What's narrativist about Zero RPG?
John Adams:
Quote from: mcv on February 11, 2009, 01:48:30 AM
That narrativism isn't the same as story, I already got from Ron's article. What confuses me is that narrativism apparently is about narrative, or possibly narration, and I don't understand the distinction.
Hi MCV. Those terms have some local definitions, or at least specific usage here on the Forge.
Narrativism = one of three Creative Agendas
Narration = Talking (in the context of role-playing). "I command my demon to teleport to the other side of the door and unlock it" is narration. The word is usually used when talking about who gets to say what, when; and is related to Authority, who gets the final say over certain things being true in the fiction.
Narrative = I think Ron's using that in the Webster sense. Story, fiction.
Definitions are messy things but I've found that when discussing role-playing it's very easy to get tripped up on words, people think they understand what you're saying but half the time they don't.
You and I come from a very similar place, I think, so let me share a bit about my experience at the Forge and RP'ing over the last few years.
I read the articles and thought I understood Creative Agendas. I didn't. Then I got my long time Sim group to play Capes which is about as un-Sim as you can get. It takes it's Creative Agenda (Nar supported by Gam) and hits it with a nine-pound hammer. It isn't subtle. I tried to make sure we followed the rules as written, but we screwed up as often as not. Didn't matter, we got close enough to "get it" or at least to understand that this was a completely different kind of game than we usually played. One of my friends exclaimed afterward "but that was NOT ROLE-PLAYING!!!". That's what a new Creative Agenda feels like the first time.
Ever play with someone who just wanted to win? You wondered if he really understood what role-playing was all about, right? That was Gamism. It's fun and it's just as valid as the kind of play you and I usually do. The two Agendas just don't usually mix very well.
So what does Nar "feel like"? It's story, ON PURPOSE.
Contrast with deep Exploration of Character (where you're really into your PC) where you make decisions based solely on what you feel in the moment the character would do. Nar turns the whole thing upside down. You start with "here's what I want to say" and design a character who must, who cannot possibly escape, engaging that question. Story, but on purpose, front and center all the time.
Contrast the kind of story that often came out of my Sim games with Story Now. I'd call most of my Sim stories "water cooler stories"; stuff happens and it might be amusing but there usually isn't a Theme in the Lit 101 sense. Story Now stories are all about creating Theme. When I tried to impose a Theme on my Sim game (as the GM) it felt like a square peg in a round hole and I usually had to decide between using Force to push the PC's where I needed them to be in order for things to turn out "right" or letting the players, you know, play their characters and to hell with the story. A good Nar game produces a story with a Theme working with the players, you just don't decide before hand exactly how those big questions will be answered.
You can achieve a Nar Creative Agenda using "Sim game". Most of the Techniques will be very similar. But not all. And the purpose behind how and when you use those Techniques will be completely different. You'll run into some common game-related questions and the answers will be completely different because your goals are completely different.
One more contrast. When Luke destroys the Death Star at the end of Star Wars the story and its theme demand that all of those little details line up at exactly that moment. It must happen that way or the story sucks and the Theme goes "poof!". Luke must be the one to fire the shot. He must hit, despite it being an hard shot. He must turn off his targeting computer first. R2 just got fried and can't help him. His human friend, Han, did just help him by getting Vader off his ass.
Lining all of that up is directly at odds with the Sim ideal of "being there" and the internal consistency it usually demands. Either R2 got fried or he didn't based on the die roll and whatever modifiers we use. Han would only get there in time if the Millenium Falcon could in fact fly fast enough, and we might argue about exactly how far he had to go. In my games at least, I would insist that Luke could MISS, which kills the Theme dead in its tracks. Now in some campaigns I would really, really want my story to go just this way and fudge it so that Luke must hit. We'd pretend, more or less, that of course Luke could have missed and wasn't it just so cool that he hit that all important shot. That's not Nar. That's GM-driven Theme in a Story Before Sim game.
