Raven (greyorm) mentioned something in the new thread Different Types of Director Stance (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=13137) that really solidified my problems with Stance Theory. My problem starts with and centers on Director Stance. Here is how i see things:
We have two (and a half, I guess) functional Stances: Actor, Author, (Pawn, if you want to count it). Each of these is used to classify how and why a given decision is made. It is impossible to determine what stance is being utilized based purely on SIS input. That is, we can not know if a decision is made in Actror or Author without knowing the thought processes of the player involved since the actual decision may be the same in either one.
Then we have Director Stance. It does not care about intent. We can identify Directo Stance based purely upon SIS input. So when you tell me that a crate falls on your enemy's head then I know that you are using Director Stance, when you tell me that you character attacks then I can not be sure whether you are using Actor Stance or Author Stance because I do not know why you decided for your character to attack.
The problem here is that we have a "Stance" that appears to be almost totally unlike all other identified Stances. So, most Stances measure intent, Director Stance measures something else. Most Stances require knowledge of thought processes to determine, not Director Stance. I keep hearing "One of these things is not like the others... One of these things just doesn't belong..." Looping in my head.
Now, it is not that I do not find Director Stance useful as a term. As I mentioned before, I see it commonly used as short hand for "Stuff the GM handles in traditional RPGs" and "Director Stance" is way easier to say.
Let me see if I can get to the point: We treat the Stances as if they are all related. We put them in this big category of "Role Playing Stances", but Director Stance is totally unrelated to the other Stances. If I were to walk up to someone on the street and say: You can determine W, X, and Y by examining motivation and you can determine Z by examining what is manipulated (but not motivation), but W, X, Y, and Z are all the same type of thing I am pretty sure I would get laughed at.
I know something about Stances bothers a number of other people, I think that this is the specific aspect that bothers me. So, do the other people who are unhappy with Stances see this as a problem, or is it something else? I also know that some people are perfectlly happy with Stance theory as it currently stands. To you I ask, do you see where I am coming from? Does discontinuity not bother you as well? If not, why?
Now, I am not saying that Stances as they stand are not useful. It is nice to have a term that essentially means "manipulating something outside of the character", my problem is not with having such a term. My problem is that current Stance Theory essentially says that Director Stance is in some way conceptually similar to the other recognized Stances, and that seems kind of ridiculous to me.
Thomas
Just a quick note. Ron split this thread from Stance Theory: The Hegemony of One Character (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=13052). Upon rereading I feel that it makes sense outside of that thread, but I believe that you can see me flailing around with this idea there. Additionally there are a number of other interesting ideas that are related to the idea I have presented here, so I recommend reading the parent thread before getting to heavily involved here (assuming anyone else finds this interesting).
Oh, and thanks Ron. I am glad that someone is keeping me honest.
Thomas
I've had similar problems, but, essentially if you want to look at it as how the player made the decision in terms of the character, the answer is that the decision was made irellevant of the character.
Actor - made as though character
Author - made as though author of the character
Director - made without considering the character
Is that any more functional? I'm not seeing where the problem lies, precisely.
Mike
I see what you are saying Mike, but as I read Director Stance that is not the case at all. In fact, I understand that often Director Stance is used to manipulate the environment with the express purpose of aiding the character. Thus, as far as I can tell, Director Stance does not specify any sort of decision making with regards to character. It can (and often is) used with the intent of assisting a character.
Thomas
Bear with me, now, because I've got fragments of what I want to say tumbling around in my head but they haven't quite come to rest in an intelligible way yet... (and what I'm saying may well have been covered in another thread.)
There seem to be two issues here - that of priorities (what the player considers important in his SIS manipulation) and authority (what the player is allowed to do to affect the SIS). I think that instead of Director Stance being a red herring, it may well be Author Stance that is, and that the distinction between the two is purely based on authority. Simply put, Author Stance is Director Stance without the authority to speak for anything except a character's actions.
Let's try some other definitions:
Actor Stance: Deciding how to affect the SIS based entirely on their interpretation of particular character's perspective within the SIS.
Author Stance: Deciding how to affect the SIS based on non-SIS priorities about what the player wants the character over which they have authority to do.
Director Stance: Deciding how to affect the SIS based on what the player wants any part of the state of the SIS to be.
These definitions at least - which may well be flawed - imply that Author and Director Stance are essentially the same. Director Stance says, 'I want X to happen in the SIS.' Author Stance says 'I want X to happen to the particular part of the SIS involving My Character'. The latter is just a more limited subset of the former.
