How Do You Create Story?

[barsoomcore]

I'm not parsing this at all. Wanting to fulfill your desires is strictly a capitalist thing? Popular culture doesn't deal with fulfillment of desires?

I'm thinking "love story". That's something you could see equally easily in pop culture or in a premodern setting.

I think I see what fusangite's getting at here, though. Look at Greek myths -- they're not about a character who has a desire and struggles to acquire it. MAYBE you could read The Odyssey that way but even then, the Odyssey is pretty much a great big diversion from its hero's desire to reach home and wife. If you took that story to Hollywood they'd demand you rewrote it so that all the weird monsters were sent by the Cyclops who was actually Od's son (Telemachus? What the heck was his name?) blah blah blah so that the whole thing all tied to Od's desire to restore his family.

Very few myths or ancient tales work within that structure. Gilgamesh sure as heck doesn't. It's one of the things that gives Chinese films of the 80's such a frenetic, carnival feel -- because they don't seem worried about stuff like following a character and having them fulfill some well-specified desire -- they feel like guys with a camera sort of ran around deciding what was going to happen next as they were filming, based more on what would provide a cool transition than any "character development" considerations.

Um, what was I talking about?

 

[fusangite]

I'm not parsing this at all. Wanting to fulfill your desires is strictly a capitalist thing? Popular culture doesn't deal with fulfillment of desires?

Most stories in popular culture still tend to represent sacrifice rather than fulfilment. And certainly the ones most similar to those played out in RPGs have that aspect. As I mentioned, sports movies are a good example of an exception to this -- but that's because success in sports is a pretty modern theme.

Most traditional stories that remain the majority of stories in our popular culture tend to represent value systems in which people are defined by what they do rather than what they want (except bad guys who conflate the two things) and, when they address questions of desire tend to echo the common pre-modern view that if what you want and what you have are in conflict, you should harmonize them by changing what you want.

Desire is a universal theme in all cultures' literatures and stories; but I would argue that simply fulfilling one's personal ambition or desire is not very morally compelling, by itself, outside of capitalist societies and therefore pretty rare in more traditional stories.

I'm thinking "love story". That's something you could see equally easily in pop culture or in a premodern setting.

Well, I thought of that when I was writing my post but decided not to even go there because romance is such an inappropriate theme in RPGs.

I could see how a game focused around the fulfillment of desire could work against a party structure. That's why, when I did it, we didn't have a party. The PCs worked together sometimes, at odds sometimes, and were off on their own a fair bit. Everybody had their own goals, but the general premise of "What lines will you cross to get what you want?" served to tie the stories together.

This is how narrativist play is often described to me. Your reference to this in your earlier post reminded me to ask this question in the first place.

 

[Afrodyte]

This is interesting. It is very different from the motivations that tend to power my campaign, though. Generally, in my games, adventurers are responding to danger, threat or crisis that someone else is causing rather than pursuing their desires, thereby bringing themselves into conflict with others. At the level of character, most great stories seem to be about people doing one thing because they are obliged to and then doing something else because a higher calling or obligation must be fulfilled or because some danger threatens them discharging their obligations. There are also stories about people pursuing their unfulfilled desires and then choosing to reject this path and then pursue a higher calling or respond to some threat instead.

I don't think I made it clear in my previous post, so I'll try to be more concise here. I do not define desire as "what you want" in a concrete sense. There can be metaphorical or even spiritual context to desire. A desire is not just a goal or an object. It can also be something a character aspires to or seeks to fulfill. I'll highlight the paladin example from my previous post. His desire is to uphold the code of chivalry. It is not something that he wants in the strictest definition of the term, but it is something that he strives toward, something he tries to do.

Although our culture has morally internalized capitalism so that human motivation can be conceptualized in the terms you describe, I think we are fortunate that our stories have yet to internalize this morality. Aside from sports movies or movies about women's professional advancement, fulfilment of goals/desires is not a predominant theme in popular culture. Given that most games are set in pre-modern societies, how does this psychological capitalism actually manifest in the stories your games produce? Being a strict narrativist -- unlike most who claim the title you seem to understand and practice Edwards' theory as described -- do you find that thematically focusing the system on individual character egos tends to inhibit party cohesion?

I can't really tackle this from the parameters you set because they are not an integral part of my roleplaying experience. The D&D tropes of party, adventures, and pre-modern aesthetics are not things that bear much, if any, influence upon my approach to roleplaying. A more useful question would be: How do I develop cohesion amongst the players (not their characters) while also addressing the themes of individual characters?

In the simplest of terms: I let the players do the work. In general, I give almost total autonomy to the players regarding the characters they play within a few firm but broadly drawn boundaries. I do not tell them if they know each other, how they know each other, or why they work together. I do give them a feel for the world's aesthetic and its defining motifs and themes. Throughout the game, I do my best to introduce characters and events that touch upon one or more characters' individual aspects. I allow myself to experiment with different narrative structures. I go out of my way to find things that can make each character shine.

Out of curiosity, do you think this "getting to the meat of the characters" is the main appeal of narrativist-style gaming? Or do you think people use it for other reasons. I ask because the style has little appeal for me and I would like to get a better sense of some of the things that attract people to it.

