Reply to Glandis, regarding Gamism

[Callan S.]

I thought I'd start a new thread to reply to Glandis from over here.

Callan,

This is just me, not Ron/GNS, using a not-RPG analogy that (while I think it can translate just fine) may not translate to RPG play like I think it does. Hopefully, you know/play poker, or that's another way this may not translate.

You know how, in poker, someone with a good hand (NOT the "nuts", the guaranteed best), may choose to fold their hand in the face of a big raise? And that the general reaction might (depending on a lot of complicated factors involving past history, pot size, stack size, etc.) NOT be "what a wimp!" but "smart laydown"? Or alternatively, if they don't fold and lose, the reaction at the table might be "gutsy call", not "hahha, you lost"?

Gamism is a lot more about "smart laydown" and "gutsy call" than it is about winning and losing.

At least, that's my current take on it.

I've played poker and...I can never remember the rules afterward (not like I can for chess).

That said, in regards to what I'm talking about, what your describing basically slides down toward one end of a spectrum. Sure, as a secondary priority, you can say gutsy call or smart laydown. Comforting someone about a loss is nice and IMO, part of it - but it is nothing like the primary goal of the agenda.

I guess I would suggest playing with someone who doesn't consider the 'smart laydown' or 'gutsy call' or Ron's 'not losing' to be particularly gamist for the way it's shirked winning (ie, that they are drifting down the spectrum toward not being on it at all) - play with such a dissenting voice and see if the play is gamist or not.

If such play is, in your evaluation, gamist, it now depends on how you face that evaluation?

Or I guess one avoids playing with a dissenting voice to begin with.

A good link to check out is Sirlin's book on play to win.

[glandis]

Ah, Sirlin - yeah, I've read that. Most of what Sirlin is talking about (if he's talking about anything meaningful and not just jerking on the chain of the internet*) is, IMO, far removed from "Creative Agenda" - he's talking about an individual drive, not a shared aesthetic priority. Gutsy call or smart laydown isn't (primarily) a comfort thing, it's an acknowledgement of the realities we face in play and a show of respect for doing so effectively - in a way that really may turn out to give you the win, ultimately. In some game, if not this one. Sometimes you can only learn about your opponent (for use later) by making a gutsy call. A smart laydown saves you money, by definition. Managing risk is never a sure thing, and in poker (like any game I'd enjoy getting Gamist with) you can NEVER be certain you'll win every time. No one does. In Sirlin's world, something where you could always be certain to win is the BEST place to be. In a Gamist CA, that would totally suck. Winning isn't the point, social proof of (it's probably wrong to say "fitness" and Ron'll expose me as insufficiently educated to use words like that for mentioning it), um, skill is the point - and Sirlin's (my paraphrase) claim that winning = skill just doesn't carry 100% to Gamism.

Which is fine, because like I said I think Sirlin is talking about an entirely different thing than CA.

(*I think he's BOTH got meaningful things to say AND is jerking on the chain of the internet, computer strategy gamers in particular.)

[glandis]

Oh, in RPGs - the guy "who doesn't consider ..." I think I've played with him, and I guess usually no CA manages to manifest at all, maybe because he's got his attention in entirely the wrong places and really ought to be playing something that isn't an RPG? There was a group I played with for a while that eventually decided that boardgames were more their thing.

On the other hand, I've also played with a guy who kinda seemed like that guy, but who also usually paid attention to a shared aesthetic, and it was Gamist play. Not always the most fun for me, as I knew that he *might* decide that the chance to raise the stakes everyone else seemed up for was too likely to put his winning in jeopardy, and so he'd maneuver to keep that from happening rather than let us take the risk. "Winning" as more important than "challenge" always seemed LESS Gamist to me, though I tried to abandon more vs. less and just call it different.

[Ron Edwards]

Moderating: If this thread continues, I want some actual play in it. Like me talking about the 4E game, that level of detail.

Also, "glandis" is Gordon.

[Mike Holmes]

I think this goes to what I was saying in 4E, yeah. It's less about winning or losing, and more about "Wow, that was a smart play." Note that the dice can screw you over (though less in 4E than in other editions). The point is that if you played well, you still "Stepped On Up," to use Ron's term, even if you lost. 4E rewards this in that if you play cleverly, you can save your daily powers for later encounters. Dailies are often last-ditch moves that save the party's bacon, and you feel bad if you have to use one in the very first encounter.

