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So, I wrote an essay about RPG theory:

http://strackenz.spod-central.org/~lpsmith/rpg/essays/ControlAndRestrictions.html

It has two basic premises:  one, that a roleplaying system delegates control over different aspects of the created story to the players (and GM, if there is one), and two, that it can be useful to break down 'story' into four axes:  Character, Plot, Setting, and Tone.  Along the way, I claim that a common resolution to "The Impossible Thing" is simply a matter of control:  the GM is in control of the Plot axis, and the players are in control of the Character axis.  It's (hopefully) a deeper analysis of Illusionism/Participationism.

At some point, I'd like to take a bunch of systems and analyze them specifically in these terms, but these are my thoughts for the nonce.  I started thinking about things in these terms after reading M.J. Young's "The Impossible Thing" (http://ptgptb.org/0027/theory101-02.html) essay.  Suggestions/criticisms welcome, of course.

Recently Ron said something along these lines of "The idea that rules are to stop arguments like 'I shot you' 'no you didn't' is just stupid". Anyway, that's what I read of it.

It struck me as a good way of debunking what system can and will do for you. The rules aren't there to stop arguments directly. They are there to avoid unwanted arguments, by creating a series of agreements/rules the players have agreed to, and then can use to arrive at further agreements (like agreeing if someone is shot).*

So what would that make of the word 'control'? Like with the GM controlling the plot. I think it means that really, there are agreements/rules about plot management. And they are used by players and GM to arrive at further agreements with each other.

Hope I'm not too far off base in adding this.

* There are of course, arguments that you do want. You just try to eliminate all the ones you don't. The remaining, carefully chosen ones lead to excellent gameplay.

I'm afraid I'm not convinced, not least becuase "the story" means too many things.  So to discuss who is in control of "the story" is nearly meaningless.  What matters is who is in control of the shared imaginary space, and thats a rather different issue.  Now we re-enter story, and see that while the GM may control plot, the players have so much impact on the SIS that the nominal plot control is not achieveable without denying players the capacity to impact the SIS.  And that, ultimately, is why the impossible thing is impossible - in order to get rising action and climax, the players have to psychically realise where they are in "the story" without the GM telling them, and behave accordingly.  It just doesn't happen.

Quote from: Callan S. on September 05, 2005, 04:05:02 AMSo what would that make of the word 'control'?  Like with the GM controlling the plot. I think it means that really, there are agreements/rules about plot management. And they are used by players and GM to arrive at further agreements with each other.

If I'm reading this correctly, in the scenario you describe both the players and GM have 'control' of the plot.  And there are certainly many games where this is true.  But it doesn't happen very often/at all in the games I usually play--the only person in control of the plot is the GM.

Quote from: contracycle on September 05, 2005, 10:40:50 AM
Now we re-enter story, and see that while the GM may control plot, the players have so much impact on the SIS that the nominal plot control is not achieveable without denying players the capacity to impact the SIS.

I simply don't see this.  As you say, 'the story' is *big*.  The shared imagination space is big.  There are plenty of ways to impact one area without affecting another.

When I was the GM for my gaming group, I was thinking about plot all the time.  The pace would slow down, so I'd throw in an encounter to speed things up a bit.  The players would be confused, so I'd hold off on encounters while they pieced things together.  I'd try to come up with intriguing locales for them to visit, interesting people to talk to, and exciting challenges to overcome.

When I'm a player in my gaming group, I don't think about plot at all.  The GM's in charge of that.  Instead, I'm thinking about funny things my character would say in the situation at hand.  I'm interested tactically in how to overcome the most recent given challenge.  I banter with the NPCs and other players, check out the cool places we're going, and see if I can accomplish a few minor personal goals along the way as the group in general accomplishes the main objective.  If something I do throws off the GM's plans, I enjoy a moment of schadenfreude at his plight, but am interested more as an observer than as a participant watching how he gets things back on track again.

I used the word 'control', but perhaps it would be more clear if I talked about 'responsibility'?  As a player, I'm responsible for stuff my character does.  As a GM, I'm responsible for 'plot stuff'.  Sure, they can influence each other, and even overlap.  But, to me, I think differently when I'm in the different roles.

Hey lpsmith.

Can I recommend a thread to you? It's this one: Why would anybody want to GM? (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=14344.0), started by Kat Miller. Oh and here's a follow-up to it: History of theGM? (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=14360.0) started by komradebob.

What the GM does varies widely, when there even is one!

-Vincent

Quote from: lpsmith on September 06, 2005, 03:14:23 PMWhen I was the GM for my gaming group, I was thinking about plot all the time.  The pace would slow down, so I'd throw in an encounter to speed things up a bit.  The players would be confused, so I'd hold off on encounters while they pieced things together.  I'd try to come up with intriguing locales for them to visit, interesting people to talk to, and exciting challenges to overcome.

Only in roleplaying are these things considered the "plot".  Encounters are simply situations and maybe some immediate conflict; holding off on the next one to let the players/characters catch up is pacing; intriguing locales are setting; interesting people are characters; challenges, like encounters, are situation and a little conflict.  Most of these are elements of plot, but to say they are plot is like mistaking nuts and bolts for a machine.

Plot is the emergent quality that is created through the interactions of most of these elements, primarily conflict, characters, and setting.  If all goes well, the emergent plot will address, explore, or present a theme -- although identifying the theme is not necessarily done or possible before you play and develop the plot.  I won't toe the hardline and say that the characters must address the theme in order to create the plot; I think it's more than possible for a GM to tell a great short story and the players to tag along.

Now, maybe you mean when you list off those elements that you are juggling them all with the eventual goal of creating a plot, but creating that plot is a lot more complex than merely keeping track of NPCs and challenges.  Additionally, things that you attribute to the 'story' in your post above, things that you allow the players to have some control over, are also part of the plot.  Can you give some nice, hard definitions of what you consider a "story", a "plot", and "control"?

After rereading your essay, it seems your definition of plot is actually more about pacing, while your comments here seem to concern the elements of the story outside of traditional players' control (NPCs, setting elements, challenges, etc).  You also seem to imply in your essay that the GM is responsible for making the events of the game "make sense" in a narrative sense, taking in the input of player character actions and weaving them together into something coherent.  This is somewhat similar to the emergent properties I mentioned above.

I get what you're going at, but I think your four 'axes' have more to do with roleplaying as it has been than what roleplaying is or could be.  As you allow in your essay, they are rather arbitrary, and are not exclusive from eachother, leading to bleed-over.  The borderland between Character and Plot is especially problematic, and is where the debate about railroading, illusionism, and participationism takes place.  I don't know if you can make any solid conclusions here until you firm up your definitions of (and the distinctions between) the axes.

Quote from: lpsmith on September 06, 2005, 03:14:23 PM
I used the word 'control', but perhaps it would be more clear if I talked about 'responsibility'?  As a player, I'm responsible for stuff my character does.  As a GM, I'm responsible for 'plot stuff'.  Sure, they can influence each other, and even overlap.  But, to me, I think differently when I'm in the different roles.

Saying "responsible" would be more appropriate, and I might even agree with you with a few clarifications. But "responsibility" and "control" are two VASTLY different things. "Responsibility" is in no way a substitute for "control".