In Actor stance, authority isn't an issue - if you are choosing to affect the SIS based entirely on a character's perceptions, then you can't affect anything in the SIS that the character couldn't or wouldn't. Actor Stance ignores any authority which may have been granted beyond that. However, when the authority a player has is only for his character's actions, there seems to be no difference between Director and Author stances. I think Author Stance may be simply an attempt to take Director Stance into games which traditionally rely on Actor Stance and thus have limited authority relegated to most players.
Thomas,
The GM is a player.
Now how does that impact your understanding?
That is, when the GM plays an NPC, he's using actor or author stance. When he throws a rockslide at the PCs, he's using director stance. If he narrates that in a far off land that there's a storm raging, that's director stance.
Generally only things that are somehow at least tangentially important to the characters in the game are narrated. But it's not to "benefit" or to "harm" them, neccessarily. Director Stance is just manipulation of elements that are not characters.
From another POV, anything can be a character, and here's where I sorta go with something like Jinx's idea. That is, if you drop the idea of character per se, there's only the question of what the player has the authority to affect, and whether he's thinking "Story logic" or "internal logic."
That is, I quite agree that someone using director stance, can be doing so from an "author" POV, in that he's making things happen for dramatic reasons, or he can do so from an "actor" POV, in that he's making things happen purely by "channeling" what "should" happen inb terms of internal causality.
Mike
Wow Jix, you may be onto something here...
If we consider a definition of Stances in which all that matters is what information is used in a given decision (we need a good term for that I think) then there is a clear overlap between Director and Author Stances. That would bring us back to the parent thread. It could be argued that Stance Theory supports a Player -> Character, GM -> Everything else paradigm because it essentially has two stances that deal with metagame decision making, one for characters and one for everything else. Very interesting.
One thing that would probably be really useful to this discussion would be a useful definition of Stance. From the Provisional Glossary (http://indie-rpgs.com/_articles/glossary.html):
QuoteThe cognitive position of a person to a fictional character.
Which seems to be rather broad... Cognitive position is such a huge idea that I do not believe that this is a useful definition.
Mike, I think we may agree, but let me run this by you again. First, yes the GM is a player, if I had not realized it before Universalis taught me that. Now, you defined Director Stance as: "Director - made without considering the character" and then you said: "Director Stance is just manipulation of elements that are not characters." I consider these to be different things. I agree with the second, but not the first. You can manipulate non-character elements in full consideration of character. For example: "There's a ladder there so that i can climb up onto the roof and escape." The ladder is there for the express purpose of aiding your character.
To address your second definition, yes, that is how I see Director Stance currently, and I do not think that it is really all that useful. It implies nothing about play except that whatever is using it has moved beyond the idea that the GM is sole arbiter of non-character elements within the SIS. While that is a useful thing to recognize, it is essentially unrelated to the other Stances. This generates confusion as we have decided to include multiple, unrelated (or possibly peripherally-related) items in one group. Essentially we say that Director Stance is similar to Actor Stance in some way, otherwise we would not call them both Stances...
Thomas
Hello,
I'm starting to get a little tired ...
Folks, I've seen both of these a thousand times.
a) Someone figures out that Author and Actor Stances are limited to the character's actions, and says, "Ooh, let's split them off from Director Stance!"
b) Someone figures out that Author and Director Stances discount the character's outlook/perspective and says, "Ooh, let's split them off from
Actor Stance!"
The observation that both of these insights are repeated over and over lets me know that we are talking about three distinct things.
Couple more details: I do not know where Mike is getting "made without reference to the character." All Stances are conducted toward the/a character, without exception, by definition - that's what a Stance is.
Thomas, that's why Director Stance is a Stance. It is not solely defined by non-GMs providing input about non-character stuff; although that's what knocks entrenched gamers for a loop about the concept, it's really not a big deal. Director Stance refers to a specific positioning of the real person's mind relative to a given character - the position is both "out of the character's head" and "out of the character's body."
It's so easy ... (a) sit in the character's head, (b) sit in the character's body but use your own head, (c) get out of the character's body, but affect the character nonetheless.
Three possible positions to place yourself relative to the character. Three Stances.
All this other stuff is red herring - GM vs. non-GM, my character vs. someone else's character, et cetera. Now it seems to be about merely providing input of any kind.
Best,
Ron
Ok Ron,
First, sorry to retread this same thing over and over. Thanks for the clarification. There seems to be the hint of another Stance. One that would be "getting out of the character altogether", so basically the "Stance" you take when you take actions outside of a Stance. Now, I am not sure that such a Stance is useful, but I wanted to bring it to your attention. Has this also been discussed before?
Thomas
My take: If it has nothing to do with a character, it's not a Stance. It's Color. Stance relates directly to character. Description that is not related to character is color.
James
Ron I admitted that it's a limited viewpoint, hence why I later stated that almost all decisions are things that will affect characters no matter how tangentially.
Thomas, there is very little, if any, "Outside of character."
