Hello,

I wonder how many people are going to find this surprising. It's a teeny excerpt from my upcoming Narrativism essay.

************
Let's say that the following transcript arose from however many sessions of role-playing.

Lord Gyrax rules over a realm or county or something, and a big dragon has recently begun to ravage the countryside. The lord prepares himself to deal with it, perhaps trying to settle some internal strife among his followers or allies. He also meets this hot, mysterious woman named Javenne who aids him at times, and they develop a romance. Then he learns that the dragon and this hot babe are one and the same, as she's been cursed to become a dragon periodically in a kind of Ladyhawke situation, and he must decide whether to kill her. Meanwhile, she struggles to control the curse, using her dragon-powers to quell an uprising in the realm led by a traitorous ally. Eventually he goes to the Underworld instead and confronts the god who cursed her, and trades his youth to the god to lift the curse. He returns, and the curse is detached from her, but still rampaging around as a dragon. So they slay the dragon together, and return as a couple, still united although he's all old-like, to his home.

The real question: reading the transcript and recognizing it as a story, what can be said about the Creative Agenda that was involved in the production of these events during the role-playing? The answer is, absolutely nothing. We don't know whether people played it Gamist, Simulationist, or Narrativist, or any combination of the three. Making a story can be accomplished through any Creative Agenda. The mere presence of story as the product of role-playing is not a GNS-based issue.
************

What do you think? "I knew that," is one possible response. "What?? You're kidding!" is another. What's yours?

For those who are interested, the Narrativism essay is one draft away from being sent out to readers. However, a nasty cold and the holidays are conspiring against that final pre-read draft.

Best,
Ron

Well, Ron, "I knew that" was my response.

In fact, perhaps I've been reading you too long, but as I read the story, I said to myself: "This story has no GNS content to it at all, since it says nothing about how this story was arrived at."

I mean, I, too, can easily imagine how that could come out of Simulationist play, Narrativist play, and, with some stretching, Gamist play.

Well, I'll give a second "I knew that." As the question came up in the except, my first thought was "Well, it has a lot of Narrativist potential"

And, I can particularly see this example coming out of play in which two modes are clashing or combining. For example, my first thought in analyzing this is a GM who wants Nar play, but a player who insists on using Sim priorities. The GM keeps wanting a theme-based decision (and thus keeps throwing hard choices a the player), but the player keeps falling back to "my guy would..." as a way to dodge making a theme statement.

Hopefully, the rest of the essay will help put to rest the concerns various people have over why some reports from games are hard to pin down in a GNS sense.

Ron Edwards wrote: The real question: reading the transcript and recognizing it as a story, what can be said about the Creative Agenda that was involved in the production of these events during the role-playing? The answer is, absolutely nothing. We don't know whether people played it Gamist, Simulationist, or Narrativist, or any combination of the three. Making a story can be accomplished through any Creative Agenda. The mere presence of story as the product of role-playing is not a GNS-based issue.
************

What do you think? "I knew that," is one possible response. "What?? You're kidding!" is another. What's yours?

Ron Edwards wrote: I think first edition Vampire takes a mainly Simulationist approach toward resolution, but a fairly Gamist one toward character creation and improvement - but confusingly, a pretty Narrativist set of rhetoric about one's character.

I read the story and thought "sounds like a narrativist game". Then you pointed out that there was no way to know just from the finished story and I said "oh yeah, good point". This fits well with my hard won, if somewhat dull-witted epiphany that Story Now does in fact means story NOW, i.e. decisions are made during that game with an eye to creating story as opposed to any other concern (versimilitude, winning).

So it was surprising but I knew that when you pointed it out.

I've lost a lot of sanity points to this theory, so if what I wrote doesn't make sense, I guess I'll go beat my head against the essays some more. Definitely looking forward to this one.

Alex

Ron Edwards wrote: What do you think? "I knew that," is one possible response. "What?? You're kidding!" is another. What's yours?