It's true that in Illusionism/Participationism, the GM is "responsible" for the "plot" and the players are responsible for the "characters". That that doesn't solve the inherent contradiction in "The Impossible Thing..."

Do you mind defining "Setup", "Conflict", "Rising Tension", & "Climax" a little more? I'm not exactly sure what you mean by them. It sounds to me like some sort of mixture of what we here would call here "situation" and "pacing".

Hi, Vincent!  I read those threads, and were interesting.  Sadly, I was not able to figure out their relevance, which probably means I'm not communicating something.  Can you say what it is you meant point out?

Hmm, clearer definitions.  Maybe an example will help?  Let's take the plot of Cinderella:

Setup:  Cinderella lives with her stepmother and stepsisters.  They make her work like a maid and do little work themselves.
Conflict:  There's a ball, and they don't let Cinderella go.
Rising action:  Cinderella tries to get to the ball, and is variously thwarted and helped along the way.
Climax:  The prince find out who she really is
Denoument:  They get married; the stepmothers/sisters get their just deserts.

In contrast, here's the character of Cinderella:

Who she is:  human, female, beautiful
What she can do:  work really hard, dream, dance
What she does:  Makes a dress in her spare time, dances with the prince, leaves the ball at midnight.

There are a wide variety of Cinderella characters who would fit the plot above, while leaving their own particular mark on the story; the one I listed is perhaps the most common, though there are others that emerge from different re-tellings of the story.  I might be a GM with that plot in mind, and a player might come up with a Cinderella who's a cleaning robot, and we could still work out a 'story' together with my original 'plot' at least vaguely intact (and changed in ways that I decided, as opposed to ways Cinderella's character decided).  This is, it seems to me, a reasonable way to describe the 'Participationism' solution to 'The Impossible Thing'.

I'm not terribly familiar with what 'situation' and 'pacing' might mean locally, but I imagine that 'situation' would be 'setup and initial conflict' while 'pacing' would be a large part of the 'rising action' bit.  In my head, if you're in control of/resonsible for 'the plot', you're in charge of taking the action somewhere.  If you're in control of/responsible for a character, you're in charge of having there be some action (among other things).

'Control' probably needs work as far as a good definition.  Perhaps it could be defined in the negative:  if you're in sole control of some aspect of the story, and you don't do something with that aspect of the story, nothing happens there.  If you're in sole control of a character, and don't say what that character does, that character doesn't do anything.  If you're in sole control of the conflict, and you don't introduce a conflict, there is no conflict.

Tim, is there something specific you see in the difference between 'control' and 'responsibility'?  There's a concept in my head that usefully can be associated with both terms; I'm more than willing to change vocabulary if it maps to that concept better.

I'm certainly not trying to say that Participationism is the only way to go.  I was trying to organize my thinking along certain lines, while using participationism to illustrate my points, since that's what our group mostly does (as I understand the term, at least).

My motivation for writing this in the first place was simply to say, "There's a lot more you can do when creating a story than control the plot."  The corollary is, "There's a lot more you can experiment with in rpg design than re-distribute plot control."

Like, I dunno, imagine a rpg where all the characters were pre-defined.  Maybe the plot was pre-defined, too, or at least highly restricted like "My Life With Master".  And when you played it, no one person controls the protagonists, but eveyone gets their own piece of the Setting to do with whatever they want.

Or have an rpg based on the 'many GMs, one character' scenario, where one person controls a single protagonist, and everyone else comes up with the plot and setting for them.

-Lucian

Quote from: lpsmith on September 06, 2005, 03:14:23 PM
When I'm a player in my gaming group, I don't think about plot at all.  The GM's in charge of that.  Instead, I'm thinking about funny things my character would say in the situation at hand.

OK, but then consider this situation which you will probably recognise.

The GM, thinking about plot, wants to impress upon the players the Eviltude of the villain by having them perform some despicable act in view of the characters.  This serves to escalate the tension of the piece and frame the reasons for the climax.  You, as a player, are thinking of witty remarks, even IC, and you come up with one and everyone corpses.

Quite possibly the theme and mood the GM was trying to create are shot to hell.  Possibly, as a result, instead of tension rising it is defused.

Thats why ultimately the GM cannot be in full control of plot, because plot is not just the notional structure of what happens when, but the actual content of what did happen.  In Lit you would not exempt the viewpoint characters actions when considering "plot".  The GM simply cannot guarantee that their intention will come out because players are players, and the only way around that is to suspend player freedom - as we saw in the Gencon thread about the game with the incredible shrinking NPC.

Quote from: contracycle on September 07, 2005, 08:25:30 AMThe GM, thinking about plot, wants to impress upon the players the Eviltude of the villain by having them perform some despicable act in view of the characters. This serves to escalate the tension of the piece and frame the reasons for the climax. You, as a player, are thinking of witty remarks, even IC, and you come up with one and everyone corpses.

What I was trying to do was to parcel out the parts from the whole here, with the caveat that there is of course overlap.  The situation you describe I tried to cover in my 'Tone' axis, where rules like "Don't make Monty Python jokes" or "Bonus XP for using your character's catch-phrase" apply.  It clearly affects the 'story' (the word I'm using to apply to the whole gamish), but it will affect what I'm calling the 'plot' only if the GM (in this case) allows for it.

Now, if I as a player had more direct control of what-I'm-calling-plot, maybe I could make the villain start to laugh at my joke, recant of his evil ways, and join the party for a rousing game of Tiddly-winks.  (Which I could do in a game of Universalis, if I'm remembering correctly.)  As the GM, I could respond to the shift of tone in exactly the same way, or I could stick doggedly to the script.  I would use my control of what-I'm-calling-plot to create the best what-I'm-calling-story.

Is there a better word than 'plot' for 'the notional structure of what happens when'?  Because that's pretty close to the concept I'm trying to use it for.

Quote from: lpsmith on September 06, 2005, 08:40:00 PMHmm, clearer definitions.  Maybe an example will help?  Let's take the plot of Cinderella...

Okay, so really, I'm not trying to be a pedantic ass here, but examples are not definitions.  I really think that both your own thinking and this discussion would greatly benefit if you sat down and defined as in a dictionary what you mean by these terms.  This will give you and us a sense of where one starts and stops, and how they are related.  See the Provisional Glossary (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/glossary.html) for an example of what I'm talking about, at least in terms of format.

OK, keep in mind that dividing things up and defining them is supposed to be useful, not prescriptive, but here goes:

Plot:  Setup, conflict, rising action, climax, denoument
  Setup:  The facts that pertain to the situation before the story begins
  Conflict:  The events of the crisis that set the plot in motion
  Rising action:  A series of events that move the action closer to or farther away from the climax (aka victories and setbacks)
  Climax:  Events that resolve the majority of the remaining conflicts.
  Denoument:  Events that follow from the climax, resulting in a new set of facts that pertain to the situation now that the story is done.

Character:  Who you are, what you can do, your attitude, and your actions.

Setting:  Truths about the universe where the story takes place.  There's a continuum between this and the 'setup' of the plot, but it's probably not worth hashing out exactly where that boundary is.  If different people/entities are in control of 'setting' and 'setup', than the boundaries of their control are the best line to draw.  If the same person/entity is in control of both, there's no useful distinction at all.  In other words 'stuff in the book' vs. 'stuff the GM made up' is a helpful line

Tone:  Things that evoke feelings and emotions in the story's viewers and/or participants.  Exactly the same events, when portrayed with different styles, can evoke different tones.  Various OOC things can affect tone, too, like distractions or music.  Tone is about *how* the game is played, not what.  Its parallel in literature is 'writing'.

