I’ve been reading David Mamet’s book about the film industry, Bambi vs. Godzilla
Now, in psychoanalysis, there is no such thing as accident, no such thing as coincidence or mere happenstance. Neither is there in dramaturgy.
Although he’s no demigod, Mamet is also no idiot, especially when it comes to drama. His point is relatively obvious: No piece of fact exposed to the audience of a drama should be irrelevant. All signs must point to the story; elements that fall “off the spine” are a meaningless diversion that distract the viewer* from (a) the emotional connection to the protagonist that the writer is trying to establish, and (b) the sense of absorption in the story that the writer is trying to maintain.
The thing about Mamet’s assertion — with which I agree — is that it has to give gamers a serious case of the willies. Because games are driven by and thrive on chance, which can’t help but manifest as coincidence and happenstance. Alarmingly, the games where the least is left to chance are usually also the least narrative (Chess, for example).
And although random encounter tables have (thankfully) fallen out of favor with game designers, it remains true that the outcomes of the vast majority of plot-critical activities in the vast majority of games are still left either in large part or in extra-large part to the whims of fate.
Will the party of heroes manage to kill their nemesis? In any quarter-decent drama, the answer would reflect what we’ve learned about the heroes and nemesis so far. In traditional games — tabletop RPG, card games, board games — the answer almost always turns on rolls of dice. Even in video games, where the answer often comes down to the player’s skill or dexterity, success and failure don’t arise based on the cleverly crafted or revealed characteristics of the protagonist or antagonist.
So if there can no accident in dramaturgy, and games thrive on chance, are games excluded from the possibility of being stories of any worth? The premises point alarmingly to “yes,” horrifying not least of which because Will and I have just started a website about the two.
I see about a half-dozen possible outs for story-gamers. (Other than, “There is no decent story game.”)
1: Perhaps — and this is my understanding of the essence of Will’s Thesis — a story game doesn’t exist to spin off a story that’s any good, and who cares, because that’s not what it’s for.
2: Maybe gameplay creates something more like psychoanalysis than dramaturgy, where the connections arise after the fact, through interpretation rather than design. To say it another way, maybe only those things eventually revealed as dramatically “correct” wind up being part of the story.
3: Perhaps gameplay can assert narrative possibilities that don’t actually happen in the resulting story, allowing players to choose from among options to find the best one.
4: Maybe story-gamers have to be so good at storytelling that they never make sub-optimal dramatic decisions in mid-game. You know, like the best improv comedians ever.
5: Perhaps the strangenesses that chance spawns, as it operates in a story-game, must be interpreted and re-interpreted on the fly in light of known facts about the drama’s characters and circumstances, and that doing so is the unique skill story-gaming requires.
Although I want to believe that it’s possible for a game to make good drama — excellent drama, even — I don’t find any of these outs particularly compelling.
And so at the moment, that is where I am stuck.
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* “Viewer,” because Mamet is writing about plays and films. Now, won’t someone please suggest a media-agonstic word for “the experiencer of a story?” “Viewers,” “readers,” “players;” all these fall down for one or more of film, stageplay, novel, short story, and game. (The most entertaining failure obviously being that the “play”/”player” match-up won’t work.) The best I’ve been able to come up with is “consumer,” which I hate.
Maybe story-gamers should not use the randomness to simulate a world, but should instead use it to pick one of the possible interesting directions the story could take. Maybe the dice don’t have to decide if the villain is defeated; maybe they can decide what the price will be and players can decide if they still want to do it.
I’m a little confused about the difference between #2 and #5, but I think that somewhere in that space is where the answer lies. Like improvisers, the current Story Games movement puts a lot of emphasis on not over-planning and on accepting what happens in play as important. But I think there’s another possibility: change the role of chance in the game. If Robin Laws has taught me nothing else (and he has, so don’t worry), it’s this: failure should always be as dramatically interesting as success. If a failed (or made, I suppose) die roll would lead to an uninteresting consequence, don’t roll those dice. (I’m also not convinced that games “thrive” on chance, as there a number of perfectly good games out there with no randomizers at all. I think other players do a perfectly good job of introducing chaos into games.)
