Manzanaro, I accidentally edited your post rather than quote it (mods have an Edit and a Quote button. I restored it but apologize for the error.)

Quote from: Manzanaro;882020And I don't understand how you on the one hand acknowledge that "You come into a room with an ogre in a chair" is indeed a narrative statement but still insist that I am speaking in analogies when I talk about RPGs having narrative elements. It isn't an analogy.

Because this is the equivocation I was talking about earlier.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;882024Because this is the equivocation I was talking about earlier.

Can you break that down for me a little further? Plus I added a paragraph to my last post for hopefully some additional clarity.

Let me try to add even a little more. If you GM or play RPGs with no consideration of the emerging narrative or how to use narrative effectively in the context of a game? Awesome! I seriously don't care! I am not saying you are doing it wrong!

But that is not the intended topic of this thread.

Quote from: Manzanaro;882020To clarify again. The purpose of this thread is to discuss ways of getting a "good" narrative (whatever thst may mean to a given person) from a simulationist ruleset.

Some of us have been asking you to clarify what you mean by a good narrative. Because unless we have similar understandings of what "a "good" narrative" means and in what context we mean it (e.g. as part of play, beside but separate from the play itself, or after play) the methods we may want to use are likely to be at cross purposes.

For example: I explicitly want and use different methods when I am playing an RPG than when I the GM of an RPG, and both of these sets of methods are different still from the methods I use when telling a story or writing up a story of the adventure after the fact.

Quote from: Bren;882026Some of us have been asking you to clarify what you mean by a good narrative. Because unless we have similar understandings of what "a "good" narrative" means and in what context we mean it (e.g. as part of play, beside but separate from the play itself, or after play) the methods we may want to use are likely to be at cross purposes.

For example: I explicitly want and use different methods when I am playing an RPG than when I the GM of an RPG, and both of these sets of methods are different still from the methods I use when telling a story or writing up a story of the adventure after the fact.

Yeah I will come back and get into that aspect more after a break.

But for now I will say that of course it is relative. And that's okay. What constitutes a good narrative for you? Outside of the context of RPGs?

How about the narrative that emerged from John Wick's Temple of Horrors scenario in that other thread? Would you consider that a good narrative? More interestingly, COULD it have been a good narrative even with the same underlying simulated events?

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;881957I don't have a problem with people using the words story or narrative to describe the events in a game session. Why it raises my defenses a bit, and why I think people react so strongly to it, is it is often use to build an argument that equivocates on the various meanings of those terms to argue that games should be designed or played to produce good stories (that mechanics or adventure structure ought to produce satisfying narratives).

Theory counts for nothing next to whether the participants are having fun.

From what I've seen, the healthiest way for developments more peculiar to role-playing or story games to evolve out of more old-fashioned game forms is for people to adopt them without pedantic fuss as a natural exploration of what they enjoy in "just a pastime" of play shared with friends.

Self-consciously treating them as Serious Business is a game in its own right we can play online, but no substitute for the commonsense communication among participants, in a friendly attitude of mutual respect, that the real game demands.

Another pernicious misplacement of priorities is the tendency to treat texts as Holy Writ.  People who blame Gary Gygax for social dysfunctions when they were 12 years old are usually misinterpreting what he wrote, but be that as it may.  If the opinions or Official Rules of a "pro designer" do not correspond to what's fun for my group, then those supposed dicta are properly and trivially dead letters to which we are not beholden.

And of course some players won't be a good match for a given game.  Trying to please everyone is a fool's errand.

Quote from: Manzanaro;882020To clarify again. The purpose of this thread is to discuss ways of getting a "good" narrative (whatever thst may mean to a given person) from a simulationist ruleset. I am not saying that YOU or anyone else should be equally interested in this goal. But why on earth are people with no interest in the goal even entering the discussion?

We're interested in entering the discussion to point out that your personal beliefs about the experience of roleplaying are not universal, despite every term you use and argument you make implying otherwise.