Different things that people do can have repercussions on different axes, either directly (if they at least partially 'control' that axis) or indirectly (if the person who is in control of an axis chooses to respond).  The example of a joke made by a character in the presence of a villain affects Character (the PC becomes the type of person who would make a joke in the presence of a villain) and Tone (because it makes people laugh/groan/growl).  It does not affect Plot, because there was no movement towards or away from the climax--unless someone in control of Plot chooses to make this happen.

Again, I'm not trying to say, "This is what 'plot' means."  I'm trying to say, "This is what I mean in my essay when I use the word 'plot'."

Quote from: lpsmith on September 07, 2005, 06:13:32 PMAgain, I'm not trying to say, "This is what 'plot' means."  I'm trying to say, "This is what I mean in my essay when I use the word 'plot'."

Does your definition of plot have a predefined climax, or is the nature and characteristics of the climax undetermined until it happens?

Depending on your answer, the question then becomes, is the GM (or whoever is responsible for plot) responsible for making the events in the game resolve to a particular conclusion, or is the GM just responsible for making the events in the game resolve in general?  In other words, is the GM responsible for movement towards a specific endpoint, or is the GM just responsible for making sure that there is movement, wherever it may be going?

Quote from: Joshua BishopRoby on September 07, 2005, 06:26:52 PMDoes your definition of plot have a predefined climax, or is the nature and characteristics of the climax undetermined until it happens?

That's up to whoever controls the plot.

If that person wants a predefined climax, there are a variety of techniques available to them to bring that about, from railroading to cajoling to making things blindingly obvious to deus ex machina to cows from space.  Some of these work better than others, both in terms of efficacy and in terms of evoking player enjoyment.

If that person wants to create a climax out of what they see as the trajectory of player actions, that's also a possibility.  But if you're in control, it's up to you.

Another way to put this:  When a player attempts an action, their success or failure to perform the action is restricted by the system.  But their success or failure to advance the plot towards the(/a) climax is (traditionally) up to the GM.

There are newer systems where the system itself dictates "If a player does thus-and-so, and the dice say this other, that is a step towards the climax of the plot."  Here, the system has given control (with certain restrictions) of the plot to the players.  "Metal Opera" even goes so far as to have a rule that says, "When the dice say this, you have reached the climax of the story--wrap things up."

Welcome to The Forge, Lucian. I'm pleased my article was helpful.

I'm jumping in while only half finished reading this, so I won't forget what I'm thinking (I do that sometimes, particularly reading long threads); so forgive me if I duplicate someone.

I'm looking at your exposition of plot and character for Cinderella, and it seems to me that your view of role playing is always either participationist or trailblazing; you're so locked into this, that you fail to see how very little control over "character" you're really allowing the character player when you give control of "plot" to the referee player.

Quote from: lpsmith on September 06, 2005, 08:40:00 PMLet's take the plot of Cinderella:

Setup:  Cinderella lives with her stepmother and stepsisters.  They make her work like a maid and do little work themselves.
Conflict:  There's a ball, and they don't let Cinderella go.
Rising action:  Cinderella tries to get to the ball, and is variously thwarted and helped along the way.
Climax:  The prince find out who she really is
Denoument:  They get married; the stepmothers/sisters get their just deserts.

In contrast, here's the character of Cinderella:

Who she is:  human, female, beautiful
What she can do:  work really hard, dream, dance
What she does:  Makes a dress in her spare time, dances with the prince, leaves the ball at midnight.

The problem is that What she does has nothing to do with her character; it is entirely about the plot.

Thus your referee has set up

• Cinderella lives with her stepmother and stepsisters.
• They make her work like a maid and do little work themselves.
• There's a ball, and they don't let Cinderella go.

Now he expects the player to decide

• Cinderella tries to get to the ball, and keeps trying until she succeeds.

Everything else is contingent on the player's decision that his character will do this; but that means it is not the player's decision at all--it is the referee's decision dictated to the player.

In this exact same situation, we could have:

• Cinderella sits by the fire crying, and commits suicide.
• Cinderella kills her stepmother and stepsisters in their sleep, takes their good clothes and jewelry, and goes to the ball.
• Cinderella finds some friends who are equally put out by this oppressive class system, and they assault the castle during the ball, taking the prince prisoner, killing chief nobles, and establishing a socialist state.
• Cinderella runs away from home and starts a life as a gypsy fortune teller. She marries a traveling bard, and they live happily ever after.

All of that would be things the character could choose to do, and thus would be about controling the character; however, your design dictates that the referee controls the character at the critical points--the only critical points--of deciding what the story is going to be about.

The story shouldn't be about what the referee's plot plans are unless that's already agreed in advance by the players (participationism or trailblazing). It should be about what the character chooses to do. Thus if the player truly does control the character's choices, then the player controls the plot, and there's nothing the referee can do about it but throw a fit and refuse to allow actions the player wants to pursue.

A few years back we were playing Multiverser in our online forum, and someone suggested that I demonstrate the system's flexibility by running several players at once independently through the Kevin Costner film, The Postman. I started each of them by "versing them in" (characters who have died in one world suddenly find themselves alive in the next, just as they were) to an abandoned gas station where some mule had gotten its harness caught trying to get water from the rain barrel. From there, I cut them loose.

• Eric "Tadeusz" Ashley gathered information about what was happening, then proceeded to harrass the Army of Eight as a one man commando unit, adopting the name The Ghost until he had them so terrified that one night he walked into their camp unopposed and killed the general in single combat, and claiming that he was now in charge.
• Graeme "Blue Canary" Comyn put up no resistance when conscripted into the Army of Eight, but once inside he began quietly fomenting rebellion. Using his engineering skills and manipulating public opinion within the army, he managed to get the general to ask him to build a public shower and laundry, within which he hid a printing press and paper maker. He began recycling paper and printing one-page newspapers opposing the Army, which his sympathizers smuggled out of camp to the villages only to have them brought into camp by soldiers to further raise internal opposition to the way things were run. Ultimately, the soldiers rose up and overthrew the general, and started rebuilding society.
• David Marcoe realized what was happening, and went as quickly as he could away from the territory of the Army of Eight toward Washington, DC. Along the way he gathered talented people and scavenged equipment with a view to creating his own small army. He was killed in a fire fight about half way there, but before that he built a tideswell for the reestablishment of a constitutional democracy in the United States.

There were one or two other players who took different approaches, each of which resulted in an interesting game, but each of which had an entirely different plot.

The plot was determined entirely by the choices made by the principle characters.

That is always what determines plot. If the referee controls plot, he is de facto controling the choices made by the characters, whether doing so directly through illusionist techniques (e.g., it doesn't matter which way the character goes, the Army of Eight will catch him) or through social contract (e.g., the point of this game is for us to be captured by the Army of Eight to start, so let's go get captured so the story can begin).

So you think you're giving control of character to the character players, but you're reserving the most important aspect of that control to the referee, the decisions that determine what is going to happen.

