not open and hence may be expressed in the form of a statement.

Is there such thing as a just war?
vs
For evil to triumph all that is required is that good men do nothing.

I would drop the question mark off of your theme, there, given that the characteristic of theme is that it isn't a question. Confused me for a couple of minutes.

I don't think that this is controversial. I think that, if you wanted to explore the connection between Theme and Premise RP more deeply, you might find some very interesting N-S middleground.

yrs--
--Ben

Hello,

All spot-on to me, Ian. Others' input is welcome, but I'll restrict myself to saying "Upcoming Narrativism essay." Imagine me kind of blinking from deep down in a lair somewhere.

Best,
Ron

Ian Charvill wrote: Premise is an open moral or ethical concern that can be expressed in the form of a question. Theme is a recurrant concern (which may be moral or ethical but equally may be aesthetic) that is not open and hence may be expressed in the form of a statement.
...
The engagement of the players with Premise at a metagame level is the defining feature of Narrativism. This engagement will lead to the production of theme one way or another by the end of the instance of play.

For Vinland, isn't the question "What will the PCs do when confronted by the sorts of issues that Vinlanders would face?"

Sure that's really broad. So? That's by your admitted design.

Mike

John Kim wrote:
Trying to apply it to, say, my Vinland campaign means saying "Well, maybe there are a bunch of different Premises that your group is subconsciously creating to make it Narrativist, or maybe not and it is Simulationist." As far as I can see, trying to apply these labels is arbitrary. i.e. There isn't a consistent way of figuring out from play which of these apply.

John,

Are you asking "How do you distinguish between play where an open-ended question is answered, and play where a pre-existing answer is illuminated?" That's what I see as the likely thing for folks to wonder about, if/when they understand and accept the points Ian outlines (which are good enough for me if they're good enough for the blinking beast).

If so - if that's even a reasonably close paraphrase of the issue you're pointing to - I think the answer is simply to watch for the distinction as you play/observe play. Are pre-existing answers primarily "revealed" - by the GM as regards the gameworld, and/or by the players as regards their characters? Or is there time and attention spent on looking at a number of possible answers, by everyone involved?

Sure, these two things can sometimes look very similar. Sometimes the distinction is subtle - perhaps even undetectable. But often it's not.

But as far as I'm concerned, it's an excellent question, and while I think I understand abstractly how to answer it, I'm not convinced I've got a lot of concrete skill at using that answer. So I'd add the question (in some version) on to Ian's summary as the important next/practical step in applying his points to actual play.

Gordon

I think of a Premise as a whole family of themes. "What would you do for power?" becomes, in play, "ambition destroys," "all the power in the world can't heal a broken heart," "ruthlessness is the only way to victory," whatever the people playing have to say on the subject.

Post-play, if you can identify the themes, figure out what they have in common and there's your Premise. Like Jeopardy. You get one answer per player and they're all answers to the same question: what's the question?

-Vincent

Mr. Kim wrote:
However, I don't see that it is (at present) a useful tool for classifying games which don't have an explicit theme or premise -- like my "open play" style campaigns. Trying to apply it to, say, my Vinland campaign means saying "Well, maybe there are a bunch of different Premises that your group is subconsciously creating to make it Narrativist, or maybe not and it is Simulationist." As far as I can see, trying to apply these labels is arbitrary. i.e. There isn't a consistent way of figuring out from play which of these apply.

I think the question of how do we tell the difference between theme-heavy sim and narrativism is a useful one. I run games similar to the ones John and Ben are describing but unlike Ben I tend to conclude sim, because I do not see the players engaging with the moral questions at a metagame level. My diagnostic for this is as follows:

We do a recap at the start of every session, sort of like a 'Last week on Homicide' bit. I start things off and then let the players take over - pricipally to gauge what they're into, what they thought was important last week. It's a useful tool for player feedback. What they feed back relates more to the imagined elements of play - and how they felt about the imagined elements of play - than to metagame issues of premise.

I'm not saying that if we were playing narrativist then the recaps would turn into deep philosphical discussions about morality. But I'd expect more of the 'that was cool last week' to focus on the moral issues.

Not particularly profound, but it is what it is.