Playing Nar I can't script exactly what will happen in advance and I don't need to. All of the characters are set up in such a way that Theme is pretty much going to happen, all we need to do is play. How System can facilitate this is the topic of a great many threads here on the Forge.
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But is that what the agendas really mean? ... Is Narrativism about making decisions that suit the character from the character's perspective (Nope, that sounds like Sim), or is it about making decisions that make a cool story?
That last part is very close. When the overall goal of the whole group is to "make a cool story" (with a Theme) and you actually sit down and do it, then you have reached your group's Creative Agenda, which is Narritivism. I phrase it that way to emphasize that it's what actually happens in play over time that matters.
In discussions like this that sounds so nebulous. It's easy to pick specific moments where you think you can see the Agenda at work, but those moments are not themselves the Creative Agenda. Stringing lots of those moments together over time as a group is what makes your Creative Agenda.
lumpley:
Quote from: mcv on February 11, 2009, 08:17:14 AM
I don't want to make decisions based on alignment, but I also don't want to make decisions based on what I would do in a situation. I want it to be my character who makes the decision. I mean, sure, he's just a figment of my imagination, but he's real in my head, and I've asigned him a personality of his own, distinct from mine. I want to think: What Would Bob the Barbarian Do? when I make a decision. That's what I call "deep character roleplay", and I still don't know whether that counts as Sim or Nar in the GNS model.
Hey, MCV.
Story Now play can easily include deep character roleplaying, but it doesn't require it.
Right to Dream play can easily include deep character roleplaying too, but also doesn't require it.
By itself, deep character roleplaying doesn't point to any creative agenda over the others. It's a technique that has its place within any of them.
-Vincent
FredGarber:
To chime on on the Star Wars Example, if the Conflict (and maybe the dice roll) at the end of the Death Star trench is "Will Luke use the Force to hit the exhaust port and blow it up, or will he use the targeting computer to hit the exhaust port and blow it up.", then you have a Nar game. Whether or not he succeeds in blowing it up might never be in doubt (like it would in a Gamist or Sim game).
I feel that Character Exploration is more about "How does my avatar's character, his personality, feel about issue X." It's internal, and how you respond doesn't change the challenges or the behavior of the character. Narrativist play tends to be more "Given that the GM has just forced Choice X or Choice Y (or Choice Z, doing nothing) about Issue X for me, how do I respond?" It's external, and how you respond determines what happens in the story. But you are right, the difference is very subtle between Deep Immersion Character Exploration and Narrativist Play.
"Narrative" creative agendas, by the way, got it's name when it used to be called "Dramatic" need, but got changed. "Dramatic" had too many connotations with particular style of play. When the word Drama got used to describe a certain type of technique (instead of rolling dice, whoever has authority describes what happens.), the name changed. Now that "Narration Rights" from Authority issues has entered the jargon, the term is all confusing again.
That said: The way I finally understood it is that Creative Agenda (Nar / Sim / Gam), despite the word "Agenda" right there, is all about game theory and not about practical application. Practical application, in my head, needs the feedback from a session. If you are rewarded (by the game mechanics or by the group) for stepping up to the Challenges? You've played a Gamist game. If you went into the game saying "I want to be rewarded for playing Narrativist," then you have Dissonance. If you are rewarded (either by the game mechanics or the group) for addressing Premise? Then you are playing a Narrativist game.
Also yes: games based on TV shows (like Serenity) are often good vehicles for Narrativist Play. Unfortunately, they tend to be designed around a Gamist/Sim bias: Unless your group is created to be a rag-tag band living on the frontier fringes of a civilized universe, taking whatever jobs they can to stay free, then there isn't really a whole lot of rules to the rule book. What if the game was designed around, instead of a Guns rating, Jane has a Loyalty rating, and the dice roll isn't whether or not Jane can successfully shoot the Alliance guy kidnapping River, but does he shoot the bad guy or give in and turn over River? It'd be a very different sort of character sheet.