It's a good start, by the way. Thinking about the elements and trying to isolate them can only lead to a better understanding of the process.

--M. J. Young

First off, let me say this has been very helpful in clarifying my thoughts.  Then let me disagree with you again ;-)

I'm definitely *not* saying that roleplaying is always either participationist or trailblazing.  That would be kind of a dumb thing to say, since clear examples to the contrary abound.  What I'm trying to say is that participationist and trailblazing play *can* happen when the GM is solely in control of what-I'm-calling-plot.  Does it help if I say that I believe 'bass playing' can *also* happen when the GM is solely in control of the plot?  And that if both players and GM are given control of the plot, you can have 'bass playing' but you can't have participationist or trailblazing play?

Quote from: M. J. Young on September 08, 2005, 07:12:08 PMThat is always what determines plot. If the referee controls plot, he is de facto controling the choices made by the characters, whether doing so directly through illusionist techniques (e.g., it doesn't matter which way the character goes, the Army of Eight will catch him) or through social contract (e.g., the point of this game is for us to be captured by the Army of Eight to start, so let's go get captured so the story can begin).

Well... no.  If the GM controls plot, he is controlling the *outcomes* of the choices made by the characters.  This is a crucial difference!  Let's say we're playing a traditional (classic?) system where the players have absolute control of my 'character' axis, and the GM has absolute control of my 'plot' axis.  If I'm playing Cinderella and I decide to try to commit suicide, that *intent* cannot be overruled by the GM.  I'm in control of Cinderella!  In this story, Cinderella is *the kind of person who tries to commit suicide*.  That's tremendously important!  I'm crafting a character here, and this is 'My Gal'.

Now, the success or failure of my suicide attempt is up to the GM, with the caveat that he has certain restrictions placed on him in the form of 'you must play by the rules'.  Surprise!  The gun wasn't loaded.  There was a pile of hay at the base of the tower.  The fairy godmother shows up (a blatant GMC if I ever saw one) and hits you with her wand.  Or not!  Cinderella succeeds, and dies tragically alone and forgotten in the east wing.  Alternatively, she succeeds, and the tale of her death reaches the prince, who is so moved that he outlaws evil stepmothers right then and there.  Whichever.  My point is that if the GM is in control, the GM is in control, to do with the plot what he wishes.

I'm starting to think I shoud re-name my 'Character' axis 'Characterization'.  Intent is characterization.  Outcome is plot.  Good intentions are character, hell is plot.

There's an improv game/exercise called "Neutral Bench".  The rules are simple:  Two players start off sitting on a bench.  One has the 'OOC' goal of getting off the bench.  The other has the goal of keeping the two of them in the same place.  Everything you say is true, and must not contradict anything that was already said.  Go.

With a bit of tweaking, you could play a form of this game in roleplaying.  One person wants to commit suicide, and the other person wants the first to marry the prince.  Everything the first person says about what they do is true.  Everything the second person says about everything else is true.  Go.

(Hmm, that could actually be fun.  Anyone up for a Railroading Invitational?  You try to derail the plot, I try to keep things on task.  Pure Gamism ;-)

You listed three different plots that stemmed from the same intial setup (I haven't seen the actual movie), and they all sound like a lot of fun.  They also sound like the GM (you) decided to use the players intentions and actions form the basis of a series of situations that moved closer to and further away from a climax that was dreamed up on the spot.  I don't know why you decided to to this.  Perhaps the system demanded that you do so (I'm unfamiliar with Multiverser).  In that case, control of the plot was at least partially granted to the players by that system.  Perhaps the Social Contract demanded that you do so.  In that case, the control of the plot was either granted by you to the players, or you simply agreed to use your powers for good (Social contracts are slippery beasts, which is one reason I left 'em out of my analysis).  Perhaps you're just That Kind Of Guy, and that sort of play is the most fun for you.

If the system did not demand that you give control to your players, though, you could have decided to railroad 'em all.  You would perhaps have had to be very creative in your railroading, and the less creative you were the more ham-fisted you would perhaps have had to be, but it *could be done*.  You control the plot.

But at the same time, you do not control the characters.  If Eric wants to gather information, you can tell him 'you find nothing', but that doesn't change the fact that Eric has created a character who tries to gather information before taking action.  If Graeme wants to surrender, you can make a rival group suddenly appear on the horizon and rescue him, but that doesn't change the fact that Grame has created a character who will surrender to a superior force.  If David wants to run away, you can have him hunted down, but that doesn't change the fact that David has created a character who runs away when he hears the first hint of bad mojo in the area, with the plan to come back when better prepared.

Now, having your character affect the plot is clearly very important to you:

Quote from: M. J. Young on September 08, 2005, 07:12:08 PMSo you think you're giving control of character to the character players, but you're reserving the most important aspect of that control to the referee, the decisions that determine what is going to happen.

You used words like 'most important' a lot in that essay, and it finally grated on my nerves enough that I wrote my essay in response.  If it's important *to you*, you need to be in a gaming group where your input directly affects the plot, either through the mechanics of the system, or through the largesse of the GM.  But if the system grants that power to the GM, your only recourse is the Social Contract.  In a straight system analysis (as I attempted to structure my essay to be), the GM simply controls the outcomes in many (not all!) systems.

Let me bare my soul a bit here.  In my actual life, character is more important to me than plot.  Who I am is tremendously important to me--fortunately, it's what I can control.  What happens to me I can *hope* to influence by who I am, but in the end, the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to the men of skill; but time and chance happen to them all.  I can *be* swift.  I can *be* strong.  Whether I win the race or finish the battle is outside of my purview.

After a long, painful, 10-year process, I got a PhD.  Did I get a PhD because I'm a tenacious SOB who finishes what he starts?  Or did I get a PhD because I'm an idiot who almost destroyed his life because he wasn't strong enough to walk away from a bad situation and cut his losses?  Those questions still haunt me.  I could hardly care less about actually having a PhD.  I am who I am by the choices I make.  For the plot, I have to trust the GM.

Hmm, this is turning into a testimonial.  Better wrap things up.

My intent with my essay was not to say, "This is what roleplaying must be."  It was to say, "These are aspects of control that shape and limit the range of possibilities for what roleplaying in a particular system can be."  It doesn't completely answer that question, but it was a start.

Quote from: lpsmith on September 09, 2005, 02:18:40 AMI'm starting to think I shoud re-name my 'Character' axis 'Characterization'.  Intent is characterization.  Outcome is plot.  Good intentions are character, hell is plot.

I'd go a step further and say that that axis that you want to give to players is 'Intent' and relabel the axis normally controlled by the GM as 'Outcome'.  At which point, you're in IIEE territory.  I think you're getting closer to what you're trying for, but personally, I think you're kind of painting yourself into a corner, describing how gaming could work, under a single, given (if common) social contract.  I'm not sure you're going to be able to draw any useful conclusions from this.

Lastly, I'd challenge -- rather stridently, in fact -- your assertation that Intent is Characterization.  Intent is a pretty pale thing next to Characterization.  Character involves a thousand things outside of the individual's intentions -- accidentally killing a friend, for instance, has huge impact on characterization.  Trying and failing to stand up for one's principles (failed Will check) says more about who the character really is than whatever it was he "intended" to do but didn't have the internal resources to actually be who he wanted to be.  Character is entirely about what you do.  Good intentions are fluff.