Let's say that I decide that there's a huge temple on the road. At the very least, the reason that I've made that decision is because I'm going to say, "On the way, the characters pass a huge temple." That affects the characters, even if only in a subtle way. To follow Ron's model, I've made the decision outside of any character's head, and outside of their body.
Even if the GM is making up information that the players of the characters will never know, it's only relevant to the game in the context of the fact that they might know. To suppose that there's something that's created that can't impact a character, even through a player's perception of it, seems to me to be saying creating something that never enters play. The value of which seems lost to me.
Put another way, what would you consider an example of something created Outside of outside of a character?
Mike
Sorry for rehashing old arguments, then. It's not easy for us newcomers to know what arguments are old.
On the other hand, I still think the distinction between Director and Author may be false. A stance is a 'cognitive position taken towards a character', right? What does 'cognitive position' mean? As far as I can see, it means 'the perspective from which one makes decisions'. To the best approximation I can find, the intellectual perspective doesn't change between Author and Director stances. Only the authority to change things in the SIS does, and authority seems like a different issue entirely.
If this's been hashed out before, could someone direct me to a thread that covers it so I can let go?
Quote from: Mike HolmesPut another way, what would you consider an example of something created Outside of outside of a character?
This is an important question because it potentially breaks the point of Stance in the first place. If there is nothing outside of outside of a character, to repeat the phrase, then everything is relevant to character, in which case everything is within some Stance. The only things I can think of that are not relative to character "however tangentially" are certain parts of Social Contract like "who buys the pizza" and the like. So it seems to me as though if Stance is to be constrained at all usefully there must be a way of distinguishing what is character-relevant more precisely.
What do you all think of James's suggestion that non-character relevant stuff is Color? I'm not sure about this, but it seems interesting.
But we do that all the time, Chris. We have SIS, and the elements of exploration, etc, etc.
In any case, it's the question not of what's being created, but the perspective of the person doing the creation (and hence what impact that might have). It passes the use test.
Jinx, perspective is the direction with which somebody looks at something. Which direction must neccessarily include that which is bieng looked at. You seem to be making some semantic argument, but the distinction between character, and not character (but part of the SIS), is a very simple and easy concept to understand. So, is it merely the wording of the definition that bothers you, or is there some real problem with how the term works?
Mike
Mike,
I am going to attempt to address your question. I am afraid my answer will be a little nebulous and possibly somewhat evasive, please let me know if you think so.
Ok, first, I am going to assume Ron's definition of character. This means that anything can be a character assuming that it is sympathetic in some way (at least that's what I think Ron is saying). Taking this definition, nothing can enter the SIS that can not impact a character. If it can not impact a character then it is not actually in the SIS.
Now, Stance to me implies proactivity. That is that you are moving forward with a specific goal, and you are adopting a Stance in order to accomplish it. "On the way to wherever you pass a temple." can easily be done, as James mentioned, purely for color. I would argue that since there is no goal then there is no Stance. Building on Chris's point about Social Contract issues it would probably be useful to clarify that to "If there is no goal regarding SIS" there is no Stance.
Hmm... Here's a thought. What about actions intended to impact the SIS through social interaction. This would be a step above metagame play. For example, I buy the pizza in order to positively incline all the players towards me. This will hopefully result in assistance for my character(s) and assistance (or at least tolerance) toward my personal story goals. My ultimate (and possibly proximate) motivation in buying the pizza may very well be to forward my character.
Using the idea that having a goal to effect the SIS being the primary motivator seems to imply that that would be a stance, but my intuition tells me that that is pretty silly.
Also, I still think that Jinx may be onto something. Unfortunatley I can not put my finger one what it is at the moment... Perhaps some more time to conisder it will make it clearer to me.
Edit: Crossposted with Mike.
Thomas
QuoteYou seem to be making some semantic argument, but the distinction between character, and not character (but part of the SIS), is a very simple and easy concept to understand. So, is it merely the wording of the definition that bothers you, or is there some real problem with how the term works?
I suppose it is a semantic argument, but I'm trying to keep it out of simple wording disputes. I have a problem with the definition of Stance vs. the distinction between Actor and Director Stance. Please bear with me - I'm really not trying to be deliberately obtuse or play with words in an attempt to look smart.
The Glossary definition of Stance is: 'The cognitive position of a person to a fictional character.' My earlier post was trying to figure out what that meant. From my understanding though - and this is one place I may well be wrong - Stance has nothing to do with authority over the SIS.
The only difference I see between Actor and Director Stance save for the authority the player is given in each case. I don't deny that they are different things, but I don't think that they are different Stances. They seem to me to be the same Stance with different levels of authority to affect the SIS (one with only the authority to dictate character actions, the other with the authority to dictate other things as well).
