Thematic Play
Simon C:
Eero,
Hi! This is just brief and I'll try to give a more full response to all the other posters tomorrow. I think that I've been using the term "theme pretty loosely, cetainly not in the way the Big Model uses it, and probably not in a very consistent fashion. So you're understandibly confused.
Note though that I formulated the theme as "Can heroes, working together, overcome evil?". The "evil" in that meaning something more general than just Bane. I'm not sure if that makes a difference for you, but for me that means that what we were interested in was looking at what problems were surmountable - what difference the heroes could make overall, whether they could make the world a better place, rather than stricly whether they could defeat Lord Bane.
I'd be happy if my exploration of theme became a way of understanding some Right to Dream play. My suspicion is that examining this leads to finding that there's a continuum between this kind of play and what's been called Story Now (rather than a divide), but I'm open to the possibility that there is a qualitative difference. I think examining exactly what this difference is would be interesting.
Other people have talked a lot about "questioning" or "challenging" theme, and I'm starting to think that I actually don't know what that means.
Simon C:
Ok, more full responses:
Contracyle,
As I said in the first post, I'm prepared to accept that your Vampire play might be different to the play I've experienced, and that theme might not be useful to understanding your play. That said, I'd be interested to know more about how you play Vampire. How would you like to start your own Actual Play thread? One of the things that makes me think that most (or all) successful Vampire play focuses on a theme is the way the setting material is selectively edited to create situation. I've seen very few successful Vampire games that start with the players making whatever character they choose, and then the Storyteller working them into a coherant game. The successful Vampire play I've seen usually starts with a pitch like "Let's play the clean-up crew of a powerful elder" or "Let's play the four most powerful vampires in the city" and so on. It's my belief that that kind of focusing usually centers the game around a theme. Does that match your experience?
"Good vs. Evil" is by far not the limit of themes that can be explored, and I'd agree with you that Vampire usually isn't good for exploring themes like that (although I think you could do an interesting game about "What is Evil?" with Vampire, maybe.)
More broadly, I'm beginning to think that our central disagreement is about whether RPG play can be useful understood as a text. I tend to think that a textual analysis of rpg play as it happens (and not just after the fact) is useful, hence my focus on theme. My sense is that you don't agree. Is that an accurate characterisation? I think it's an interesting question, and worth exploring.
Caldis,
I think what you're actually talking about is Situation. I agree that there's a big difference in play between a game like I described (where seriously questioning the party's goals the structure of the party would remove the character from play) and a game where questioning the party's goals is an accepted and desired part of play. I think your characterisation of how that difference changes the theme of play is accurate.
What we're talking about, I think, is creating fit characters. In my game, a fit character is one who is prepared to try to overcome Evil. A character that's no longer answering the question of whether good can overcome evil isn't a fit character for the game, and leaves play. I don't see that there's a qualitative difference between that, and Dogs in the Vinyard. In Dogs, a fit character is one who's engaged with the question of the use of violence in the pursuit of good. That's a more nuanced theme, for sure (and I think I'm simplifying it some), but it remains that a character in Dogs who's not engaged by the central theme of play leaves the game. That happened a couple of times in the recent Dogs game I played.
Now, I think there's a question of how acceptable it is in practice for characters to leave play this way. I think that's something that varies, but I don't see a pattern in that that maps to particular types of play.
Fred,
I don't really understand the utility of the theme/premise distinction you're making. My experience is that in play, theme is always a question. Sometimes there's a heavily expected answer to that question, and play is more about how the question is answered than what the answer is. But I don't think there's a strict distinction between the two.
Note that neither GNS nor theme are really about player preferences. You can say "I generally prefer Story Now play" or, as I would put it "I prefer games with challenging and complex themes" (and I think the latter is more useful), but the real use for both of these ways of understanding games is in understanding how to create coherant play - how to make design and play choices that provide more fun.