Quote from: Joshua BishopRoby on September 09, 2005, 12:58:59 PM

Quote from: lpsmith on September 09, 2005, 02:18:40 AMI'm starting to think I shoud re-name my 'Character' axis 'Characterization'.  Intent is characterization.  Outcome is plot.  Good intentions are character, hell is plot.

I'd go a step further and say that that axis that you want to give to players is 'Intent' and relabel the axis normally controlled by the GM as 'Outcome'.  At which point, you're in IIEE territory.  I think you're getting closer to what you're trying for, but personally, I think you're kind of painting yourself into a corner, describing how gaming could work, under a single, given (if common) social contract.  I'm not sure you're going to be able to draw any useful conclusions from this.

The (traditional) GM-Player interaction set is very complex. Even in a group that has a good history of functional gaming, the actions and interactions between GM and Players may change a lot depending on circumstances and edge conditions during play (i.e. a GM may normally be very pin-ball sim, to use a term I think may be depricated, but might someitmes take on a heavier hand depending on energy level of the group, present mix of players, real-life conditions, etc.)

As such, any generalization is going to have problems. For example Ron's recent assertion that two CA's are as different as one guy who rides motorcycles and one guy who uses them in his abstract art is an example of this: the two CAs look almost exactly alike and the theoritically, in this frame work, most cycle racres do, at times, enjoy turning their bikes into abstract art. NOTE: while I can rarely figure out exactly what Ron is talking about without a scorecard, I'm pretty sure that his example was for a very constrained set of circumstances and conditions rather than a total overarching statement. Even so: any attempt to be specific usually results in someone painting themself into some kind of corner.

Quote
Lastly, I'd challenge -- rather stridently, in fact -- your assertation that Intent is Characterization.  Intent is a pretty pale thing next to Characterization.  Character involves a thousand things outside of the individual's intentions -- accidentally killing a friend, for instance, has huge impact on characterization.  Trying and failing to stand up for one's principles (failed Will check) says more about who the character really is than whatever it was he "intended" to do but didn't have the internal resources to actually be who he wanted to be.  Character is entirely about what you do.  Good intentions are fluff.

I think this is an example of splitting hairs a bit too finely. I think intent is one of the forces behind player Input. A player's mental model of characterization (i.e. how I precieve the character) is part of this as well. What the character "actually does" is the result of a lot of factors (and, indeed, may be vague in a lot of cases or imagined differently by different people).

If you are not the player then characterization is about what the character does and what you precieve the player thinks. If you are the player you may have  more data to work with and see things differently (and things like a failed will check can result in a disconnect between the mental model and the SIS rendering of the character--I don't think it's any more proper to say that one is more about who the character "is" in a general sense since both are imaginary constructs).

-Marco

Quote from: Marco on September 09, 2005, 01:28:51 PMI don't think it's any more proper to say that one is more about who the character "is" in a general sense since both are imaginary constructs.

One conception of the character is given credibility by the system; the other conception is not.  Characterization is something that is irretrievably fractured by point of view.  Player A will think of Character A in one way, Player B will think of Character A in another way.  While those characterizations can be reconciled, the way that happens is through the game system (which may or may not be accurately described in the written rules) and the way that it apportions credibility.  Under this model, the control of the plot -- the outcome, the effect, the "what happens" -- gives absolute credibility over that reconciliation process.

Is a character a hero if he really wants to stand up and fight for the innocent, or is a character a hero when he does stand up and fight for the innocent?  Heroism is doing, not wanting to do.  The same thing applies to the rest of characterization; the why is irrelevant without the what.  To say that the credible statements made during play are meaningless to characterization begs the question why the system that provides those credible statements is being used at all.  Why play with other people and roll dice?  Just write out the character profile as a short story.

To drag this closer to topic, I think the "typical" railroading/illusionist/participationist play that is described by the model assumes that the GM will provide the what while the players provide the why.  That isn't the same, however, as saying that the GM provides the plot and the players provide the characterization.  Character and plot are inextricably linked, and absolute control over one means near-absolute control over the other -- you can't give absolute control of characterization to one person and absolute control of plot to another person.  Their spheres of control will immediately be in conflict.  You can, however, give absolute control of intent to one person and absolute control of outcomes to another.  No conflict arises there.

Quote from: Joshua BishopRoby on September 09, 2005, 03:37:27 PM
You can, however, give absolute control of intent to one person and absolute control of outcomes to another.  No conflict arises there.

Going further, I'd argue that if you give control of outcomes to one player, then - over time - that means no other player can have absolute control of intents.
Players learn that X will always fail, so they stop intending to do X. Then they learn Y won't work, so they cut that out of their possible options. Gradually, the range of possible intents shrinks to those the players have learned can lead to (or think might lead to) achievable outcomes.
One player having absolute control of oitcomes will shape the kind of intents allowed to everyone else.

Control of outcomes does imply control of context, true, but this is at best an indirect control -- potentially powerful, sure, but by no means 'absolute'.  Players can always continue to beat their heads against the wall, after all.

Hmm, we're veering into philosophy here.  But anyway.

My little "Intent is Characterization" aphorism seems to be causing some confusion from what I meant--'intent' probably isn't the right word.  I didn't mean 'stuff you think about doing', I meant, 'stuff you try to do'.

Which changes the question to "Is a character any less of a hero if he stands up for the innocent and fails, or must he succeed?"  And you will actually get different answers to that question depending on who you ask, but *my* answer (and, I suspect, the answer of others who 'don't care about' plot) is 'No'.  And that gets at the difference between what I meant by character and what I meant by plot.  And I continue to assert that they are separable.

However, I'm clearly not communicating something, because while I see what I've written as a perfectly extensible way to dissect a wide variety of roleplaying models (participationism, trailblazing, actual module play, bass playing, battlegrounding, timetabling, relationship mapping, etc. etc.) you all keep thinking I'm only talking about participationism.  Why is this?  What did I say?  Is 'control' overloaded?

To clarify:  I'm trying to talk about *systems*, not Social Contracts.  Any social contract must work with what it is given by the system.  If a system gives control of 'plot' (/outcomes?) to the GM, the GM can then bequeath control to the players through the social contract.  But you cannot keep for yourself something you do not have, and if the system gives control to the players, the GM no longer has the power to run a Participationist game--if that's what everyone wants to play, the players would have to give control *back to the GM*.

Maybe this is enlightening:

Quote from: Darren Hill on September 09, 2005, 04:43:00 PMGoing further, I'd argue that if you give control of outcomes to one player, then - over time - that means no other player can have absolute control of intents.
Players learn that X will always fail, so they stop intending to do X.

Why do you think that my saying 'the GM has control' means 'the players will always fail'?  What's up with that?  A perfectly valid mode for a GM to follow is to make the players always *succeed*.  I'm only saying that it's the GM's choice which mode to follow.

And this is also a sort of red herring.  Success or failure, does the action result in a change in the situation that is closer to or further away from the ultimate climax?  (Keep in mind that the climax may itself be shifting or not even exist yet.)  That's even more up to the GM than success or failure of particular actions are (often because success/failure of 'small' actions are determined by die rolls).  This is the foundation of why participationism and trailblazing work at all, but (I contend) is *also* at the foundation of certain flavors of 'bass playing'.  The GM is making different types of decisions, that result in different play experiences.  The players don't have to do anything different at all.

