Agenda Clash or can two games peacefully coexist at one table?

[Joshua Bearden]

I subscribe to the theory says that two competing creative agenda cannot peacefully co-exist at a table. An honest look at my aspirations for this sandbox campaign tells me that my own creative agenda is  The Right to
Dream. However I've adopted many of Eero's methods which he clearly identifies as gamist. AND I've pitched this to potential players with the invitation to Step on Up.  I've offered players a two-fold challenge (1) play in my campaign in order to seek out challenges and attempt to beat them - by taking risks, problem-solving, and mastering the rules (even as we develop them),  and (2) attempt to "break" my games - by making choices that intuitively violate the agenda of the module writer, or even me if I appear to be railroading or by exploiting flaws and inconsistencies in the shared imagined space or system. For the player, the reward seems to be all Step on Up both within and around the SIS. But for me, however, the reward is discovery and exploration of both setting and system.  By inviting players to "game" in it, I get to watch it unfold.. ie. when players, seeking some advantage or challenge, force my attention on a new unexplored area of the map, or force me to tighten up the rule by over using certain ephemera.

(continued...)

[Joshua Bearden]

 (By the way I'm keeping a record of in-game events on my own website for reference if you want more detail.)

By way of actual play example, Eero's description of the players extensive use of Pavises and hirelings springs to mind.  This is the sort of thing I'm interested in seeing but haven't seen in my first session.  Perhaps players need to start to believe in two things for this to start to happen... they need to begin to believe this is a "real" sandbox that permits truly lateral thinking (not a "clipped sky" where all choices lead back to the DM's vision); and they need to believe that the creative agenda is Step On Up, so that they're motivated by the reward of winning more gold than the DM planned to give them by exploiting/creatively mining the sandbox.

My hypothesis is that this dual agenda does not require deception or misdirection on my part to achieve.  Players are entitled to know that I'm pursuing the Right to Dream even as they are focusing on Stepping On Up. What they should also know is that they aren't going to be rewarded in game for contributing to my agenda at the expense of 'trying to win'.

If I'm wrong I expect that play will creep in one direction or another. Either I'll subjugate my simulationist goals to "the game" or the players will start to lose interest in the gamist reward cycle. I'm not entirely sure how I'll recognize either of those eventualities.

[Eero Tuovinen]

In concrete terms what you describe doesn't seem likely to cause major problems - I trust that if the methodology is pure, D&D will show a functional creative agenda sooner or later. As a semantic matter I have no idea if you've got a real agenda disjunction there, or if you're just describing yourself in rather extreme terms. If you really don't acknowledge the existence of challenge or communicate with players in terms of stepping up, then your agenda apparently isn't a very gamist one; but if this is not the case, how are the players able to foster a focused, goal-oriented atmosphere? If one of the most important leading players at the table (which the referee is by definition) ignores the goals and refuses to acknowledge success, then how is it possible for a proper challenge to emerge?

Equivalently: if the other players grow disinterested in exploring the setting for its own sake, then who is going to satisfy your curiousity towards it? Will you be fine with the players making choices that don't pertain to e.g. the sociology of the setting, but rather stick close to the dungeon? Or will you grow unsatisfied by play because the players don't care about the interesting setting detail you've developed?

As I often explain GNS theory: the kind of socio-psychological thing that creative agenda is indicates that if we have two players with incongruent agendas, then they are actually playing two separate games at the same place and the same time. This might not be a problem for you socially, but often it is; rarely do we play games where it's not necessary for players to acknowledge and appreciate the game played by the other people at the table. Suggesting that the GM has a different agenda from the rest of the players is simply saying that while everybody else plays for one reason, this one guy is there ironically, satisfying an entirely different purpose. Maybe it's not a problem when properly planned?

