Roleplaying Stories
weaselheart:
Recently I had a lot of questions about play balance in Sorcerer, which led me to do a lot of background reading.
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=29500.0
I write short stories as a hobby. As well as having a good time at the gaming table, I like to use roleplaying texts and theory to help me understand what a "story" is. I think the work done on narrativist roleplay has helped me a lot in this regard.
Part of my reading led me to this:
Quote from: Ron Edwards
To engage in a social, creative activity, three things are absolutely required. Think of music, theater, quilting, whatever you'd like. These principles also apply to competitive games and sports, but that is not to the present point.
1. You have to trust that the procedures work - look, these instruments make different noises, so we can make music; look, this ball is bouncey, so we can toss and dribble it
2. You have to want to do it, now, here, with these people - important! (a) as opposed to other activities, (b) as opposed to "with anybody who'll let me"
3. You have to try it out, to reflect meaningfully on the results, and to try again - if it's worth doing, it's worth learning to do better; failure is not disaster, improvement is a virtue
... which I think is correct. I'm particularly interested in point (3).
I also found, in the preface to the Sorcerer's Soul book:
Quote from: Ron Edwards
Over time, we will all be able to enjoy one another's stories as well, on the same basis as enjoying a movie, novel or play.
The goal is to assemble, sustain, and continue to add to a genuine artistic community, proud of what we do and willing to develop it among one another's perceptions. Coherent role-playing should lead to coherent stories emerging, as well as the enjoyment of those stories and the techniques to produce them.
So my question is, has anyone done this?
I don't mean the "actual play" forum, which is very interesting for helping people understand play and a great way of diagnosing problems, but frequently full of metagame information (player names, kickers, bangs, prep work, etc.)
What I mean is, has anyone:
a) Written their play up as a story, and then,
b) used fictional techniques to analyse how good a story it was? Perhaps also,
c) Found out how well it relates to an outside audience.
I.e. seen whether the promise of narrativist play is borne out empirically?
greyorm:
I'm very fond of how much Narrativism and GNS has helped me with understanding fiction and writing as well, however:Quote from: weaselheart on March 27, 2010, 04:56:43 AM
I.e. seen whether the promise of narrativist play is borne out empirically?
If I'm reading you correctly, this is a mistake. The promise of narrativist play is not to produce written stories (or to produce some kind of thing that can be expressed a short-story, movie, or play). The promise of narrativist play is to produce stories in play at the table as part of a shared creative gaming endeavor.
That is, as much as removing spaces and punctuation unmakes a work of written fiction or removing the actors from a play destroys it as a theatrical creative work, removing the game and social parts of play removes an actual part of the story-thing created, because those things are integral elements of it.
What narrativism produces is momentary shared fiction, hopefully mutually appreciated by the participants; it doesn't really "live" outside the group experiencing and co-creating it. You may be able to retool it into some other type of entertainment, but it does not produce "stories" as they are on the page as a function of play.
"So Joe had Kayon the Almighty give the prince the bird and Fred couldn't stop laughing about it" (or whatever) is as much a part of the story-thing as the character dialogue and actions, as are the Kickers, the Bangs, that one roll everyone held their breath for, and all that metagame stuff, etc.
While like them, Narrativist play is not a movie, novel, or play. It is a jam session. Everyone brings their instrument and plays and adds and riffs and contributes to what you're all making and appreciating. That group is your artistic community, the community being discussed in the quote. The appreciation and shared techniques, the coherency and perceptions and so forth being talked about are for your group. Not for people outside the jam session. Not for all the people in the big world beyond to whom you might someday sell a record (or story, or whatever).
And, yes, we're involved in our own little jam sessions so we're part of this larger community, too, and we occasionally say, "Hey, we did this riff last week when jamming, and it had wings." or "Damn, this one thing we did, it sounded like two cats tied together and used to beat a carpet." And as a bigger group, we can all enjoy that or learn from it or whatever, but we're not going to the jam session to produce the things for the enjoyment or placation of those other groups.
The group in the quote is your group at the table.
jburneko:
I wanted to build on what Raven said. I think one of the biggest divide between "story oriented" gamers has to do with the roll of narrative structure in the procedures of play. Movies, Plays, Novels and TV Shows all have very particular structures. They have "beats" in them that most people can identify and certain "types" of stories have very specific and widely recognized beat patterns. There are certain players who simply aren't happy unless the game matches those beats. If they can't look back on play and say, "Yup, that looks EXACTLY like a mid-80s action movie" from a structural point of view then the game was a failure.