I contend that a sufficiently creative and/or ham-fisted GM, if granted control of the 'plot' by the system, could make player action result in situation change towards a pre-defined climax even if the players were intentionally trying to avoid that climax and/or stall.  Whether this would be any fun is an open question.

Quote from: lpsmith on September 09, 2005, 05:03:39 PM
Which changes the question to "Is a character any less of a hero if he stands up for the innocent and fails, or must he succeed?"  And you will actually get different answers to that question depending on who you ask, but *my* answer (and, I suspect, the answer of others who 'don't care about' plot) is 'No'.  And that gets at the difference between what I meant by character and what I meant by plot.  And I continue to assert that they are separable.

Right--exactly. And while there's a great deal of credit given to the idea that the game system "resolves" or "reconciles" player's ideas about what their character's characterization is, I don't think this is as true as the theory would like it to be. If my character is a doctor with a decent skill roll but the three or four times he tries to save someone the dice come up really unlucky, some people will say he's an incompetent doctor despite what my internal characterization is and (correctly, IMO) continues to be.

The theory sounds good--it doesn't apply to reality: if you ask the players at the table they may, rightly, feel nothing has been reconciled through mechanics or system (in fact, if the player(s) decide that the mechanics are out of line with system then the two characterizations remain fractured).

This is why saying "Just write out the character profile as a short story" is missing the point: a lot of things, not just system and not just mechanics go into the in-game representation of the character (one of these is 'situation'--which is a major component of what, I think, becomes 'plot' in this construct--and may or may not be counted as a part of 'system' depending on who you are and how far you want to take it).

Ultimately there isn't a universal concept of "characterization" in an RPG (or, perhaps, anywhere else--but very strongly in an RPG). You have to specify a person holding that view. As noted, I might very much differ from you about who is a hero and where heroism resides in a given set of character interactions. The idea that one of us is objectively wrong about that, across a broad spectrum of possibilities, is hard to legitimately hold.

-Marco

Quote from: lpsmith on September 09, 2005, 05:03:39 PMMy little "Intent is Characterization" aphorism seems to be causing some confusion from what I meant--'intent' probably isn't the right word.  I didn't mean 'stuff you think about doing', I meant, 'stuff you try to do'.

That's all well and good when the System operates after Initiation in the IIEE sequence, but this isn't always the case.  There are a fat lot of Systems out there where player intent does not necessarily equal character attempt.  The failed Will check is a prime example.  If in GURPS I fail my Will roll against Cowardice, I didn't "try" to save the people in the burning building and decided not to, I cowered in the corner.  You're assuming that the System provides this divide between "character" attempt and "plot" outcome, when this is not necessarily the case.

QuoteI'm clearly not communicating something, because while I see what I've written as a perfectly extensible way to dissect a wide variety of roleplaying models ... you all keep thinking I'm only talking about participationism.  Why is this?  What did I say?  Is 'control' overloaded?
...
To clarify:  I'm trying to talk about *systems*, not Social Contracts.  Any social contract must work with what it is given by the system.  If a system gives control of 'plot' (/outcomes?) to the GM, the GM can then bequeath control to the players through the social contract.

You attempt to show that control of character and control of plot can be separated (the Impossible Thing Before Breakfast), which is pretty much assumed as an untenable position around here.  Railroading/Illusionism/Participationism is where that breakdown occurs, which is why most of the comments are focused on it.    Additionally, Social Contract is typically portrayed as the level "above" System.  In fact, Social Contract determines System in the usual configuration -- your group of players decides what game to play, after all.  So the Social Contract doesn't work with what the System provides, the System works with what the Social Contract allows.  Also, when you say "System" are you using it as Lumpley Principle defines it, or as a one-word shorthand for "The rules as presented in the published material"?

QuoteWhy do you think that my saying 'the GM has control' means 'the players will always fail'?  What's up with that?

When you say there is control in two places, that is true right up until those two places disagree -- there is always some rule (explicit or not) that says when one takes precedence over the other, when one gets to say they're right and the other one is wrong.  Otherwise the players would just sit there staring at each other.  When the GM exerts his control to stymie player initiative, you have the Impossible Thing Before Breakfast.

Here's my take on your model as presented -- you say that Character and Plot are two separate axes and you can successfully grant control of each to different people.  When you say 'Character', though, you mean 'Player Intention expressed through a character' which you are used to being the same thing as Character Intention.  This is a big assumption that is not universal.  If you model is built on assumptions that are not universal, then your model is not universal.  Additionally, when you say 'Plot' you mean 'Events that happen in the game' and perhaps 'An overarching sense of coherent motion towards a climax'.

What you have is a model of how roleplaying usually works in most cases in traditional games, which may or may not be a useful tool for understanding roleplay that works outside of this scheme (in games like Capes, Polaris, or Under the Bed, all of which mix these elements up).  On the other hand, I can easily see your model reconfigured to talk about 'Roleplaying Tasks' in general, and who has responsibility for what.  Those outlier games would simply organize those tasks in different schemes than your four axes.

Quote from: lpsmith on September 09, 2005, 05:03:39 PM
Maybe this is enlightening:

Quote from: Darren Hill on September 09, 2005, 04:43:00 PMGoing further, I'd argue that if you give control of outcomes to one player, then - over time - that means no other player can have absolute control of intents.
Players learn that X will always fail, so they stop intending to do X.

Why do you think that my saying 'the GM has control' means 'the players will always fail'?  What's up with that?  A perfectly valid mode for a GM to follow is to make the players always *succeed*.  I'm only saying that it's the GM's choice which mode to follow.

And this is also a sort of red herring.  Success or failure, does the action result in a change in the situation that is closer to or further away from the ultimate climax?  (Keep in mind that the climax may itself be shifting or not even exist yet.)  That's even more up to the GM than success or failure of particular actions are (often because success/failure of 'small' actions are determined by die rolls).  This is the foundation of why participationism and trailblazing work at all, but (I contend) is *also* at the foundation of certain flavors of 'bass playing'.  The GM is making different types of decisions, that result in different play experiences.  The players don't have to do anything different at all.

I think Darren shortcut past an important step (or I'm reading his message wrong).  
If the GM is the one who decides success or failure, over time a pattern will arise as to what the GM 'likes' and allows to succeed, and what the GM 'dislikes' and causes to fail.  The players will notice this trend, and stop doing things the GM doesn't like, because they know it's a dead end.  They'll do what the GM likes, which is what moves the story along - in essence, admitting their choice is an illusion.

James

Quote from: Marco on September 09, 2005, 05:38:34 PMAnd while there's a great deal of credit given to the idea that the game system "resolves" or "reconciles" player's ideas about what their character's characterization is, I don't think this is as true as the theory would like it to be. If my character is a doctor with a decent skill roll but the three or four times he tries to save someone the dice come up really unlucky, some people will say he's an incompetent doctor despite what my internal characterization is and (correctly, IMO) continues to be.

