What is Right to Dream for?
David Berg:
P.S. I play a ruthless character. By game's end, he winds up all alone. So, was this simply realizing an extension of my vision for the character? Was it the fiction providing genre-appropriate conseuqences for my character's actions, even in ways that surprised me? Or was this a moral judgment by one or more players? I don't think you can answer this question without looking at how the game was played; and I think the distinction from my last post is a crucial dimension of that "how".
Frank Tarcikowski:
Simon, this is a great thread. Thanks for starting it.
You linking those discussions from Anyway has been very important to me for seeing where you’re coming from. I remember reading them back then and thinking, ‘Wow, Vincent, you have no idea.’ So maybe I’m just that guy he mentions who identifies as Sim, but then, I’ve read all the constructive denial stuff and discussed this with Ron on the forums and in person, I daresay I’ve advocated the merits of The Right to Dream on these forums on more than one occasion, and all I can say is, that thing Vincent is describing there sounds terribly dull to me.
Now I’m sure there is a functional way of playing with a Creative Agenda that is The Right to Dream, constructive denial and all, that also matches Vincents description. But that’s not a comprehensive view on the Agenda, more like an example. Vincent is explaining the difference between one particular way of playing Story Now, and one particular way of playing The Right to Dream. Simon, you said you do not want to make a point of labelling your session and I am not trying to, all I am saying is, don’t get caught up in Synecdoche. I might offer this post as an example where a paladin just wouldn’t do that got thrown straight out the window, in a game that I would consider as Right to Dream as it gets.
That said, what’s the use in The Right to Dream, as a term? Well, that’s a very fundamental question about GNS, the most fundamental one, in fact, that you can ask. I’m certainly not the one to answer it.
Concerning the moral dimension, I guess three things should be kept apart: The moral dimension of player actions (at the table), the moral dimension of the characters’ actions, and how much (or little) the players care about the moral dimension of the characters’ actions. I used to think that players caring about the moral dimension of the characters’ actions was Story Now, because moral was present in a lot of examples and discussions. But Luke’s angle is an interesting one. Moral is maybe best looked at like Exploration: It’s part of any role-playing, but is it what play is all about?
To make a guess, I would say your Traveller game wasn’t about answering the question you phrased as Premise and thus creating Theme. The moral questions were present in your game, were part of it, part of the fun. They colored your expectations and the way you added to your “package” of shared imagination. As such, it makes a lot of sense to look at your play that way, but then, check out what you wrote there: “How does a person make their way in an indifferent universe?”
There you got Setting (“an indifferent universe”), you got Character (“a person”, meaning, I suppose, a character with something of a personality), and you got Situation (“making your way”, meaning, I suppose, a struggling but self-determined existence). So, if I’m guessing correctly, that was your “package” right there, your “Dream”, the thing play was all about. Phrasing it as a Premise-like question just helped, in this particular instance, to get a grip on it. Does any of this make sense to you, Simon?
- Frank
Simon C:
This thread is garnering a surprisingly positive reaction. Perhaps my intentions aren't clear enough? Essentially what I'm arguing is that the label "Right to Dream" isn't a useful one, and should be discarded. My next thread is gonna be about Step on Up.
Let the flames begin?
I want to explain why I think Luke's definition of an RPG is useful. His focus on "ethical choices" lays bare what I think lies at the core of what a Shared Imagined Space is for. We don't need a shared imagined space to enjoy the details of a world. We can do that by just writing about it (and I think a lot of obsessive setting designers are doing just this). We don't need a shared imagined space to imagine ourselves in a different world. We can read books for that (and I think a lot of obsessive setting book readers are doing that). The key factor that a shared imagined space allows us is to act, and to have that action interpreted within the ethical framework that all human acts are interpreted in. That's what it's about. Roleplaying gives us the illusion that our characters' actions are human acts, and subject to the interpretation and judgement of the other players. Even the strictly immersive, zero action games that Eero talks about are like this. Our characters act (or fail to act), and we think about the meaning of those actions - their significance to ourselves. I think all the acts of a character in a roleplaying game are symbolic acts. They have meaning only through our moral judgement of them.