Ron,

I wouldn't call that a transcript at all. It was an outline. In sotware development there is graphical tool called a Data Flow Diagram. It consists of bubbles connected by lines. The bubbles represent stages of the program, while the lines represent movement of data between stages. This type of diagram is intended to omit all policies and mechanisms that determine which lines are used at any time. It ignores all decision making. The way your outline connects nodes of a story reminds me of a Data Flow Diagram and the other similar diagram types. Different kinds of diagrams focus on other issues like decisions, timing, or record keeping.

I don't know if that helps, but I want to say more than "I knew that".

John

Hello,

I'm glad everyone "knew that" so far. It's an important starting point for the essay.

John, I littered that post you quoted from with the most explicit qualifiers I could regarding "text is not play." I didn't put the qualifiers into that post for no reason. What you've quoted takes on a very different character in their absence, which is not what I wrote.

I disagree with you that Creative Agenda is unrelated to Techniques and, in fact, think you're pretty off-base about that. What's unrelated are single Techniques to single Creative Agendas. Sure, Author Stance (a unit of Ephemera) isn't Narrativism. Neither is a dice mechanic permitting point-tweaks to the outcomes through a resource. But in combination with certain other techniques (looking throughout the whole system), they indeed facilitate Narrativist play in, say, HeroQuest or Legends of Alyria.

It's pretty basic to me that specific combinations of Techniques do, in fact, facilitate various specific Creative Agendas. Is it guaranteed? No. "Can" those Techniques be used in play for other Creative Agendas? Depends - you'd have to look at all the features of the system in action, not just those alone.

Best,
Ron

Whoops, missed a couple of replies.

Hal, I suggest that you're looking for clues as to what decisions were made by the real people in the prose ... and not seeing them, because they're not there. My point is that an account of the fictional events in a role-playing game can be given any sort of "feel" post-hoc through how it's recounted, entirely independently of the decisions made by the creators at the time. If I'd put "Only by making a risky dive through the flames of the dragon did Javenne place herself to catch the ring that Gyrax tossed to her, and to activate it as he hacked at the monster to distract it ..." it still wouldn't mean a thing in terms of however the group actually played that session. It would still just be how I wrote it up, and hence meaningless regarding Creative Agenda during the process of play.

John, I'm afraid you'll have to endure my use of the term transcript as "account of the fictional events during play." The complete lack of process (i.e. what decisions were made by the creators) is deliberate.

Best,
Ron

Heh, my response while reading it was, "Hah! There's no game context. Can't say what it is." Then, before I finished it I said, "Either I've got Narrativism really wrong, or this is an object lesson about how a 'story' doesn't equate to Narrativism, because game events don't map to GNS priorities."

Looking forward to the essay, Ron!

I knew that - but only because of hard-thought puzzling in threads like this one and this one .

I'd add that while the events (story-bits, plot points, Explorative elements, etc.) themselves tell us nothing about the creative agenda of those who created them, the fact that these particular bits are the ones that did get created does have impact on the creative agenda as play continues. And they might thus be part of what causes or keeps a particular creative agenda prioritized. That is, establishing Javenne as the dragon and a curse-victim is not a meaningless thing in GNS terms, it's just that determining what the particular meaning is requires information about the context of play and the interaction of the individuals participating. The more info, the better

In other words - that this info, by itself, tells us nothing about GNS does not mean that this info is entirely useless. Combined with other info, I'd think it could be very useful.

Gordon

Hmm. In my mind, I upgraded "I knew that" to "yeah, no shit." :) Looking forward to reading the rest of the essay.

What Gordon said. Ron has carefully provided just exactly the kind of information that preserves ambiguity about CA. Add any other sort of information, and you can start drawing conclusions or at least assessing probabilities.

For instance, if we knew for sure that the plot related in the transcript was not pre-written and front-loaded into play in some way, then the quality of the story (middling, as these things go) tells us that at least one participant was probably putting effort into authoring during play and was permitted to do so by the system and the other participants. That might not prove or rule out an overall Narr, Sim, or Gamist CA, but it would say something about the Creative Agenda that I'd consider pretty important.

