[Obsidian, Champs, Babylon Project] Incipient Narrativism and its discontents
Tor Erickson:
I've been following this thread pretty closely for a number of reasons. First, I find it highly interesting as far as it throws light onto the origins of Narrativism here at the Forge. In fact, it may be the single most relevant thread to the specific and direct roots of how we understand Narrativism, which for me is a pretty damn big deal for those of us interested in STORY NOW.
The second thing I'm drawing from this thread are the close parallels that exist between Story Now and Story Before play, which I'm wondering is not leading to a lot of the confusion we see in threads like "Sand Box Adventures" (sorry, I don't know how to make the link). The Champions/Bab 5 posts illustrate this perfectly, and I'll try and hi-light those parallels here in a way that illustrates my point.
The original 'sketchy setting' and 'game feel' handout that Ron prepared for Champs, and all of the attention paid to creating a specific look and feel for that game could go either way in terms of Story Now/Story Before. Same goes for my reading of character creation itself, with all of its 'aesthetic commitment,' and then with the follow-up 'new, more detailed handouts' about setting, which incorporates lots of player input and the chargen.
Again, in my understanding, and someone correct me if I'm wrong, ALL of this could be very successful in either STORY NOW or STORY BEFORE.
Dittoes for pre-planned revelations down the road, with their exact timing to be determined by the game. Heck yeah, could work both ways.
Now, when we get to Ron's breakdown of pre-planned scenes into Drive vs. Distraction and Mystery vs. Confrontation I can start to see some differences shaping up, but comparisons could still be made to Ron's Weaves, Bobs, Openings, Bangs terminology (actually, I'd be curious to hear a little more about how these two groups of terms compare).
Same goes for the Babylon 5 stuff, where can see in practice a lot of techniques that could work in either STORY NOW or STORY BEFORE. I think Ron effectively decouples the whole Underbelly technique from those particular agendas (as a side note, from the point of view of a Story Now GM, this is very, very exciting news because it opens up whole new arenas of play: you mean I can do STORY NOW in a canonical setting? With a canonical timeline? Hell YEAH).
To summarize my second point here, I'm seeing a TON of crossover in terms of technique between Story Now and Story Before. Loads of the same prep methods can be used in one or the other, without tipping off whether or not you're in either Story Now or Story Before mode. And I wonder if this isn't leading to some of the confusion in threads like the aforementioned "Sandbox Adventures."
Thanks to Ron and everyone for this thread.
- Tor
Ron Edwards:
Hi Tor,
It looks like I need to discuss Story Now in a big, big way.
Story Now is a Creative Agenda. Dozens of techniques can support it, some very pointed and structured. But it can be done even if all the techniques are “extra-curricular” in terms of written rules and the overt mechanics. Right now, I’m working up another monster essay-post about a Castles & Crusades module, and how its content can be wonderful raw Narrativist meat. And it could be so even if we used the rules-set for which the module was written (which are free here, so you can see what I mean).
What I’ve been calling “Story Before” is not a Creative Agenda, and the linguistic equivalency of X-modifier, X-other-modifier, is a pitfall of this whole discussion. David has been careful to avoid it in his thread, staying close to techniques as such and leaving his CA of interest more-or-less off to the side.
Now, it so happens that Story Before techniques are incompatible with the Story Now CA, if – if by “story” we mean the thematically most powerful material. From inside that CA, Story Before is, effectively, defined in the negative in both senses of the terms. I am working up a discussion of how fixed plot components can contribute to Story Now, and I suppose those would be “before” techniques, but not really the story, merely a specialized version of very big Bangs.
What I’m saying is that I disagree with you very strongly. Maybe I should have spent a little bit more time on the discontents of the thread title, such as Ed constantly pre-planning outcomes for his character in Champions in game after game; me in Champions as a player being uninterested in any material except for climactic Claremont opera. Both us were essentially horrible Prima Donnas as players and borderline Typhoid Marys as GMs, in my case because I’d completely had it with Story Before techniques. Or in the Northwatch Champions game, Randy was an interminable wanderer as GM, content to run fifteen or twenty sessions of “nothing happens” and then landing us with eighteen “clues” that prompted the climax. Whereas as a player in our Cyberpunk game, he insisted on pure in-character expression to the point of wallowing in it, relying on other players – namely Sonya – to get the action rolling in a direction. And bear in mind, people like us were the best one another could find to help satisfy one another’s Narrativist goals in the absence of any vocabulary toward that end.