If you are talking about the Interaction Model like it looks like you are, first off, that's a different thread and if you want to spawn one off, I'd be happy to be bombastic in it.  That said, the Interaction Model says that roleplaying works towards reconciliation, but does not ever really reach 100%-match.  Some players may think your doctor is inept; others may decide he's had a very bad day.  The point is, they're all drawing conclusions about the same imaginary doctor.

QuoteI might very much differ from you about who is a hero and where heroism resides in a given set of character interactions...

My point isn't about character interactions; it's about the distinction between player intent and character initiation.  Someone who tries and fails to do something heroic may very well be heroic; a character who doesn't try at all isn't heroic under any circumstances.  See my IIEE comment in my last post.

Quote from: Blankshield on September 09, 2005, 06:21:11 PM
I think Darren shortcut past an important step (or I'm reading his message wrong).  

You're right, I did miss that out.

Quote from: Blankshield on September 09, 2005, 06:21:11 PMIf the GM is the one who decides success or failure, over time a pattern will arise as to what the GM 'likes' and allows to succeed, and what the GM 'dislikes' and causes to fail.  The players will notice this trend, and stop doing things the GM doesn't like, because they know it's a dead end.

...assuming the players are only interested in character success, yes.

Quote from: Joshua BishopRoby on September 09, 2005, 07:47:37 PM

Quote from: Blankshield on September 09, 2005, 06:21:11 PMIf the GM is the one who decides success or failure, over time a pattern will arise as to what the GM 'likes' and allows to succeed, and what the GM 'dislikes' and causes to fail.  The players will notice this trend, and stop doing things the GM doesn't like, because they know it's a dead end.

...assuming the players are only interested in character success, yes.

Remember the context. We are talking about a situation in which the GM controls outcomes, and players control intents. If the GM controls outcomes, then the GM controls what actually happens in the SIS.  It doesn't matter whether the players are interested in character success or not, what matters is whether their additions to the SIS (whether character-focussed or not) are recieving validation or being rejected. If they are being rejected, they will make assumptions about why this is, and change their play accordingly, to find inputs that will recieve validation. Players will manoeuvre to find a smaller subset of intentions that they can find fun, or they'll reject this kind of play completely.
I would expect this to be the case whether the system focusses player interest on their characters, or allows them to influence the SIS in some other way. (Though I find it hard to imagine a system with an emphasis on GM control of outcomes also having support for players controlling elements beyond their character.)

Man, you people and your terminology!  For one thing, it's hard to keep up, and for another, you've used up half the useful words for these things for specialized concepts.  Whew.  Also, can I request that the non-functional links in the glossary be made functional?  I had to search for the named threads manually (after finally realizing they were named threads) and even then didn't find them except indirectly.

This has been a great discussion, though, and has really served to clarify my thoughts.  Let me start by answering the question, "how do I see my axes interacting with IIEE?"

As I understand it, IIEE is a way of establishing 'what happened in this short bit of the scene'.  So, what you all normally think of as 'Effect' is things like "the blow does 10 points of damage and the guy dies" instead of things like, "Six months later, his brother shows up, intent on revenge." (Correct me if I'm wrong here)

So as far as I can tell, all the roleplaying systems I've actually played (though fewer of the ones I've read about here) have the same model of control over each element of IIEE.  (That would be D&D, 7th Sea, Nobilis, and FUDGE).  Namely, the player has complete control of Intent, has a few system-based restrictions for Initiation, probably gets to narrate what happens in Execution, and should have a good idea of the range of possibilities inherent in the (short-term) Effects, and might even get to narrate some of those (I do 10 points of damage; I make it across the ledge; I successfully throw the moon into the sun, etc.). 

All of these affect my 'Character' axis, the earlier ones (Intent and Initiation) perhaps a bit more than the latter.  But more importantly, as a player, I either completely control or can reasonably predict the content of all four.  The GM is there merely as an arbiter for System.

But what happens *next*?  What are the effects of the effects?  You guys like coming up with cute names for things; I'll add my voice to the noise:  the Butterfly Effects.  Butterfly Effects are stuff like "The guy's brother shows up wanting revenge", "Your actions build a tideswell for the reestablishment of a constitutional democracy in the United States", "The prince falls in love with you", or even "Nothing else happens." 

Butterfly Effects are not very predictable by the players, and (in those four systems) are completely under the control of the GM.  You can say, "I hit the guy", but you can't have the exchange, "I hit the guy so that I can kill him and six months later his brother comes looking for me."  "OK, roll it."  If you were to say that, the GM might take it under advisement, but it's not the sort of thing that happens very often in those games.

Are there systems where Butterfly Effects *are* under control of the players?  GM-less systems; sure.  Any systems with a GM?

So, what is Plot made of?  As I see it (and I'm thinking on my feet here), it's a combination of Butterfly Effects and External Actions (stuff that happens that had nothing to do with anything the PCs did).  I'm finally setting on a definition of 'rising action' to be 'changes in the game state to states either closer to a final resolution (victories) or to states further away from a final resolution (setbacks)'.  Changes in the game state to states equidistant from the desired final resolution are not changes that have affected the plot.  So I'm contending that *only* Butterfly Effects and External Actions can change the game state with respect to plot resolution.

And there's your Impossible Thing.  The players control (or at least reasonably predict) IIEE.  That's character.  The GM controls Butterfly Effects and External Actions.  That's plot.

(I have the niggling suspicion that Revealed Truths factor in here somewhere, but I'm not sure where.  It wouldn't change my analysis of the above four systems, since the GM controls the Revealed Truths, too, but it would affect games like 'The Pool' with its 'monologue of victory'.  Have to think about that some more.)

The next question, then:  what kind of Butterfly Effects are there?
  - Ones that do not affect the plot (no-ops)
  - Ones that affect the plot in a manner predetermined by the GM. (brick paths)
  - Ones that affect the plot in a manner that the GM thinks up on the spot, but nevertheless move towards or away from a predetermined climax. (roller coasters)
  - Ones that affect the plot in a manner that the GM thinks up on the spot, and additionally affect the nature of the eventual climax. (brave new world)

And, you know, you can categorize External Actions exactly the same way, with the additional wrinkle that all of them can be either predetermined or improvised.

Now we can talk about what the GM is doing when following different styles.  Let's start with MJ Young's Participationism, Trailblazing, and Bass Playing:

Participationism:  a lot of brick paths of various stripes, with no-ops thrown in when the GM's creativity runs dry, and roller coasters when the GM's creativity is firing on all cylinders.  Very few if any brave new world's.  A fairly even mix of Butterfly Effects and External Actions; most External Actions are predetermined.

Trailblazing:  Lots of Butterfly Effect no-ops, punctuated by Butterfly Effect and External Action brick paths.  Perhaps a roller coaster or two, if the players get creative and force the GM 'off-book'.

Bass Playing:  Almost all Butterfly Effect brave new worlds, with perhaps a few improvised External Action roller coasters now and again.

Other styles pop out at me as well:

Bullying (aka the Frustrated Novelist):  All Butterfly Effects are no-ops; all External Actions are brick paths.

No Myth:  No brick paths of any kind, no predetermined External Actions, very few no-ops.  Plenty of Butterfly Effect and improvised External Action roller coasters, with a few brave new worlds, probably to kick things off.

Uppity Bass Playing:  Still plenty of Butterfly Effect brave new worlds, but a fair amount of improvised External Action brave new worlds as well.  Butterfly Effects gradually shift to roller coasters.