- Walt

Ron Edwards wrote: What do you think? "I knew that," is one possible response. "What?? You're kidding!" is another. What's yours?

"I knew that!"

Yeah!

As I was reading I was thinking, this is a story, not something specific to roleplay. I was somewhat confused as to what the point of the narrative was...then I got to the following paragraph and all became right in the world again.

I CAN NOT wait to read the Narrative essay!!!

Hope you feel better soon, Ron.

Aure Entaluva,

Silmenume

"I knew that", sorta. However, I probably wouldn't have known that a few months ago. It's taken me awhile of reading and re-reading the theory -- and the Whole Model thread among others -- to get to that point.

I say "sorta" because you loaded that story with theme and it tempted me to jump to a "this is Narrativist" conclusion while I was reading it, but when you asked the question, I managed to get it right.

Take care, have a good holiday, then get back to work on the essay!

Ron Edwards wrote:
Hal, I suggest that you're looking for clues as to what decisions were made by the real people in the prose ... and not seeing them, because they're not there. My point is that an account of the fictional events in a role-playing game can be given any sort of "feel" post-hoc through how it's recounted, entirely independently of the decisions made by the creators at the time.

If I'd put "Only by making a risky dive through the flames of the dragon did Javenne place herself to catch the ring that Gyrax tossed to her, and to activate it as he hacked at the monster to distract it ..." it still wouldn't mean a thing in terms of however the group actually played that session. It would still just be how I wrote it up, and hence meaningless regarding Creative Agenda during the process of play.

It's not that I "knew it"; it's that during the process of reading the passage I independently came to that conclusion. Perhaps I figured that because you'd excerpted the summary, there had to be something tricksy about it.

Steve.

I knew that. I do think there's a certain amount of rhetorical manouevring going on in that I'm guessing that you've written a story which would tend to produce 'looks like narrativism' responses if people weren't paying enough attention.

Hello everybody,

The rhetorical maneuvering, as Hal put it and as referred to by several people so far, is actually very simple: I stated the events strictly in Explorative terms. Characters, setting, situation, system (i.e. stuff happened) and color.

It's only "maneuvering" or "cleverness" insofar as you guys knew it was supposed to emerge from a role-playing experience.

However, most movies, novels, comics, etc, do not include an intrinsic account of what it was like to make them as part of their fictional content. There are some exceptions, but arguably, they are stories-within-stories, just as biography and autobiography are stories. Putting that aside, though, most of the stories you and I know do not tell you what the authors "went through" to make them. John B, by your rules, almost all stories are outlines.

I had to come up with a name for "account of what fictionally happened during play," and "transcript" is what emerged, for better or worse. A transcript with thematic content, however trite, is a story.

Best,
Ron

qxjit wrote: you loaded that story with theme and it tempted me to jump to a "this is Narrativist" conclusion

My response was more along the lines of "I was affraid of that." You might want to spend some time in your essay outlining some of the differences between Narrativism and Simulationism with heavy Character/Situation focus where the Situation happens to embody a lot of sticky moral/ethical questions.

Sometime after reading your Whole Model post I began to realize the fact that my entire group threw up their arms and cheered when Renaux's player had Renaux bend down on one knee and fully propose to Jaquelline in my 7th Sea game says more about their Creative Agenda than my entire transcript of in-game events.

So, I think your point is made, although it is slightly disconcerting.

Jesse

greyorm wrote:
(I would have killed for this idea being expressed so concretely a few years back, when I kept being questioned about how how "Our characters did this and this and this, and we all felt really bad. How does that not fit the criteria for Narrativism?" and it took quite a bit of explanation to get through the differences)

Hi Ron,

I, too, am part of that "knew that" crowd, but I'm also glad you're using an example to point out that in-game fictional events are lower on the theory-chain than GNS, and don't necessarily indicate what's going on higher up in the boxes.