I think narrativist-style gaming appeals to different people for different reasons, and for me to speculate on it with so little to work with would be presumptious. For me, the appeal of narrativist gaming is the depth it encourages me to bring to my entertainment. I do think that gamist and simulationist gaming have potential for depth as well, but the direction and focus of the depth I find with narrativism is more compatible with my temperament. I tend to live in my own little world. This world, rather than being some sort of alternate reality, is actually a part of my own inner reality. In a way it is more real to me because that is when I feel most like myself. This reality is goverened by (for lack of a better term) forces that manifest in my imagination as particular people and situations. What narrativist roleplaying does is allow me to express and explore these things in a dynamic manner appropriate to its dynamic nature. The only viable alternative is to seek experiences which draw this out of me, but that is not always prudent.

 

[fusangite]

Thanks Afrodyte. Great answers!

 

[mythusmage]

Plot and Story Where RPGs Are Concerned

Plot: What you hope happens.
Story: What does happen.

How to Create Story From an RPG

Run an adventure and write down what happened.

 

[Afrodyte]

*shoos mythusmage to his own thread*

 

[Desdichado]

I think I see what fusangite's getting at here, though. Look at Greek myths -- they're not about a character who has a desire and struggles to acquire it. MAYBE you could read The Odyssey that way but even then, the Odyssey is pretty much a great big diversion from its hero's desire to reach home and wife.

How about the Iliad, then? Paris wants a woman to love; he gets Helen. Which is a great choice except that she's married. Meneleus wants her back; Achilles wants glory; the Iliad is all about "capitalist" desire fulfillment.

 

[Rel]

VERY interesting thread so far. I hope I manage to contribute something. And I agree with Barsoomcore that Fusangite's posts make me feel smarter (or at least wish I WAS smarter) for having read them.

First up, I must agree with Joshua Dyal that, from my perspective at least, many stories that I read or movies that I watch are based on the protagonists desire to "get" something. It might not be a tangible object, and in fact is more often a concept like "revenge" or "status" or "redemption", but it is most certainly a goal toward which they are striving. Obviously there are also plenty (if not more) stories of individuals thrust into situations not of their own making and what they do to cope with this or try and return things to the status-quo. In my mind, this represents one major divide in types of story and types of campaigns for RPGs: Proactive vs. Reactive.

As I sit here and think about it, I feel like most campaigns will be primarily either proactive or reactive (from the PC's point of view) at a given point, but that they can easily move back and forth across that divide through the course of the campaign. I'd encapsulate these two modes with the following two statements:

"If I do X then Good things will happen."

"If I don't do Y then Bad things will happen."

Reflecting back on my history of campaigns, I would say that I tend to start out with a Reactive situation, primarily because it is fairly easy to craft one that involves the whole party. This binds them together (if they were not already bound by backstory) and imparts some initial momentum to the campaign. After the first situation is resolved then I often open things up (by way of various plot hooks) to allow the PC's to pick which direction the story will head. At that point I've shifted to a Proactive posture. But along the way to whatever goal they've established, it is not infrequent that they'll run across other situations that they'll need to react to or face the Consequences.

That last word is the other big theme of my campaigns. I try not to constantly put my players in a "damned if you do and damned if you don't" situation but I do convey that doing things and NOT doing things both have consequences. The group collectively selects which set of consequences they cannot abide and pursues a course of action to prevent those from taking place.

At this point I can't honestly say that my campaigns are any more organized or thematic than that. I've made a lot of changes to my GMing style over the last couple years since I got a better understanding of what makes my players tick and how to keep them happy. So my style of GMing is very much in flux right now, which makes threads like this very interesting to me.

 

[fusangite]

How about the Iliad, then? Paris wants a woman to love; he gets Helen. Which is a great choice except that she's married. Meneleus wants her back; Achilles wants glory; the Iliad is all about "capitalist" desire fulfillment.

And who is the hero? Paris? No. In an Iliad game, people play Achiles. Characters motivated by desire are typically the antagonists in pre-modern stories whom pre-modern heroes fight. Either that or the desire-based character renounces his covetous ways during the narrative and seeks to attone (e.g. Lancelot). Characters motivated by desire appear in the literature of every civilization but I think that there is something special about our civilization in that we valourize desire rather than making it the hero's foil either in himself or in the antagonist.

It might not be a tangible object, and in fact is more often a concept like "revenge" or "status" or "redemption", but it is most certainly a goal toward which they are striving.

I tend not to view redemption as desire; most theories of redemption then to be about tempering or overcoming desire. Also, I prefer it when the characters seek redemption for something they do early in the campaign rather than something they do before the campaign begins; the motivation is more persistent and clearer that way.

In my mind, this represents one major divide in types of story and types of campaigns for RPGs: Proactive vs. Reactive.

And, in general, I tend to find that proactive campaigns feel more modern.

I do convey that doing things and NOT doing things both have consequences. The group collectively selects which set of consequences they cannot abide and pursues a course of action to prevent those from taking place.

I think I tend to structure my campaigns similarly -- the party must organize possible consequences for their actions into a hierarchy.

 

[The Grumpy Celt]

I can't help but create stories. They crop up in my brain, like kudzo, overgrowing vast sections, wiping out forests and providing homes and cover to rabbits, in addition to reducing the property value.