It's notable that insofar as I can perceive an agenda in many mainstream games of the traditional bend, they're often suggestive of this type of arrangement: the GM comes to the table because he wants to express and explore; the players come because they've been promised challenges and glory. This is, as I understand it, the reason for why e.g. Exalted consists of a hyper-complex combat system married to a massive setting. Apparently this is working for many people in some way.

I characterize my own D&D game as gamist because it's pretty explicit about being goal-oriented: the fun we get from the game is primarily, on a session-to-session basis, provided by a cycle of analyzing situation, selecting goals, creating plan, executing, facing consequences; that's what basically happens 1-3 times per session, that's what playing the game is about. Were the GM not committed to this process, I think it'd be much harder to make it "go" as fluidly as it does. For instance, now that I'm playing in Helsinki with another GM, I can sort of see how he's not quite as adept about understanding this facet of the game, and sometimes he's unnecessarily difficult for the players as a consequence; he only has one neutral refereeing mode and he doesn't budge from it no matter where we are in that challenge cycle, so sometimes we have to engage in pretty moronic "find the clickable spot" exercises to e.g. get a party together and establish an adventure hook. I can only imagine how much more difficult this would be if the GM was genuinely committed to not making the challenge cycle progress, instead of being merely a bit inflexible with his GMing attitudes.

(Regardless of the gamism, though, I want to emphasize that we've still got as intricate a setting as any - the gamism does not mean that we just roll dice, the entire basis of the game is in exacting fictional positioning and deeply-rooted fiction. The technical derives from the tactical, the tactical derives from the strategic, and the strategic derives from a full-body understanding of the setting.)

[Ron Edwards]

Eero, let me talk to Joshua by myself for a couple of more posts. Thanks!

Hi Joshua,

Most of what I'm saying here is compatible with what Eero posted, but I think I can tune the points to address your specific concerns.

Issue #1
This one concerns your claim, as GM not only to seeking The Right to Dream, but to doing it, compatibly with these Stepping On Up players. This claim bears criticism.

The classic confusion with the Big Model is mistaking desiring a perfectly reasonable degree of the five components of Exploration to be in action at all times, which is required for role-playing, for The Right to Dream. This is very common because so many groups have suffered with members who were flat-out not role-playing at all, in that they did not care about those five components, and thus functional play of any kind failed to emerge – there was no platform, or medium, of Shared Imagined Space to do anything with. So many people have labored painfully along in the desire for Exploration to a functional degree, that when they find it, it's like the Holy Grail and they can't imagine anything about what to do with it, so they think that this – which I consider nothing more than a mere healthy baseline – must be their Creative Agenda.

Which if this applies to any degree in your case, casts doubt on your claim to being a Right to Dream player. It may well be that you are deeply concerned that play be well-founded on shared, imagined Situations (which includes Characters in a Setting), subjected to System, all dosed liberally with enjoyable Color, and are willing to go with, in this case, a Step On Up play as long as that's there. In which case, there's no Right to Dream seen anywhere in the room, not even hiding in the cupboard, and this is Step On Up play without frills.

(Here it's important to remember that Step On Up play is very frequently slandered as dismissing the Exploration platform, which is not true; Eero, you fell into this trap in your post as you  frantically sought to save your group and yourself from this criticism. It's a canard, not worthy of attention, and there's no need to stave it off.)

A related point is that CAs are not about deep-buried desires, but genuine action and dialogue at the table. So let's say, unlike my implication above, that you do harbor love and desire for The Right to Dream above and beyond the necessarily baseline of Exploration. However, if, as GM and indeed as a human at the table at all, you spend your time preparing, describing, delivering, resolving, and otherwise managing (as GM) Step On Up actions and dialogue, well then, that's what you are bloody fucking doing and all this talk of The Right to Dream is nothing but the air and water vapor it's physically composed of.

Issue #2
The second issue is your term "peacefully coexist." This isn't a part of my rhetoric and I think it introduces a problem, or claims a problem which might not need solving, or obfuscates a problem that may be occurring.