Experiencee!
(Meaning: the person who sits there and gets the experience. Which may or may not involve collecting XP.)
I think what helps story-games is the same kind of ‘publication’ bias that helps improv scenes. Many offers might be made, with only some being picked up on; but the offers that lie fallow are swiftly forgotten. What’s remembered more closely resembles the coherent dramatic narrative than what actually happened.
I actually think that stories with no spare fat on them at all- where every element drives towards the conclusion- are terribly dull.
Items 1, 2, and 5 are all related to my uncoiling thesis: The gameplay decisions being made on the fly during actual play of storytellin games are narrative decisions, aimed at creating (or recreating) an experience not unlike that of an individually crafted story, but using cues and inputs that arise randomly through rolling dice or the collision of individual imaginations. This is, as Paul well knows, the “gameplay” of being in a live improv performance, too.
What’s fascinating about this, in part, is that audience suspense (that of the audience watching or of the players playing) and creator suspense (that of the improv performers performing or of the players playing) generate the same electric thrill in people: the question of “what happens next?” that makes great stories, and great storytelling, so engrossing.
The rub, to me, is that the criteria we use for measuring stories are only somewhat applicable to measuring story-games, and this results in many story-games producing tales that are “no good” according to the strict dramaturgical metrics of, for example, your David Mamets, but which are undeniably good to those who were there when the stories emerged from the explosion of dice rolls and decisions.
Stories that are stripped down to their barest components, in which everything feeds back into one essential ending (or explanation for everything), feel inorganic to me. I like having background details emerge about the people, the job, the setting.
In mysteries, these are red herrings. In drama, they’re dressing. Red herrings in dressing are delicious.
Isn’t there case to be made that, to a willing and fully participatory group of Story Gamers, the role of chance can be to invigorate the story? For instance, the scenarios was set up to handle events A, B, and C. If random chance all of a sudden posits that D happens instead, I think that’s a place where really interesting, entertaining and rewarding stories can START, not end.
The game designer says “I want to tell this story”. The chance mechanics can sometimes change reply with “You *wanted* to tell that story, but guess what, new direction. What are you going to do about it to make sure the story is still great?” In a standard RPG, that question is asked of only the GM. In a Story Game, the question is often asked of all participants.
It seems like it all boils down to control of the story. Random chance elements like dice, etc. ARE a form of control that can be exercised by the players, albeit a form of story control they are not exactly…um…in control of.
Even if you remove dice, I think an argument can be made that allowing players any participation in the story at ALL is a form of randomizing. In a situation in which the player’s actions aren’t specifically restricted (video games usually do this, just because hey, you can’t model teh entire universe of a game worked to give unlimited choice) the designer can NEVER predict ahead of time how the people involved in the story game will react. Player choice can come up with Option D as easily as dice determining it.
This has gone sort of stream of consciousness, so I think I need some coffee now. 🙂
Some random thoughts:
1) When describing how the GUMSHOE system works, Robin Laws mentioned that the standard investigative scenario (which are much more plot-driven than some other types of scenarios) usually funnel down to “find the clue” events where if you blow the roll, the plot grinds to an abrupt halt. Most GMs navigate around this problem by fudging things so that the roll succeeds, drop hints via partial success, or re-insert the vital clue elsewhere so that eventually one of those crucial rolls succeeds and moves the plot forward. So from the GM standpoint, yes, his narrative “spine” is at the mercy of chance, but he can hedge his bets by lowering or circumventing the chances of failure. This is also where you can get into trouble for railroading, as the GM shuts down certain options to force the players to return to the spine he’s already planned out. But if you’re clever (and a bit lucky), there are tricks you can use to convince the players that they have the illusion of free choice, so long as they don’t catch on that any decision made by chance or player choice really leads back to the same spine.
2) Each individual player has a different narrative spine, and very rarely do they coincide with the GM’s. While the GM’s spine may involve “Defeating the Evil Overlord”, the player’s spine in an achievement-driven game (such as D&D) is more likely to be “How My Badass Wizard Reached Level 20”. Events which are completely meaningless or irrelevant for the GM’s spine, such killing an orc in meaningless dungeon closet #3, might be important in the player’s spine.