(This is, OTOH, a problem with 4E if you don't want to play it as chains of encounters. You pretty much have to stick to that for this to work right.)

[Callan S.]

I remember an account of Dave Arneson playing, sure, a tabletop wargame, but...it was called 'We come for your women' or something, with aliens invading to abduct our womens!

What Areneson did, taking into account that the aliens lost a massive amount of warpoints if they killed a human woman, was to have his men hand over their guns to the women! Sure they had crap to hit skills, but it didn't matter, the aliens couldn't kill them because of the warpoint loss and the women would hit eventually. So the women cover the men and are evacuating them out of the area (in a delicious role reversal, I might add!) and winning the game! Not 'not losing'. Winning the game!

I'd actually highlight how that, if you cease laying fiction over it, dips into the 'hardcore'. Cease laying fiction over the mechanics and Arneson is being some kinda abusive metagamer over the loss of warpoints which is abstract, bla bla bla. Or keep laying fiction over the mechanics and instead figure out reasons why the aliens are lothe to kill the human women.

I give it as an example where the SIS is not the end itself of play - it's just (heresy!) a means to an end. Yes (blasphemy!) you may even discard the SIS, in ones efforts to win, and retroactively add fiction to cover that gap. Rather than the traditional 'if we can't figure fiction for it, it can't happen (even if the rules say it can happen)'

Currently I'm running a Rifts campaign once every two weeks at the same games club I do the encounters at. I'd actually explicitly said at it's start that it was about getting to level five - if you can. I wasn't pitching some 'forever' game. Part of the very reason I did that is because then, even if they flaked out, you get a result - they never got to level five! They could not make it. Anyway, now they are on average at level seven - having achieved the original objective (though one main PC died (along with three other PC's, two of which died on the day their players joined - long story, short death) and restarted at level one) and I'm seriously considering setting a new overall level goal, because it's meandery. Actually, if the combat were like the old 4E encounters program where it was one combat per session, that could work as much as T&T's 'can you get out of the dungeon', with each session having it's own relatively concrete finish line (sorry, that T&T quote just has a finish line, IMO). But given the nature of the game the number of combats in the rifts games varies - so with no combat being 'the combat of the evening' to win or lose (whether lose is run away or TPK or just getting your face mashed), it does not aleviate the broader meanderyness of no set goal/no gauntlet thrown.

Anyway, I spoke about playing with someone who dissents against 'smart laydown', 'gutsy call' or 'not losing' as being sufficient/the whole of the activity (and heck, I give a disproval method for my theory - does the play seem gamist still? Maybe it wont (if actually played) somehow?). As much as actual play accounts are called for, I'll call for any further discussion (if any) to either be from the perspective of looking toward doing just that in real life at some point soonish, or explicitly opting out of doing that. Without any talk that simply ignores the two options. PS: I'm not gunna just dump on anyone for opting out - indeed I'd admire the explicitness of the choice.

[Mike Holmes]

I don't think that anyone is saying that winning isn't an interesting goal, or that making good moves is the only goal. Yeah, a big win is a big reward for a gamist. It's just not the only reward.

See Ron's concept of the Gentleman Gamist, too. Where you intentionally handicap yourself to make it harder to win. So that if you DO win, it's that much more impressive. And that if you do lose, you're a magnificent bastard for having the guts to have attempted it in the first place.

There are LOTs of internal Gamism goals. Goals and motives have always been omitted from Creative Agendas. That's not to say that they don't exist. Just that we don't equate any one goal or motive with any one agenda.

[glandis]

Callan - I'm not sure how to interpret your someone who "dissents against 'smart laydown', 'gutsy call' or 'not losing' as being sufficient/the whole of the activity." Is this someone who is plain and simply all about the winning? As I mentioned, I think I have played with such people, sometimes resulting in play that had no CA, sometimes (in Mekton, which can be played in a very wargamey way) with satisfactory Gamism.

But again, I don't think their being plain and simply all about the winning is DIRECTLY associated with a Gamist CA, so - am I bowing out of your challenge? I'm not sure. I'm prepping for a game right now with a player who tends a bit in that direction, but I don't think he'd dissent from me that honoring/not honoring his "win" goal is a different thing from whether a game is pursing a Gamist agenda. I'll be paying some attention to these issues with him, but I'm not sure that really qualifies for what you're asking.