The following assumes that none Issue #1 above applies and that indeed, persons A and B are sitting at the same table, and we're going to say, uncritically, that A wants to and does play Step On Up, and B wants to and does play The Right to Dream. Neither one really cares what the other one does, in agenda terms. Is this a problem?

The answer is, yes, in practice, it is. Because we're not talking whether a rock could float away like a soap bubble if you let it go, but rather about what rocks do when you let them go. Let's avoid any talk of whether this situation could occur if we just imagine hard enough. Let's talk about what happens when real people breathe, sweat, fart, and otherwise be people in one another's presence.

Your group has not yet met very much, or played through very much together, and I doubt they have been through what I call a Reward Cyle yet.  So I can't do what I usually do, which is to ask questions about observable behavior. I have to speak generally from my observations of what's happened in the past. It may not predict what would happen in your group (pending that Issue #1 isn't the culprit and A-and-B is really happening); your group will have to find its way in the real world for a while first.

So: we are talking about this persons A-and-B situation without the usual unsubtle Agenda clash, in which one or the other would be pissed that the other isn't "playing right." Ah no, this group is going to be above all that, and pat ourselves on the back about how mature we are, and how we aren't dicks, and we all get along. Which as you're probably seeing, I consider that once brutal or rude methods of resolving Agenda differences are socially prohibited, then the problem shifts to more subtler interpersonal dysfunctions involving caretaking and passive-aggressive actions.

CAs are very much like sports teams insofar as one may "have" a CA individually, but it cannot be realized without group response and participation. Reward Cycles are only effective insofar as they expand outward from Ephemeral moments all the back/out to the Social Contract, predicated on togetherness. A and B simply cannot hover happily in their individual spheres and achieve satisfaction that way.

Let's say so far this isn't a problem because other people at the table are "taking care" of A and B, such that each gets the sense of playing their CA with a group after all. You may notice that a crucial feature of the Social Contract has just been broken, the part that says, "let's play this game together." Because the group members are not playing a game together. They are merely present together and therefore will become distractions to one another at best. It's even likely that they will come to regard one another's presence at the table as a serious reduction of fun.

One outcome thereof is very frequently Zilchplay, which is not co-existence of Agendas, but rather play which never revs up to Agenda level at all. But that's not what you're talking about, so I won't go into it; let's say that real Step On Up and real The Right to Dream do persist as actions and dialogue at the table.

My point is that it's not peaceful coexistence. It's definitely not a lovely portrait of harmonizing, which was one of the plaintive claims of many long-time GMs in encountering the first GNS discussions (and led to much blither about "triangles"), because as we discussed real play, we found that it never actually occurred among real humans. It's an inherently unstable situation, and in those which persist for a long time, the the caretakers are not only necessary, they assiduously practice attention and values switches that border on "emotional caretaking" in the negative social-psychological sense.

I plan to discuss a third issue as well which brings in the GM/player relationship and the kind of D&D you're playing. But until I get there, let me know whether what I'm writing so far makes any sense.

Best, Ron

[Joshua Bearden]

Thank you Ron and Eero. These responses are definitely helping my understanding of the theory, an understanding which I feel is critical to my ability to consciously work towards facilitating gaming experiences I enjoy with others who will also enjoy themselves.  Ron, your criticism of my issue #1 really struck home.  It is true that past play has been so devoid baseline exploration that I may very easily be conflating the right to even hope for functional role-play as The Right to Dream.

On one hand I'm not married to a particular creative agenda as a goal per se. On the other, however, I'd like to make it clear in my mind what sort of experience I'm seeking AND be able to communicate that effectively to other prospective players. My line of thinking started with the premise that "sandbox" by definition implies Right to Dream and then I started trying to rationalize this with Eero's campaigns. It occurs to me as I write this that there is a lot more to describe and communicate besides simply the creative agenda.