The problems were easily encapsulated in our inability to tell when we were conducting Story Before when we should have been thinking Story Now. Therefore to me, the difference between the techniques involved is a matter of keen interest.
You listed (edited for pointedness),
Quote
all of the attention paid to creating a specific look and feel for that game
character creation itself, with all of its 'aesthetic commitment,'
with the follow-up 'new, more detailed handouts' about setting, which incorporates lots of player input and the chargen.
pre-planned revelations down the road, with their exact timing to be determined by the game.
See, I think these are way too atomic even to call “Story Before” or “After.” That makes them similar only in the crudest of terms: yes, we fill a metal bucket with water, yes, we heat it until it boils, yes, we put some stuff in there for a while. But I’m making pasta and you are laundering your crusty jeans. In light of the other techniques and the demonstrated, concrete payoff, and what we do with that, the similarities … well, aren’t. They only become apparent similarities if knowledge of those things (payoff, what we do with it) are left unsaid.
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Loads of the same prep methods can be used in one or the other, without tipping off whether or not you're in either Story Now or Story Before mode.
Arrrgh, I would rather poke holes in my own skin with a rusty fork than ever, ever go down that road in role-playing, ever again. If you do this, all you get is incoherence at best, and more likely and unfortunately, Agenda clash.
My argument is that such a situation can only arise when people deliberately elide certain questions like “what does your character want,” or “how did your character get here,” and it makes no difference that such a dodge is standard practice for a lot of role-playing – it’s still a dodge.
Therefore, I suggest that the confusion you mentioned arises from deception: less so of others as in Illusionism, and more so of oneself, as in Ouija Boarding.
Best, Ron
Roger:
There's a lot going on in this thread. My responses are going to be a bit disjointed and scattered; pay attention to the ones that interest you and disregard the rest.
Story Now and Story Before Participationism
Here's the thing about Story Before: it's a context in which talking about "'the' story" is sensible and meaningful.
In contrast, when it comes to Story Now, there is no "'the' story". There is, perhaps, My Story Now. And, perhaps, there are Stories Now.
Each Narrativist has to address Premise themselves. They each have to have their own Story, and have it Now.
This fundamental difference between the Participationists and their "'the' story" and the Narrativists and their "'our' stories" is the source of most, perhaps all, of their conflict with each other.
The underbelly of historical fiction
If you know what "historical fiction" is, you probably see what I'm getting at here. Underbelly lies very close to this genre.
It's also worthwhile considering the various distortions of pure historical fiction and their gaming parallels.
Colour Drift: The underbelly is Hamlet. The play is Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. The facts of the underbelly are respected, while the Colour is altered radically.
Very easy to do with an rpg -- perhaps too easy. The two main and opposite directions we tend to see are "much more comedic" and "much more gritty."
Differences in opinion about the proper amount of fidelty to the underbelly's Colour can result in intense conflict. Tread carefully.
Bait-and-switch Setting Breaking: The underbelly is World War Two. The play is Inglourious Basterds.
Mostly I'm bringing this up because it's sort of clever in a technical way. I'm not sure if such trickeries would be appreciated in an rpg context. Perhaps.
Story Structure
Seems like My Life With Master has a lot of it. And it seems like lots of folks with Narrativist leanings are fond of it. So I'm not sure how it fits in with your observations.
Cheers,
Roger
Frank Tarcikowski:
Hi Ron,
This thread was an interesting read, with a sense of some missing pieces in the puzzle that is the Forge, GNS and your work coming together. So this is where you've been coming from. There is something fitting about you posting this very personal stuff now, a sense of closure, looking back at a cycle of work and dedication, here in the late autumn of the Forge. Thanks for sharing.
I would like to pick up on one thing that you have mentioned, how people get confused about the "Before" story sometimes being a sort of not-the-real-deal framework of events, and the "Now" story being the Real Deal, the thing that is the point of play, that is not scripted or forced or otherwise pre-determined by one single person.
Even without the pitfall of both of these things being called "story", I have repeatedly run into a wall trying to explain to certain fervent advocats of "open outcomes" that not all outcomes are equally important, and play can still have an open outcome in all regards that really count when some events are scripted, or triggered, or otherwise pre-determined. This has caused me great frustration as I had to find that evaluated distinctions that seemed no-brainers to me were absolutely, completely lost on many other role-players.
