Agenda and Reward

[clukemula]

I've been thinking about this for a while, and never have had a good discussion about it, so here goes:

From my experiences as well as from what I can tell from others' experiences, it seems that the three Creative Agendas in play each lead to their own type of Reward.

Step On Up play is rewarding because it gives a sense of accomplishment. There are specific challenges, specific goals, and it's completely up to the player to Step On Up and accomplish what they set out to. Failure is a real possibility.

Story Now play is rewarding because it gives a sense of consequence. There are key decisions to be made by the players, and the players' responses to events and situations truly affect the fiction in a meaningful way.

Right to Dream play is rewarding because it gives a sense of wonder. It involves a steady stream of new experiences, of new things to explore, and each new thing enhances and progresses the dream.

I can give examples of actual play, but as they are, do these claims sound right? Or am I way off in even understanding Creative Agenda and Reward?

[clukemula]

Sorry for the double post, but I'd also like to suggest a term change:

From "Creative Agenda" to "Play," and from "Reward" to "Fun."

Then we can just talk about types of play and types of fun without people confusing CA for anything but play and Reward for reward mechanics.

- Luke

[Ron Edwards]

Hi! Good to see you here.

I think the phrasings in your first post are fine examples of "Say it for yourself," which is a useful part of engaging with the ideas as they stand. Given a generous reading, I have no reason to criticize them. But this isn't really a forum for cutting ideas phrasing much slack, so I'll get a little Smilodon on them now.

In practice, such statements tend not to be transitive. I'll see if I can show you why, in your phrases ...

1. Universalism. All role-playing conceivably offers the potential for all three things you've said. For example, accomplishment about what? If it's not about strategy and guts as a social priority, then it's not Step On Up, and without making sure those are in there, then your "losing" clause sort of floats there out of context. Hard or soft, luck-light or luck-heavy, such play is about whether you get acknowledged as having won or lost, a point which led to much wailing and gnashing of teeth about a decade ago, but which I think I defended pretty well. (including defending those role-players who like doing it a lot!)

To look at it another way, our long-term Hero Wars game in 2000-2002 definitely accomplished something, and in my opinion, something which touched all four of us very significantly for the rest of our lives. A very minor illustration would be the writing and publication of Trollbabe; a major one would be strongly affecting how I want to be (and can be) a father to my daughter. But it was in no way and could never have been mistaken for Step On Up play.

That point also illustrates the reverse: that without consequence, Story Now play would be trivial and circular, the equivalent of a particularly bad and preachy kids' cartoon that annoys the kids who watch it, or one of those bullshit movies that pretend to be quirky and post-millenial but are actually simply boring.

2. Your phrasing for The Right to Dream shows a long-standing problem, which I acknowledge is present in the original Simulationism essay, although I think it's clarified by reading all three at once: the old "Exploration squared" interpretation, which is rightly criticized as a definition-by-absence. We finally resolved this problem through my discussion of "constructive denial" a few years ago, which effectively retooled The Right to Dream into as active and productively creative an agenda as the other two. It also helped that Zilchplay had received a better airing by then too, and we'd stopped unfairly loading instances of Zilchplay into The Right to Dream.

Anyway, what I'm saying is (1) that your phrasing about the wonder is another instance of what I talked about above, merely a universal feature of enjoyable role-playing; and  more specifically, (2) that The Right to Dream play includes a definite focus (for accomplishment, consequences, and wonder) which your phrasing doesn't even hint at. I suppose this is a good time for me to concentrate on the bite-size, example-driven version of that for the wiki.

Best, Ron

[clukemula]

Hmm...

In response to your first objection: from my experience, Step On Up play is specifically about accomplishing clearly defined goals. If the focus of play isn't setting out to accomplish major, clearly defined goals, and about striving towards them no matter what the obstacle (with varying degrees of luck and hardness involved), then strategy and guts don't have to be the creative social priority of play. In other words, players strategize and take risks in relation to clear, predefined goals, and "losing" or "failure" is defined in relation to those goals.

Story Now play, on the other hand, is about responding to a central question, thesis, or premise, and the players' decisions in response have real consequences in the fiction (i.e., it's not planned out beforehand and there are multiple viable options to choose from).

Also, while all roleplaying can feature all of these types of fun, each instance of play is fun overall in a particular way, and I'm arguing that it's directly related to the group's Creative Agenda during that instance.

I had planned on giving some Right to Dream examples of play, but I'll save those for when I understand RtD play better. As of now, I'm slightly confused by your objection to my use of it, since I don't see how Exploration can be either passive or uncreative.

- Luke

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Luke,

I'm not finding your argument convincing.

Although one must have a goal to exert strategy and guts, having a goal does not make strategy and guts (and social regard for them) into the point of play. Those are the point only if - and this is an irreducible social if - they are already the point.

Goals are competition's bitch, when it comes to social leisure activities. No one wants the points you get from scoring a touchdown, what they want is to get the points because they won, in that instance of their team being on offense.

This point applies to all three things you mention. Each lacks a crucial about what at the Social Contract level which is what Creative Agenda specifically addresses, and which clearly and evidently acts as a breaking point at the most basic level of fun, when unmet.

Best, Ron

[clukemula]

I think my terminology is my worst enemy here. To me, the concept I'm trying to communicate is extremely obvious, but my communication of it has been horrible at best so far, and because of my wording it seems like you're objecting to something I'm not trying to claim.

So I'm going to postpone my response until I can figure out a better way to word this, and post some Actual Play to pull it out of the abstract.

- Luke