It'd be great to hear what you make of any games you've had with such players, too.

-Gordon

[Callan S.]

Gordon,

I suppose it's a cruel challenge in a way - it's like if the riddle of steel had no spiritual attributes, but I challenged someone to go play narrativist in it. Possible? Yes. Mechanically supported? Not really. So a cruel challenge.

Most RPG's, even ones like tunnels and trolls, have no strongly supporting fiction to mechanical advantage mechanic in them, like TROS has in regard to it's CA (humour me here - engaging the SIS to get mechanical bonuses is a technique - it's agenda neutral. I should be able to refer to a technique in another agenda as being transportable to the gamist agenda). At best maybe you have D&D 3rd editions +2/-2 rule for converting fiction events into a potential advantage, but it's freakin weak sauce, only affecting one roll in 10 (the new advantage rules in 5E, despite the texts trying to say to hand it out rarely, might be another kettle of fish at effectively a +5 bonus - it might start reignighting 'engage the SIS to gain mechanical advantage' gamist culture. More chandelier swinging! Not for genres sake, but for the sake of winning!).

So you have no clear examples of someone playing to win by engaging the SIS in order to leverage major mechanical advantage. Because there are no mechanics around that convert engaging the SIS into major mechanical advantage.

So you'll bring up Mekton, which has no way of players engaging the SIS to leverage major mechanical advantage, and treat it as an example of how play to win people wont engage the SIS/wont do any creative agenda kinda stuff. But is that because they are disinclined to do so? Or that the game simply does not let them?

but I don't think he'd dissent from me that honoring/not honoring his "win" goal is a different thing from whether a game is pursing a Gamist agenda.

So if he wins, you wouldn't say he's won? Do you have an AP example of how he feels about when he wins but you don't acknowledge that, Gordon? I'd be really surprised if he's indifferent to that lack of acknowledgement?


Mike,

Do you have an AP account of someone agreeing they'll give you esteem if you handicap yourself? If so, I agree in that case. But I don't agree that somehow if you handicap yourself you will automatically get esteem from someone, somewhere, as if they owe it to you? I'd think most would just think 'Why on earth did you do that?'. Do you have any examples where handicapping (without asking anyone) forced others to grant esteem latter on? Let alone for being 'a magnificent bastard for trying', after handicapping without asking anyone?

[RangerEd]

Callan,

I may be jumping into a discussion where I have no dog in the fight, but in answer to Mike's point...the examples of AP supporting the esteem earned from handicap are so ubiquitous as to be cliché. "I can do it with one hand tied behind my back." "Look ma, no hands." "And now my lovely assistant will blindfold me for my next trick." And so on. I have a friend I strongly suspect is Gamist, and he LOVES to handicap himself to prove his superiority in whatever game we play, Settlers and Axis & Allies especially.

Does this idea help expand upon Mike's point?

Ed

[Eero Tuovinen]

So you have no clear examples of someone playing to win by engaging the SIS in order to leverage major mechanical advantage. Because there are no mechanics around that convert engaging the SIS into major mechanical advantage.

The way we've been playing D&D (and Tunnels & Trolls, and Runeslayers to a degree) over the last few years is all about leveraging the SIS for significant mechanical advantage. In fact, it's often so significant that it might even seem non-mechanical; when a player "avoids a roll" by manipulating the SIS, that might be considered a complete success on the scale ranging from "my plan is so bad that it'll fail automatically" to "my plan is so good we all agree that it's going to succeed automatically".

This is a completely everyday dynamic for us. I mean, we'll be playing a session today, and I am 100% certain that it'll be more of this stuff, because that's what it's been like for the last hundred sessions. That's what playing the game is.

And it's not merely skipping rolls, it can also be various bonuses to the rolling. When I GM D&D myself, there's a rich technique/rule set of various fiction-based bonuses and roll variations in there, and it's intentionally statistically more significant than the static bonuses you get from character build and whatnot. The most important of these mechanics in my personal D&D version is the 3rd edition style task resolution DC, which will routinely provide as much as the equivalent of a +10 bonus or -10 penalty to any given roll, simply depending on how well-thought a player's plan is. A sad +2 for being a 2nd level Fighter or whatever just doesn't compare.