-Fred
mcv:
Quote from: John Adams on February 11, 2009, 08:40:11 AM
I read the articles and thought I understood Creative Agendas. I didn't. Then I got my long time Sim group to play Capes which is about as un-Sim as you can get. It takes it's Creative Agenda (Nar supported by Gam) and hits it with a nine-pound hammer. It isn't subtle. I tried to make sure we followed the rules as written, but we screwed up as often as not. Didn't matter, we got close enough to "get it" or at least to understand that this was a completely different kind of game than we usually played. One of my friends exclaimed afterward "but that was NOT ROLE-PLAYING!!!". That's what a new Creative Agenda feels like the first time.
That's interesting. Our "new guy" also had us play Capes half a year ago. Didn't trigger my roleplaying-button at all. Also, I don't think we had a theme or moral dilemma we were addressing, so I guess we were playing pure Gamist? It felt like a somewhat story-oriented game that wasn't an RPG. A bit like Once Upon A Time, I think, but with more mechanics (although it's been years since I played that; all I can remember about it is that the guy with the longest beard begins). But when I hear "Gamist", I think D&D focusing on killing the monsters and looting their stuff, getting XPs, leveling up, and finding an optimal build. That is something I do recognise as roleplaying, just not my kind of roleplaying.
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Ever play with someone who just wanted to win? You wondered if he really understood what role-playing was all about, right? That was Gamism. It's fun and it's just as valid as the kind of play you and I usually do. The two Agendas just don't usually mix very well.
To me, winning and roleplaying just doesn't belong together. You don't win life. Stories aren't won either. My understanding of Gamism was about beating the challenges the GM throws at you, resource management, building the most powerful character, that sort of stuff. Can be fun, but doesn't strike me as as deep or meaningful as a more realistic approach to the world and the characters. And while it can be mixed, it tends to make the whole game shallower and sliding towards Gamism. At least my kind of gamism. I'm not sure if that fits in your definition of gamism.
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So what does Nar "feel like"? It's story, ON PURPOSE.
Contrast with deep Exploration of Character (where you're really into your PC) where you make decisions based solely on what you feel in the moment the character would do. Nar turns the whole thing upside down. You start with "here's what I want to say" and design a character who must, who cannot possibly escape, engaging that question. Story, but on purpose, front and center all the time.
So to get back to my decisions:
Simulationist decision: Considering Bob the Barbarian's unhappy childhood, his principled stand on X, and his weakness for Y, I think action Z is most appropriate for him.
Narrativist decision: I think it would make a good story if Bob the Barbarian did Z. Or even: to get to what I want to say, Bob needs to do Z.
Is that what you mean?
Actually, you mention designing a character. I sometimes do have some theme or engaging question in mind when I design a character, but once designed, I play him (almost) entirely from the character's own motivation, rather than mine. If I did my work right, the theme or question will come out. But what I'm doing is still mostly Sim, I think.
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Contrast the kind of story that often came out of my Sim games with Story Now. I'd call most of my Sim stories "water cooler stories"; stuff happens and it might be amusing but there usually isn't a Theme in the Lit 101 sense.
I like the description "water cooler stories". And I agree, most of my campaigns have been like that. But they haven't been pure Sim, IMO. They've always had a layer of (what I consider) Gamism. And some Sim games do result in a pretty exciting, dramatic and unexpected story, like the Mad Max-Mad Scientist trainwreck I described above. We didn't start with a theme, but I guess a theme emerged about cultural differences and irreconcilable world views or something like that.
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Story Now stories are all about creating Theme. When I tried to impose a Theme on my Sim game (as the GM) it felt like a square peg in a round hole and I usually had to decide between using Force to push the PC's where I needed them to be in order for things to turn out "right" or letting the players, you know, play their characters and to hell with the story. A good Nar game produces a story with a Theme working with the players, you just don't decide before hand exactly how those big questions will be answered.
But what exactly is the difference in actual play? Do you agree on a theme or some big questions beforehand? Does every player agree not to focus on playing their own characters, but to focus on getting their characters to address those big questions somehow? Because if you don't, I can't really see how you can get to answering those questions. And if you do, aren't you basically limiting the freedom, scope and/or focus of your character? (Maybe that last sentence only means something to a die-hard simulationist.)