The Big Model actually identifies that kind of play as a form of Simulationism (Right To Dream) because the play priority of the group is that the result conforms to a pre-agreed upon aesthetic. They are satisfied because the artifact of play "looks like" the thing they wanted to construct. Most Narrativist (Story Now) play is wholly unconcerned with structural fidelity to existing media. What matters is that moment-to-moment the events of play emotionally resonates with the play group for the same reasons that stories do: the situations at hand are compelling in human terms to the audience.
I can tell you right now that if I wrote down any of my Sorcerer & Sword games, not only would they be pretty bad from a narrative structure point of view they don't actually look anything like a Conan or Elric story. Emotional content wise, yes, they have the aesthetic vibe of those stories. Structurally? Nope. Not once and I don't even try. But I can tell you that moment-to-moment the fiction is gripping to us at the table because it's all built from stuff we personally connect with and care about.
That's why when playing Sorcerer & Sword constructing a character "like" an existing character and expecting similar outcomes and results is problematic. The game isn't built for the player to before play decide the shape and structure of his character's narrative. It only guarantees that his commitment, contribution and gusto will not be meaningless.
Jesse
weaselheart:
I don't understand. I thought telling stories and addressing theme was what the whole narrative idea of roleplaying was about. For example:
Quote from: Ron Edwards on February 11, 2006, 10:04:06 AM
I'm going to start with a claim that a human being can routinely understand, enjoy, and (with some practice) create stories. I think most postmodernism is arrant garbage, so I'll say that a story is a fictional series of events which present a conflict and a resolution, with the emergent/resulting audience experience of "theme." I also think that stories concern a fairly limited range of possible conflicts, but the angles one might use for presentation, and the interactions among the range, make for quite a stunning array of individual examples or expressions of them.
Again, my claim is that this is a human capacity which is swiftly learned and shaped into a personal characteristic ("what stories I like") as a basic feature of the human experience, used as a constant means of touchpoints during communication, along the whole spectrum of polite conversation to icebreaking all the way to the most intimate or critical of conversations. I am completely unconvinced by the suggestion that what we call a "story" today is a local historical artifact, or that people in past epochs or in different cultures had or have utterly different fundamentals for stories.
My reading of this is that there's something called a story that's cross-cultural and cross-media. To be honest, I don't want to just quote other people's opinion, particularly if I'm not seeing the whole picture. So, let's say this is something I believe - that to some degree, stories are universal and contain similar elements ( protagonist(s), conflict, desire, resolution, etc ).
Quote from: jburneko on March 29, 2010, 04:13:48 PM
I can tell you right now that if I wrote down any of my Sorcerer & Sword games ... they don't actually look anything like a Conan or Elric story.
... this I understand. Naturally each story is different from any other. And I can see that you wouldn't want to simulate anyone else's fiction.
Quote from: jburneko on March 29, 2010, 04:13:48 PM
I can tell you right now that if I wrote down any of my Sorcerer & Sword games, not only would they be pretty bad from a narrative structure point of view ...
... but this, I don't. Surely a story is a story is a story? Cross cultural boundaries and everything?
Quote from: greyorm on March 27, 2010, 02:48:29 PM
That is, as much as removing spaces and punctuation unmakes a work of written fiction or removing the actors from a play destroys it as a theatrical creative work, removing the game and social parts of play removes an actual part of the story-thing created, because those things are integral elements of it.
Let's take a movie example. I agree there's a massive difference between a film with actors and the script, but when Hollywood types want to work out whether to film something, they don't get a bunch of actors together. They read the script, and decide whether it approximates to a story that will attract people. Same with a stageplay. I like watching plays, but I'm happy to read the script for Hamlet.
Quote from: greyorm on March 27, 2010, 02:48:29 PM
While like them, Narrativist play is not a movie, novel, or play. It is a jam session. Everyone brings their instrument and plays and adds and riffs and contributes to what you're all making and appreciating. That group is your artistic community, the community being discussed in the quote.
An improv act may look weak when transcripted, but if it doesn't approximate to anything like a story, wouldn't the actors like to work out why, and try to learn from that?
Don't get me wrong - I'm not trying to minimise anyone's fun. If tabletop rpg the narrative way is fun, then great. But isn't the idea to produce workable narrative that addresses theme? Not that it has to be written up as a story, but that if it was, it would be readable?
Ron Edwards:
Please let me get to this in a little while. The current dialogue has located (and entered) every possible minor qualifier, each threatening to become its own quagmire.
The issue and answer are extraordinarily simple. As this is, however, the first week of the new term, I am limited in my time and must call for patience - and no more posting until I get to it, please.
Best, Ron
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