the preservation of antagonism
Ben Lehman:
Quote from: Paul Czege on September 17, 2008, 12:12:15 PM
Hey Ben,
Quote from: Ben Lehman on September 16, 2008, 08:13:10 AM
P.S. Hey, Paul, this may be kinda an edge case, but what about games that simply don't contain antagonists as such and get protagonism from other means?
Name one?
For three, the whole Trollbabe -> Dogs in the Vineyard -> Drifter's Escape lineage can do this, if the GM wants to (or, in the case of the Drifter's Escape, if everyone wants their characters to be sympathetic.) Basically, it creates a situation where a lot of people have done bad things to each other, and the protagonist is in a lynchpin position to figure out a resolution to their grievances, but no one is providing opposition to the protagonist in any way. The protagonism comes from the difficulty in resolving the situation, period, rather than from any effective resistance.
I'm thinking in particular about a Dogs in the Vineyard game Tony ran involving some pre-marital sex and some teenagers falling in and out of love and making stupid mistakes. All of them were basically good people, but the situation was completely unresolvable in any sort of satisfactory way: we ended up ordering a boy to fall back in love with the girl he had previously been in love with and so on. No one in the game opposed us in any significant way: they were aware that they had screwed up, and that their situation was difficult, and they were relying on us to help them sort it out.
Not an antagonist in sight.
I'm not actually sure that antagonism (as in: resistance to the protagonists that allows them to shine) has anything to do with antagonists (individuals hostile to the protagonists) at all. Clearly, a functional antagonist is one possible source of antagonism, but it's not like the antagonism itself goes away when a specific character does.
Not to say that keeping your favorite NPC alive isn't also a noble endeavor. It's just unrelated to protagonism or antagonism or any other -ism.
yrs--
--Ben
Ron Edwards:
Hi Paul,
Here's an interesting technique for #1, found in the game Zero. In that game, a given character's roll is 2d6. What you do is, when rolling for a bunch of foes and when one is supposed to be pretty tough, you roll all the dice for your NPCs in one big go. Then you sort them into 2d6 pairs of your choosing, assigning them to characters as you see fit. That way, you make sure that your favorite baddies get the good rolls.
In Hong Kong Action Hero, NPCs are rated on a strict scale, which is to say certain villains are practically unbeatable and the mooks are really one-hit mooks. I'll have to review the specific technique, but it was very formal. This kind of NPC categorization was really big in early-mid 1990s design, like the Chessmen thing Ralph is talking about and lots of others.
The thread topic does confuse me a little, because I'm not sure I understand the difference between antagonism (-ist?) and adversity in general. Nor am I sure whether it's linked with certain expectations for scenario prep and play, i.e., a climactic confrontation. It'd help if I could work with a specific example.
Best, Ron
Vulpinoid:
Quote from: Ron Edwards on September 18, 2008, 09:45:26 AM
...I'm not sure I understand the difference between antagonism (-ist?) and adversity in general...
Sorry if this quote seems a little out of context, but this highlights some of the ideas that have been going through my head with regard to this thread.
Especially after Ben's comments about a DitV game without personified antagonism.
I'd always considered antagonism to be an obstacle that prevents a "happily ever after" conclusion. This could be in the form of a person who is instigating storyline events that need to be resolved, or the dramatic tension of events that need to be addressed. Without antagonism of some form, is there a story?
Sometimes minor events get in the way, and need to be addressed before the true villain is revealed. Sometimes minor villains need to be addressed before a mencaing event can be seen for its truth.
I perceive most of these systems as different ways to categorise the immediacy of threats. Methods to isolate protagonist and antagonist (personified or otherwise), until suitably dramatic moments. That probably a narrativistic way to look at things, but it's the first that comes to mind.
Isn't a relationship map a similar concept when viewed in this light...heaven knows we've seen a lot of them lately. The characters have an ally in the form of Person X...Person X connects with Y and Z in these ways...the players can't access Person Z until they've resolved the fight between X and Z...oterwise they could go through Y to get to Z but this has it's own issues to be resolved.
The antagonism between person X and Z isn't directly motivated against the players, but they'll need to bring it on themselves to get further.
I guess that's the whole point.
Stories need antagonism of some form as a drive. Complex stories develop this further by making certain antagonisms hidden, while their ripple effects may be felt further afield. For a character to develop, they need something to work against...
...that's why they put snakes on the snakes-and-ladders board.
V
Ron Edwards:
Hello,
Ouch. Michael, that's a very distorted description of relationship maps; it describes older techniques found in hundreds of modules, not how relationship maps are used (you may not know that the term is highly specific to a single game text, not a general/casual term). Rather than derail the thread, I invite you to hop down to the Adept Press forum and talk about it there.
The thing is, though, I agree with you fully about the presence of adversity, or even better, relevant adversity in making any kind of fictional experience worth anyone's time. But I don't know whether that point applies. I don't even know if Paul is talking about adversity in general, antagonism (which is to say adversity in the form of other people's priorities), or specific antagonists (characters chosen to deliver antagonism).
Paul, this thread is really struggling. Can you provide an account of play that nails what you're talking about?
Best, Ron
Paul Czege:
Hey Ron,
Quote from: Ron Edwards on September 18, 2008, 09:45:26 AM
The thread topic does confuse me a little, because I'm not sure I understand the difference between antagonism (-ist?) and adversity in general. Nor am I sure whether it's linked with certain expectations for scenario prep and play, i.e., a climactic confrontation. It'd help if I could work with a specific example.
Personally, I reject Ben's assertion that protagonism can be achieved without antagonism. NPCs with needs they can't resolve themselves who attach themselves to player characters are antagonists. NPCs with flaws that create problems for player characters are antagonists. They are the source of the conflicts upon which the story turns.
The first time I ran The Pool I had an NPC named India Vaunt, an accomplished mercenary leader who was a mentor to Scott Knipe's lower ranked mercenary character. In the second session of play he used a Monologue of Victory to kill her melodramatically during a trial by combat in which they were both acting as champions. As the GM, I wasn't done with her yet. Scott scarfed her for a moment of melodrama.
I'm finding myself needing to run a game that lets me own, and invest time and creativity and depth in NPCs. I'm weary of having NPCs slain by vagaries of the dice (a risk of type #1) or authored out from under me (my problem with type #3) before I've even scratched their surface.
(Moreno, would you believe I had just made a PayPal payment for a copy of Ars Magica 2e before seeing your post on the 15th? It arrived two days ago. I've barely had a chance to crack the cover, but I'm really looking forward to seeing the pre-licensed game.)
Paul
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