Do you have an AP account of someone agreeing they'll give you esteem if you handicap yourself? If so, I agree in that case. But I don't agree that somehow if you handicap yourself you will automatically get esteem from someone, somewhere, as if they owe it to you? I'd think most would just think 'Why on earth did you do that?'. Do you have any examples where handicapping (without asking anyone) forced others to grant esteem latter on? Let alone for being 'a magnificent bastard for trying', after handicapping without asking anyone?

In my D&D campaign playing a "good guy" is generally considered a handicap: you limit your option set in advance in a way that might or might not prove significant, all for the sake of succeeding with style. Players choose to do this exactly because we're not playing a childish game of "try to do what the GM says"; we can choose the nature of our challenges among the group, and one of the more common sources of difficulty is that players want to succeed without having their characters be complete assholes. It's very much the same as e.g. Hero System, which considers having personal moral convictions a handicap worth character creation points.

Being a Paladin in our campaign is an extreme example of the "good guy handicap": the player character commits to a certain moral protocol by holy wows, and woe be him if he cannot uphold his promises when the rubber hits the road. We've even intentionally removed most of the traditional magical razzle-dazzle from the paladin to make the handicap more starkly visible - not that it ever was actually useful to be a paladin in e.g. AD&D in comparison with the disadvantages, but in our take on the concept you can't even pretend that there's any reason except gamesmanship to tackle the challenge. It's very interesting and worthy of the respect of the other players when a given player commits their character to paladinhood.

Other common handicaps that come up in a campaign of this sort are fighting for the underdog in a geopolitical struggle (e.g. swearing fealty to a small city state in danger of being conquered), joining an army (it's a handicap because you lose a lot of personal freedom in choosing where and how you're endangering yourself), being a woman (there's not much in the way of mandatory gender-based mechanical differentiation, but the setting is historical fantasy where it is usually easier for an adventurer - or anybody else for that matter - to be a man), belonging to an ethnic minority of some sort... it's a pretty central conceit to the game that in the process of choosing our challenges we voluntarily take on handicaps that become part of the accepted strategic landscape: it is very rare in this style of play to face any sort of "pure" challenge that would be entirely unencumbered by any sort of handicap, as the handicaps pretty much are the game. There is no such thing as a purely non-handicapped player character, everybody's limited in some way by their fictional positioning and personal identity.

As for whether we get esteem for our handicaps "in hindsight", I don't think that is a meaningful distinction in a clearly phrased gamist endeavour like this. I mean, as we're on the same page regarding our creative goals here, of course it's a given that I'll be getting esteem for my bold and flavourful choices. Sometimes it comes in advance in the form of other players encouraging me to make a choice ("Come on, you totally should play a leprous beggar, it'll be great!"), other times some or all of us notice how great a given choice/handicap was only afterwards, at which point you're given esteem for going for it. Of course there is a difference between being foolish and being brave, both in tactics and strategy: if you intentionally chose to resist the evil emperor because your character just wouldn't play along with his evil plans, then that's bold play worthy of respect (it's always worthy of respect when a player sticks to their character concept, just like any time a player commits to the way the SIS lays), but if you resisted because you're a naive fool who didn't realize the consequences, then that's something others might berate you over.

[Callan S.]

Eero and Ed,

I find some of those handicap examples vague, and the retroactive esteem one fairly wobbly. But ignoring that (since it doesn't directly contradict your point), my point is that esteem isn't a cash register exchange - no one has to give you any esteem for adding a handicap. I may simply have a problem with how you and Mike put it - for example, you say "then that is a bold play worthy of respect', where with a literal reading of that is that it is saying it's definite you get respect. Where as in regard to being berated you say 'but if you resisted because you're a naive fool who didn't realize the consequences, then that's something others might berate you over.', treating it as a mere possibility they might. You can write me up as pedantic on a detail if you want - my point is just that you do not automatically get respect if you take a handicap. Someone decides (often in the moment, but sometimes it can be well before the moment). I don't think anything you've said contradicts that.


Eero,

The way we've been playing D&D (and Tunnels & Trolls, and Runeslayers to a degree) over the last few years is all about leveraging the SIS for significant mechanical advantage. In fact, it's often so significant that it might even seem non-mechanical; when a player "avoids a roll" by manipulating the SIS, that might be considered a complete success on the scale ranging from "my plan is so bad that it'll fail automatically" to "my plan is so good we all agree that it's going to succeed automatically".