3) Even when the player’s spine is story-, character-, or theme-driven, you’re never going to get 100% overlap with the GM spine. The greater the number of contributors, the greater number of loose ends, dead ends, and red herrings. I’m not sure you could map “maximized enjoyment” directly to “strong narrative spine”, you might find that as you approach 100% overlap on multiple participant spines, enjoyment might drop as participants might be forced to leave out something they really enjoy at the expense of reaching a group consensus. Think of it as a gourmet chef versus a cafeteria model: A director/screenwriter can put together the perfect recipe, no wasted ingredients, that hits all of his taste buds. But if there are multiple director/writers, then one of them is really going to love cheesecake but another one may be lactose-intolerant and really in love with potato salad. A pot-luck or cafeteria model is more likely to make them all happier than one chef dictating his personal menu. Chance mechanics can be a way of putting a variety of dishes on the table.
4) Another Robin Laws observation: RPGs are all “first draft”. Heck, sometimes they’re the brainstorming sessions before the first draft gets written, with a lot of people tossing out ideas, and a lot of stuff happens that isn’t important to the main story spine that develops later. In this respect, it’s probably pointless to think of stories in RPGs to be anything OTHER than first drafts. You don’t really get the opportunity to go back and “do things again, only this time you are not going to kill the old man in the inn or become conviced that the cow was magical”. To expect this medium to produce a polished final draft without any irrelevant elements is impossible, the vehicle just isn’t capable of producing that kind of experience.
5) How many of your truly unforgettable RPG events were related to the main story, and how many of them start out something like, “Oh man, I can’t believe what we did to that cow…” (It could be you’re thinking that a strong narrative spine is a necessary requirement to an enjoyable RPG experience when it’s really more of a optional requirement.)
Another, much more succinct point might be “David Mamet writes plays. He doesn’t design games.”
I heard Ridley Scott interviewed on NPR the other day, talking about, of course, the new final cut of Blade Runner. He and Harrison Ford had different opinions about whether Deckard was a replicant. Ford didn’t think so, and thought that it wrapped everything up too neatly. Scott quipped that in a movie that was all over the place like this one, it’d be nice to wrap something up.
Anyway, Scott wins the argument by controlling the final cut. In an rpg, the GM (Scott) could force his view, but the player (Ford) will always have his say anyway. I actually prefer, in the case of Blade Runner, leaving it up to the audience to decide. In an rpg, such creative differences between GM and player could likewise remain unresolved, to allow both to write their own ending, or, even if they do resolve them, the result is a collaboration rather than the invention of a single dramaturge.
So, my point being, rpgs are more like improv — multiple authors riffing off one another, but with one acknowledged as the editor (GM), who can guide the thread into some shape or keep it from tangling too much.
You know, Bill, you’ve got me wondering: Ford’s sense of the film’s “facts” are as true as those that come out of any RPG session. Most of us don’t record our RPG sessions after the fact, and even if we do that recording probably isn’t considered more authoritative than the actual gameplay.
So my question becomes: Does the Ford-viewpoint version of Blade Runner actually cease to exist because the director, in his authority, believes in a different version of the story? Can’t the player retain his own version of the story by choosing to insert his character’s motivations and secret history in his own retelling or remembering of it?
In reference to your cooking analogy Darrin mentioned above…I think RPGs might sometimes be compared to that old children’s story “Stone Soup”. Ganked from Wikipedia”:
“According to the story, some travelers come to a village, carrying nothing more than an empty pot. Upon their arrival, the villagers are unwilling to share any of their food stores with the hungry travelers. The travelers fill the pot with water, drop a large stone in it, and place it over a fire in the village square. One of the villagers becomes curious and asks what they are doing. The travelers answer that they are making “stone soup”, which tastes wonderful, although it still needs a little bit of garnish to improve the flavor, which they are missing. The villager doesn’t mind parting with just a little bit to help them out, so it gets added to the soup. Another villager walks by, inquiring about the pot, and the travelers again mention their stone soup which hasn’t reached its full potential yet. The villager hands them a little bit of seasoning to help them out. More and more villagers walk by, each adding another ingredient. Finally, a delicious and nourishing pot of soup is enjoyed by all.”