Eero,
Like I said, I think you're using a more rigorous and probably more correct definition of theme and premise than I am. Here's what I'm trying to say:
The question "Can heroes, working together, overcome evil" was a unifying and organising principle throughout play. That question informed choices throughout play, from colour (clean, happy, virtuous "good" folk, and dirty, unhappy, cruel "evil" folk) to techniques (use of challenge to focus on the "Can" in the question) to character (people with the will and means to enact change in the world) and situation (an evil power spreading through the world).
Does that make it clearer for you?
Eero Tuovinen:
Quote from: Simon C on April 10, 2010, 10:39:34 PM
The question "Can heroes, working together, overcome evil" was a unifying and organising principle throughout play. That question informed choices throughout play, from colour (clean, happy, virtuous "good" folk, and dirty, unhappy, cruel "evil" folk) to techniques (use of challenge to focus on the "Can" in the question) to character (people with the will and means to enact change in the world) and situation (an evil power spreading through the world).
That seems very sensible to me as a technique. I'm starting to think that the long GNS-gazetteer that initiated this discussion has led to a lot of wrangling over secondary issues when the basic realization is very simple and useful.
Are you familiar with how TSoY is utilized as a campaign setting for actual play? The original game text wasn't too clear on this point, but since then several people have written on the topic, including Ron and myself: a wide and rambling setting narrative like that included in TSoY is not functional in play for the game depicted by the rules unless a conscious effort is made to frame and define the focus of play by picking a geographical location (due to the nature of the setting geography is drama) and perhaps a viewpoint around which the players create their characters. To me this seems like exactly the technique you advocate here.
Because you've been contrasting this concept of theme as the focus of play with GNS, I'd like to say a few words about that without trying to undermine your substantial point itself: to me it seems that what you're describing is clearly functional, a technique of play, and not at all a matter that challenges or circumscribes Creative Agenda. The fact that using theme as a focusing, informing framework of play seems to bridge the Sim/Nar divide is simply because it is a technique that can be useful within both agenda modes. Likewise, it's not wonder that some games and play experiences among both agendas don't seem to cohere around a theme in this sense: when other technical priorities are involved, thematic coherence of the sort you posit might well be incompatible with the other techniques present. For example, if absolute player autonomy in character concept (a common technique through the '90s) is on the table, then a focusing thematic framework won't be that useful as a secondary technique simply because the autonomic character vision might break the framework.
Assuming I'm not misunderstanding anything, the next useful step might be to use the technique of thematic focus in game design, whatever the Creative Agenda serviced. We've done a bit of that with TSoY - for example, the World of Near explicitly requires the play group to choose a focal framework from within the setting material before characters and created so as to ensure that all player characters are pertinent. I'm sure that much more can be done in this regard as well, especially for dramatic simulationistic play that by nature requires more thematic coordination than many types of narrativism.
contracycle:
Quote from: Simon C on April 10, 2010, 10:39:34 PM
As I said in the first post, I'm prepared to accept that your Vampire play might be different to the play I've experienced, and that theme might not be useful to understanding your play. That said, I'd be interested to know more about how you play Vampire. How would you like to start your own Actual Play thread? One of the things that makes me think that most (or all) successful Vampire play focuses on a theme is the way the setting material is selectively edited to create situation. I've seen very few successful Vampire games that start with the players making whatever character they choose, and then the Storyteller working them into a coherant game. The successful Vampire play I've seen usually starts with a pitch like "Let's play the clean-up crew of a powerful elder" or "Let's play the four most powerful vampires in the city" and so on. It's my belief that that kind of focusing usually centers the game around a theme. Does that match your experience?
I'll do an AP if you want, but it is not clear to me what you would to know, and therefore, what I should say. You suggest my style is odd, and maybe it is, but then again I've been able to join groups with whom I've never played before and fit in perfectly well both as GM and player, so it can't be that odd.
