Establishing Premise in Serenity RPG
JB:
About Loyalty as a premise: Yeah, it's a big theme on the show. Depending on where you want to go during play, you may not want to make it a primary theme in your game.
Lemme toss out the biggest difference between 'Premise' in a game and 'Premise' in something like a novel or a script.
* In a novel, the theme is 'asked and answered' by the author. As a reader or viewer, it's all there already, just waiting for you to uncover it. And as the author, you can answer the question first and then very carefully construct and assemble the pieces in order to 'state your case'.
* In a game, you're starting by asking the question and then answering it thru play. In that respect, it's similar to what the author does, but without anywhere near the level of control over the story that an author has. And since you don't have total control over everything in the story, you don't always know just what's gonna happen next or what side of the argument the final tally is going to be on, which is pretty similar to the role of the reader or viewer.
Let me tie this into the Loyalty thing: You watch Firefly and the Loyalty question comes up a lot.
Let's state a Premise of, "Which is more important, being loyal or getting the gold?" (I'm over simplifying - most good premises are going to be a bit broader or deeper, like the ones Vincent poses above. This lets you approach the question from more angles, and thus build a more convincing answer. But let's keep this simple so the example doesn't become a novel itself.)
As observed in the show, the characters most often come down on the 'pro-loyalty' side of the issue. By the end of the episode you're left with a pretty compelling 'argument' for choosing to be loyal when the question comes up. I could state this Theme in a number of ways, but lets go with, "Loyalty is more valuable than money."
Cool. By taking those characters and putting them in those situations, having them take the actions they do and presenting the consequences of those actions, Joss Wedon or whoever makes a case for 'Loyalty'. Notice that you can do this by making positive or negative examples of characters - if Jayne chooses 'Take the money and to hell with being Loyal' and then dies in a hail of gunfire, it's making a pretty strong argument for loyalty.
But here's the rub: If you're going to play a Story Now game and make the story about loyalty, the game has to be open to the other side of the argument. What about the movie where everyone's trying to screw everyone else for some prize, and the most ruthless guy wins? It's still about loyalty, still asking, "Which is more important, being loyal or getting the gold?" but the final tally comes down on the side of, "Gold is more valuable than being loyal." (Again, I'm simplifying for the sake of example. That kind of film is going to have Premise/Theme of something like, "There is no true loyalty when this kind of money is involved, so go for the damn gold!")
So finally, we get where I'm going with all of this:
Joss Wedon can decide to make his show about loyalty and ensure that the show comes out as an argument for loyalty by showing that loyalty is consistently the best choice.
If YOU make your game about Loyalty, you may end up with an argument for or against loyalty - Characters could be loyal and victorious, or disloyal and defeated, or loyal and defeated, or disloyal and victorious - and noone knows at the beginning how it's going turn out in the end.
That's cool, and that's why I would play that game. (Mountain Witch, anyone?) But I'm not going to make 'Loyalty' a Premise of play if I don't want to open the doors to those options. You can set it up so 'loyalty' isn't really an issue to be addressed thru play, and focus on other things instead.
Okie, this is getting long and I still haven't gotten around to deconstructing the Serenity RPG. I'm still willing to do that, but if the option is there to play Dogs In The Vineyard, or even just read the game, I would say do that first. That'll give you more traction for getting a grip on this 'Narrative/Story Now' thing than revamping Serenity, IMO - The analogy that occurs to me is this: If you want to know what it's like to ride a race bike, just take Vincent's excellent machine out for a spin. Then we'll worry about hotrodding a Serenity 650 for the track.
Cheers,
J
mcv:
Quote from: JB on February 13, 2009, 12:16:46 PM
Okie, this is getting long and I still haven't gotten around to deconstructing the Serenity RPG. I'm still willing to do that, but if the option is there to play Dogs In The Vineyard, or even just read the game, I would say do that first. That'll give you more traction for getting a grip on this 'Narrative/Story Now' thing than revamping Serenity, IMO - The analogy that occurs to me is this: If you want to know what it's like to ride a race bike, just take Vincent's excellent machine out for a spin. Then we'll worry about hotrodding a Serenity 650 for the track.
That was my plan. I'm seeing the group tomorrow (for a birthday instead of a game this time), and I'll insist that the guy who brough up narrativism GMs a game of DitV or something similar.
greyorm:
I think it's important to recognize that the game won't make play Narrativist unless the players do, and we're always cautioning people not to put their hopes into games or expect games to change their play groups just by whipping out a game. So I'm on-board with the suggestion of "play some Narrativist RPGs" to get your feet wet and hopefully see how they work (or might work in the right environment), but I'm also wary of the suggestion as well because it isn't going to be a magic bullet.