Here’s the answer, which is really just an extension of Hal’s above: RPG stories are not three-act (or even five-act) plays. You can use a similar intro if you want in the two forms, specifically in dealing with the first act, but whereas a play’s first act is very nearly a third of the play, and a novel’s first act is at least a couple of chapters, a story-game’s first act tends to be the first session and that’s it. Any longer and the lack of direction and motivation kills any momentum you’re trying to build. This is because the audience doesn’t need to get to know the characters; they are the characters. The players know more about the characters than the GM possibly could, so that portion of the narrative gets largely skipped. There are other differences, but that’s sufficient for starters.
The GM may have a play in mind, complete with rising action, setbacks, climax, and denouement, but the players write short stories — and theirs are more like biographies or chains of anecdotes than plays. As real life owes its twists and turns to a disconcerting amount of chance, so do the biographical elements of story-games.
You guys are getting way too philosophical about this.
David Mamet is an author, it’s the author’s job to tell a great story. Does the hero live or die? That’s almost secondary to telling the story. Now most people prefer happy endings so the hero usually lives but it isn’t mandatory.
Now in roleplaying the shoe is on a completely different foot. The GM’s job is to generate an enjoyable experience so the players will want to come back for more. This almost automatically requires that the characters survive as very few gamers will be happy to constantly lose their characters.
How should the GM generate tension in such a setting without making the characters mad at him? Roll the dice and see where they fall.
If the GM has done a decent job of designing the adventure and the players aren’t stupid the characters should be able to survive just about anything the dice throw at them and a good time should be had by all. The slight chance that the dice will kill the characters adds spice to the game.
Of course, I speak from many years of GM-ing where the dice have been more than a little uncanny at finding character weaknesses that I didn’t expect. My favorite was a random encounter where a bunch of kobolds attacked a 7th level fighter on a narrow mountain pass. The kobolds lost a couple of guys and then the character fumbled his +5 sword (his only weapon) and it landed in the middle of the kobolds. The player’s only response was “this is going to be a little harder than it looked at first…” He was right and we had a great time finding out what happened next (the hero survived and got the sword back, but it was nip and tuck for a while).
The GM’s job is to generate an enjoyable experience so the players will want to come back for more.
I think a good bit of the style of play Jeff is grappling with is based on challenging this assumption.
Chance is actually an incredibly useful tool for inspiring stories. In _Made to Stick_ the authors talk about knowledge gaps in stories. A knowledge gap is a question that arises as the story unfolds: how did this happen, what will happen, how can the protagonist win? Our brains desperately want to see these gaps filled, and it’s very pleasing when they are successfully closed. That’s why we hate spoilers: they close the gaps in an unsatisfying way. Randomness can be an excellent inspiration for creating these gaps, because constructing them consciously often results in predictable gaps, which of course are not gaps at all. In a story game, the story part of the experience is then all about filling those gaps. I believe this is fundamental to the joining of games and stories.
*How about “patron”? It’s a bit less generic and sterile than “consumer”, implying one for whom a work of art is created, without precluding participation in that creation.
There’s that writer’s dictum, from Chekhov (I think): “Don’t introduce a gun in the first act unless it will be fired by the third act.” This just doesn’t apply to rpgs. (Or does it? Discuss.) There’s a welter of stuff the GM introduces, only to be ignored by players as they go their own way. In some cases, the GM can adjust and reintroduce the item again (and it’s very return might just catch the players attention this time), but this doesn’t always work.
In other words, when the players go to the weapon store before entering the dungeon, there’s a lot of swords that won’t be swung by the “third act”. (Of course, this isn’t just about “stuff”, but NPCs or bits of information, or other phenomena.)
Today’s Darths & Droids is oddly topical. From the player’s perspective, chance appears to _create_ drama.