As for issue #2: I'd like to clarify my language.  I don't meant to propose that two CA's can "co-exist" within a game; my understanding of a CA as a statement of priority makes such a proposal nonsensical.  What I still mean to ask is whether two separate games can co-exist at single table. Ron, it's your anecdote on the creative agenda page, about the unreasonable person at a convention claiming that all three agendas were being successfully pursued at his table, (in three separate games), that entices me to raise this question. If the answer is no, I intend not to waste time trying.  If it's yes or maybe then I intend to carry on with the experiment and seek additional guidance as I do so. The answer may also simply be that I don't understand what I'm talking about, in which case I hope this conversation can help me achieve insight.

An actual experience I had in the distant past nudges my memory now. I played D&D in college with other theatre arts students. The games were fun, the shared imagined space vivid and interesting. I'm pretty sure we all shared a Step Right Up agenda, but there was plenty of colour and exploration --- all the things I seek now.  However, in between games, the DM would write up records of play, removing any descriptions of system or mechanics, enhancing and taking licence with character and dialog, creating stories which were quite entertaining to read.  My thought is that although fully present and committed to providing gamist challenges to us during play, he was quietly pursuing his agenda as a writer at the same time.  I'm quite certain that the dominant reward for the DM's participation in the games was the raw material our gamist sessions provided for his literary endeavors. Could that be described as a "Story Now" agenda in a game that encompassed our Step on Up sessions? Is it even useful to ask this question? 

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Joshua,

What I still mean to ask is whether two separate games can co-exist at single table. Ron, it's your anecdote on the creative agenda page, about the unreasonable person at a convention claiming that all three agendas were being successfully pursued at his table, (in three separate games), that entices me to raise this question. If the answer is no, I intend not to waste time trying.  If it's yes or maybe then I intend to carry on with the experiment and seek additional guidance as I do so. The answer may also simply be that I don't understand what I'm talking about, in which case I hope this conversation can help me achieve insight.

I'm not sure you got the point of that anecdote. The point is that he wanted to claim Creative Agendas were in fact not exclusive, but the fact that he had to separately/in-parallel GM three games (or more) at once at the table demonstrates that they are. This isn't about co-existing or even side-by-side compatibility, but rather about harmonizing – GMing in such a way (one way) that everyone enjoys different agendas while playing the same game.

Your post shows me that you already know this is a false hope. That was the hope, or deeply-felt belief and self-image, this guy was bringing to me. His revelation that he was not actually playing a single game was either a revelation to him, which I doubt, or evidence of solid cognitive dissonance, which I suspect. Along the lines of:

Me: American prison convicts are enslaved.
A guy: No they're not!
Me: [evidence provided including constitutional-amendment text, clear definitions, historical events, and present conditions]
The guy: But they deserve it! [or perhaps, It's better than Sharia!]

The respondent above walks away convinced that he has defended Ah-merrr-ica from my scurrilous attack on it, but the fact is that his second response entirely conceded my point. This is made possible only by mentally compartmentalizing concepts away from one another so their connection cannot challenge a deeply-felt narrative. I think that's what the person at the convention was doing.

So: can two separate games co-exist at the same table? In your words:

I don't meant to propose that two CA's can "co-exist" within a game; my understanding of a CA as a statement of priority makes such a proposal nonsensical.  What I still mean to ask is whether two separate games can co-exist at single table.

That is a very fine distinction, to the point of then-President Clinton's "it depends on what the meaning of 'is' is." Am I to understand that "within a game" and "at a single table" are two different things?

I think I can try to work with that. To avoid the conitive dissonance problem, we have to be honest about these terms in your question.

As I tried to explain in the previous post, "at the same table" cannot be used as code for "in harmony." Which is exactly what it does code for in gaming parlance, so I am not going to let that one slide. If by "at a single table," you mean "in harmony," then the answer is NO, because evidence is wholly against it.

