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Author Topic: Narrative authority and role-playing games  (Read 21993 times)

Omnifray

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Narrative authority and role-playing games
« Reply #270 on: November 24, 2010, 06:17:07 PM »
Another long one, sorry

Quote from: RPGPundit;419623
This is bullshit Forge Swine jargon meant to obfuscate the truth by dominating the semantic terms from the get go in an argument.


It's certainly bullshit jargon which obfuscates the truth by means of semantics from the get-go in the argument. The true terms should be:-

1. Story Planned Out in Advance, Fleshed Out Cosmetically As We Go Along
[instead of Story First, although Story First is not a wholly unreasonable term for this, and neither is Railroading]

2. Play Now!, Accidental/Incidental Story Also Now
[instead of Story After]

3. Story Planned Out Through Play As We Go Along Then Immediately Narrated
[instead of Story Now!]

In 1, the plot is mainly laid down well in advance of the game. In 2, it arises exactly at the moment of play. In 3, the individual player/GM kind of comes up with an on-the-spot plan for the story and immediately narrates that part of it... so strictly speaking, the story in what RE calls "Story After" is actually literally "Incidental Story Now!", whereas his "Story Now!" is actually literally "Story First (But Only Just)". He's got the three of them in the right sequence, it's just that 2 and 3 need to be put back in the chronological process slightly. That's kind of funny, isn't it :-D

I was not asserting nor even seeking to imply the appropriateness of the jargon I explained. I was only citing it to explain to the poster I quoted that there genuinely IS a school of thought that you can something different to Story After, and it's a Forgie school of thought. Of course I disagree with its choice of terminology.

Quote
If I accepted these terms, I'd have to agree on a number of things that aren't true,


A pedantic no to this assertion, but you would be handing a victory to storygame propaganda for sure.

Quote
particularly that "story after" is a real goal for regular roleplayers,


You're right, it's not.

Quote
that "story now" is actually "story" as normal people define it


With respect, I think that terminologically speaking it is.

Quote
that "story now" is the inherently superior option over the other two.


And plainly it's not the superior option. On that we agree.

Quote
there's a reason that most of the times when some gamer sits there for an hour telling you about his character's awesome adventures you want to claw your eardrums out: its not actually a "good" story that's been created. ... the thing that's awesome to the guy who lived it is that he LIVED it,  ...  


Nice insight there actually. In fact I can tolerate about 5 seconds of this kind of behaviour. Sadly, I'm sometimes guilty of it, probably for the reason you state. Very interesting.

Quote
"story" is an ENTIRELY INCIDENTAL byproduct of the gaming experience.


Change this to "immersive roleplay involves storytelling as an incidental byproduct" and we would be in complete agreement.

Quote
ALL HIS LITTLE FOLLOWERS who have come on here deceitfully to try to argue that the RPG is somehow an inherent story-making device.


I've already explained to you earlier in this thread, it's not some deceitful conspiracy. What it is is that The Big Model (God what a pretentious name) is a pile of craptacular fuckwittery due to the failure to apply basic empathic insight in putting it together, possibly (as a matter of speculation) because the man behind it is presumably better trained and more often professionally engaged in the modelling of externally observable behaviour, rather than in engaging with internal perspectives and subjective experience. Plus the fact that The Big Model notwithstanding this flaw is put together with considerable articulation and is superficially highly persuasive due to the intelligence of the man who put it together, so it genuinely convinces people. To jump to the conclusion that anyone who subscribes to that theory is an evil conspiracist is unwarranted. But it is a source of endless amusement. And you may be a son of a bitch but with respect, you are OUR son of a bitch. (We being the pro-immersionists.)

Quote
those "storygames" that the Forge are creating are not actually RPGs at all, but something new.


They might be kind of abstract roleplaying games rather than immersive ones, meaning you superficially play different roles, but you don't really get into them in any immersive kind of way, if that makes sense.