So either:
- I don't understand what Stance means.
- I don't understand the difference between Actor and Director Stance.
- The definition of Stance needs to be changed.
- The definitions of Actor and/or Director Stance need to be changed.
- Something I am totally not considering.
- Any or all of the above.
Which one is the problem?
Oh, no, not the "social stance" again. Aiiiieeeee!
While we're at it, let's mention again that "audience" is not a stance by this definition, because it's not about making decisions.
You can ascribe goal and "layers" and whatever you want to stance in order to make it non-functional. Stance doesn't say any of that, and works fine as it is.
Its like you've said, Lighbulbs can't give off light because light doesn't have a purpose, and lightbulbs seem purposeful.
Are there things that are done in RPGs outside of stance? Sure. Lots of activities that are only social, or non SIS oriented. But as soon as the intent is to affect the SIS, we can attatch a stance to how the player was looking at doing it. Did he ask the GM to put something in? Then, from one perspective, he's not affecting the SIS, the GM is. From another, if he's asking that the GM change something outside the character, from an outside the character POV, then it's director stance.
Put another way, what does, "uncovering" any of these things as "new" do for the model? What usefulness does it have (oh, I can sense Chris breathing down my neck even as I type that)? As it stands, I use the stance model all the time to talk about how players were making decisions, and the subject of how they obtained the authority to do so, etc. Where's the functionality? It's a model, sans functionality to say something about play, what's the point?
Mike
Quote from: Mike HolmesPut another way, what does, "uncovering" any of these things as "new" do for the model? What usefulness does it have (oh, I can sense Chris breathing down my neck even as I type that)? As it stands, I use the stance model all the time to talk about how players were making decisions, and the subject of how they obtained the authority to do so, etc. Where's the functionality? It's a model, sans functionality to say something about play, what's the point?
Mike
Mike, for me this is the crux of the entire issue. I feel, not that current Stance theory is not useful, but that current Stance theory is incomplete or inaccurate. So, once again, I feel that current Stance theory is useful. In fact it is probably incredibly useful. The problem is that it seems... well... that's the problem. I can not seem to put my finger on exactly what bothers me about it which is why I keep asking the same questions over and over.
So it seems to me that Stances as they stand are a sort of cobbled-together affair. They work, they do what they are supposed to do, but they do not do it as well as they could...
Again, my feelings are all nebulous intuition, so I may just be wrong, but that's how I feel about it.
Thomas
Postulate: It is impossible to impact the SIS without employing one or more of the stances.
I'm curious to see if anyone agrees with that. I'm pretty sure it's true, but am interested in hearing what the rest of you think. I've been thinking about stances all day, and that's one of the conclusions I've come to.
That being said, I think there is something that needs to be tweaked about Director Stance. Let me see if I can iron it out.
The current stances measure two things, the agent through which you effect the SIS, and the rationale you employ to justify that effect. Let's assume for the moment, and for the sake of simplicity, that the acting player has the authority (implicit or explicit) to perform the action in question.
Actor Stance: Agent = specific character, Rationale = in game causality
Author Stance: Agent = specific character, Rationale = player desires (justified by in game causality after the fact)
Pawn Stance: Agent = specific character, Rationale = player desires
Director Stance: Agent = anything other than specific character (including multiple agents), Rationale = any
Thomas is right, one of these things is not like the others. Director Stance doesn't really define Rationale. It is essentially made up of separate instances of the other stances, which get lumped into Director Stance because the Agent is not the acting character. I wrote up a long example to show this, but I don't think it's really necessary.
Perhaps we should break down Director Stance into 3 (probably 3, anyway) types corresponding to the 3 specific character stances, based on the rationale for the action?
A veritable rash of Stance threads.
I have to admit to being completely puzzled by the confusion. Stance seems to me to be one of the clearest and easiest to grasp aspects of the model we have.
You have 3 elements to work with 1) A character (any character yours, mine, the GMs, 2) The environment (anything that isn't a character), 3) the player (including GM).
A player can do one of 2 things: manipulate a character with respect to the environment or manipulate the environment with respect to a character.
A player can have one of 2 relationships with the character while he is doing these things: within the character attempting to determine and base decisions on what the given character would do if they were real people in a real situation based on the character's goals, or without the character attempting to determine what they the player want to do based on the player's goals.
So you have essentially 2 axes which can be tabulated into a 4 box grid.
Manipulate Character and Manipulate Environment vs.
Based on Character Goals and Based on Player Goals.
If you are manipulating a character based on character goals you are in Actor Stance.
If you are manipulating a character based on player goals you are in Author Stance.
If you are manipulating the environment based on player goals you are in Director Stance. The Environment is moving around the character in a manner the character did not cause.