"Co-exist," or as you've put it, "peacefully co-exist," can also be used as such a code, for the same thing, and my point applies equally to it. I think you get that, though, and are not falling into that trap.

So my tentative reading of your question leads me to think you are asking whether one can observe differing CAs in some group of people in the absence of harmony. I think that's what you mean by "co-exist" and "in the same game." Meaning, the players with different Agendas cannot be appreciating or facilitating one another's CAs; they are sitting together but not in any other sense playing together. The problem there is that you're no longer talking about in-play functioning CAs, or at least not reliably. Non-harmonious parallel-play, such as the surly convention guy inadvertently conceded, consistently becomes either Zilchplay or full-blown Agenda clash.

So again, the answer is NO, although people certainly struggle to make it happen and see their games wander and diminish in fun – which if it doesn't result in arguments, or the arguments are socially prohibited, ultimately means less commitment to the Exploration at all.

You mentioned this game of your as an "experiment" precisely about this kind of parallel-play. I think you're borrowing trouble by doing so. Furthermore, I see no reason on this earth why you should be thinking in experimental terms at all.

The first reason I say this is your response to my first point in the above post: which I am interpreting to mean that you have no basis for tattooing "I want The Right to Dream" on your forehead. You seem to be playing a fine Step on Up game, with your role as GM being oriented toward in-fiction adversity and very enjoyable in-fiction coherence ("good SIS," in the jargon). I think you're getting all tangled up in extraneous crap that keeps you from simply going with that.

My line of thinking started with the premise that "sandbox" by definition implies Right to Dream

It doesn't. There are so many things wrong with that statement that I am currently writing one of my most extensive essays to deal with it. I suspect that saying this makes you curious and I know it makes 100 other people incredibly argumentative, but it's not actually the topic of your concern. It's a distraction.

I will solve this problem instantly. I'll willingly call whatever it is you're doing a sandbox, you can be happy, and let's move on. But that means that we let the requirements or effects of playing this way be whatever they are, for you, in your game, with these players, with this fiction – without reference to any external definition of sandbox.

then I started trying to rationalize this with Eero's campaigns.

Let's focus just on yours. I'm sure Eero's games are wonderful play-experiences, but let's talk about you and your game, period. Which leads right into my notes for the third point that I promised above.

Issue #3
This is about GMing, and for D&D in particular, i.e., DMing.

First, the GM part. You should keep in mind that you're not just the GM. You're the social organizer and the rules-manager too, which muddies the water significantly. I'm bringing this up only for context, but it is a real context which needs appreciating.

Now to the point: no one knows what a DM is. Opponent? Den daddy? Story-saga master? World-builder? The frequent response, and frequently enshrined in text, is to say "all of the above!" with manic enthusiasm. Which totally fails to address the actual required role: the facilitator of adversity, and the ardent facilitator of whatever purpose that adversity serves.

And the trouble is, since D&D subculture suffers horribly from the twinned ills of fundamentalism and orthodoxy, you're supposed merely to be good at it because you "just" or "naturally" know the answer in some grand intuitive, and above-all faith-based fashion.

That is of course pure ass. So, I say again: all else aside, the DM must be the facilitator of adversity – so to be a good DM, one must answer for oneself, specifically in the service of what?

It all comes down not to the wooorlld, but the immediate situation, the characters' circumstances right there in the moment of play. Not the stoooooorry, but the characters' options in those circumstances (at those moments), with various consequences. Whatever your role is in getting these into the SIS and addressing them in system terms, and if you're doing those things in a way that ignites a CA (and will be sustained via the Reward System), then that's who you are as Dungeon Master. You could build the world's biggest setting map to wrap around this, but frankly, it doesn't matter if you do or don't, or if you would like to.

Immediate fictional circumstances, character options and consequences – look at what you're doing with those and you'll know.

Best, Ron

P.S. I'd like to take up your anecdote from the long-ago game in its own thread, in the Your Stuff column. It deserves some serious and specific attention. But let's do that after this thread gets itself sorted.