Chris

Ron Edwards wrote: What do you think?

greyorm wrote: Of course, though this is in the Narrativism essay, it's a lesson that applies equally to the other styles: a thematic story could just as easily have arrived out of Gamist or Simulationist play, with equal probability, so it must be something other than "what happened", or something in addition to it which is examined to determine style.

That's an out and out example of Simulatonism. And there ain't nobody who can tell me otherwise. ;-)

Uh, credit to Marco, no? For fighting for the terminology change?

Mike

Hello,

I don't see any terminology change, Mike. The GNS essay says the same thing.

More generally, the topic of this thread is in no way a modification of any of my points, from day one. I've been saying the same damn thing the whole time, just not finding the right language.

Best,
Ron

Might have been before the GNS essay, but I remember long harangues about whether or not Sim could produce story. What was finally hacked out is that different people mean different things by story.

But there was a time Ron, when you insisted that Sim tended to produce "interesting series of events" and that this was not story - more like life than story. The change to accepting that story has too personal a meaning to be used as a definition of GNS mode is what I'm refering to.

Mike

I also recall what Mike does.

EDIT:

I found an old thread from August 2001 here.

Ron Edwards wrote: It all depends on whether CREATING a good story is a priority or not. If not, then fine - let the other priorities rule, and let "story" exist only in its most superficial sense, as a series of causal events.

I'm scratching my head a bit, but not for the same reasons. I recall those discussions Mike and Jack are referring to. However, I also have it quite strongly in my head that Ron has ALWAYS said theme is possible in any mode (i.e. Creative Agenda). If that's true, then naturally story, too, must be possible. Of course, I've got no specific discussions to back my memory up. Ron?

Well, it was in the threads linked in my earlier post here, but to call it out specifically, from May 12 2001 (GO archives being essentially lost, that's about as early as we're gonna get - outside the Sorceror mailing list):

Lo, 2 years ago and more, Ron Edwards wrote:
No one could possibly dispute that components of story are integral to role-playing, or to wargaming, CCGing, video games, and many other activities once called "adventure gaming."

That does not mean that everyone performs these activities in order to CREATE stories. This "author" approach is only one way to enjoy adventure gaming, and as I said elsewhere, I think it's by no means the most common way. And I certainly do not think it's some kind of "best" way, except as one might decide on a personal level.

Therefore "story-oriented" is a terribly useless term. All role-playing is SORT OF story-oriented - there are characters, there are conflicts, there are causal events that are determined by game-action activities.

Narrativism, as I've defined it, is about MAKING stories on the spot, meaning that, to satisfy the definition, authorial power [GcL note: NOT author-stance]MUST be the driving, causal element of the role-playing experience.

Matt & Gordon are right. The ideas have't changed; I'm just getting better at explaining them without creating new pits for people to fall into.

Look at it this way. I say, "Narrativist play is about making stories, like an author makes stories, or hell, as an author does it, no 'like.' Get it?"

And the person listening provides their own italics, as follows:

"... about making stories."

"... about making stories."

See the difference? If you use the first version, we have just crossed paths at different trajectories, different speeds, different everything, and failed to communicate at all. It's "product oriented."

Use the second version, and at least now we both know we're talking about process. And then we can discuss why front-loading and retro-assembling don't count, which is a whole 'nother discussion right there.

That's been the whole source of the conundrum. Back then, when I said, "non-Narrativist play doesn't make stories" (the kind of text Mike was referring to), the message was often completely lost because of the misplaced emphasis - and the fact that I couldn't figure out why people were doing that, or that they were doing it at all.

Later, I tried to fix it by saying stuff like "thematic" and "literary" and so forth, which didn't work either.

Anyway, I hope that the current version of the concept is going to be a better starting point for a lot of people.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: Matt & Gordon are right. The ideas have't changed; I'm just getting better at explaining them without creating new pits for people to fall into.