Quote
storygames aren't in fact all that good at telling stories either


I agree. But what they are good at is getting people to work together to tell a story. What's the point in that? you may well ask. Well, I guess people enjoy working together. I say work, but I guess you could say play, and it wouldn't be inaccurate, but pissing around together might be a better description, given the quality of the narrative endeavour :-D

Quote
Its probably why the Forge Swine don't have enough faith in their own hobby to admit that its a new and separate hobby


There is of course a storygames Internet site. I post there sometimes. I don't know what proportion of them really subscribe to The Big Model in its entirety. Probably only a small minority. The rest probably play a bunch of games, including general RPGs and some Forgie games. And they probably enjoy doing so because they get some kind of a kick out of pissing around together making up a moderately passable story together which seems awesome to them because they're having fun making it up together. Not really my bag but I'd do it maybe once every couple of years or so at a con to get a feel for it and see if I can rip any inspiration from the experience to improve my actual immersive roleplaying, and so that if it turns out you're talking bunkum and I'm missing out on something great, I find out about it.
I did not write this but would like to mention it:-
http://jimboboz.livejournal.com/7305.html

I did however write this Player's Quickstarter for the forthcoming Soul's Calling RPG, free to download here, and a bunch of other Soul's Calling stuff available via Lulu.

As for this, I can't comment one way or the other on the correctness of the factual assertions made, but it makes for chilling reading:-
http://home.roadrunner.com/~b.gleichman/Theory/Threefold/GNS.htm

Omnifray

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Narrative authority and role-playing games
« Reply #271 on: November 24, 2010, 06:22:29 PM »
Quote from: RPGPundit;419628
So the POINT of fishing is to be able to tell a story, then?
By that logic, absolutely EVERYTHING is about telling a story, and therefore "story" is a meaningless term. You have defeated yourself.


Rephrased as "So FISHING means creating a story then? By that logic, absolutely ANY ACTIVITY means creating a story, and therefore 'story' is a term of such broad meaning that it is virtually useless as an instrument of discourse," this would be utterly incontrovertible.
I did not write this but would like to mention it:-
http://jimboboz.livejournal.com/7305.html

I did however write this Player's Quickstarter for the forthcoming Soul's Calling RPG, free to download here, and a bunch of other Soul's Calling stuff available via Lulu.

As for this, I can't comment one way or the other on the correctness of the factual assertions made, but it makes for chilling reading:-
http://home.roadrunner.com/~b.gleichman/Theory/Threefold/GNS.htm

Omnifray

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Narrative authority and role-playing games
« Reply #272 on: November 24, 2010, 06:26:48 PM »
Quote from: FunTyrant;419627
I honestly don't know what scares me more; the fact that you believe this or the fact that you get this frothed up about RPGs.


Why be scared about something which provides such excellent entertainment value?
I did not write this but would like to mention it:-
http://jimboboz.livejournal.com/7305.html

I did however write this Player's Quickstarter for the forthcoming Soul's Calling RPG, free to download here, and a bunch of other Soul's Calling stuff available via Lulu.

As for this, I can't comment one way or the other on the correctness of the factual assertions made, but it makes for chilling reading:-
http://home.roadrunner.com/~b.gleichman/Theory/Threefold/GNS.htm

RPGPundit

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Narrative authority and role-playing games
« Reply #273 on: November 24, 2010, 06:26:51 PM »
Quote from: Omnifray;419666

I've already explained to you earlier in this thread, it's not some deceitful conspiracy. What it is is that The Big Model (God what a pretentious name) is a pile of craptacular fuckwittery due to the failure to apply basic empathic insight in putting it together, possibly (as a matter of speculation) because the man behind it is presumably better trained and more often professionally engaged in the modelling of externally observable behaviour, rather than in engaging with internal perspectives and subjective experience. Plus the fact that The Big Model notwithstanding this flaw is put together with considerable articulation and is superficially highly persuasive due to the intelligence of the man who put it together, so it genuinely convinces people. To jump to the conclusion that anyone who subscribes to that theory is an evil conspiracist is unwarranted. But it is a source of endless amusement. And you may be a son of a bitch but with respect, you are OUR son of a bitch. (We being the pro-immersionists.)


Except that time and time again Forge Storygame Swine have been CAUGHT LYING in threads like this one, and all over the internet; saying one thing that they think will make them sound more reasonable and appeal to the audience they're trying to convert while over on some other website they are saying the exact opposite.  The most egregious example of this was the "Brain damage" affair, where tons of storygamers came out to try to claim that "Edwards didn't mean it" on all the RPG websites, while over on the forge some of those SAME people were saying "You're so right, Ron! I'm totally brain-damaged!".  There are plenty of other examples as well. People on the Storygames website feigning "respect" for Gary Gygax when he died, and trying to claim he was pro-Storygames, while over on the Storygames forum they were making fun of his death in a thread they somehow stupidly didn't think people would see.