- Frank
Ron Edwards:
Hi Frank and Roger,
I think it's time to discuss some design history. I did this earlier this year in the Italian forum Gente Che Gioca: L'Albero Genealogico dei GDR Indie is the direct link. To read it in English, I search for Gente Che Gioca on Google, then hit the "translate this page" link, and then find the thread. For that purpose, its date is June 11, 2011. The quoted material from me and my own posts in that thread are in English already. Somewhat confusingly, to read those, you should view the thread in Italian - otherwise the software translates my English into English with some weird results.
I'm providing that information because the whole thread is worth reviewing. I'll also quote my post from June 16 which includes the link to the diagam and is absolutely crucial companion reading for it:
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Five or six years ago, I sketched a diagram of the games produced by the independent, Forge-centered design community up to that point.
I have not made it available on the internet until now because I know it will be read badly by a lot of people. It's based only on certain variables that interested me, and yet I'm sure people will read it as being about every imaginable aspect of every game, toward the end of producing some kind of definitive taxonomy, which it is not. Also, the arrows don't necessarily mean direct inspiration or experience with the earlier games, and I'm sure some author or another will say "But I never played game X!" as an intended refutation of their game being at the end of an arrow from game X.
But Moreno has asked for it, and it seems to me that the Italian GCG discussion community is pretty rational, so you can find it here (direct PDF link). Please be careful to read the notes as well. If someone wants to translate it into Italian, please feel free. I ask that you do not post all over the blogs and other discussion pages with links to it. I don't want this to be some huge secret, but I'd like the discussion to be centered here. I also have an ulterior motive for talking about it at GCG in particular, as I'll make clear in a moment.
The rest of my points assume that you've looked at the document. I can't over-emphasize that the branches that I've drawn are very limited and do not create separatist categories for game design. Lots of design variables "jump" around the branches: e.g. Dust Devils narration-rules are Pool-inspired and then hop back into the Primetime Adventures narration rules; Polaris demonics and much other content are Sorcerer-inspired. My Life with Master's fictional content is definitely not typical of the right-hand branch, but its turn structure and endgame are very strong components of that side (stemming from Soap and Extreme Vengeance), both of which feature heavily in games branching from it as well. It might be considered its own full branch growing from both sides of the games under the dotted line (drawing on Sorcerer for its left-hand side), but the games derived from it do belong on the right, I think. That point leads into a related one: that as a strictly historical document, it's not intended to become a categorization tool for further work; nothing dictates that the historical associations need to be preserved.
As I see it, the diagram's value lies in capturing at least some of the relationships and diversity among the independent games of the Forge's most productive era, right at the moment when a surge of newcomers arrived and perceived the games more-or-less as a unit. Until that point, people did not really think in terms of "Forge games," and the games in the diagram reflect that: some of them were made entirely outside of the Forge, then revised upon contact with it (e.g. The Riddle of Steel, The Burning Wheel, Orbit). Others were designed privately after much contact with Forge discussion (The Pool, My Life with Master, Trollbabe, Polaris) and still others were designed through intensive discussion at the Forge itself (Dust Devils, Legends of Alyria, Universalis). The Iron Game Chef was not yet generating literally dozens upon dozens of designs in a short period. Perhaps most significantly, the discussion community had not yet become the primary marketing community yet, as it quickly did in 2006-2007.
I did revise the diagram in 2009 or so, adding games to see what had happened to the categories, but I have apparently lost that file. As I remember, the left-hand side saw a lot of additions to existing boxes and the right-hand side developed a more sophisticated and interesting set of branches, but more importantly, so many games had appeared by then which drew upon the available techniques across the whole diagram (in my case, Spione), that there wasn't much point in trying to preserve the structure after the 2006 mark.
As Moreno mentioned and as my first post to GCG expresses, I think the Italian indie/new-wave discussion community would benefit from more familiarity with many of the games, especially in this historical context.
Specifically, the games that I think would matter most include Orkworld, The Riddle of Steel, Hero Wars (or probably later version, HeroQuest), as well as the literally criminal omissions of Matt Snyder's games, Dust Devils and Nine Worlds. I regret that Violence Future isn't available, to my knowledge. Certainly The Pool (for which I hope my recent essay is helpful essay), Universalis obviously, and perhaps Fastlane.