"But Ralph, what about that fourth box...Manipulating the environment based on character goals...what goes in there?"
Simple...nothing.
That box definitionally cannot exist. It is the junction of manipulating the environment in a manner the character did not cause while operating solely within the goals and capabilities of the character. They are mutually exclusive and can't happen.
However...we can get CLOSE to that box. There were a few older discussions on the role of Magic in traditional fantasy RPGs (particularly with respect to AD&D and the dungeon crawl). Magic in those games represented the closest thing to Director Stance you could get in Old School roleplaying...the ability to manipulate the environment in a manner outside of a normal person's ability to do so. Of course, since Magic-Users are not normal persons the ability to do magic is within their capability so the actual use of magic is still Actor or Author Stance...BUT you can see how its similiar (and often used to similar effect).
Now, there seems to be some problem with having two different axes being discussed under the label of Stance. I can relate to that. For a long time Director Stance was referred to as Directoral Power and generally kept seperate from Author and Actor until general useage began to blur the distinction.
So one could say (and its been said before) that Director Power is seperate from Author and Actor. That you can have Actor with or without Director Power or Author with or without Director Power.
Lo and behold...that relationship winds up being exactly the same 4 boxes I outlined above. And since Actor Stance with Director Power can not exist, you wind up having only 3 possible conditions.
Actor Stance, Author Stance, or Author Stance with Director Power.
What's really the problem then with simplifying things and renaming "Author Stance with Director Power" simply as "Director Stance"?
Seems pretty straightforward to me...
The more I think on Stances the more my problem seems to clarify itself. At the moment I think that my problem centers upon the fact that it is difficult (if not impossible) to provide a clear definition of Stances without defining the three stances. This seems tautological. We basically say "the three Stances are what Stances are", or at least I get that impression.
Again, I do not feel that I have a problem using or understanding Stances, and I feel that they are quite useful. I almost feel about Stances as Ron felt about Gamism when he wrote the Step On Up essay (i.e. we all think we know what they are, and no one ever talks about it much, we just use the term) with the exception that we use Stances in a pretty standardized manner. Now, it is possible that all this has been hashed out to pretty much everyone's satisfaction and thus it is not a case of no one ever discussing it, but just that everyone has discussed as much as they feel necessary.
At the risk of drifting off topic a bit, Ralph how would you respond to the idea of manipulating the environment with respect to the character based on causal goals. That is, sure the environment effects the character, but the reason you are manipulating it is to maintain environmental causality. It could be argued that maintaining causality is just another player goal, but then we could toss out Actor Stance and say that being "in character" is just another player goal, which seems kind of silly. If the discussion of my postulated fourth "Environmental Stance" starts to head somewhere I will probably take it to a new thread.
So again: My problem is not with understanding what current Stance theory is (at least not after all this discusison of it). Instead my problem is tied to the idea that Stance can not be defined except by its members. It is not an idea on its own, it is instead a grouping label. Now grouping labels are useful, but I feel that we could do more with Stances if we knew what a Stance was apart from "Stance is one of these three things".
Thomas
What seems to be going on to me is that different people have a different understanding on what stances are, or at least, what stances should be.
Ron's (& other's) definition is based around the characters. How does the player effect the characters and how does he make that decision? Using this viewpoint, the definition of stances as-is is complete.
Thomas' (& other's) seems not to be based around the character. That is to say, Thomas seems to think that stances answer the question of how/why do players make decisions & how do they affect the SIS in general. From this viewpoint, stances either need some sort of re-structuring, or at least they need Ralph's fourth box (internal-logic + environment).
To me, those just seem to be different ways of looking at the same phenomonon. Both seem valid in their own way. The question is, which way of looking at things is more useful?
[edit] Cross-posted with Thomas. [/edit]
Hello,
Tim, the way I see it is that we have two obvious and clear levels of dealing with the SIS.
One, the biggest and overall, has no specific set of terms associated with it beyond words like "play" or "input" or "saying stuff."
Two, the one which Stances are about, concerns the positioning and announcements of characters within the SIS. Key point: this is contained within the #1 category above; it is a subset of it.
People seem absolutely determined to make Stances apply to the larger #1 category. They are hunting for a set of terms to describe what *role-playing* is, at the Ephemeral level, in a way which cuts all the way up to Exploration/SIS in general.
I don't really see much need for that. Phrases like "Bob says," or "Suzy suggests," or "We play that ..." all work for me, at the level of #1.
I really wish people wouldn't fixate on the poor little (and perfectly adequate to its scope) concept of Stance and try to beef it up into the rubric for role-playing input of all kinds. It only seems to lead to pain and suffering.
