Ludic Narrem

A Ludic Narrem is the smallest unit of fictional truth - what something counts as: gold, blood, power, life. The ascription attaches it to a bearer: “The red cube counts as blood.”

The narrem is transferable. Life travels from game to game; that this cube is blood holds for one game. The same narrem can attach to different bearers - power in a point, a throne, a crown -, and the same bearer can carry different ones: the red cube as blood or as energy.

A narrem brings a field with it. Whoever calls the cube gold also sets that it is valuable and scarce. What is ascribed is set, what comes with it is implied; both are fictionally true.

What it is not. It is not meaning: meaning results from all three terms of the triad and is derived. It is not a relation: the link to the bearer is the ascription. And it is not an appearance: gold says what something counts as, not what it looks like.

Place and design access

Place on the axis: CORPUS - the narrem belongs to Ludic Fiction: it is what an ascription attaches to a bearer. It is transferable and atomic, but not a pattern - not a configuration of determinations, but the content of a single ascription. It stands for the transferable as the Mechanism does on the side of regulation; its game-specific counterpart is the ascription, like the Rule.

Design access: designable - designers determine which narrems a game uses and to which bearers they are attached.

Relations on the axis:

• CORPUS: the narrem is part of the Ludic Argumentum: every premise is composed of at least one narrem, and the same narrem can stand in none or in many. It fills the Narrational Structure with content; without narrems it remains an empty framework. Ludic Appearance gives an ascribed narrem shape without being identical with it. To fiction itself it is attached by no edge: what is part of a game’s fiction is the ascription.
• FORM: the Ludic Form spans the possibility space of narrems; the same narrem holds at the table and in digital games - gold is gold in a board game as in a digital game.
• PROCESS: the order in which a game’s ascriptions are set and made known is arranged by the Ludic Sujet.
• AGENT–CORPUS: the Ludic Frame limits which narrems are coherent within it - in a western the sheriff’s star, not the lightsaber. Cultural knowledge also includes conventions: fixed links between an appearance and a narrem, the red heart as life.
• AGENT–PROCESS: on the game side the ascribed fictional truths enter the Ludic Fabula of every agent - in chess, that the king fell; in Go none enter.
• AGENT: a narrem determines what something counts as; whether the agents imagine it, and what they want and feel in doing so, it does not determine. Agents ascribe narrems too - by agreement or emergently: in Go a group “lives”. These ascriptions do not belong to the corpus.

The trias at this concept

Regulation - a narrem regulates nothing, but its field raises expectations of the regulation: what counts as gold should be scarce. If the regulation does not fulfil this, coherence costs arise.

Appearance - an ascribed narrem usually gets its shape from an appearance. How similar it is to the narrem is measured by iconicity: the rendered gold nugget, the stylised knight piece, the yellow cube.

Ascription - the narrem is what is ascribed; the ascription attaches it to a bearer of this game.

Delimitations

Delimitation from Ludic Fiction

Against Ludic Fiction: unit and truth. The narrem is the transferable unit - gold. Fiction is the fictional truth at a bearer of this game - that this cube is gold -, and as a mass term the totality of these truths, the game world. The narrem is what is ascribed; fiction is what holds through the ascription.

Delimitation from Ludic Entity

Against the Ludic Entity: content and thing. The entity is a bearer - the red cube, the figure, the card. The narrem is what it counts as - blood, legion, gold. The same entity can carry different narrems or none, like the Go stone; the same narrem can adhere to an entity, but also to an action, a place or a round: power in a crown, in the throne room, in the move that wins it.

Delimitation from Ludic Regulation

Against Ludic Regulation: counting as and holding for. Regulation determines what happens with a bearer and what follows from it - the cube is paid, counted, handed over. The narrem determines what it counts as - gold. A narrem regulates nothing: that gold is scarce is set by its field as an expectation, not as a rule. If regulation fulfils the expectation, imagination carries the game; if not, coherence costs arise.