We don't get good narratives, bad narratives, or indeed any narrative from play, but we do, in fact, have quite satisfying and enjoyable roleplaying sessions.

For Brendan, this is what comes of, for decades saying in books, "Roleplaying is pretending your a character in a book or movie" instead of saying "Roleplaying is imagining yourself as an inhabitant of Middle Earth."  The notion of book and movie (which are forms of art) becomes so ingrained in Roleplaying thought that roleplaying becomes intrinsically linked and inseparable from the creative process of literature or other forms of art.

Manzanaro seems incapable of shedding the thought processes of literature when discussing roleplaying (or may just be obstinate, quite a lot of people who think of things in term of narrative terms seem unwilling to accept the idea that others experience roleplaying in a different way.)

A lot of mockery is thrown at the people who object to terms like story applied to roleplaying, even on this site, because they see it as a harmless description that has no effect.  Are you seeing an effect here?

Quote from: Manzanaro;881965And yes, I would also agree that directly experienced events are not a narrative. But when we play RPGs we are not directly experiencing the events (other than things like rolling dice). The events of the game come to us SYMBOLICALLY. We interpret the events from words, dice rolls and rules. And we also AUTHOR events by saying what our characters do, say, and attempt (as well as directly narrating what characters experience if we are the GM). All of this is outside of the realm of direct experience.

The question is whether to make a big fat hairy deal of this.

Your so-called "direct experience" itself is far from that, being actually a story (often very cunningly edited) told to the conscious you by mediating interpreters of sensory stimuli -- when the latter are even present at all!

Pushing a button on a console while watching a video screen is also not an experience of actually running, jumping, or what have you; it is a symbolic communication. Neither however is playing a video game a matter of thinking in dramatic terms about one's actions via the persona.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar for all we really care.

Quote from: CRKrueger;882032We're interested in entering the discussion to point out that your personal beliefs about the experience of roleplaying are not universal, despite every term you use and argument you make implying otherwise.

We don't get good narratives, bad narratives, or indeed any narrative from play, but we do, in fact, have quite satisfying and enjoyable roleplaying sessions.

For Brendan, this is what comes of, for decades saying in books, "Roleplaying is pretending your a character in a book or movie" instead of saying "Roleplaying is imagining yourself as an inhabitant of Middle Earth."  The notion of book and movie (which are forms of art) becomes so ingrained in Roleplaying thought that roleplaying becomes intrinsically linked and inseparable from the creative process of literature or other forms of art.

Manzanaro seems incapable of shedding the thought processes of literature when discussing roleplaying (or may just be obstinate, quite a lot of people who think of things in term of narrative terms seem unwilling to accept the idea that others experience roleplaying in a different way.)

A lot of mockery is thrown at the people who object to terms like story applied to roleplaying, even on this site, because they see it as a harmless description that has no effect.  Are you seeing an effect here?

What I'm seeing is a lot of outrage for not sharing your opinion. How much of that do you see coming from me?

Also narrative does not equal literature. Nor is narrative some nebulous imaginary thing that I am using as a metaphor.

An RPG session with no emergent narrative would be one in which no events were related for the entire session.

Quote from: Manzanaro;882034An RPG session with no emergent narrative would be one in which no events were related for the entire session.

Nope, an event or happening is simply an occurance, a historical fact that "this happened".  

That has nothing to do with the term narrative, which is a active creation in which someone accounts events that occurred.

In life it works like...
1. Events happen to people. Experience of Events.
2. People creatively tell stories afterward. Creation and narration of a narrative.

In IC immersive roleplaying it works like...
1. Events happen to characters, the players experience those events through the imaginative act of roleplaying.
2. Characters or players creatively tell stories afterward.  Creation and narration of a narrative.

As long as you keep to the concept that everyone is creating a narrative as they are roleplaying, which is absolutely, positively, demonstrably, and objectively FALSE, you're not gonna get much traction moving past that.

