[Obsidian, Champs, Babylon Project] Incipient Narrativism and its discontents
Ron Edwards:
Ask it here - I'll split it if it seems like its own topic. Can you keep the question as thoroughly simple as you can?
Best, Ron
David Berg:
I already judged that elsewhere would be better. It wasn't a question, just my perspective on the dangers of planning for romance. I now doubt that it's on topic here. (Though if you read it and disagree, I'm happy to re-post here.)
Fortunately, I do have something on topic to say:
On breaking the setting in B5, yes, absolutely! I would love to be part of an endeavor to transform that setting from a dwarfed-humans-dealing-with-demigods situation-generator into, say, a demigod-humans-dealing-with-primitives situation-generator. Or, rather, if we're being Narrativist, an endeavor to achieve that level of transofmration, with it's specific identity to be determined by play. That sounds fucking great.
I do wonder about the impact of a shift in types of situations on characters, though. Staying relevant in a new context would be a challenge all its own (maybe one not worth it? just make a new character?), unless the changing setting and changing characters were inter-related in just the right way.
Ron Edwards:
Hi David,
There is a final point for my big post above that I probably should have emphasized more. The point of the underbelly technique is that the overall setting is (i) changing (ii) according to canonical knowledge as we proceed down the line of sessions. Those two things are special. The first is important because the situations the characters encounter are going to be changing under their feet no matter what (how is another question); the second is important because it preserves a key point of wanting to play in a canonical setting, which is to honor what we already know and like about it.
Furthermore, they require a third feature: (iii) the resolution of situations by and upon the player-characters does not itself send feedback “up” to the setting level to change the setting. The potential for doing so would undermine the underbelly technique entirely, which relies upon a sequence of pre-established very high-level changes in setting.
I hope that makes it clear that your point, David, that “breaking the setting” is an exciting prospect (which is true, it is), is actually the opposite of what I was talking about. Looking at the underbelly technique today, it strikes me as primarily suited for character transformation, which to their credit is exactly what Tom and Camille did realize when they decided that Ashley’s character’s ability to affect her own life (and the necessary power to do so) would become the focus for play.
I’ve provided a diagram for talking about how setting relates to the underbelly technique (all in my local “universe” here in this thread of talking strictly about Narrativist play). The relevant point is that the blue prep arrows that emerge from a resolved situation do not extend up to the yellow setting level. That level is fixed in place as a desired constraint. Again, that’s why if I were to have to choose between setting-centric (i.e. setting-breaking) and character-centric (i.e. character-breaking) given the use of the underbelly technique, the former is the only viable option.
Putting it that way seems backwards, because it is. Clearly one would choose setting-centric or character-centric first (or some useful combined version, e.g. Trollbabe), then decide upon things like underbelly or not on that basis. That leads to two points. (i) Tom and Camille did not have that luxury. They had to choose which way to go with this, i.e., to find some creatively satisfying focus, right in the middle of the play-prep-play process. I therefore suspect that putting it backwards like this is not entirely irrelevant for practical purposes. (ii) At first glance, our completely fandom-driven, enthusiastic embrace of the canonical setting would seem consistent with calling it “setting-centric” play … but here, I’m saying it’s not. The setting is providing crucially desired Color and (as part of our love of it) acting as a crucial constraint – all of which means it is not, and cannot be, the thematic crux of play, i.e., included as a thing to be broken in an as-yet-unknown way.
You wrote,
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Or, rather, if we're being Narrativist, an endeavor to achieve that level of transofmration, with it's specific identity to be determined by play. That sounds fucking great.
It is great. It was one of the finest experiences of my role-playing life, to be GMing Hero Wars in just this way, buoyed by my youthful excitement and study of the Gloranthan material, newly transformed by my design and play of Sorcerer and other games, right in the thick of the heady early GNS debates, confirmed and supported throughout by one-on-one conversations with Greg Stafford, and allied with three mature, politicized, creative, and deeply character-identifying people for players.
As stated in HeroQuest (2003), just past halfway through the book:
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Make Your Own Part
All heroes are extraordinary and destined for some fame in the world of Glorantha. This is guaranteed, since they are individually guided by a higher power: you, the player.
Your heroes will have the chance to be involved in the great events of the Hero Wars, such as [several colorful examples - RE]. Such events are not only for the super-powerful; they require the participation of your hero at whatever level of power he has achieved.
And near the end:
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Drama
Drama in Glorantha often comes from the conflict between what is and what ought to be. Living up to expectations of cult behavior, for instance, is meant to be difficult and limiting. After all, religious requirements are not human ideals. [Wow! Talk about an Egri Premise! - RE] The intensity of the plot comes from the hero trying to fulfil these expectations while living with the everyday temptations and complications of life: a cow is missing, some of your clan died in a raid, your children are ominously ill, or neighbors are poaching the hunting lands. Add to this the imperative of the Hero Wars, where some things will happen no matter what the heroes do, and the heroes have to make difficult choices about what to do and who [sic] to aid.
I was able to find these quickly because they’re the same text I quoted in my Narrativism essay, for reasons that I’m sure are clear.