[Joshua Bearden]

I've been travelling all week and haven't had time to prepare a detailed response, but I don't want to appear too have flaked out so here's a few quick words.

In short I feel Ron's posts have clarified a lot for me. Probably the insight of most general importance to my understanding and applying the Big Model is that CA's are not personal agendas, or philisophies, or platonic forms but tools for describing system. A player may have all kinds of agendas in their head, and all kinds of ideas about what sort of game they'd like to play but the only relevant creative agenda is the one  manifest in the system of the current game through ephemera and the reward cycle. What I think I was describing was a set of irrelevant coincidences. The game I'm intending to play is clearing Step on Up.  The fact that I hope, through multiple iterations of play, to see an imaginary world develop on its own is irrelevant to a discussion of what actually happens between me and my players in a given session.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Joshua,

I appreciate the kind words, and I also want to say thanks to you for reviving this subforum. I hope you'll critique the Wiki for clarity about anything you've asked about here.

Your final sentence in your post opens another crucial point, though – which is that Exploration includes five components, not just System, and they are intimately connected. Setting is one of them, and it shouldn't be isolated, i.e., considered to be some disconnected feature that is or isn't there, or desired or not desired all on it's own.

I've noticed over the years that "setting" as a subcultural term suffers from two things.

1.  To isolate it in just that way (i.e. from Character, Situation, System, and Color {in play}). This might also be by person, meaning only one person gives a shit about it, either because he or she is its author, or because he or she is a fan of published work. Or another variant is that one person is the gatekeeper for this setting and doesn't want anyone else to read the same sourcebooks, for instance.

2. Or to elevate and exalt into containing everything we'd ordinarily call "the story," as well as any and all Color into the concept of setting, such that anything but rolling to hit is included in the term. (People who do this can be very threatened by the idea of any descriptive or analytical dialogue about it, too, for fear of ruining the magic.)

The role of setting in my terminology is a lot less loaded: it's the scale of imagined material above and beyond the immediate situations the characters are in. It might be very minimal relative to those situations (Sorcerer play is often like this) or it might be enormously larger and quite consequential upon those situations (classically, any game set in Glorantha).

Some of my thoughts about this can be found in Setting and emergent story, which is too Narrativism-centric for present purposes, and as I implied above, there's a companion essay in the works which is pretty elaborate and focuses on D&D and the OSR.

Anyway, all that is to say that let's not write off settings as irrelevant. Their degree of relevance, and their relationship to prep and play, are wildly variable, but each variant is relevant to all the other components of Exploration – in some way.

Might you not consider, for example, that after a couple of location-specific adventures, your players might become just as interested in the setting-building process as you? Or that over time, the causality might get reversed, such that you or anyone at the table might refer to a setting-level feature as relevant to an immediate concern? Maybe your enjoyment of setting as (at first) Color and (later) as genuinely-relevant Setting  isn't limited to you after all. And there's nothing about this shared enjoyment and use of an Exploration component which contradicts the Creative Agenda at hand; in fact, by definition, the more relevant interconnections among the five components of Exploration, the stronger the foundation of play and the more fun the CA at the table becomes.

But again, not all relevance is the same from game to game, or group to group. (overly-elaborate example involving Sorcerer & Sword and HeroQuest snipped, it got me all distracted) The problem is therefore that one person sees another's game, or a given text, as anti-setting rather than merely different, or sees the way another person plays as not reverent enough, or worst of all, associates a given setting (Exalted, Lovecraftiana, World of Greyhawk, World of Darkness, you name it) as a subcultural brand to which one is either allied or opposed, to the extent of vilifying "the way those guys play." Plenty of settings deserve criticism of various kinds, and sure as hell various ways to play deserve sharp criticism, but not like that.