Ian Charvill wrote: I'm not saying that if we were playing narrativist then the recaps would turn into deep philosphical discussions about morality. But I'd expect more of the 'that was cool last week' to focus on the moral issues.

Hi Alan

It's not simply that I'm not seeing any engagement with the premise in the recaps, I am seeing engagement with the imagined elements of play.

In your games - what's the evidence that you would see of narrativism?

I'm wary of saying that since you can imply a premise from the extant themes - especially if that premise is loose - you must therefore be playing narrativist. Remembering that the players themselves must be engaging with the premise on a metagame level then I'd expect some at-the-table player behaviour that would demonstrate that engagement with the premise.

What form would people expect that behaviour to take if not in what the players remember from last week/their excitement in retelling what happened?

Hi Ian,

That is the key question, and I've tried to demonstrate the answer many times, but often gets missed.

Look for social reinforcement during play itself. Statements of approval, little grunts of encouragement, suggestions for dialogue, suggestions for actions, suggestions for scenes, body language, sighs, laughter (of dozens of different types) ... all of these occur very often during play, far more often than I think most people perceive at the time and definitely more often than they remember. The only times they remember this stuff is when it breaks the Social Contract; when it doesn't, it goes "whiff" out of the mind.

So the key answer is to start paying attention. Unless everyone else at the table turns into a department store dummy while any person is talking, then you have data. Look at what the social reinforcement is directed toward (color? tactics? thematic showdowns?), and look at what is encouraged vs. what is discouraged.

It's incredibly simple and clear.

Best,
Ron

Ron, yeah, I'm with you 100% on the social reinforcement thing. I was turtling a little with Alan I guess. I'm saying that recap is part of play, and it's the part of play when I find it easiest to see what the players are into. After the recap I'm doing GM stuff and I don't have quite as much attention to focus on player feedback - so it's a useful time for me to pay attention.

I guess my point to Alan was - in what circumstances would you be able to read player engagement during play that wouldn't show up during the recap. The idea that the players would be engaged with one thing during play proper and another thing during the recap isn't persuasive for me.

(During the recap we are establishing things into the shared imaginative space, pure and simple)

Hello,

I guess I don't really see the recap's verbal content as being especially significant compared to the social behavior during the recap. And similarly, I don't see the recap per se as being especially significant compared to play itself. That's not to shut down this angle of the conversation, so much as to say I won't be able to contribute much about it.

Also, for anyone who hasn't checked it out yet, the thread that spawned this one is continuing, so here's the link again:Why should the Narrativist Premise be pre-set in Sorcerer?. I was building a more complete reply in this thread and then realized it was silly to repeat myself there and here.

Best,
Ron

Hi Ian,

I see it like this:

Using my ever-favorite "Aliens" as an example:

Someone coming out of the theater might say to his freind, with a lot of hand motion, "Wasn't it cool when she told the army guy to shut up, got the girl to buckle up and drove the ATV into the complex to save the marines when they were being chewed up by the aliens. Man, she was so kick ass!"

Tha's a recap. It's also a recap of a major revelation of premise revealed through Ripley's actions.

One could say, "How interesting that a woman who only 45 minutes in the film earlier refused to sign on to such a mission would be, at the mid-point, ordering around the people assigned to protect her, seizing control of a large vehicle and driving it straight into danger to save people from the monsters she swore she'd never go near...."

But the first "recap" revels in the fun of the moment. It's still all about Premise, moral choices and whatnot. It's simply done in terms of story. Which is good, cause that means the story is working.

Players can do the same thing in recapping last week's session without doing a Disertation on why they had a good time or remembered certain scenes with fondness.

Christopher

Ian Charvill wrote:
I guess my point to Alan was - in what circumstances would you be able to read player engagement during play that wouldn't show up during the recap. The idea that the players would be engaged with one thing during play proper and another thing during the recap isn't persuasive for me.

(During the recap we are establishing things into the shared imaginative space, pure and simple)

Something to clarify cos I think the thread's threatening to derail off on a recap tangent.

Diagnosis from recap is just a technique I use when GMing to gauge player engagement with various things. It isn't solely a diagnostic tool for GNS (you can also use it to see if they're picking up the clues for the mystery and a thousand other things) but I find it a useful tool for doing so. It's very much a milage may vary issue, from group to group. For your group it may be useless, and that's cool.