They do this kind of shit all the time. They're doing it here, right now.  Storygamers accept the premise that regular RPGs "fail" at telling stories, yet here you have several Forge Swine trying to argue till they're blue in the face that RPGs tell good stories, because it suits them to say this at this moment. On some other thread, somewhere more amenable to their ideology, they'd be trying to convince people that regular RPGs suck ass at story and you need a Storygame to do it right.

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Omnifray

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Narrative authority and role-playing games
« Reply #274 on: November 24, 2010, 06:32:11 PM »
Quote from: Koltar;419636
...
Again the phrase or term "narrative authority' is a bullshit phrase when applied to RPGs.

The GM is the final authority at the game table. ...

NON SEQUITUR! The GM is the final authority at the game table. Yes, the final NARRATIVE authority at the game-table. The players have NO NARRATIVE AUTHORITY. The term Narrative Authority is still useful. It describes what the GM has!

The only get-out you have for this is to say that what the GM has final authority over is not narrative. But what else can it be? The GM does not have final authority over the players' immersive experience. The GM does not have final authority over the style or substance of the players' roleplay. All he can control is the sequence of events in the game-world and the description of the same.

Now, you can say that the sequence of events in the game-world is not a narrative, and I guess you're probably right. But the description of the sequence of events in the game-world I think can be credibly called a narrative as a question of ordinary English. So, it ends up being debatable whether narrative authority is a strictly literally correct term for the GM's final authority. IMHO YMMV, it is. Even though the point of RPGs is the immersive experience. Because the GM has no direct authority over the immersive experience. He only has control over the narration. You can't order a player to feel immersed. Well, you can, but it's a bit of Cnuttish endeavour.
I did not write this but would like to mention it:-
http://jimboboz.livejournal.com/7305.html

I did however write this Player's Quickstarter for the forthcoming Soul's Calling RPG, free to download here, and a bunch of other Soul's Calling stuff available via Lulu.

As for this, I can't comment one way or the other on the correctness of the factual assertions made, but it makes for chilling reading:-
http://home.roadrunner.com/~b.gleichman/Theory/Threefold/GNS.htm

Koltar

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Narrative authority and role-playing games
« Reply #275 on: November 24, 2010, 06:39:50 PM »
Sorry. Omnifray you don't get yell "NON-SEQUITUR" and shut down things as if you were the hovering robotic probe Nomad.

A GM is not a 'narrative authority'. A GM is a GamesMaster and the Authority at the game table.

By-the-way, saying the word 'narrative' over anbd over again doesn't sore you any points.  Why is it you guys think it makes you look educated using words that don't apply to roleplaying games and turning simple concepts and ideas into murky multi-word phrases?


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Doctor Jest

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Narrative authority and role-playing games
« Reply #276 on: November 24, 2010, 06:46:53 PM »
When I GM I have no idea what is going to happen. I present the world, players make choices via their PCs to react to said world. Out of this interaction, a narrative Might occur as a byproduct. But this is not the aim or goal. As GM I am not in charge of the "story". I'm in charge of the setting. A setting is not a story. Protagonists doing things in that setting might generate a story, but if they do, it's really quite by accident. And as GM I do not dictate that story. It is as much a mystery to me as it is the players.

Narrative Authority means something very specific in story gaming which frankly isn't really there in most RPGs. The entire concept requires a level of intentional metagaming most of us would find quite foreign.

As GM I have authority over the rules, but over whatever narrative might occur? No.
« Last Edit: November 24, 2010, 06:49:09 PM by Doctor Jest »

Cranewings

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Narrative authority and role-playing games
« Reply #277 on: November 24, 2010, 06:50:30 PM »
Quote from: RPGPundit;419662
Dude, are you also a Creationist? Its funny


Fucking Awesome.

Omnifray

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Narrative authority and role-playing games
« Reply #278 on: November 24, 2010, 06:51:05 PM »
Quote from: FunTyrant;419644

Fine. Prove it. Cite irrefutable and universal sources. Prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that no RPG in the history of the industry ever was ever designed to make a story. Show your sources and detail your research please.

Otherwise, it's just your opinion that RPGs are a certain way.


No, it's a question of the ordinary and natural use of language which at this stage in the life of the term "roleplaying game" can be demonstrated etymologically as the term is still in relatively fresh use. Perhaps if you had read my lengthy replies to some of the earlier posts which had replied to yours, you would understand why.