Best,
Ron
QuoteAt the risk of drifting off topic a bit, Ralph how would you respond to the idea of manipulating the environment with respect to the character based on causal goals. That is, sure the environment effects the character, but the reason you are manipulating it is to maintain environmental causality. It could be argued that maintaining causality is just another player goal, but then we could toss out Actor Stance and say that being "in character" is just another player goal, which seems kind of silly. If the discussion of my postulated fourth "Environmental Stance" starts to head somewhere I will probably take it to a new thread.
Actor Stance is entirely distinct and seperate from the notion of being "in character". You can be 100% "in character" and be playing Author stance the whole way. You can be completely immersed in your character and be using Actor Stance. Or you can be using Actor Stance with little immersion beyond the minimum needed to grok who the character is. There is a fair degree of correlation between Actor Stance and "in character" but don't mistake that for causation.
There is absolutely zero element of "why" inherent in the Stances. To Ron's point above I find it very counter productive to try and duplicate at the stance level all of the various inputs and ramifications that are discussed at the other level of the model. Stances are not a model of roleplaying. You can not learn the sum total of a player's roleplaying habits based on what stance they're in.
What I mean by this, is that your question above is really pretty immaterial to the idea of Stances. Did the player manipulate the environment...yes...then they were engaged in Director Stance. Why the player manipulated the environment doesn't factor in to Stances at all.
It doesn't matter if he did it to maintain internal causality. It doesn't matter if he did it in order to force an explosive situation to a dramatic climax. It doesn't matter if he did it to torque his buddy off across the table. It doesn't matter if he did it to impress the cute girl with how clever he is. All of these are examples of using Director Stance in pursuit of a player goal.
To delve deeper into what those goals are and how Director Stance might be used differently as a reult you need to go back up the model and start looking at Creative Agenda and Social Contract. Is Director Stance in pursuit of a Narrativist CA going to appear different than Director Stance in pursuit of a Gamist CA? Yup. But they're still both Director Stance.
Well, bloody hell then.
Let's just ignore the term Stance, then, and fix on the point that Thomas, in Ron's characterization, is more interested in. It's my opinion that this isn't a split topic; I'm just recommending a change in terminology to appease those of us with jargon inertia issues.
Stances describe only a subset of ephemera! But in doing so, they use only a subset of the conceptual spaces that they define with the distinctions that they make. Are the ephemera described by the missing recombinations of these categories exhaustive, or do they also proscribe a subset of ephemera? If so, what characterizes them on the whole?
I am hesitant as to whether it would be better to start a new thread and increase the sheer number of stance threads running at the moment, or post here and risk derailing the direction some people want this thread to take. I'm going to post here, and if the moderators think this is something different, they can split it.
Quote from: Ralph"But Ralph, what about that fourth box...Manipulating the environment based on character goals...what goes in there?"
Simple...nothing.
That box definitionally cannot exist. It is the junction of manipulating the environment in a manner the character did not cause while operating solely within the goals and capabilities of the character. They are mutually exclusive and can't happen.
I'm going to pose a hypothetical.
In this game, there is a mechanic which allows any player to manipulate the world in favor of his character; that is, for example, on the right roll, or with the right card, or something of that sort, the player can say,
the bus arrives at this moment, and I board it, escaping the pursuers.
O.K., that's obviously director stance; the player is exercising authority over events beyond his character's control to have what he wants to happen, which is also what his character wants, because their interests coincide.
However, I postulate that this mechanic also works for the antagonists, and the referee in this game is required to use it in such a fashion that he is obliged to control events outside the control of the characters in a manner which favors what the character would want, even if that is contrary to what he as a player wants.
According to your analysis, that should be the fourth box. That is the player acting to control events beyond the character's ability to control based on the character's desires.
Now, I have no problem with calling that director stance; but I do see this as an example of the confusion people are citing here. How would you treat it, Ralph? I presume Ron would call it director stance, and that's what I would call it. Anyone else have a different position on this?
--M. J. Young
And... I don't see the problem in seeing a problem. :)
Quote from: ValamirWhat I mean by this, is that your question above is really pretty immaterial to the idea of Stances. Did the player manipulate the environment...yes...then they were engaged in Director Stance. Why the player manipulated the environment doesn't factor in to Stances at all.
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A player can do one of 2 things: manipulate a character with respect to the environment or manipulate the environment with respect to a character.
And this is the problem. The requirement that the environment be manipulated with respect to a character is a false one. It is an arbitrary requirement. It is also a non-functioning requirement. Director stance can not be defined in terms of character, because Director stance has no relationship to character! Director stance is about manipulating the environment. Characters are not manipulated, and as such, the presence or absence of characters is totally incidental. They can be there, or they can not. Either way, with Director stance, the environment is manipulated.