Now, in Glorantha, there are several levels of setting, including the biggest most-mondo level of bringing the Hero Wars to the level of changing the absolute nature of reality (and as I understand it, ceasing to play, which is what we did anyway). But if we’re talking about certain things like the fate of a province or the elevation/destruction of a given god, then yes, play does in fact impact the setting profoundly.
It’s also tricky because the pre- and during-Hero Wars setting for Glorantha does indeed have scheduled canonical events, with the proviso that the textual accounts of those events are all in-character-in-setting and hence subject to massive re-interpretation at one’s own play-table. Jamie may have already brought this up with his thread, and I’ll probably want to address it there.
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I do wonder about the impact of a shift in types of situations on characters, though. Staying relevant in a new context would be a challenge all its own (maybe one not worth it? just make a new character?), unless the changing setting and changing characters were inter-related in just the right way.
That is indeed a concern, one which most RPG design is poorly suited to solve. In our game, for instance, Julie found herself more engaged in later play with her character’s adolescent niece, and mentioned that she would be happy shifting her own character into NPC status and taking over the niece. Her ideas about this corresponded very well to resolutions about her starting character’s role with the rest of the group; when due to events in play, that role became non-problematic and the character’s own sense of self and purpose was pretty well settled, then it seems logical to “fade” her to NPC-ness and bring forward a more charged, possibly more significant character in the new situations.
I’ve tried to work with this issue too. The game design part of my current Shahida project is effectively complete. In it, play proceeds through a series of phases in the Lebanese civil war, in a way inspired by Grey Ranks. Members and acquaintances of a given family are utilized throughout play, but which ones are “brought forward” to experience and deal with the events of play differ phase by phase. So multi-phase play sees different family members as protagonists at different times. However, which family members get highlighted per phase is not an outcome of what happened in the previous phase.
Best, Ron
Ron Edwards:
Shit! Typo!
Correction:
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... if I were to have to choose between setting-centric (i.e. setting-breaking) and character-centric (i.e. character-breaking) given the use of the underbelly technique, the latter is the only viable option.
Thanks Moreno.
Best, Ron
Ron Edwards:
So much for rhapsodizing about Story Now (if you want more, see Jamie’s thread). Here, I want to get back to incipient Narrativism and its discontents. They come in two forms.
1. When someone is trying to organize and carry out play that isn’t Narrativist, and he or she does impose a climactic story arc (to be experienced as the story) upon play for any number of reasons, then anyone with Narrativist leanings who’s involved is going to be either a disaster or at best be left feeling short-changed. All perceived compromises (“set it up with me beforehand”) fail.
2. When Narrativist play proceeds with a set of constraints which include material that, on its own and regarded externally, is indeed a story (but not the story), then the table will get into trouble if they are applied in such a way that they intrude upon rather than facilitate the story.
I described the Obsidian game to show that Narrativist leanings can catch fire and succeed among a group who has not, as a group, made any agreement to do so or shares any verbal, theoretical grounding about doing so. I included that account to show the default, if you will – both the entire lack of Story Before, and the lack of story-type constraints as well. It corresponds almost perfectly to the Setting-centric Narrativist diagram in the essay, to the extent that I think Dav was a little bit surprised at how much genuine impact play like this can have on the setting itself.
#1 and #2 above are the circumstances of discontents. I did not include examples for #1 because the Forge is full of them, and as we’ve seen just now, there’s a fine example just posted by Jamie. I described the Champions and Babylon Project games to show two examples of #2.
I think both of these are of special interest because in both cases, the players were generally enjoying the role of the story-structure constraints as long as they only served as productive constraints, i.e., provided meat and drink for the real story in the making. Whereas when, in the Champions game, they began to intrude upon that and become, effectively, Force techniques, the satisfaction level dropped sharply. And whereas when, in the Babylon Project, they were perceived as if they should be sufficient, the satisfaction level hit a sub-par plateau.
And here’s my big take-home about both of them: the fact that all the people involved greatly valued story integrity and content actually aggravated the problem due to the lack of viable terminology beyond saying “the story!” in anguished tones. In other words, it’s all well and good to “communicate,” but if everyone talking doesn’t know what they’re communicating about, the best you can get is deadlock at sympathetic, frustrated bafflement (and the worst you can get is really very bad).
All true. But the solution is not to avoid such things! The solution is to understand how different sorts of constraints work toward such ends. This shouldn’t really be too difficult, because the most basic concept of “productive constraint” operates as a given in role-playing anyway.
But I’m interested in digging deeper into the details, not only for Narrativist play as in my essay, but for all sorts. Some such details have received extraordinary intellectual and creative attention in the past decade: the scope for character creation, narrational issues, behavioral mechanics, consequence mechanics for characters, and more, and for each of them, the crucial issue of when and how they are not constrained as well. My current take is that both consequences for setting and the role of imposed changes in setting have not yet been understood as well, in part because “setting heavy” is too broad a term (as I hope to have shown above) and because historically Narrativist-inclined people have shied away from detailed settings for a number of reasons.
So that’s where I’m going with this. I want to talk about imposed changes upon setting, i.e., as prep, some more, but I think it’s a new topic and will either join in with Jamie’s thread or start my own.
For this thread, I’m pretty much finished with original input, but I would very much enjoy feedback, comparisons, thoughts, and questions.
Best, Ron
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