Roleplaying means playing the role of a character. Playing a role is what actors do. Playing the role of a character means, in essence, adopting what your lord and master His Holiness King Ron Edward I, First Lord of the Forge, was pleased to call actor stance. Perhaps you can understand that? Any game which is not (at least primarily) about adopting actor stance is not about playing the role of a character. At best it might be analogous to a game about playing the role of a character.

If the game is about a story, well, authors write stories. To do so they ask themselves what will make a good story. Funnily enough, His Holiness King Ron Edward I calls it (IIRC) Author Stance to do this when you are deciding the actions of a particular character and making them believable, and Director Stance when you are deciding the way the world works globally. So, if you are adopting Author Stance, funnily enough, you are doing one of the things an author does, and you are telling a story. You are storygaming. Actors when they are playing roles are doing just that - playing roles. They are not being Authors or Directors. if you are being an Author or Director and not an Actor, you are not playing a role. You are not roleplaying.

Finally, His Holiness King Ron Edward I referred to Pawn Stance. This is where you don't care about the believability of your character's actions, you just want them to fit the story you desire. In other words, Pawn Stance is basically a kind of porn. It could be fight-porn (gamism) or it could be story-porn (so-called narrativism) but at the end of the day it is basically porn fit only to be wanked over.

Please note that by my definitions I am implying that the GM of a roleplaying game is often in effect storygaming and the game is still a roleplaying game because the game is surprise surprise about what the people who PLAY it are doing, and not about what the person who is in overall CHARGE of the game is doing. For instance we call football football because the players play football. The referee doesn't play football, he watches it and makes rules calls. We don't call it "watching the ball and making rules calls". We call it football, because that's what the players are doing, kicking a ball. Unless they're American of course in which case they get confused about anatomy and use their hands instead for most of the time. So if the players are roleplaying, it's a roleplaying game. If they are storygaming it's a storygame. If the ref is roleplaying and the players are storygaming, it's probably a storygame. if the players are roleplaying and the ref is storygaming, it's probably a roleplaying game. Pundit may disagree but that is my view.

It is also my view that roleplaying involves incidental elements of story, and storygaming involves incidental elements of roleplay.

In a hundred years' time it may be that the word roleplaying game is so commonly used to mean something else that as a matter of usage that simply becomes its meaning, just as egregious IIRC once meant strikingly good, and now means strikingly bad.
I did not write this but would like to mention it:-
http://jimboboz.livejournal.com/7305.html

I did however write this Player's Quickstarter for the forthcoming Soul's Calling RPG, free to download here, and a bunch of other Soul's Calling stuff available via Lulu.

As for this, I can't comment one way or the other on the correctness of the factual assertions made, but it makes for chilling reading:-
http://home.roadrunner.com/~b.gleichman/Theory/Threefold/GNS.htm

Benoist

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Narrative authority and role-playing games
« Reply #279 on: November 24, 2010, 06:57:24 PM »
Quote from: RPGPundit;419669
Except that time and time again Forge Storygame Swine have been CAUGHT LYING in threads like this one, and all over the internet; saying one thing that they think will make them sound more reasonable and appeal to the audience they're trying to convert while over on some other website they are saying the exact opposite.  The most egregious example of this was the "Brain damage" affair, where tons of storygamers came out to try to claim that "Edwards didn't mean it" on all the RPG websites, while over on the forge some of those SAME people were saying "You're so right, Ron! I'm totally brain-damaged!".  There are plenty of other examples as well. People on the Storygames website feigning "respect" for Gary Gygax when he died, and trying to claim he was pro-Storygames, while over on the Storygames forum they were making fun of his death in a thread they somehow stupidly didn't think people would see.

They do this kind of shit all the time. They're doing it here, right now.  Storygamers accept the premise that regular RPGs "fail" at telling stories, yet here you have several Forge Swine trying to argue till they're blue in the face that RPGs tell good stories, because it suits them to say this at this moment. On some other thread, somewhere more amenable to their ideology, they'd be trying to convince people that regular RPGs suck ass at story and you need a Storygame to do it right.