So, yes, do it. It's a good step towards understanding! But don't put a whole bunch of expectations into play, just have fun.
Christopher Kubasik:
This has been an awesome thread.
I want to expand on some of the points Marshall brought up and tie them back specifically to Firefly.
Marshall wrote, "right down to having rules for the Black acting as a character," in reference to having the thematic Issues personified by characters within an RPG game.
It's important to note that that Firefly, and the movie Serenity, do this already.
The Reavers. The Alliance scientists who experimented on the population of Miranda. The damage that was done to River (making her almost another person when her "possession" clicked on.)
It is not possible to overstate the importance of this.
Many people, when they discuss Firefly in RPG terms, always discuss the crew, the ship, the bits. But they seem to fail to notice that the arc of the first and only season was built around River and the experiments of the Alliance. (Not in this thread, but in general.)
The original, two hour pilot lays all this out clearly. For the first hour we're introduced to the characters, we have terrific Joss Whedon banter and so forth. But at the mid-point of the pilot, River -- naked, vulnerable and terrified -- crawls out of the freeze unit. The show changes at this point -- you simply can't have a girl that exposed and freaked out without changing the rules. The rules are changed because something is wrong.
No matter all the other moral complications, River, the Alliance experiments, and the Reavers are the other side of the moral coin, dramatized and personified. There is no show without this.
(I'll add quickly that Whedon conceived of the show as a seven year arc. Many of the plot elements of Serenity are from what would have been the second season. The original two hour pilot, which I just watched again tonight and is amazing television, was deemed too moody by the FOX executives, who demanded a happier captain and bigger than life characters. In short, the tv series was not the tv series that Whedon actually envisioned. To get that, watch the original two hour pilot, and then watch Serenity.)
So, Martjin, as you think about your Firefly game, keep in mind that the show isn't just a crew running around doing space hijinks. To make it a Firefly story, you'll have to find that way of making the Blackness literal -- personified by characters and their actions.
Moreover, there will need to be something wrong -- a transgression that anchors the show morally but still creates ambiguity. Remember, no one lives with more freedom in the Firefly universe than the Reavers. They live by no rules and break every taboo of human culture. They are the embodiment of The Black... and every character in the show has to place themselves on the spectrum of freedom to better or worse effect.
Without the GM manifesting these moral issues with transgressive actions and characters for the PCs to interact with, you don't have Firefly, you have Guys Running Around Making Money in Space. Which might be fun. But it will gut the attempt to grab after what made the show actually work.
mcv:
Quote from: Christopher Kubasik on February 14, 2009, 01:13:19 AM
This has been an awesome thread.
Yours in an awesome response. You make a really good point that always has a tendency to go really wrong in my games.
Quote
Moreover, there will need to be something wrong -- a transgression that anchors the show morally but still creates ambiguity. Remember, no one lives with more freedom in the Firefly universe than the Reavers. They live by no rules and break every taboo of human culture. They are the embodiment of The Black... and every character in the show has to place themselves on the spectrum of freedom to better or worse effect.
Without the GM manifesting these moral issues with transgressive actions and characters for the PCs to interact with, you don't have Firefly, you have Guys Running Around Making Money in Space. Which might be fun. But it will gut the attempt to grab after what made the show actually work.
Yeah, that's exactly what I want to prevent. I mean, I do want them to run around and try to make money, but that should be a backdrop, and not the central focus of the game. Another reason why I'd like to abstract the money away completely, although that will certainly lessen the effect of finances as motivator in conflicts. In other words: I'm not really sure what to do with that yet.
But yeah, something needs to be terribly wrong, and that needs to point towards some terrible secret. But it's hard to find something suitable. I'd rather not use a River-clone, because I don't want this game to be a direct copy of Firefly. I want the players to make their own decisions, not copy the TV show. But on the other hand, messing with people is a lot more wrong than messing with stuff.
In my GURPS Traveller game I had a few starting points for a big conspiracy between nobles. I had no idea yet what the conspiracy was, but the players had found a MacGuffin: a big aquarium psionic shrimp-like creatures that could form a hive-mind to drive anyone mad that wants to kill them. They're extremely rare creatures, and somebody wants it back real bad. But it's not wrong the way messing with River's head is. But what?
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