Look at it this way. I say, "Narrativist play is about making stories, like an author makes stories, or hell, as an author does it, no 'like.' Get it?"
...
Back then, when I said, "non-Narrativist play doesn't make stories" (the kind of text Mike was referring to), the message was often completely lost because of the misplaced emphasis - and the fact that I couldn't figure out why people were doing that, or that they were doing it at all.

Hi John,

I knew someone was going to say that. It's wrong.

It's also accounted for in my post:

And then we can discuss why front-loading and retro-assembling don't count, which is a whole 'nother discussion right there.

The most difficult aspect of writing this essay is the presence of two distinct problematic audiences, neither of which I realized existed when I first wrote System Does Matter.

- Role-players who greatly value the story quality of their transcripts, but don't play Narrativist to make them. It's often painful for them to be, as they see it, relegated to Simulationist play (specifically, Exploration of Situation and sometimes Character). "We create stories too, dammit!"

- Role-players who play Narrativist already, but who think what I'm describing must be harder or more abstract than it is. Since they can identify Exploration of Character and Situation in their play preferences, they think they must be playing Simulationist. "That's Narrativist? But we do that, using a plain old well-known role-playing game - it can't be Narrativist!"

The first problem these audiences pose for me is that any point, example, or clarification I make that's specific to one of them is automatically misleading for the other.

The second problem is that, given that I say Not Narrativist to the first, and the second mistakenly says Not Narrativist to me, Narrativism as a label has become incorrectly associated with the narrow space of "how Ron himself plays."

Ron Edwards wrote: - Role-players who greatly value the story quality of their transcripts, but don't play Narrativist to make them. It's often painful for them to be, as they see it, relegated to Simulationist play (specifically, Exploration of Situation and sometimes Character). "We create stories too, dammit!"
...
The second problem is that, given that I say Not Narrativist to the first, and the second mistakenly says Not Narrativist to me, Narrativism as a label has become incorrectly associated with the narrow space of "how Ron himself plays."

I thought I'd point out that my posts in this old thread (also linked in my earlier post here) are all about struggling with this very issue - "Sim Story," call it. I'm pretty sure I now understand the distinction, and why "front-loading and retro-assembling don't count [as Narrativist]," but I go back and forth on whether it's an incredibly subtle distinction that perhaps might-as-well not exist , or a really obvious thing that's very easy to see in play once you know what to look for.

So I look forward to the post-Nar essay discussions,

Gordon

PS - A way to phrase the distinction that seems clever just occured to me(and maybe it's not clever to anyone else - hel, maybe Ron and others will think it's off-base): "It's not just that you and others are responding to pre-established and/or self-created "story" issues and building based on that - it's that you are responding to what they created, right then. And they are responding to what *you* created, right then. And so on, in a loop that doesn't end until those involved decide to stop."

However, this first set are completely correct when they say they create stories.

Hi John,

Nothing you're saying is arguing against any point I'm making. This whole thread is about how stories may be produced through role-playing of all sorts.

Therefore your statement:

... you are simply wrong when you say "non-Narrativist play doesn't make stories". This first set do actively author stories in every way. They are just deciding on a theme before writing, which is something that many authors do.

Based upon my limited understanding of model, I posit the following.

As we are talking about one of the three Creative Agendas, specifically Narativism, what matters is what is expressed in game, not what is intended or prepared by any of the players including the DM.

In discussing the idea of creative priority I will see if applying a little economic theory helps in elucidating this topic. When a player expresses a creative inclination in doing so he must give up something in the process. If I chose to read a book the cost of reading that book is the highest valued activity that I did not engage in. Or to put it another way the cost of expressing the desire to read, by reading, is calculated by determining the next highest valued desire or need that was subverted. The cost in terms of roleplay is expressed as which agenda isn’t vocalized. The acting out of the Creative Agenda of a player is the search for a meaning that satisfies his desire.

Let’s take a VERY short story – A Knight set out, slaying a dragon and saving the princess.