RPGPundit

Swine: People tell stories all the time with RPGs. It's about who's got narrative authority and...
Trad Gamer: No. I'm not telling "stories" when I play RPGs. I'm living fictional events as they occur.
Swine: Well, you might call it some other way, but what you're really doing is telling stories, everyone agrees on that.
Trad Gamer: I don't.
Swine: Anyway. RPGs are telling stories, and the GM has narrative authority, but it doesn't have to be that way, see?
Trad Gamer: ...
Swine: Because you know, trad games kinda suck at telling stories. If only you could share narrative authority, then the game becomes so much better, so much more dynamic!
Trad Gamer: ... MY GAMES DON'T TELL STORIES YOU DUMB FUCK!
Swine: They could! See, if we add action points and cards so players can have an input on the storyline, boom! Your games are telling awesome stories now!
Trad Gamer: Shut the fuck up.
Swine: Don't be frustrated! You can make your games work too, see?
Trad Gamer: You need... to SHUT. THE FUCK. UP!
Swine: Wow. So much nerdrage! You should really work on that.

Omnifray

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Narrative authority and role-playing games
« Reply #280 on: November 24, 2010, 07:03:46 PM »
Quote from: Elliot Wilen;419654
I'm sorry, but I can't get get any farther with your post because you're exhibiting a classic fallacy of equivocation here. German does use "Geschichte" to mean both "history" and "story", but this doesn't mean that German-speakers are confused by the distinction made by Anglophones.

I think you are making the same error when you play around with "narrate".


I was merely speculating, not asserting, that the use of the same word for the two different things might make the association of the concept of story with the notion of a past-tense narrative more attractive to a particular individual German-speaker. If you like, my intention was to offer that up for consideration to the particular individual to accept or reject as he saw fit. I certainly wasn't assuming that he was necessarily misled by the use of the same word.

I have seen people misled by this kind of thing in their native language frequently. For instance, feminists thinking that we should say Herstory instead of History because History sounds like a contraction of His and Story - well that's fine I suppose. But if they then go around assuming that that is how the word history was etymologically derived, well there will be a lot of Frenchmen wondering how they got their histoires. Some people ARE misled by this kind of thing. I wasn't trying to say that the particular poster (NORBERT) necessarily WAS misled by it. I was just asking him to think about it.

So you may return to my post and re-read it there's a good chap :p

I can't identify any similar fallacy I might be making with the word "narrate". Do you mean that because narrate can mean to tell a story in the strict sense of a fictional work, and can also be used to relate a series of events, that I might be confusing the one with the other? If so I understand your point and have already considered that and rejected it. "Narrate events as they happen" is a phrase with some Google evidence of usage even in a factual context. Roleplayers play through discourse and that discourse is a form of narration. It is, specifically, a form of narration of fictional events in a sense as they (fictionally) happen, for entertainment. The narration of fictional events is story for entertainment is a story. I guess you could argue that it's the wrong kind of entertainment to qualify as a story, but even if that's right, the analogy is very close - we are not extending the meaning of the word story very far by saying that there is a story incidentally created by playing the game. But even if that is an extension of the meaning of the word story, the idea of the "game-narrative" seems to me to be perfectly sound.
I did not write this but would like to mention it:-
http://jimboboz.livejournal.com/7305.html

I did however write this Player's Quickstarter for the forthcoming Soul's Calling RPG, free to download here, and a bunch of other Soul's Calling stuff available via Lulu.

As for this, I can't comment one way or the other on the correctness of the factual assertions made, but it makes for chilling reading:-
http://home.roadrunner.com/~b.gleichman/Theory/Threefold/GNS.htm

Cole

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Narrative authority and role-playing games
« Reply #281 on: November 24, 2010, 07:11:10 PM »
Quote from: BWA;419657
Some of you guys are really exhausting.


There are other threads ripe to be posted in or started, if this one's getting boring to you.
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Doctor Jest

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Narrative authority and role-playing games
« Reply #282 on: November 24, 2010, 07:11:48 PM »
Quote from: Omnifray;419684

Please note that by my definitions I am implying that the GM of a roleplaying game is often in effect storygaming


I am implying you're wrong. No, wait, I'm not implying it. I'm just coming out and saying it. You're wrong.

As a GM, I primarily am involved in three activities:

1.) I adjudicate rules.

2.) I *roleplay* NPCs

3.) I present situations (environmental factors and NPC actions) to the players.

I do *not* tell stories. Therefore I am not storygaming.

Quote
In a hundred years' time it may be that the word roleplaying game is so commonly used to mean something else that as a matter of usage that simply becomes its meaning, just as egregious IIRC once meant strikingly good, and now means strikingly bad.