In fact, the general "environmental manipulative authority" that GMs traditionally have are usually called "director stance," regardless of characters. In fact, you can play Universalis for a *long time* without creating any characters at all, and still be manipulating the environment. People call this "director stance."
Director stance is a fundamentally different animal from Actor / Author / Pawn stance. Director stance is about what gets manipulated. In A/A/P stance, it's a given that character is manipulated. A/A/P stance is about what thought process the player uses to decide *how* to manipulate the character.
If director stance is a stance, then A/A/P stance is not. If If A/A/P stance is a stance, the Director stance is not. Ron has said that the stances deal with ephemera, and that is true. But they're two different *kinds* of ephimera that have been lumped into one label.
Quote from: MJHowever, I postulate that this mechanic also works for the antagonists, and the referee in this game is required to use it in such a fashion that he is obliged to control events outside the control of the characters in a manner which favors what the character would want, even if that is contrary to what he as a player wants.
According to your analysis, that should be the fourth box. That is the player acting to control events beyond the character's ability to control based on the character's desires.
Now, I have no problem with calling that director stance; but I do see this as an example of the confusion people are citing here. How would you treat it, Ralph? I presume Ron would call it director stance, and that's what I would call it. Anyone else have a different position on this?
The situation you propose is completely impossible. There is no humanly possible way barring mind control lasers, demonic possession, or severe mental disorder for the GM to use this mechanic and not want to use it.
He may not like it. He may not enjoy it. He may prefer to not do it. But if he wants to play the game by the rules, and that's the rule...then he is intentionally and knowingly using the mechanic. I don't see reason to get hung up on the semantics of "want".
I don't "want" to jump your cunningly placed pawn with my king and set you up for a double jump. But if I "want" to continue to play checkers with you, I have to do it. Therefor I want to make that move as part and parcel of my want to play the game.
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If director stance is a stance, then A/A/P stance is not. If If A/A/P stance is a stance, the Director stance is not. Ron has said that the stances deal with ephemera, and that is true. But they're two different *kinds* of ephimera that have been lumped into one label.
So what?
Seriously, and with no snarkiness at all...so what?
I think I've already addressed this above when I mentioned that it used to be seperate and was called Directoral Power rather than Directoral Stance.
Author Stance Plus Directoral Power = Director Stance.
I'm quite happy simply calling it Director Stance and saving the extra words in the same way I'm quite happy calling a game "Narrativist" rather than "a game which facilitates, blah blah blah".
I'm failing to see where this is an obstacle to any application of theory, or a hindrance to futher development in any way.
If you can show me the big step forward that splitting these apart will accomplish I'm all ears.
But it seems an awfully trivial thing to be worried about to me.
Quote from: Valamir
So what?
I'm failing to see where this is an obstacle to any application of theory, or a hindrance to futher development in any way.
So, it's not an obstacle. But it is an inconsistency - hence, a confusion generator. Furthermore, it is an imprecision, or... well, maybe incompletion is a better word.
Basically, there are a lot of different *kinds* of director stance lumped into one catchall expression. In terms of design, there are a lot of specific ways to use Director stance that are drastically different. Playing Universalis (where you can do whatever you want to the environment, as long as it doesn't step on anybody's toes) is a lot different from playing TROS (where you're limited to a specific currency that can only be used to manipulate things that directly affect the situation of your character).
I think that the TROS style Director stance is closer to the actual definition of Director stance give in the Glossary. But I think Uni "free for all" type stuff is still Director stance. And I think there are a lot of interesting degrees. MoVs in the Pool for example.
Your classification of "author stance with director power" doesn't work, because Author Stance is not required. You don't even have to have character's present. Frex, I was outlining a game idea in #indierpgs last week where each player is in charge of some aspect of the environment. The specific spheres or influence would be determined at the start of each session by dealing out a deck of cards. The guy who got the "weather" card is responsible for framing the weather in scenes, and so on.
QuoteNow, there seems to be some problem with having two different axes being discussed under the label of Stance. I can relate to that. For a long time Director Stance was referred to as Directoral Power and generally kept seperate from Author and Actor until general useage began to blur the distinction.
Thank you, Ralph. This is exactly where I've been getting confused and a bit frustrated, because it seemed as though no one wanted to acknowledge the distinction between 'Director Power' and 'Stances' in general. If it's just a general useage convention, I understand. If not, I still don't see why the 'with or without Director Power' is part of the definition of Stances.
I wouldn't keep making an issue of this if I didn't think that it led to problems when people try to conceptualize about Stances.
Hello,
Stance is not "power." This is a common misunderstanding. In fact, I suggest that "power" be recognized as a colloquial and local term which means whatever a given posting person wants it to, which is why it's not in the Glossary. A good thread to read is Stance is still not power (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=6255).