For a player who might be described as expressing himself in a Gamist fashion might he have been motivated by the following -

To be the first player at the table to kill a dragon.
To kill the dragon so as to be able to get EP’s so as to pull a head of the other players in level.
To see if the player (not character!) has what it takes to kill the dragon.
To outwit the DM.
To kill the dragon in order to loot the hoard so that the player would then have bragging rights to the best weapon/magic item in the game

For a player who might be described as expressing himself in a Simulationist fashion he might have been motivated by the following -

To experience what it is like to live the life a knight fighting against impossible odds.
To experience what it’s like to save the life of another.
To experience what it’s like to be in deadly combat.
To experience what it means to operate under the bonds of Chivalry, Duty, etc.

For a player who might be described as expressing himself in a Narrativist fashion he might have been motivated by the following -

The idea of creating a story about a Knight slaying a dragon and saving the princess.
To overtly and expressly explore what it means to operate under the bonds of Chivalry, Duty, etc., and to what extent is one willing to hold to those ideals.

In both the Gamist and Narrativist agendas the players set out with certain meta-game goals in mind. This shows up in roleplay when a decision is made where the player subverts internal causality to pursue an out of character goal. A Gamist makes a decision that is out of character to pursue his competitive, meta-game goal. A Narrativist makes a decision that subverts internal causality to pursue the meta-game goal of story creation and/or staying focused on the premise question. Does this mean that Simulationists have no goal? No. The Simulationist desires to experience the life of the character, hopefully in a fashion that is exciting and interesting. The interesting thing is that exciting and interesting fashion of experiencing things leads to exciting and interesting stories. The important thing to remember is that the Simulationist does not enter into a game with the number one priority of creating a story; it’s just that the game, by virtue of exploring character and situation automatically leads to story creation. In other words the player is NOT going to subvert or trade off internal causality for the sake of story creation. One could have a Simulationist game that is heavy in the Exploration of Situation, but as long as internal causality is not breeched by the players (this excludes the DM) to pursue story then the game is Simulationist.

Aure Entaluva,

Silmenume

Hi,

Oooh, that's almost there, S. I'll quibble.

The important thing to remember is that the Simulationist does not enter into a game with the number one priority of creating a story; it’s just that the game, by virtue of exploring character and situation automatically leads to story creation.

Ron Edwards wrote: a) Sim-story arising "automatically" is very much like people who want to write novels by ... I'm sure there's a technical name for it ... enacting the fictional events through some kind of internal-cause logic, without "interference" from the writer. I consider it a vast waste of time.

Because in that instance, he's not talking about a style of play, he's talking about a way of writing stories. At least, that was my interpretation.

Silmenume wrote: The Simulationist desires to experience the life of the character, hopefully in a fashion that is exciting and interesting. The interesting thing is that exciting and interesting fashion of experiencing things leads to exciting and interesting stories. The important thing to remember is that the Simulationist does not enter into a game with the number one priority of creating a story; it’s just that the game, by virtue of exploring character and situation automatically leads to story creation.

Heya,

When I read the transcript, Ron, I said to myself "Sounds Narrativist, but where's the system?" Then I kept reading and understood.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I see it as one cant make a judgement about a recounting of events in a session/adventure without knowing specifics of the System (in this case Technics and Rules) and how the players used them. Right?

Peace,

-Troy

Lxndr wrote: Because in that instance, he's not talking about a style of play, he's talking about a way of writing stories. At least, that was my interpretation.

Hi Troy,

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I see it as one cant make a judgement about a recounting of events in a session/adventure without knowing specifics of the System (in this case Technics and Rules) and how the players used them. Right?

Ron Edwards wrote: The difficulty with that analysis is that it focuses on intention and motivation as explanatory variables.

Ron Edwards wrote: a) Sim-story arising "automatically" is very much like people who want to write novels by ... I'm sure there's a technical name for it ... enacting the fictional events through some kind of internal-cause logic, without "interference" from the writer. I consider it a vast waste of time.