Speaking of non-sequitirs. It might be in a hundred years' time people greet each other by sticking their thumbs up their asses too. However, trying to enact greeting people by sticking your thumb up their ass on the strength of your sole speculation on the subject is unlikely to convince anyone that what you're doing is, in fact, polite behavior.

Similarly, your speculation on what the term "roleplaying games" might mean in 100 years time is immaterial to the discussion of what they mean today. So stop trying to stick your thumb up our asses.
« Last Edit: November 24, 2010, 07:14:30 PM by Doctor Jest »

Omnifray

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« Reply #283 on: November 24, 2010, 07:19:20 PM »
Quote from: Koltar;419676

A GM is not a 'narrative authority'. A GM is a GamesMaster and the Authority at the game table.


What does he have authority over? The game as a whole? But the focus of the game is on immersive roleplay. He cannot have authority over immersion, and can scarcely have authority over roleplay (well, he can try). So what else is there left for him to have control over? Only the sequence of events. If you don't think that sequence of events or the way it emerges through discourse can be called a narrative, fine. That's the only point we seem to differ over. Except...

Quote
Why is it you guys think it makes you look educated using words that don't apply to roleplaying games and turning simple concepts and ideas into murky multi-word phrases?


Who the fuck are "you guys"? Are you equating me with Forgites right now? Cos I am most definitely not a Forgite. I hate GNS. How many times do I have to say this before you will believe me? I am an immersionist roleplayer. How many times do I have to say that before you believe me? It's just a pretty trivial difference between us over whether there is technically speaking some kind of narrative which is at least incidental to the game. I don't think it's a particularly intellectual word to use, considering how analytical this whole thread has become. If you are just being anti-intellectual about it, that's as bad as being an intellectual snob, it's the same thing, just in reverse.

If, on the other hand, all you are saying is that it's a pretentious phrase and you think it's pretentious of me to use it, well, fine. I disagree. But even if I'm wrong, me being a pretentious dickwad does not make me a Forgite and I'm not sure who the "you guys" are that you're equating me with. I am a GNS-loathing immersive roleplayer who just happens to think ONE PARTICULAR PHRASE (namely "narrative authority") isn't quite as lame as you think it is. It's like we could almost be exactly the same person just speaking a slightly different language.

I pointed out your non sequitur because it was a non sequitur. The way you strung the two sentences together made it look like the REASON for your argument being correct that there is no such thing as narrative authority in an RPG is that the GM has final authority. That doesn't follow, because that final authority could still be called narrative authority. That's why it's a non sequitur. I wasn't saying your conclusion was necessarily wrong, just how you got there. Ropey arguments like that one serve the Forgite cause by making our arguments look piss poor.

Me playing devil's advocate might wind you up a bit but it's not deliberate trolling. I'd like to think it MIGHT help some of the pro-immersionist brigade on this site to sharpen up their pro-immersionist arguments or as Pundy puts it flex his rhetorical muscle. Of course my assistance might prove to be totally buttfuck useless but it's meant with good intentions.
I did not write this but would like to mention it:-
http://jimboboz.livejournal.com/7305.html

I did however write this Player's Quickstarter for the forthcoming Soul's Calling RPG, free to download here, and a bunch of other Soul's Calling stuff available via Lulu.

As for this, I can't comment one way or the other on the correctness of the factual assertions made, but it makes for chilling reading:-
http://home.roadrunner.com/~b.gleichman/Theory/Threefold/GNS.htm

Doctor Jest

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Narrative authority and role-playing games
« Reply #284 on: November 24, 2010, 07:25:16 PM »
Quote from: Omnifray;419699
What does he have authority over? The game as a whole? But the focus of the game is on immersive roleplay. He cannot have authority over immersion, and can scarcely have authority over roleplay (well, he can try). So what else is there left for him to have control over? Only the sequence of events.


Wrong. As GM I do not have authority over the sequence of events. I can't decide when the PCs will act, or how they will act. I don't know if they will turn left or right. I don't know if they will fight the Evil Queen... or join her. I have no authority over the sequence of events. I can only present the setting as it exists at the moment, and I can attempt to lure the PCs in one direction or another, but I can't actually decide the sequence of events.

My In-Game (as opposed to OOC) authority is over two things;

1.) the present condition of the game setting
2.) the actions of the NPCs

The rest is the result of the interaction between the above and the PCs. Those things, taken together, generate the sequence of events.