OK, so that said, I think you have all the room in the world to see setting material develop in play, to enjoy it collectively, to see it become its own meaningful component, and for all of this to be contributing force to the CA at hand. There's no need to fear that your players won't care about it because they are enjoying Step On Up play, or to distinguish between your and their enjoyment of it because you're the DM and they're not.

Best, Ron

[Eero Tuovinen]

Might you not consider, for example, that after a couple of location-specific adventures, your players might become just as interested in the setting-building process as you? Or that over time, the causality might get reversed, such that you or anyone at the table might refer to a setting-level feature as relevant to an immediate concern? Maybe your enjoyment of setting as (at first) Color and (later) as genuinely-relevant Setting  isn't limited to you after all. And there's nothing about this shared enjoyment and use of an Exploration component which contradicts the Creative Agenda at hand; in fact, by definition, the more relevant interconnections among the five components of Exploration, the stronger the foundation of play and the more fun the CA at the table becomes.

For what it's worth, this has exactly been my experience with my old school D&D experimentation: a pure challenge-oriented campaign set up in the way I've documented seems to reliably and effortlessly support developing a setting as you go, from a relatively sparse starting point; over time this setting-creation process becomes a balanced cycle where established elements inform further play. This is not merely developing setting for its own sake - these developments come to matter in ways impossible to predict in advance, but completely authoritative over the long term.

And that's not just the referee's viewpoint, that's how it works for the players as well. I should know, I've been a player in this sort of campaign lately. It doesn't catch all players, but you can recognize the ones for whom the game is right creatively: they are explicitly concerned with respecting the setting over superficial (let's say pre-Exploratory) matters like e.g. character min-maxing, party balance or rules-lawyering.

[Joshua Bearden]

.. I hope you'll critique the Wiki for clarity about anything you've asked
about here.

I'll assume this thread the best place to do this. (If I'm wrong I'm relying
on you to use your moderator powers to help move this to a more productive
place.)

I'll start by going back to the sources I referred to when trying to define what
sort of play I was hoping to facilitate at my table:

The aesthetic priorities and any matters of imaginative interest regarding role-
playing. Three distinct Creative Agendas are currently recognized: Step On Up
(Gamist), The Right to Dream (Simulationist), and Story Now (Narrativist). This
definition replaces all uses of "Premise" in "GNS and other matters of role-playing
theory" aside from the specific Creative Agenda of Narrativist play. Creative Agenda
is expressed using all Components of Exploration, but most especially System.

The first sentence makes CA a principle of extremely general application. My problem
is with the phrase "regarding roleplaying".  It is so broad as to let just about
anything in, for any purpose. The following three sentences are more informative,
though they rely on historical knowledge of past discussions.  I lurked on the Forge
during its last days and I've dug up lots of relevant archives but I come to this
wiki to get the definitive answer. The final sentence gives me the best guidance but
I'm only seeing it now, after having had this discussion.

After reading the above, I clicked the link to read the wiki entry which contained the
following definition in italics:

"The players' aesthetic priorities and their effect on anything that happen at the
table that has any impact on the shared fiction"

The phrase "players' aesthetic priorities" invited me to think of CA as something
that each player brings with them to the table. I know it doesn't SAY that, but it
was easy to read that definition and keep thinking it. Would it not be more useful
to conceive of the 'game' or 'instance of play' itself as being the thing that
posessess an set of aesthetic priorities as an attribute?  In that case it becomes
clear that since the CA is a property of the game, and there is only one game at a
time, then there can only be one CA (one set of aesthetic properties). 

Is this not more consistent with the following, (from the diagram level definition)?
"Creative Agenda is expressed using all Components of Exploration, but most
especially System."

Does it then follow that: System suggests or implies a particular Creative Agenda which
is best expressed with coherent use of Exploration?