Ron Edwards wrote: b) Sim-story works very nicely when Situation is locked and loaded prior to play, in the sense that most Call of Cthulhu games I've played have been so locked. The player-characters' decisions and actions are essentially taken as mildly wiggly pieces to fit into the existing puzzle.

Ron Edwards wrote: c) Sim-story also works nicely, although it takes a lot of skill, when the GM constantly retro-fits and re-interprets events of a session just played to give them protagonist-like significance. The players discover how "important" they were in the next session.

A, possibly beffuddling tuppence worth: to me, there are a couple of differences between N and S story making..

1. S story making tends to be an emrgent quality. Exploration of theme tends to produce recognisable stories as a by-product of the exploration. But any exploration produces what my teachers called a narrative, ie a series of events linked by a common protagonist. But any stories arising are emrgent from the act of exploration, and often "remembered" as stories by participants rather than being structured dramatically during actual play.

2. N story making arises from wanting to tell a story that matters to the participants... or, indeed, being in the kind of mood, having the kind of engagement with the theme, that the only satisfactory way for the players to continue is to address the premise through play. Sim exploration of theme can certainly lead to this, depnding on how the players engage with the theme, but needn't. I spend most of my time in HQ games at this level: even when dilemmas come in as Egri style permises, they're enagged on a sim level of theme. Occassionally, we'll get grabbed by an issue that the answers matter to us. The techniques and ephemera shift to support premise, hero points get spent more freely, etc etc.

Like the oracle said in the good matrix movie "It's like being in love, you can't describe, you just feel it, balls to bones." That's the difference for me between N & S story telling, the difference between raising an eyebrow like Spock and saying "fascinating," and playing while feeling like you've got a spear in your guts twisting a story out of you.

Pete

1. I think it would be more correct to say theme is an emergant quality of sim play rather than story (with the caveat that theme can be preloaded cf Call of Cthulhu).

2. I think just speaks to preferences. The foregrounding of moral issues, for me, always runs the risk of kicking me out of the imagined space. It can have the effect of distancingme from the story.

I think it's Chris Kubasilik that keeps talking about doing a thread to demonstrate that N story-telling is superior to S story-telling. I'm kind of curious to see his arguments, but for me I think it'll just come down to different strokes for different folks. Narrativism will tend to produce stories that will be more compelling to people with narrativist tendencies. I'm rather dubious of the idea that there will ever be any way of objectively arguing for the superiority or inferiority of a particular story.

Ian Charvill wrote: I'm rather dubious of the idea that there will ever be any way of objectively arguing for the superiority or inferiority of a particular story.

Jack Spencer Jr wrote: I'm inclined to agree, Ian, unless we can find an objective mean to examine and judge the parts of a story and, by this criteria, be able to say if story X is better made than story Y.

Unfortunately, roleplaying is a temperary temporal art. It's played and then it's gone. I suppose we could video tape sessions, but I really have no interest in do so. Anyone?

Hi there,

Good discussion, everyone. I was looking at the post-count on this thread and kind of rolling my eyes, wondering whether I should come in and close it, but as it turns out .... no. This is very interesting all 'round.

One point for Jay. Jay, you wrote:

There is a method of Simulationist play that you did not mention. It is one where the DM creates a locale with a number of motivated NPC’s and drops in the PC’s at a moment of crisis/decision. The GM has no clear idea how things are going to resolve, as the actions of the PC’s will have a vital effect on the unfolding of events. The idea is to create a situation where lots of conflicts are present and the presence or actions of the PC’s impacts them all. This does not preclude the protagonist decision-making process as the PC’s can still chose to go off in their own unanticipated direction. Every decision has consequences, great or small, yet each decision creates a bit of story. The idea of using motivated NPC’s instead of pre-created plots is that there is more flexibility in such an arrangement. If the PC’s move off in unanticipated directions the NPC’s can react in a fashion that is based upon desires and motives, not fixed plans.