Many offers might be made, with only some being picked up on; but the offers that lie fallow are swiftly forgotten. What’s remembered more closely resembles the coherent dramatic narrative than what actually happened.
My wife brought up a similar point last night. The context was the last D&D campaign I played in and its extensive “story hour” thread on ENWorld. One of the other players (i.e., neither my wife nor I) has spent quite a lot of time chronicling the adventures our group had. I find the enthusiasm for our campaign’s tales — and it is not insignificant — by those who didn’t participate a little stunning, which must be credited in largely equal parts to the campaign’s DM and to the chronicler. In the latter’s case, the most critical point is probably that player’s ability to successfully elide that which ought be “swiftly forgotten” and emphasize the good stuff.
It’s all wrong.
When you’re playing a tabletop RPG, you’re not creating a drama; you’re living a second life- this is History, not Drama, with all of the false starts, missed chances, and other seeming randomness that life has for everyone. The rules of drama do not work because they do not apply; the law governing life apply instead.
When my fighter is in over his head in an encounter, it’s not because it would be pleasingly in a dramatic sense to do so; when I decide how my fighter reacts, and what he does about it, not only do I not care at all about what would be best for the drama, I reject any consideration of drama from anyone at the table because what makes good drama doesn’t make for either believable role-playing (as PCs, being facsimiles of real people, should think and act like them) or sensible game-play (the object is to overcome the encounter).
This is why Mamet, Chekov, and dramaturgy in general–why the whole idea of tabletop RPGs as a story-telling medium–is such an epic failure. Take it from a historian; you’re off-base with this entire idea of RPG-as-drama, and instead you should return to RPG-as-fictional-history.
Take it from a historian; you’re off-base with this entire idea of RPG-as-drama, and instead you should return to RPG-as-fictional-history.
“Historical” seems like a weird label wildly fictional genre games, but even assuming that the simulationist agenda is the only correct aesthetic approach for all RPG gaming, it’s not remotely accurate to write off RPGs + storytelling as an “epic failure.” See also the entire creative output of White Wolf.
But more to the point, to banish the dramatic entirely from the RPG in favor of “the law governing life” just doesn’t make sense. Does the party’s breakfast warrant as much attention as a brutal fight? The former takes up a lot more “real” time. Should the GM roll randomly to determine whether the fighter falls down the stairs while heading up to his room at the inn, or the mage develops a case of stomach cancer? These things do happen, after all.
I was pointed to this website by the blog of Robin Laws, who is also exploring the possibilities of storytelling or better using dramatic structure (of movies) for RPG’s. I have been too interested in this approach for quite some time myself – alas I am only a GM not a designer or author myself. The most fun games I played/run felt like a good story and where in fact stories. That is what makes RPG still interesting for me.
Recently I succeeded what I aimed for: combining a cinematic approach of a story in a classical RPG adventure. I used the approach of the HeroQuest RPG – and the testing of the scenario was quite successful.
I also succeeded in using quite some elements that are used in the narration in films and was stunned how uncomplicated it applying them was after I gained some control over the advancement of the plot.
In HQ you mainly decide the magnitude of the conflicts of your game scenes and use a detailed or easy resolution possibility of the rules accordingly. The more important the conflict – the more detailed the resolution. If the actions of the players not really advance the story roll the dice quickly or not at all.
But by thinking of the outcomes of success AND failure of your conflicts, by making both meaningful and plot advancing, I find, you have a pretty good way of telling a story in a RPG. That way a GM has a very solid technique to ‘control’ the events of his game. THEN he is enabled to build a dramatic structure.
Of course, I think, it requires some preparation and actual writing of a story.
A main problem of the cinematic approach in RPG’s is that you have several main characters (the players) that do not necessarily have the same goal in the same story/adventure. Most adventures fail in the regard of involving all characters with a strong unify goal to create a good plot. How many games start in a tavern with a stranger approaching the table of the heroes?
I think we need to approach this thing more from a writer’s perspective. How do you ‘write’ a story without knowing what the heroes of this story do?