So what's creative agenda? I think the distinction of Right to Dream, Story Now, and Step on Up has distracted us from a more useful understanding of creative agenda. To clarify, my understanding is that creative agenda is the skewer that holds together all the other parts of play. Exploration is "what happens next". Creative agenda is "why do we care?" I think that "why we care" is always about the symbolic meaning of the characters' actions, their relevance to a theme, a premise.
So in my Traveller-esque game, our theme of "How does a person get by in an uncaring universe" informed all of our play. As Frank puts it, it gave us setting (an indifferent universe), characters (people unfettered with obligations or scruples) and situation (making their way). I think Frank's right that our play wasn;t really about "answering" the Premise, but then I think a lot of canonically Story Now play isn't either. The premise was a framework for interpreting the acts of the characters - a lens, an organising principle. A creative agenda.
Some games are tightly wound around their premise. The premise is tightly defined, even if it is unstated. They have system that makes the relevance of character actions to the theme explicit, and helps players interpret actions in the context of the theme. They have characters that are appropriate to the theme (in the sense of being invested in issues that reflect on the premise), situations that will impell those characters to action, and a clear space for the judgement of those characters according to the theme. Historically we've called this kind of play Story Now.
Some games are loosely built around their premise. The premise is loosely defined, broad, probably bland or phatic, and almost certainly unstated. There may be more than one premise. They have systems that allow the characters to act, but not neccesarily that drive those actions to refer to the premise. They have characters that may be relevant to the theme, or that may not. Some of the characters' actions are relevant to the theme, but others are not. I think we've tended to call this kind of play Right to Dream.
Between these two extremes there's a broad area of intermingling.
Sometimes we're all on the same page about what that theme is, and we can easily appreciate each others' characters' actions in the game as relevant to the theme and thus worthy of our care. Other times we each see the theme differently, our characters' actions seem hard to interpret to the others. They seem to act at random. I think that's what has been called creative agenda clash.
So that's what I reckon.
David Berg:
I'll buy that the G/N/S distinction has distracted some folks from possibly adopting the focus you're proposing: varying approaches to Premise and Theme. So how exactly is your proposed focus more useful? I'd be happy to see what it's good at that GNS isn't...
Simon C:
Excellent question David.
I'm torn between starting a new thread, and continuing this one. There's another piece of Actual Play that I'd like to refer to.
I'll do it here, with the understanding that it might get split to a different thread.
A friend of mine is a fan of the White Wolf game Exalted. I don't really see the appeal myself, but he's a good friend so we often end up talking about his plans for play, his prep for games, plotlines, NPCs and so on. Exalted's a big old mess of stuff, with so much going on in the world that there seems to be no room for characters within it. It's a mess thematically as well, with all kinds of different things going on. I've had really bad experiences with the game where play was just an unconnected string of events - things happening with no meaning or significance. There were moments where fun almost emerged, but there was so much stuff present that wasn't connected to anything to do with the characters, and the characters were so disparate in their goals, that nothing felt meaningful. In terms of my new understanding of creative agenda, play didn't coalesce around a theme at all.
And yet, people seem to have consistently fun play with the game. What are they doing to achieve that? How do my friend and I capture that?
What I've found, using insights from this new understanding of creative agenda, is that selectively editing down the content of the game, creating a contained situation, and NPCs appropriate to that situation, makes for a better game. In other words, to make a fun game out of a whole mess of possible content, you need to edit with an eye for theme. We've done that with the game he's currently planning. We looked at the range of possible elements to include, the characters that the players were interested in, and some of the issues they evoked, and created a tightly bound situation around those characters. There's no "Premise" in the Story Now sense, but there is a theme in the sense that I now understand it. It's something like "Can the powerless, working together, defeat the powerful?" or maybe "Does 'the system' always win?" We have characters all with their own vendettas against those more powerful than them, a vast and ever-unfolding conspiracy involving the highest levels of power, a contained place for all the events to take place, and a triggering event that sets the actors in motion.
I want to make it clear that what we're creating is NOT a recipe for Story Now play. There's explicitly no doubt that the characters are the heroes of the story, no question that uncovering the conspiracy is a good act. We don't care what it may cost the protagonists. But a tight theme is still a recipe for better play. Diagnosing my friend's preferred play style as "Right to Dream", and then going on to tell him about what that entails isn't going to help him make a fun game at all. Talking about theme and editing to clarify theme does.
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