The nice thing about this style of play is that it inherently allows for protagonist decision-making processes. This style of play is like a very intuitive dance between DM and Player with each partner passing off the lead to each other at the proper moments. Each partner must pay close attention to the needs of the other; the DM to his players so he can construct conflicts that revolve around the interests of the players, the players to the DM in the form of trust and communicating intent.

John Kim wrote: I think even this wouldn't be definitive. Lisa Padol makes this point in her essay on <a target="_blank" href="http://www.recappub.com/games.html">Collaborative Storytelling in RPGs. As she puts it, the "text" of the RPG is not the transcript. If you judge by a videotape of the session, then the best games will be those where the players present a story to the camera rather than presenting a story to themselves. The play is itself the text, meaning that it depends on the context and the people playing.

In response to Jay's example of dropping the PC's into a moment of crisis,

Ron Edwards wrote: That would most likely be Narrativist play, my friend. It's practically impossible actually to run a player-character in such a game without getting into a Premise of some sort.

Jack Spencer Jr wrote: The other is recording the story, such as it is, as it is made during play. That is, we want the first draft of the story, not third of fourth draft as the player repiece together what happened during the session from memory. Memory is unreliable, especially for our purposes here. The players don't have to play to the camera here, either. The camera is more a fly-on-the-wall while we eavesdrop, and can see the story, such as it is, that is formed from play.

This is what I was thinking, so I don't see what your objects to it are.

Ron Edwards wrote: That would most likely be Narrativist play, my friend. It's practically impossible actually to run a player-character in such a game without getting into a Premise of some sort.

Ian Charvill wrote: Pete

1. I think it would be more correct to say theme is an emergant quality of sim play rather than story (with the caveat that theme can be preloaded cf Call of Cthulhu).

Ian Charvill wrote:

2. I think just speaks to preferences. The foregrounding of moral issues, for me, always runs the risk of kicking me out of the imagined space. It can have the effect of distancingme from the story.

I think it's Chris Kubasilik that keeps talking about doing a thread to demonstrate that N story-telling is superior to S story-telling. I'm kind of curious to see his arguments, but for me I think it'll just come down to different strokes for different folks. Narrativism will tend to produce stories that will be more compelling to people with narrativist tendencies. I'm rather dubious of the idea that there will ever be any way of objectively arguing for the superiority or inferiority of a particular story.

Hello,

This thread is splitting around all over the place ...

Regarding my comments, which I suspected were going to cause some wide eyes and fluttering fingers:

1. Jay: nothing must "come up in conversation" about Premise. That is a key point. The human mind addresses Premise extremely easily and without self-reflection. Doing so is often expressed, relative to role-playing, as "playing my character."

In other words, there are thousands of role-players out there playing Narrativist who would not self-identify as doing so if they wrongly look for some kind of abstract awareness of the Premise as the indicator.

The play-activities you describe can go one of two ways: (a) nothing happens, as everyone wanders all 'round Doing His Thing without any particular reverberations or feedback from one another or from the in-game environment; (b) Premise gets addressed in all sorts of ways via the conflicts that become important to the players, mediated through the "filter" of "important to my character."

This issue is discussed in detail in the Narrativist essay. To discuss your game in more detail, and to see whether it's (a) or (b), we'd have to take it to a different thread - and with respect, I think it will require a better understanding, post-essay, on your part of what I'm saying. For now, I'll point out the phrase "protagonist decision-making process" and the trust-feedback as indicating most likely (a).

2. Qxjit: correct. You'll note the "most likely" and other qualifiers in my post. They were not merely place-holders. They really mean "most likely" and "almost" and stuff like that, for exactly the reasons you stated.

Best,
Ron

Thank you Ron!

I can clearly see just how little I do know about Narrativism. I eagerly look forward to reading the final essay!

Aure Entaluva,

Silmenume

Hey guys,

In the spirit of the New Year and so forth (and my crossing eyeballs), let's call this thread closed.

All topics still hanging fire ought to be taken to their own threads now.

Best,
Ron