And what about moral dilemmas? Ron said Narrativism is all about moral dilemmas, but you can easily address moral dilemmas in character-driven sim-games. I suppose players (or their characters) can decide to avoid those dilemmas or choose the easiest way out, whereas in a narrativist game, they all agree to face the moral dillemas head on?
And should you do agree in advance on what the moral dilemmas are going to be? I guess my problem is that I still have some trouble seeing how Narrativism would work out in practice. How to pull it off, what to agree on in advance, how each player should play, that sort of thing.
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One more contrast. When Luke destroys the Death Star at the end of Star Wars the story and its theme demand that all of those little details line up at exactly that moment. It must happen that way or the story sucks and the Theme goes "poof!". Luke must be the one to fire the shot. He must hit, despite it being an hard shot. He must turn off his targeting computer first. R2 just got fried and can't help him. His human friend, Han, did just help him by getting Vader off his ass.
Lining all of that up is directly at odds with the Sim ideal of "being there" and the internal consistency it usually demands. Either R2 got fried or he didn't based on the die roll and whatever modifiers we use. Han would only get there in time if the Millenium Falcon could in fact fly fast enough, and we might argue about exactly how far he had to go. In my games at least, I would insist that Luke could MISS, which kills the Theme dead in its tracks. Now in some campaigns I would really, really want my story to go just this way and fudge it so that Luke must hit. We'd pretend, more or less, that of course Luke could have missed and wasn't it just so cool that he hit that all important shot. That's not Nar. That's GM-driven Theme in a Story Before Sim game.
Playing Nar I can't script exactly what will happen in advance and I don't need to. All of the characters are set up in such a way that Theme is pretty much going to happen, all we need to do is play. How System can facilitate this is the topic of a great many threads here on the Forge.
But how do you ensure that Luke will make that shot? Many Simulationist games also have plenty of mechanisms that increase the chance you'll succeed when it really counts. CORPS has ass-save-points, Shadowrun2/3 has dice pools and karma, Shadowrun4 has Edge. Hell, even GURPS has extra effort, although that's perhaps a bit too realistic to count. Serenity RPG (not sure if that's a Sim or a Nar game) allows you to use Plot Points that can guarantee success even after you missed (unless you missed by such a big margin that you don't have enough Plot Points, which means you'd better do lots of cool stuff or suffer from Complications in order to earn enough Plot Points for the big finale).
But all of that had little to do with moral dilemmas. In fact, Star Wars (the original movie had least) didn't really have a lot of moral dilemmas, did it? It's plain Good vs Evil.
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But is that what the agendas really mean? ... Is Narrativism about making decisions that suit the character from the character's perspective (Nope, that sounds like Sim), or is it about making decisions that make a cool story?
That last part is very close. When the overall goal of the whole group is to "make a cool story" (with a Theme) and you actually sit down and do it, then you have reached your group's Creative Agenda, which is Narritivism. I phrase it that way to emphasize that it's what actually happens in play over time that matters.
So now we have:
1. Moral dilemmas
2. Everybody makes decisions based on what makes the best story (according to a theme)
3. Luke needs to hit that deathstar
Is that it? Do I need all three to have Nar? What do I have when I have only one? Because I still get the impression that the line between (my kind of) Sim and Nar is really fuzzy. Really, really fuzzy.
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In discussions like this that sounds so nebulous. It's easy to pick specific moments where you think you can see the Agenda at work, but those moments are not themselves the Creative Agenda. Stringing lots of those moments together over time as a group is what makes your Creative Agenda.