My point really is that in regard to the Mekton players, they want to engage the rules. They want to roll. They don't want to engage an SIS so as to avoid rolling. And there are not any strong examples (though below I ask you about your +10/-10 example) of where by wanting to engage the rules, you will as a subset of that (!) want to engage the SIS to leverage advantage within those rules.

When I GM D&D myself, there's a rich technique/rule set of various fiction-based bonuses and roll variations in there, and it's intentionally statistically more significant than the static bonuses you get from character build and whatnot. The most important of these mechanics in my personal D&D version is the 3rd edition style task resolution DC, which will routinely provide as much as the equivalent of a +10 bonus or -10 penalty to any given roll, simply depending on how well-thought a player's plan is. A sad +2 for being a 2nd level Fighter or whatever just doesn't compare.

I'm really not familiar with bonuses with such a wide range? What edition are you refering to, Eero? Can you give some game text examples to help me catch up?

[Eero Tuovinen]

The particular D&D we're playing is heavily house-ruled: it's essentially a mechanically streamlined take that I developed to capture this style of play even better than by-the-book D&D does (all particular editions of the game do have their own failings, after all, for various historical reasons; only a considered and play-tempered house version may attain to perfection historically). Personally I consider it a bunch of minor variations on superficial mechanical solutions (that is, I call it "D&D" instead of giving it some funky name of its own), but I've heard differing opinions. If you're interested (and there's no reason why you should be - a very particular topic, this), a pretty good overview can be found by following this bunch of links.

In case you're curious about the particular D&D scholarship of how difficulties are manipulated in our play, the core conceit, borrowed from 3rd edition, is that the DC (difficulty class, the target number) of various task resolution checks is determined on the basis of realistic fictional difficulty of achieving the task described by the player. For this reason a player's arguments based on positioning and tactics in the SIS have a massive influence on the odds of success: the difference between having to roll for a 20 or a 30 (effective +10 to the roll) is nothing more than whether you're attempting an easy task or a difficult one. For example, climbing the same wall with or without a rope might account for a difficulty swing of this magnitude.

In the style of D&D we play, leveraging the SIS "through the rules" or otherwise is not really a meaningful distinction, because we do not acknowledge the existence of any "outside the rules" arbitration. I understand that this is rare - many people read the D&D game with a false dichotomy where they perceive a freeform portion of play and a rules-constrained portion of play, and the DM's main authority is to decide when we move from one to the other. However, I've found that this is all bullshit, and the way D&D is supposed to work ("supposed" as in "this is how it can be fun, as opposed to not being fun") is by putting all fictional events through the exact same procedural wringer. Sometimes that wringer warrants dice rolls, and sometimes it doesn't, but that is strictly an incident of the process, not a sign that we're somehow avoiding or embracing "the rules", as if they were something that only applied to dicing and not to everything else.

In this mode of thinking the pertinent question in how a character positions and how he attempts to accomplish his goals is not really fundamentally about mechanical manipulation: you don't primarily do something because the rules say that doing it provides you with X leverage in the mechanics; such play will fail you at the most inopportune moments, for it's not you who decides that the rule may be used, but rather the table concensus or the DM. It is more effective for every action to principally derive from realistic fictional consideration: you get a charge bonus for your attack if you have the appropriate weapon, positioning and psychological position against your enemy, not just because you're 10' out and that's what the rules demand for a charge. (I mention this example as a minor pet peeve of mine; LotFP rules, which we've been rocking lately, have some rather stupid notions that will only work when applied correctly.) Ultimately, all minor mechanical details of the rules are subservient to the macro-scale procedural rules of play, and thus only a fool who misunderstands the nature of the game relies on any particular rule. Trust in the courage and strength of your troops, for that's an established fact in the fiction, and may thus be the basis on which to derive mechanical strength.

(Do note that I'm writing here with the understanding that we're interested in concrete actual play examples of how this sort of gamism works in practice, and not in whether any particular published game is a well-realized presentation of such. I mention this because there are a bunch of threads active right now where we're talking about D&D specifically, and in those threads it is entirely fair to brush my particular D&D experiences aside with the note that I'm not playing "real D&D" and therefore it doesn't matter what we do and how we do it.)