Now for why I am saying any of this. What exactly do I perceive as possibly missing for the Italian community represented in this forum? As many of you know, I am not famous for tact. So I will say it in the way that I think it. My question is, are Italian role-players wimps, or in cruder English terms, pussies? My answer is, "Maybe, yes!" - but let me clarify. I certainly do not think this is due to personal inclination or to a limitation in creative ambition or ability. I think it's a matter of understanding the available tools at a visceral, emotional level. I will try to explain.
When we were developing the games just over the dotted lines in the diagrams, we did not think in terms of perfect, pure, or packaged items which would provide a neat and well-molded product of play. We were thinking in terms of personal rebellion and making a given system that could be pushed as far as it could in the service of a given emotional need during play. In fact, pushed past the fictional applications of which we, the designers, were currently capable ourselves.
Therefore a game was like a door, or as I like to say, a set of musical instruments. If I designed X, just how far could it be employed? If I invent the electric guitar, that's not because I am Jimi Hendrix. Jimi Hendrix is another person, who showed what the electric guitar could do. The goal was to design in ways that might be discovered and developed into such explosive and inspiring experiences through others' play. I see that as very different from many of the so-called story games of today, in which the goal of play is to experience the designer's vision, as carefully packaged and explained for the user. I see them as Rock-and-Roll Hero toys - the music is already written and indeed, already performed.
Specifically, the Italian community did not experience and develop the thematic savagery at the root of the left-hand branch, distilled into pure form in Sorcerer. By thematic savagery, I mean being willing to discover that your character is or isn't a good or successful character, and for that to have its own meaning. Effectively, to discover through play whether your intended or initially-conceived Batman is actually the Joker, or whether your very heroic and wonderful protagonist has instead, through play, become the dead or destroyed counter-example to the theme which emerged. It is clear to me that this desire and ability does exist among Italian players. That's why my compliments to the players at my Sorcerer game at INC were not empty. I was convinced that they were, in fact, able to play this game, even if they had only barely seen a little bit of what it could do at that session. I had seen that they were willing to find out. But I am not at all convinced that people in this community collectively realize that this kind of "breakout" play is even possible, or that games like Sorcerer (or Dogs in the Vineyard) exist primarily for this purpose.
On the right-hand branch, this community did not experience and develop the freewheeling openness of Universalis and The Pool. If the creative freedom of Primetime Adventures seems outstandingly broad to you, for instance, then it's valuable to learn that it is actually a reduction and specification of the vastly wilder and wider freedom of those two games. After playing Universalis and The Pool a lot, playing Primetime Adventures allows channelling and shaping that same energetic freedom in productive ways - but if the first thing you encounter is Primetime Adventures, those forces may not have been "released" among you and your group, resulting in a much more imitative version of play, tamely reproducing the content of television shows instead of literally creating a new kind of television via playing the game. It's also valuable to realize that The Pool is not a game which permits the wild and free creation of back-story among every member of the play-group, whereas Universalis is, and I think it's essential to understand what creative freedom can produce within each game's very different constraints for this issue
So ... is it possible for someone who perceives 3:16 as a "story game" to access its potential for raw and vicious political satire? Is it possible to GM The Rustbelt without realizing that your role is to brutalize and destroy the player-characters, because their very survival is solely the players' responsibility? Is it possible to play Dogs in the Vineyard without realizing that its "mission" context is effectively a lie, and that these characters may turn out to be the very worst people in the story? I think it's possible for the occasional individual person or group to come upon these insights by chance or happy accident in terms of specific personalities.
I apologize for any insulting or patronizing content of this post. As I say, I've presented it as it appears in my mind, and not as a public-relations project. I want to stress that I have in fact seen enormous potential among many of the groups and sessions that I've seen at INC '10 and '11, for exactly the things I'm talking about. My goal here is to show how that potential might find available tools, and I hope that you will find the diagram at least interesting.
And:
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Since my diagram is NOT based on direct influences from each designer's point of view, but instead based on particular variables which interested me personally, I want to present this as well: Jonathan Walton's tree of RPG influences using networking software, which IS based on designers' accounts of what influenced them.
http://www-958.ibm.com/software/data/cognos/manyeyes/datasets/indie-roleplaying-game-design-influe-3/versions/5
Use the "relationship" option to visualize the diagram, then you can play with it by moving "around in" the diagram. I think it's very illuminating as well.
Roger, I hope you can see that the structural features of My Life with Master, for instance, are very significant techniques subsets but not definitive features for a given Creative Agenda. As I see it, a lot of design over the past five years has committed the error of imposing such structure (often imitative) and missing the point.
Best, Ron
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