Player's may indeed have preferences for games with certain CAs but that shouldn't
have an effect on the particular game they're playing at a given instance. I believe
it would be necessary in healthy play for each player to recognize the CA of the
game they join and to voluntarily adopt it for the duration of play. If this happens
then the current definition becomes true.  The CA of the game IS (for the duration
of play) the aesthetic priorities of the players. Howwever, When players refuse to adopt
the proper CA of the game either due to ignorance of it or due to a mistaken belief like
my own recent misunderstanding, that you can bring your own Ca ("BYOCA") to any given game,
then clash or zilchplay will result.  In such cases do we say that the game has no CA or
should we say it has a CA that is simply not being fulfilled?

By "the game" I mean to refer to an instance of play, in a particular social context
complete with all the other elements of the Big Model. By "actual CA" I mean the CA,
which, if adopted by all players will yeild the best opportunity for fun by the
participants. Ideally, this is readily apparent in, and suggested by the System.

Finally, I looked to Common misconceptions
about Creative Agenda for further guidance.  Here I found some of the most
helpful explanations. I think some of this at least should be expressed in the
definition proper:

- One can only play Simulationist, Gamist, or Narrativist, period.

FALSE: The actual case: when talking about the course of a person's role-playing
over time, the Big Model explicitly disavow this claim; Creative Agenda applies
to an instance of play. All perceptions that it must be "labeling" people are
mistaken.

(emphasis added)

-Given a hypothetical situation, a Narrativist player would do X, a Simulationist
player would do Y, and a Gamist player would do Z.

FALSE: The actual case: all such examples and generalizations are false when taken
as definitions (i.e. any Gamist, etc). Each of the modes has literally dozens of
applications and nuances that will affect the actions taken during play.
For instance, Gamist play varies along an axis of risk (minimal to maximal), as well
as along an axis of centralized authority (absent to present to absolute), as well
as in terms of what constitutes "succeeding" (wide variety of possibilities,
including the difference between "winning for good" and "winning so far"), as well
as in terms of who one's opponent(s) is or are, as well as along an axis of the role
of Fortune (absent to medium to extreme), and as well as along an axis of when
Fortune is applied (early, e.g. PC and scenario creation; to late, e.g. resolution
only; or a combination of the two).
Given all this variation, I am to understand that one can point at "Gamist player"
and state what he, she, or any Gamist player will do when confronted with a problem
or situation of play? Nonsense.
The same variety applies to Narrativism, based on at least as many angles or axes of
variation, and most especially to Simulationism.

(emphasis added)

The answer was extremely helpful to me now but originally I failed get the point.
One problem in retrospect is that it shifts application from 'player to 'play'
without explicitly pointing out that thinking of players as entities with inherent
CA's may be the underlying source of confusion. (I emphasized two places which
indicate that shift.)

Here's an experimental statement in which I try to demonstate my understanding of
the terms so far.

A well-designed role-playing game System should have a clear Creative Agenda. Highly
functional play will necessarily involve players agreeing to pursue a single
Creative Agenda through Exploration. Contrarily, dysfunctional play will result when
players fail to agree to pursue a creative agenda. A poorly-designed system may
exacerbate this problem by not clearly presenting a single Creative Agenda.

With that I'll stop for breath and wait for feedback.

[Ron Edwards]

This is exactly what I need. Thank you! Changes will come to the wiki during the week.

Best, Ron

[Joshua Bearden]

Here's a cross-quote from our conversation in "Your Stuff" that I feel fits really well into this conversation.

You have definitely nailed it in that there is no Story Now here at all, and your non-RPG examples are completely relevant. No, the DM was not pursuing a Story Now Creative Agenda. The game may have provided service for his writing agenda (in the ordinary use of the word), but that has nothing to do with the in-play experience and the shared dynamics of activity among persons.

I really feel the emphasized phrase, if somehow incorporated into the definition of "creative agenda" would provide real focus beyond "regarding roleplaying". 

What if the core definition included "the common set of aesthetic priorities as pursued in actual play and affirmed (achieved/confirmed/rewarded?) in the shared dynamics among the players and System." ?