For my group, when I'm running, the recap is as much a part of play as awarding experience, or calling for dice rolls. It blends into what are we going to do this week, and calling for scenes, and calling for rolls. It's not uncommon for rolls to be called for during the recap. Anyone who is asserting that the recap is not a part of play, is merely asserting that they play differently from me. And like I said, that's cool.

For your group, the recap may be non-diagnostic. YMMV. If someone thinks the issue is really worth delving into, I'd be happy to see a new thread, to recieve PMs or whatever. But I really want to keep the meat of this thread on the realtionship of GNS and theme.

Chris -

Yeppers - I can see where you're coming from there. If the pattern develops that they always refer back to the moral choice moments (or in play that they become emotionally engaged with moral choice moments) then you have indications of narrativism. If they talk about the moment in the film and then spend the next three hours talking about the FX and saying things like "I'm not sure if this burger's cooked... we're going to have to pull back to orbit and nuke it, just to be sure" a different pattern is emerging.

So are we saying that narrativism would focus on moments of moral choice, while theme-heavy sim would focus on moments of thematic resonance irrespective of whether choice was involved?

Ron Edwards wrote: Statements of approval, little grunts of encouragement, suggestions for dialogue, suggestions for actions, suggestions for scenes, body language, sighs, laughter (of dozens of different types) ... all of these occur very often during play, far more often than I think most people perceive at the time and definitely more often than they remember.
...
Unless everyone else at the table turns into a department store dummy while any person is talking, then you have data. Look at what the social reinforcement is directed toward (color? tactics? thematic showdowns?), and look at what is encouraged vs. what is discouraged.

It's incredibly simple and clear.

Hi Ian,

Glad that one worked for you.

Other examples of people getting different things from the same movie: a loving discussion of the guns featured; reviewing all the combat strategies; a spirited debate of the authenticity of hardware, military protocol and whatnot. None of these things are the "wrong" thing to focus on... But clearly it's just a different focus.

Christopher

Hello,

Ian, you wrote:

So are we saying that narrativism would focus on moments of moral choice, while theme-heavy sim would focus on moments of thematic resonance irrespective of whether choice was involved?

Ron Edwards wrote: And speaking of that emotional attention ... John, frankly I think you're talking yourself into all kinds of weird corners. It's no harder than deciding whether a small group of people, engaged in some social leisure activity, likes anything about whatever it is they're doing, and what the specific likeable features (or underlying "why we do this") might be. I find it extremely hard to believe that you have any practical trouble doing that.

John,

"Are there competitive or strategic choices that are not gamist?"

When in doubt, convert to something you understand more easily. In nearly every case I can imagine, you can substitute Nar. questions with Gam. questions and the answer will be clearer. Then, just change it all back to Nar. Voila! Answers galore.

I'm saying that there's a helluva lot of hand-wringing going on over Narrativism. But, there's almost none for gamism. And yet, the two are so analogous it's almost alarming.

To answer your question, "Yes, there are moral choices when they're not priortized over time by the group."

I think theres a couple of issues here. One I think may be stemming from the word Premise itself. In logical argument premise is what comes at the beginning. It is a clear definable statement of presumed fact upon which everything else is built. That other useage may well be part of the confusion regarding premise needing to be clearly established up front in advance in Nar play.

Second, I think the idea that you have to be able to tie a moral choice made during play to a premise at the time it was made in order to be sure it was "narrativist" is probably making things more complicated than they needed to be.

When you observe players during the game and are evaluating their spontaneous biomechanical feedback during play you don't need to pin that down to a premise right then.

So yeah, you can simply think in terms of it being the moral statement that was being made that was engageing their interest and then how much of that engagement was derived from their own personal choices on how to make or address that moral statement (as opposed to simply observing the statement). One can then after the fact look back on those occassions and find the common thread and say "a-ha that was the premise we were addressing".

This is just as valid as setting the premise up front and making a concious effort to address it specifically.

In fact, its a distinction that I think was made best by the Vanilla Narrativism vs. Pervy Narrativism distinction that for some reason fell out of vogue.