Thing is though, when you talk about editing the material to create situation, thats something I find much easier to digest. I certainly approve of doing this sort thing, but I'm not sure that situation can be translated to theme in a way the term is used in its literary context. However, most of my play has not used even this; it's usually been old fashioned characters-designed-in-isolation, bring 'em all to the table, GM finds a means to integrate them. I can't speak to "how many" games work like this succesfully, not least because ours is not a hobby that lends itself to data collection and any guessing as to the frequency or otherwise of particular techniques can be little more, I think, than projection. Even trying to define what succesful play is is fraught with difficulty.
I certainly agree that good vs. evil type stuff is not the only theme at all, but my point was that my regular group actively avoided this sort of moral questioning. But I still have difficulty with your proposition because it seems so broad, ranging from any control of situation at all to a sort of premise-lite. Theme as such doesn't seem to be very well defined in drama jargon either, so while your use might be relevant to some uses I still find it difficult to understand what it is that you mean by the term exactly. Similarly, I don't really know what mean by "understanding RPG as a text". A text like a novel is usually the creation of one person, and it may well be that you can extract from this certain recurrent patterns of thought that can be construed as theme. Does the same hold when there is not one authorial voice but many, when there is no single mind creating the content under the influence, even subconsciously, of a coherent idea?
As you may know, I make a point of disavowing "story". Not only do I find the term also too broad to be useful, but it doesn't capture what I feel is going on. What I do is "adventures", not stories. Slightly outsize characters in slightly outsize situations: bright colours, explosions, fancy toys, etc. Excitement, danger. At the more serious end, exploration of stuff like different social structures, how life would be in microgravity, and so on. Not moral issues as such. Sometimes, things that might be construed as moral if you were that way inclined; it could be said that my cyberpunk play contained an exploration of the Thatcherite dictum that "there is no such thing as society", and you could, if you insisted, take a moral stand, as it were, for or against that statement. But I don't think you'd have to, and I don't think you (I) would necessarily be aware of it while doing it.
As I have previously opined, I think there is a big difference between theme as some element of human concern, and simply the sculpting of situation and the use of an organising principle to frame play. That latter I can use, and relate to; the former I can't. I definitely don't see a continuum between these that makes them a single thing unviversal to all games.
Simon C:
Eero,
I'm totally getting what you're saying bout TSoY. The game itself doesn't have a strongly hard-coded theme, but rather it's just rich in potential for theme - lots of meaty stuff to hook into, plus system that's going to constantly center play on character-focused themes. So I think my "can heroes overcome Evil" theme wouldn't work well with TSoY, because "Evil" and "Heroes" are going to be constantly undercut by the setting and system of the game. I think the closest you could get with TSoY would be something like "Can you make a positive change in the world?" and you'd play Maldorian revolutionaries or something.
I can understand what you're saying about describing theme as a technique. I'm not sure I agree though. If it is a technique it's a technique of design much more than of play (in the broad sense of design as choosing system, setting, situation, characters and so on). I think during play, theme is a property of the game as a text - something that can be more or less present, can be engaging or phatic, can be strong or weak. I think that differences in attitude to theme can explain incoherant play better and more constructively than GNS incoherance can.
Assuming the existance of Story Now play as a thing distinct from Right to Dream play, what are the distinguishing features when it comes to theme? Can you show that these are qualitative differences rather than quantitative?
Contracycle,
Here's what I would want to know about your play:
How do you choose what system to play? How do you choose what situation to put the characters into once you've chosen system? How do you choose what characters to play?
I suspect your answer will be something like "We do whatever seems interesting". I hope it is, because "Interesting" is exactly what I'm talking about. What makes it interesting? The fact of it being interesting to a human being says to me that it speaks to issues of being a human. Now, it may not be very deep issues, and it doesn't have to be very deeply examined, but I think that a theme is there. Interest is not sustained on lightsabers alone.
Roger,
I just realised I forgot you before. I'm afraid I don't really follow you. I don't know what a "Step on Up" player is, since the GNS agendas describe play, not players. I'm also not sure that systems have theme. Rather I'd say that systems encourage theme (or don't).
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