Delimitation from Ludic Argumentum

Against the Ludic Argumentum: unit and premise. Village, dragon and threat are narrems; “The village must be saved from the dragon” is an argumentum. The premise is more than its narrems: urgency arises only in the composition. The argumentum and the Narrational Structure are two ways of composing narrems - into a premise and into a framework -, not rungs of a ladder.

Delimitation from Ludic Frame

Against the Ludic Frame: unit and schema. The frame is an interpretive schema from cultural knowledge that agents bring along - western, pirates, fairy tale. It holds for a game as a whole and suggests which narrems fit without fixing any. The narrem holds at a bearer. A narrem against the frame is possible - with coherence costs or on purpose.

Examples

• Same bearer, different narrems: the red cube counts as blood in one game and as energy in another - without any change in regulation or appearance.
• Same narrem, different bearers: power lies in a victory point, in a throne, in a crown.
• Two narrems at one bearer: the figure counts as Roman and as legion; each brings its field - empire and Latin, discipline and marching.
• Conventions: the red heart counts as life in Zelda and countless other games, the skull as poison, the yellow card in sport as warning.
• Ascriptions by agents: children ascribe the narrem car to wooden blocks; Go players say a group “lives” - emergent, not in the corpus.
• Zero point: in Go no stone is anything other than a stone; in chess the pieces count as king, queen, knight.

Explanation

A red wooden cube can count as gold in one game, as blood in another, as energy in a third. Gold, blood, energy are narrems: the smallest building blocks of what is imagined in a game. They travel from game to game; which one you attach to which element is your decision.

Every narrem brings expectations. What counts as gold should be valuable and scarce; what counts as poison should harm. If your rules fulfil this, imagination carries the game. And you need not give every element a narrem: a Go stone is a stone, and the game is still one of the deepest there is.

Usage context

• Phase: ideation - which narrems does the game carry?; development - which attach to which bearers?; evaluation - do the ascriptions come across, and do others arise?
• Narrative worksheet: the narrem table with bearer, narrem and experience segment for each ascription; the header field “deliberately without narrative” as zero point.
• Argumentum cards: the field narrem aggregation - how narrems combine into a premise.
• No stack of its own. Whether cultural conventions get a catalogue is open.

Theoretical foundation

• Kendall L. Walton, Mimesis as Make-Believe (1990): props and principles of generation make propositions fictionally true, including implied ones - hence the field of a narrem.
• Claude Lévi-Strauss, “The Structural Study of Myth” (1955): the mytheme as the smallest unit of myth - model for the formation in -em.
• Stith Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature (1932-1936): a catalogue of transferable narrative units. The literary motif is a situation - the forbidden chamber, the duel -, the narrem an element; motifs stand closer to the argumentum.
• The earlier semiotic reading - element as signifier, narrem as signified - is given up: the narrem is not a meaning but the unit of a fictional truth.

Properties

• Atomic, not a pattern: a narrem is the smallest unit that brings a field of its own; it has no articulation. It is not a pattern - not a configuration of determinations that a game realises, but the content of an ascription. Roman legion is two narrems, because Roman and legion each raise expectations of their own. There is no “narrem complex”: several narrems at one bearer are several ascriptions; their composition into a sense across several bearers - “threatened object + threat + escalating time → urgency of rescue” - is achieved by the argumentum and the Narrational Structure.
• Transferable: narrems travel between games and would be catalogable. Also transferable is the convention, a fixed link of an appearance with a narrem - red heart = life. It is cultural knowledge like the frame and enables a culturally conventional ascription.
• With a field: what is ascribed brings implied truths with it - gold makes valuable and scarce. This is where expectations of the regulation arise.
• Independent of appearance: the same narrem can appear in quite different ways; how similar is measured by iconicity.
• Kinds of ascription are kinds of the ascription, not of the narrem: designated (set by the designers), culturally conventional (following a convention), agreed (arranged by the players), in the process emergent (by agents without agreement). Designated and emergent ascriptions are of equal worth; how much is fixed is a matter of the wish to steer.