On Wed, 21 Dec 2005, Karen J. Cravens wrote:

> I think half the problem is nobody approaches this on the same level.

Many of the indie game authors _want_ to approach this at a level such 
that the game dictates the campaign and adventure.  The extreme 
example of this is _The Mountain Witch_, which is essentially a single 
adventure with its own rules.  Its theme is "trust" and the mechanics 
are all about trust and betrayal.

But even there, TMW doesn't dictate a _premise_... it offers a 
question, the answer to which is the premise.  (I haven't actually 
read TWM, so I'm not going to guess at what the question is.)

_Dogs In the Vineyard_ does the same thing... it doesn't say, "You 
should always forgive sinners," or "You should punish sinners who have 
done something worse than X."  It asks the question, "Where should you 
draw the line between dealing out forgiveness and judgment?"  It's up 
to the players to answer that question through play... premise arises 
through play.

I think it would be hard to _dictate_ premise, because it means 
forcing an answer to the question... it means _telling_ the story in 
advance, because the resolution of the conflict answers the question 
of premise.  I think I've mentioned that _Polaris_ actually does this, 
because it's about the hopelessness of the situation, and the 
mechanics _force_ a particular unhappy ending.  (All the Knights of 
the North Star die or become demons.)  It is _interesting_, but I 
certainly wouldn't want every, or even many, of the games I play to 
have a foregone conclusion.

> You've got your campaign-level premises and whatnot, but they don't
> necessarily have an impact on what actually happens in any given game.
> And that's the level I, as player, care about.

I think premise, or the question that prompts the creation of premise, 
is useful to the GM in creating the campaign.  I'm sure a lot of GMs 
do this without thinking in terms of premise.

Of course, you often can figure out the exact question until you've 
seen the answer. :)  I think the most concrete thing you can do most 
of the time is develop a theme.

The PCs are the crew of a free trader on the fringes of civilized 
space.  We start the campaign... no cargo, a tank of fuel, and enough 
credits to stay in dock for just twelve more hours.

I _could_ say the premise is, "You should respond to adversity with 
persistence and optimism."  And I could throw a lot of adversity your 
way, rewarding persistence and optimism, and punishing anything else. 
And I, as gamemaster, could prove my premise, but it wouldn't 
necessarily be any fun.

But I could ask the question, "How should you respond to adversity," 
and let the players answer that question through play.

> And often as GM, come to that... game premise usually only matters 
> in hindsight, IMHO.

I think theme is more useful than premise.  But a few weeks ago, you 
said, "Heroism requires sacrifice."  That's a premise.  It can be the 
premise of an individual character's part in the story, or it could be 
the premise of the entire campaign... or it could be the premise of 
just one particular story within the campaign.

This is where I find TSoY's Keys intersesting... because you can take 
The Key of the Hero and that tells me you want your character's story 
to be about heroic sacrifice.  But you can later decide you've had 
your fill of focusing on heroic sacrifice and buy off that Key, 
trading it in for The Key of the Broken Hero or something like that... 
which signals to the me that you want to tell a story about how these 
sacrifices have destroyed your life.  Or something like that.

Now, you _could_ just do this entirely outside of the game...  just 
tell the GM what you want your story to be about.  But I like the 
formality, the concreteness, of Keys... they go on your character 
sheet and act as a constant reminder.  It takes an implied social 
contract and makes it explicit... it's in writing that if I don't 
include your Keys in the game, you can remind me about it because 
including your Keys is part of the rules, the explicit game contract. 
It makes it clear to me the elements you really want in the story.

-- 
Carl D Cravens (raven@phoenyx.net)                Gamers List Owner
     [        The Fudge List -- http://fudge.phoenyx.net/        ]
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