So mostly you balance between different Creative Agendas? Alternate bits of Sim with bits of Nar or Gam? Ofcourse then you have the problem how to get everybody to do Sim or Nar at the same time. I suppose it can be frustrating if one player spots a perfect opportunity for a great twist in the story, and another decides to maximise his profit from that scene (which is a bit how I've come to interpret gamism, I think).
mcv:
Quote from: FredGarber on February 11, 2009, 12:40:28 PM
To chime on on the Star Wars Example, if the Conflict (and maybe the dice roll) at the end of the Death Star trench is "Will Luke use the Force to hit the exhaust port and blow it up, or will he use the targeting computer to hit the exhaust port and blow it up.", then you have a Nar game. Whether or not he succeeds in blowing it up might never be in doubt (like it would in a Gamist or Sim game).
Thanks! This really makes it a lot more clear. It's not about whether he hits or misses, it's a choice between relying on proven technology or putting his faith in a hokey religion. That's the dilemma here. (Not sure if it's a moral one, but it's definitely a dillemma.)
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I feel that Character Exploration is more about "How does my avatar's character, his personality, feel about issue X." It's internal, and how you respond doesn't change the challenges or the behavior of the character.
Or his personality, for that matter. I can see where you're going.
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Narrativist play tends to be more "Given that the GM has just forced Choice X or Choice Y (or Choice Z, doing nothing) about Issue X for me, how do I respond?" It's external, and how you respond determines what happens in the story. But you are right, the difference is very subtle between Deep Immersion Character Exploration and Narrativist Play.
The comprehension that suddenly seems to break through suggests that in Nar, you let the decisions in the game shape your character's personality, whereas in Sim, the personality shapes the decisions. Is that (part of) it?
In Sim, characters can grow and change too, ofcourse, but it's not a focus of the game. It's just something that happens. Slowly. You wake up, and you realise your character isn't the same person he was at the start of the campaign. In Nar, it's at the end of the session that you realise he's changed. This is a really interesting angle that I think I can work with.
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"Narrative" creative agendas, by the way, got it's name when it used to be called "Dramatic" need, but got changed. "Dramatic" had too many connotations with particular style of play. When the word Drama got used to describe a certain type of technique (instead of rolling dice, whoever has authority describes what happens.), the name changed. Now that "Narration Rights" from Authority issues has entered the jargon, the term is all confusing again.
From an old Threefold Model FAQ I got the impression that simulationism isn't quite what it used to be either. Words, meanings and distinctions change, and that makes this all very confusing. But I think I just got something really useful out of this, thanks to you.
Whether it's really what you mean by Narrativism, having personalities shaped and changed by decisions instead of the other way around is definitely something I intend to try in my group.
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That said: The way I finally understood it is that Creative Agenda (Nar / Sim / Gam), despite the word "Agenda" right there, is all about game theory and not about practical application. Practical application, in my head, needs the feedback from a session. If you are rewarded (by the game mechanics or by the group) for stepping up to the Challenges? You've played a Gamist game. If you went into the game saying "I want to be rewarded for playing Narrativist," then you have Dissonance. If you are rewarded (either by the game mechanics or the group) for addressing Premise? Then you are playing a Narrativist game.
That doesn't help me nearly as much, I'm afraid. One of my most satisfying RPG experiences, despite its glacial speed, is a GURPS PBeM I'm currently in where I've never received any experience points, or a word of appreciation, for that matter. The fact that I can get in my characters (somewhat repulsive) skin and act based his egocentric and mysogynistic personality and have it all work out fine, is more than enough reward for me.
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Also yes: games based on TV shows (like Serenity) are often good vehicles for Narrativist Play. Unfortunately, they tend to be designed around a Gamist/Sim bias: Unless your group is created to be a rag-tag band living on the frontier fringes of a civilized universe, taking whatever jobs they can to stay free, then there isn't really a whole lot of rules to the rule book. What if the game was designed around, instead of a Guns rating, Jane has a Loyalty rating, and the dice roll isn't whether or not Jane can successfully shoot the Alliance guy kidnapping River, but does he shoot the bad guy or give in and turn over River? It'd be a very different sort of character sheet.
It would. But then wouldn't you be letting the game mechanics make a decision that the player should be making? Or is that the whole point?
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