Incoherence and Reintroducing the Idea of Technical Agenda

[lumpley]

Part 1.

Once upon a time, Ben Lehman and I hatched this idea of "technical agenda," and made some noise about it. We conceived it as a side-by-side piece to creative agenda, the "how we're going to do it" to creative agenda's "what we're here to do."

At some point, Ron said, and I'm paraphrasing, "sure, guys, but I consider that to be implicit in creative agenda already. What we're here to do naturally includes how we're going to do it."

"Ah," said I, "so it does," and there we stand to this day.

Part 2.

Now I'm going to talk about this episode of play and Ron's comment in response to it, so go read up if it's not fresh.

The episode wasn't one of classic CA incoherence (as Ron points out). Rob's creative agenda was, in classic CA terms, the same as the rest of ours, Story Now. We were all there to play these characters with integrity through the conflicts and crises they'd find themselves in, escalating to a resolution only to be determined by the process of play itself.

Rob's mismatch with the rest of us was technical, meaning techniques, and Ron I think you nailed it: he didn't want to play a game by whose rules the other players got to call him out in that way.

Back in the day, Ben and I would have called it a technical agenda clash, if you'd asked us.

Synthesis.

The effect was the same as a classic CA mismatch. Rob got frustrated by the game, but tried to play on, but didn't enjoy it. Others of us got frustrated by Rob's play, and got mad about how he was messing up the game for everybody. Ultimately Rob dropped out of the game and we played on for a while longer without him, but the game didn't quite survive it. There were some lingering hard feelings in a few different directions.

My position now is that since how we're going to do it is implicit in what we're here to do, it WAS a creative agenda mismatch. It wasn't a Story Now vs Right To Dream one or whatever, as in the classic cases, but we nevertheless had incompatible creative agendas, plain and simple.

-Vincent

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Vincent,

I remember this, it was all wrapped up with Ben talking about Social Agenda too. I'll tell you what I think.

1. My original reply to you guys was way too vague, and I don't think it stands up as written.
2. The idea of any agenda existing entirely orthogonally to Creative Agenda but otherwise operating at the same scale ... I don't buy it.

So! The good new is that I think it all snapped together in my head in a way that you and Ben, I hope, will find compatible with your idea. Consider the nifty diagram at the wiki. Now, at each level, think about what a Creative Agenda looks like when viewed from the variables at that particular level. I mean, people have to like and want what they see there, right?

I think that's what Social Agenda and Technical Agenda are - what the group (or a person I guess) wants at that level of the model. You could even draw a dot inside the arrow at that very level, so four dots.

Now I can consider a consequence of those dots' existence, because they can carry stuff "off the arrow."

Consider stuff that is at that level, but isn't particularly relevant to the Creative Agenda. I remember talking to Steven Stewart about "bucket seats" - the person wants them, period, because they associate them with something good, and never mind what they have to do with any other aspect of the car. So say Bob hates d10s and insists always on using some other die, for whatever reason. OK, this game uses d10's and Bob has issues with that - that's his bucket seats, and here, I think you'd say it was part of Bob's Technical Agenda, meaning that if he's going to buy into this Creative Agenda (this group, this game, this way), then it better not use d10's.

I can see the same level-based concept for social stuff, easily; in fact, I think that's a major feature of logistics and people-wrangling as a whole. On the one hand, in a totally functional situation, the details of Social Contract for us in this group feed very nicely into our Creative Agenda, which is the whole "let's play this game" concept; that's the Social Agenda dot. On the other, i.e., it can also include social stuff which isn't obviously CA-relevant but which can affect it, a given social scene might be perfectly OK by me for our Creative Agenda, except that at Barbara's place, her boyfriend always hangs around and I prefer to ogle Barbara forlornly and I hope secretly at some other location so I'm not reminded of him while I do it. That's part of my Social Agenda which may cause a little trouble (regarding the location; I take the fifth regarding the ogling in the first place).

I think in both cases, these points apply when the Creative Agenda is in pretty good shape, but can be rattled by these other priorities coming in regarding a given level. If we were talking about Creative Agenda clashes, then that's different, that'd be about totally different big arrows and the social or technical (or whatever) variables would, I think, be implicated verbally as everyone wrangled, but really wouldn't help much if they were solved.

Let me know what you think.

Best, Ron

[Bret Gillan]

This is sticky, because it's something I attribute to frustration born of lack of experience with or interest in the systemic aspects of a game.

I've played a number of roleplaying games with Carly including Apocalypse World, Freemarket, Burning Wheel, Sorcerer, etc. Out of all of these, the one game that I would have a very hard time talking her into playing again is Burning Wheel because she finds writing Beliefs to be such a struggle. She enjoys the rest of the play of the game, and even the mechanics of Beliefs in play, but not writing them. Would this also be a clash of Technical Agenda?

What I wonder is where the line is between Technical Agenda and, say, a low threshold for frustration. Or do you think that's irrelevant?

[rgrassi]

So Ron, are you saying that each player looks to satisty his/her needs and priorities in each level of the diagram leading to different concepts of agendas?
Rob

[Ron Edwards]

Hey Rob, this isn't about different concepts of Agendas across different people, not really. It's about whether people find aspects of play satisfying. For years, we've focused on Creative Agenda and ultimately agreed that it is the most important unifying principle of play, and that aspects of play that reinforce (and arguably construct) a Creative Agenda in a given group are very satisfying for that group. But that doesn't mean it's invulnerable even when shared, or that this particular thing is the one thing; other aspects do matter too. Ben and Vincent were right to point out that these other aspects do seem to have identity at the social and technical levels and bear investigating.

I am still not too thrilled with using the word "Agenda" for them; to me, that instantly provides the inaccurate idea that they are equivalent to the Creative Agenda relative to the model as a whole, which as I recall was still puzzling to Ben at the time he was writing about this.

Vincent, unless you think my post above was way off-base (in which case I'll reboot and figure out what you mean with your help), then then I will pitch for calling these things priorities or preferences or some other word instead.

Best, Ron

[lumpley]

Oh, yeah. I've taken to calling it "the technical component of creative agenda" when I've needed to be precise. I'm settled with it being just that, not its own independent thing. Along those lines, "technical priorities" seems too independent to me by itself. Part of my point in the opener is that I think its relationship with creative agenda is very strong!

The visual of a dot inside the arrow within the techniques circle might be good. Let me think about that a little bit more before I commit.

-Vincent