Quote from: Phillip;882033The question is whether to make a big fat hairy deal of this.

Your so-called "direct experience" itself is far from that, being actually a story (often very cunningly edited) told to the conscious you by mediating interpreters of sensory stimuli -- when the latter are even present at all!

Pushing a button on a console while watching a video screen is also not an experience of actually running, jumping, or what have you; it is a symbolic communication. Neither however is playing a video game a matter of thinking in dramatic terms about one's actions via the persona.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar for all we really care.

I respect that perspective.

What kills me though? Is a very simple topic getting so tortured that we find ourselves branching out into discussions of Descartes' demon rather than stuff that relates to the simple initial premise like, "I find that empathizing with the protagonists helps build a more emotionally resonant narrative and here are some ways I have found to help establish that" or " I find that even seemingly nonclimactic failures on the part of the PCs can be compelling and here are some approaches that have worked for me" or any of an unlimited number of approaches that might be taken to my initial premise.

Instead, aside from some good bits scattered over the thread, we get page after page after page of pedantic squabbling and accusations of one true way isms.

Quote from: CRKrueger;882035Nope, an event or happening is simply an occurance, a historical fact that "this happened".  

That has nothing to do with the term narrative, which is a active creation in which someone accounts events that occurred.

In life it works like...
1. Events happen to people. Experience of Events.
2. People creatively tell stories afterward. Creation and narration of a narrative.

In IC immersive roleplaying it works like...
1. Events happen to characters, the players experience those events through the imaginative act of roleplaying.
2. Characters or players creatively tell stories afterward.  Creation and narration of a narrative.

As long as you keep to the concept that everyone is creating a narrative as they are roleplaying, which is absolutely, positively, demonstrably, and objectively FALSE, you're not gonna get much traction moving past that.

You're a funny dude. I'll give you that much.

A narrative, by definition, is a creative construct, a retelling of events, not the events themselves.

OED
1.) A spoken or written account of connected events; a story:

• the hero of his modest narrative
• These were Maori narratives written and read from the position of living in a European country.
• Their narratives were accounts of how a democratic state had been achieved.
• Many narratives have also been written in more conventional language and forms by Aboriginal authors.

1.1) The narrated part or parts of a literary work, as distinct from dialogue.

• These struggles were only the beginning, as similar feelings about dialogue and narrative nagged the back of my mind.
• It spools out and out of my mouth, narrative, dialogue and commentary.
• I was brought in to, essentially, write some voice-over dialogue and narrative for it, to buttress the story.

1.2) The practice or art of telling stories:

• traditions of oral narrative
• The short story cycle looks back to oral traditions of narrative while embodying signs of modernity.
• It didn't just object to certain kinds of story, but to narrative in general as a promoter of illusion.
• In the realm of mythic narrative, the same stories keep getting reincarnated.

1.3) A representation of a particular situation or process in such a way as to reflect or conform to an overarching set of aims or values:

• the coalition's carefully constructed narrative about its sensitivity to recession victims
• The bigger picture, however, is of a prime minister and a government that want to be more self-confident but are frustrated at the failure of their 'narrative' to find a more receptive audience.
• Such expectations may have been unrealistic, but it was part of an overall narrative about the Liberal Democrat path to government which depended not only on Liberal Democrat progress, but also Conservative decline.
• Labour needs to find a new narrative. And the Conservatives must stick to their story.

Yay.

More pedantic squabbling. It's fun for the whole family.

So what is a work of fiction a retelling of?

Quote from: Manzanaro;882037You're a funny dude. I'll give you that much.

So that would be a no on admitting we all don't create narrative or experience things the way you do, huh?  Not a surprise.

I wish I could call you funny, but unfortunately, the arrogance of your point of view is all too common and banal, which is why we do this every year or so when one of the anointed comes in to tell us how we actually think.