Thematic Play
contracycle:
Umm, well, I don't know about that last. Of all games, I've played WOD most as a player, and to this day I couldn't tell you what themes were allegedly operating in those games. I could recount anecdotes that stick in the memory, but I am not aware, and was not aware at the time, that any such issues impinged upon the game at all. When I GM, they certainly don't; perhaps because my old regular group generally turned their noses up at anything that smacked remotely of good versus evil. I just don't tend to think in those terms anyway - the idea of structuring play around such issues doesn't really make any intuitive sense to me. To me, if Vamp can be said to have any theme with which I ever engaged, it is the rather loose idea of a "secret history", an underworld that is a truer version of reality than is commonly percieved. That is interesting to explore, but I'm not sure it qualifies as a theme in the sense you use it, and I'm pretty confident it doesn't qualify as a theme in drama-speak.
I'm not saying there is no utlity to looking at theme as an aspect of what happens in games, but I have difficulty in seeing as central. It seems to me that theme, in whatever sense, can be coexistent with a GNS classification of CA. Appreciating the game you describe in that light may well help you understand it, help you build it, help you play it; but I'm unconvinced that it's all you need to know about it.
Roger:
Okay, so let's talk about Theme within Step On Up play.
I'd suggest that Theme for the Step On Up player comes from a very specific place: the mechanics and rules-engine of the system.
Assuming that hypothesis is true, these things naturally follow:
1. Some Themes and families of Themes will be more prevalent than others. Most common: Themes like "Even a lowly peasant with a rusty dagger can fell the mightiest of knights with a lucky blow" or "With enough skill, experience, and luck, a hero can survive even a leap from a 200-foot cliff." Less common: "Love will overcome fear" or "All good things come to those who wait."
2. The Themes pre-exist within the rules engine; the function of the players is to discover them through an Exploration process that is essentially scientific and objective. Theme here is especially not Edwardian Premise.
3. In the common situation where there is a disagreement in Theme between the rules-engine and the other components, the Step On Up players will always side with the rules-engine. Non-Step-On-Uppers may very well side with the other components. Both sides will accuse the other of totally missing the point of the game, which is obvious and self-evident to them. Examples: Vampire: the Masquerade, some versions of Call of Cthulhu.
4. In the less-common, but increasingly-frequent, situation where every part of the game is consistent in Theme, there will be much less conflict between the Step On Up players and everyone else. Examples: The Riddle of Steel, very early editions of D&D.
5. Games in which there is a sparse rules-engine that does not contain much Theme in itself will generally bewilder, irritate, and fail to engage the Step On Up player. Examples: PrimeTime Adventures, Once Upon a Time.
This is one of those things that I feel so close to that I can't distinguish whether any of those points need more clarification; they all seem obviously self-evident to me. So if I've said anything that seems unclear or untrue, please let me know. Or if I've missed the point of this thread entirely.
Caldis:
I think what you quoted from Fred and what I wrote are both speaking to one point from different angles. There is a huge difference in having a game with theme in it where the theme isnt really questioned and one where it is. Where I spoke of manipulating events so things that seem like longshots end up happening the theme really isnt in question with regards to the players. The in game fiction may have a question about whether the group will be able to overcome the opposition but outside the fiction in terms of players interacting the theme isnt in question, they will overcome evil the only question is how.
In contrast what Fred speaks of, where choices that lead to a character becoming opposition for the party dont end play is questioning the theme. It transforms the theme from the trials involved in a good group battling evil to the danger in battling evil is becoming that which you fight. Because your group accepts the theme you've given to the game and dont try to question it they can function with the given theme but if you had a group that didnt take that theme as set in stone they might not work so well together, someone trying to force that questioning would be subverting the groups fun.
So yes theme can be important but having a theme and using it to limit play boundaries is a huge difference from a game where the theme is in question and open to refinement and comment. I'm all for discussing theme as part of game design but I think there's more to it than just realizing what theme you've chosen for the game, you also have to realize how you will use the theme and that can be problematic when many people historically have believed the theme is in question when in reality it isnt.
FredGarber:
Some comments in no particular order, responding to nothing in particular.
1. I think there already exists a nicely definied definition about a theme in question vs. a stated theme.
For example, "The smallest hobbit can make a difference" is defined as a Theme, because it's a statement.
"Can a small Fellowship resist Sauron's evil?" might be defined as a Premise, where Boromir and Frodo answer "No," Aragorn, and Samwise answer "Yes," and the rest of the group count Orc heads and enjoy the adventure.
2. Refinement of my confusing statement earlier: In my experience, I apparently played with a lot of Incoherance.
I had a big rant written, and I deleted it. Why should you have to read through my litany of bad experiences? I think I played with a lot of people who wanted different things from the RPG experience. Now I know what to look for, and I know how to verbalize what I'm looking for in a way that hopefully will help GMs say "nope, this game isn't for you," or "yeah, I think i can work that in."
"Playing with a Theme" won't help me find gamers who play like I do. "Playing Story focused / Sandbox games" gets me a lot closer. (**) Looking at what System is used helps, because System Matters.
-Fred
(**) Although these terms sometimes fail too!
Eero Tuovinen:
Huh, reading this thread is actually starting to make me suspect that I don't understand what Simon means by the term "theme". Looking at that Warlords game (awesome topic, incidentally), the themes I'm seeing there are heroism and villainy, which are then reflected through many lenses as is the wont of the genre. "Can heroes beat the dark lord?" is not any theme that I'd recognize in the literary sense of the word; at most that's plot. Theme-wise it's well established that the genre of chivalrous romance can easily take both victory or defeat as the plot of the piece while still fully advocating the virtues of heroism.
Now, "Can the heroes beat the dark lord" might be a Premise in the narrativistic sense, but only if the issue of victory is actually being used as a crux issue in judging the notions of heroism or whatever it is that the protagonists of the piece embody. Thus, we can ask a simple question: had the heroes lost in their war against Lord Bane, would that have cast the story in a light that would have actually changed its theme? That is, if the story as it exists advocates for heroism as its theme, would a story with a tragic ending have had a different lesson, perhaps one that would have condemned heroism as futile and ultimately disastrous to everybody involved? Is heroism, for this storyteller, only worthwhile insofar as it leads to victory? If that were the case, then we could ask the question about defeating the dark lord and have it actually be thematically important.
When a theme is actually not malleable in the process of play and it is merely being illustrated, the nature of conflicts related to the theme are fundamentally different: a hero fighting against Lord Bane is not resolving for us whether heroism is worthwhile, but rather just depicting for us what heroism is like. He may still win or lose, but this does not cast his actions in new light: we already know that heroism is a virtue, we're just enjoying its depiction in different circumstances. This is a pretty clear example of the difference between simulationism and narrativism, I think.
The above is just me wrestling with Simon's conception of theme. Insofar as his conclusions go, I find them worthwhile for exploring how simulationism works: there are certainly existing games that rely on largely unexplained praxis in coordinating the focus of play and its themes. I wouldn't be surprised if thematic coordination became an important piece in the on-going work to understand the theory of simulationism.
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