Nathan (Paganini), your proposed weather mechanic has nothing to do with Stance. I think you are falling into the common trap of thinking that any announcements or any game-input at all about the "world" must be Director Stance. Although quite a bit of Universalis play involves Director Stance, not all of it does.
I keep saying this over and over - Stance does not account for any and every moment of play. Your statement "You don't even have to have character's present" is nonsensical as an example of anything to do with Stance.
Best,
Ron
Ron, let me see if I can make this clearer.
In the first place, I don't need you to teach me what the current stances mean. I understand your definitions. I grok what you mean when you say Director stance.
The point I'm making is not that all Universalis play is called Director stance *right now.* I'm saying it logically *should be.* (Actually, Director stance is not really a stance, but that's more of a semantic argument than a technical one.) The point I'm making is that requiring Director stance to be defined in terms of its relationship to character is nonsensical.
Here's basically how I see where we're at now:
Ron: Stances are about character, so Director stance has to be environmental manipultion in relation to some character.
Me: The presence of characters is totally incidental to manipulating the environment, so Director stance is not really a stance. It's something else, and we should look at all the different ways that in can work in addition to being in relation to character.
Here's why:
Actor, Author, and Pawn stances are all coherent with one another - they require character because they are about a player activity that involves character - namely, a player deciding what that character does.
The player activity that's central to Director stance does *not* require a character. The activity is manipulating the environment. You can do that in relation to character, yes. But you can do it just as well without that relationship. Either way, the player is doing the same thing - he's manipulating the environment. Why call it a stance, then? It only even remotely resembles the other stances if it has this artificial restriction of character relationship. But, there are a lot of ways to manipulate the environment. So why do we only have a word for *one specific* one - the manipulation of environment with respect to character?
Sure, MoVs in TQB and a lot of Uni play aren't covered by the current definition of Director stance. But, then, what *are* they covered by? These activities *look* exactly the same as Director stance, but without spatial relationship to a character.
So you can say "it's not Director stance." Fine. But what is it when you're doing the exact same thing as Director stance, but without the tie to character? Why is it called Director stance when you do have a tie to character, when Director stance isn't even remotely like any of the other stances?
I don't know Pags. This really seems much ado about nothing to me.
I don't know why or where this focus on whether or not Director stance infers a relationship to a character comes from, why you think its a meaningful, useful, or at all important distinction, and what benefit there is to changing the definition to account for your percieved issue...I really don't.
I can tell its important to you, but at this point, I kind of have to shrug and think I'm not going to be able to help you, because I can't perceive why its an issue at all.
But I will leave you with this thought:
When you think you are doing stuff in a game that you think ought to be considered Director Stance, but you think is currently being excluded because what you are doing doesn't involve a character and thus doesn't fall within the definition, consider these three possibilities...
possibility #1) Working up stuff about an environment that absolutely positively has nothing at all to do with character in any way...probably isn't roleplaying. You might be using mechanics derived from a roleplaying game to do it...but without a connection to character is it really roleplaying?...or just shared imagining of world creation stuff...
possibility #2) There actually is a connection to character that you just haven't articulated. Meaning that most of the time you think you're making changes to the environment that have nothing to do with character...you probably aren't. Your changes probably can be described in terms of their relation to a character...you just haven't conceptualized it in that fashion yet.
possibility #3) You're anthropomorphizing various setting elements. In the process of using rules to effect the environment and make things happen in the environment, chances are those various environmental features are acting as a proxy for character for you. This is pretty common in world building exercises and Aria: Worlds made an entire game around the concept. So in a sense...once the weather becomes like a character...you're back to the current definition of Director Stance working just fine.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that 99% of every instance that you think you're performing Director Stance activity that isn't covered by the current definition probably falls into one of these 3 possibilities...and the other 1%...right now...doesn't hold all that much interest for me I'm afraid.
Ok. I think we have gone about as far as we can. We have one side which has a problem with current Stance theory. I believe that the reasons for that problem have been well articulated. That side understands current Stance theory and just feels that something is wrong. We have another side which does not see what the problem is. They acknowledge that it bothers some people, but they just do not see a problem there.
I believe that this is about as far as we are going to be able to go on this train. I think it has been profitable, and commentary has really helped me to get a good grasp on what I find wrong with Stances. Additionally, I have reached a point where I don't care. Yes, I am unhappy with Stance theory, but it is what it is.
I will shortly be kicking off another thread to address the nuances of authority and justification that Nathan and I (and, I percieve, others) are really caught up on. We, hopefully, won't even mention Stances. We'll talk about these elements and discuss what they are useful for. Perhaps when we have some coherent stuff we can come back and discuss Stances again, but then again maybe not.
Thomas