Regarding handicaps, I do agree that esteem is somewhat subjective, in the exact same way the creative goals are in the first place. You've got to sell the other players on your handicaps, to make them compelling. For example, deciding to play a crippled character might fall flat if everybody finds it a ridiculous and unfeasible thing to do - they don't see feasible and interesting challenges arising out of it in the context of the on-going game. However, it might also be a very popular choice, assuming the situation was such that being crippled would be cause for an interesting challenge. For example, we actually had a character in a wheelchair in our campaign last year: Peitsa, one of the players, had rolled awfully low physical statistics, so we decided for fun that he went everywhere with a servant rolling him in a wheelchair. This is ludicrous in a dungeoneering context, of course, but the adventure of the moment was more akin to a murder mystery, and we were in a jocular mood, so the idea was well-received. I'm sure that had play veered towards a dungeoneering environment, and had the player chosen to retain the character, we'd have found that the character could walk under his own strength, despite tiring easily.

[glandis]

I'm still not clear on the specific players you're talking about, Callan - are you saying they do NOT consider the old-school "use a 10-foot pole to avoid making a Trap roll" to be a Step On Up "win"? I'm sure you agree there are players that do find that - and those that'd consider it "right" in the Right to Dream or a great (say) paranoia-example for Story Now (more specifically, players exist who might find it so within the scope of specific instances of play, to go all Big Model-pedantic). I mean, I recognize Eero's play as G, but it seems like you're pointing to players for whom it's not G enough. That seems possible, but I'm not sure yet exactly why you're saying such players would find it so, nor what that means beyond "tastes vary within agenda as well as across them."

I can talk about how Mekton CAN connect SIS stuff to mechanics (one trick - if a player wants to design mechs (HUGE potential source of mechanical advantage), their character has gotta have the Mech Designer skill, and the fiction has to include the building process). But given the current D&D focus, maybe letting that continue is better. I mean, I'm worried that all I have to say is that the win-focus Callan is talking about (I think) is just not, in my understanding, opinion or experience, the whole or core of Step On Up play. But maybe there's something I'm missing.

[Callan S.]

Gordon,

I'm still not clear on the specific players you're talking about, Callan - are you saying they do NOT consider the old-school "use a 10-foot pole to avoid making a Trap roll" to be a Step On Up "win"?

Well in two different respects, yes and possibly yes. Yes, in that you gain nothing by bypassing a trap in itself. Yes possibly, as in my reply to Eero on black boxes.

That seems possible, but I'm not sure yet exactly why you're saying such players would find it so, nor what that means beyond "tastes vary within agenda as well as across them."

Here is where, when I read you literally, you have ceased engaging any kind of gamism.

No, it's not about tastes - do you take up the challenge of winning rather than 'not just not losing' and the challenge of being told you lost, not just being told 'smart laydown'? Or NOT?

To take it up or not take it up are both gamism, I would agree. To ignore the challenge and go on about tastes - either the person is not gamist inclined or are but are trying to avoid making the choice (I would like to have stated this in a much more negative way, as it seems the gamist version of bad apples).

I would agree that 'smart laydown' and 'not losing' are potentially part of a gamism for folk who have not yet been challenged with something harder by anyone. They could also be something else. Hopefully not, though.



Eero,

It's interesting that you developed such a strong potential mechanical benefit, much as I'm talking about. Bit of an off topic question, how often do people get a full +10 (or even a 8 to 9)?

On the 'macro-scale procedural rules of play', I think it's too much of a black box - sure, the GM could be judging it all with a harsh scrutiny, but he could also be colluding with them, or even swinging from one to the other at various times. I know alot of GM's will insist that no, they are super impartial - and sans any way of measuring it (since it's all hidden in a black box), I am inclined to not believe them - I don't even believe I am some kind super impartial when it comes to 'you get to skip the rolls' decision - I could be colluding without even realising it (most people think they could never do something without realising it, I know, I know).

I don't mind some play hinging on the black box. That's fun and all. I guess if one has faith in the capacity of the human mind, one can hinge all play upon the black box. But no, I just don't share that faith. The six o'clock news keeps putting me in an unfaithful state each night. I prefer to hinge the lions share on mechanics. If 'the nature of the game' hinges entirely on a black box and that black box colludes on a regular basis, then the nature of the game is borked.