The Tangent Adventure:  Starts with brick paths, then a Butterfly Effect brave new world gets thrown into the mix, and it's roller coasters from then on.

Digressions:  Any of the above, but with lots of no-ops.  Not because (like Trailblazing) the GM is waiting for the players to find the right thing to do, but because they get distracted from the plot and do nothing plot-wise with the result.  Sessions that devolve into nothing but jokes can go here.

OK, that's entirely too much text.  And geez, look at the time.  I always think better in discussions than on my own, so thanks again for all the insightful comments.

Quote from: Joshua BishopRoby on September 09, 2005, 06:24:16 PM
My point isn't about character interactions; it's about the distinction between player intent and character initiation.  Someone who tries and fails to do something heroic may very well be heroic; a character who doesn't try at all isn't heroic under any circumstances.  See my IIEE comment in my last post.

Of course--and that's where the theory diverges from the real experience: whether or not my character did anything in the game, my player still tried to have the character do it and (probably) everyone at the table (in anything resembling a traditional RPG session) will be aware of it.

That information *also* goes into "SIS" (if you think it doesn't then you are defining SIS in some very specific ways that I don't think are well defined and, at any rate, not especially tennable). This is why calling things that upset the meta-game IIEE issues is patently incorrect. Whether something is rendered in the game-space is only part of how it is experienced and how it impacts the players at the table.

This is why I'm calling this a "theory" perspective and it isn't referant to any one theory. It's a large portion of the theory-space that places an emphasis on things that game mechanics control but doesn't well address things outside the mechanical scope (and mechanically resolved conflict especially).

Example: A player tries (perhaps constantly) to have his character betray the party. Each time the GM prevents him saying it'll ruin the game in a pure meta-game call. Is the character considered treacherous? I'd say "yes." If you think I'm 100% incorrect because of some IIEE issue to do so, you're simply wrong--I know, for example, how that character'll play when we switch GMs to the guy who's okay with intra-party conflict.

-Marco

Quote from: Marco on September 10, 2005, 08:14:52 AMExample: A player tries (perhaps constantly) to have his character betray the party. Each time the GM prevents him saying it'll ruin the game in a pure meta-game call. Is the character considered treacherous? I'd say "yes." If you think I'm 100% incorrect because of some IIEE issue to do so, you're simply wrong--I know, for example, how that character'll play when we switch GMs to the guy who's okay with intra-party conflict.

I guess I'm simply wrong, Marco.

Okay, LP.  Couple points:

You've got IIEE more or less right, as I understand it, although it's not so much a specific process as steps that are common to all (?) resolution processes.  Every game has all four steps; the system just does its 'thing' at one or another step, depending.

A lot of what you're saying is based on task resolution as opposed to conflict resolution; I think you'll find a lot more player control of external actions and butterfly effects in conflict resolution games, especially those where players narrate their own successes and failures.  There are indeed games that allow the players control of the far-reaching Effects, including what you term Butterfly Effects.  Universalis does this, I think Trollbabe does, and a couple more that aren't coming to mind yet (FLFS will).  Additionally, consider spending XP in 7th Sea -- you can buy the Enemy background (I think it's Enemy, or Nemesis) with XP, stipulating that it's the brother of the guy you killed.  Also, remember that "System" is not limited to "published rules" and so any playgroup where the players can ask for long-range effects gives at least some control of Butterfly Effects to the players.  It is by no means cut and dried.

In any case, you still have "Character" (Player Intent, and maybe Character Initiation) and "Plot" (Outcomes, Butterfly Effects, and External Actions) as separate domains.  Now, I won't argue that this is how a lot of games are played -- sure.  Take a look at what this means, though.  Character has no causal effect on Plot.  No matter what the players want their characters to do, it has no direct effect on the development of the game: all the results are the product of GM fiat.  Maybe the GM "plays nice" and incorporates player actions into the developing story; maybe he doesn't.  And you still haven't resolved the extent to which plot development impacts characterization.  The players have no guarantees outside of "Play nice or I walk" and there is no mechanical foundation from which to even judge whether the GM is playing nice or not.  Lastly, this all puts a tremendous burden on the GM, who is essentially responsible for the progress of the entire game.  Sure, we can apportion these parts of the game in such a way, but now you have to answer the hard question: why do we want to?

Quote from: Joshua BishopRoby on September 12, 2005, 01:30:24 PM

Quote from: Marco on September 10, 2005, 08:14:52 AMExample: A player tries (perhaps constantly) to have his character betray the party. Each time the GM prevents him saying it'll ruin the game in a pure meta-game call. Is the character considered treacherous? I'd say "yes." If you think I'm 100% incorrect because of some IIEE issue to do so, you're simply wrong--I know, for example, how that character'll play when we switch GMs to the guy who's okay with intra-party conflict.

I guess I'm simply wrong, Marco.

Well, yes--I think you are.
Look, any stance you take can take is a tool until it becomes the *only* one you are willing to hold. Then it becomes a constraint as well.

I can see several profitable ways of qualifying a statement about how or why the character is/is not treacherous--but if you believe that no set of qualifications allows for half of that (the character *is* seen as treacherous by the player) then you are limiting yourself dramatically.

When the GM changes (if it's a rotating GM game) the player(s) will be well advised to see the character as treacherous if doing so will improve their gaming experience (and it very possibly will).

Constraining what "characterization" is in an RPG is valuable for looking at some perspectives but not others.

NOTE: I can see a valid case for the statement you make (a character who has taken no treacherous action in the game narrative can be said not to be treacherous). However, if you're going to define that in a certain context in an RPG where the sum value of the "character" exists in several player's heads and with many different input sources, I don't think there's any way to say you automatically have the only vaild defintion.

That's what I'm sayin'

-Marco

Quote from: Joshua BishopRoby on September 12, 2005, 01:54:00 PMThere are indeed games that allow the players control of the far-reaching Effects, including what you term Butterfly Effects.  Universalis does this, I think Trollbabe does, and a couple more that aren't coming to mind yet (FLFS will).  Additionally, consider spending XP in 7th Sea -- you can buy the Enemy background (I think it's Enemy, or Nemesis) with XP, stipulating that it's the brother of the guy you killed.

Hey, good point!  There's still the issue of *any* background in 7th Sea acts as a 'suggestion for the GM' instead of anything actually binding, but that's a step away from the issue.

Quote from: Joshua BishopRoby on September 12, 2005, 01:54:00 PMAlso, remember that "System" is not limited to "published rules"

Really?  Ack.  I was really trying to limit the discussion to published rules, given that this is the only bit the game designer has access to.  I was also unaware (from someone else's post) that the 'Social Contract' is usually seen as being *above* the published rules in terms of priority.  Again, the game designer doesn't have access to that bit, so it's sort of moot.

Quote from: Joshua BishopRoby on September 12, 2005, 01:54:00 PM
In any case, you still have "Character" (Player Intent, and maybe Character Initiation) and "Plot" (Outcomes, Butterfly Effects, and External Actions) as separate domains. 

[snip]

Quote from: Joshua BishopRoby on September 12, 2005, 01:54:00 PMSure, we can apportion these parts of the game in such a way, but now you have to answer the hard question: why do we want to?

Right!  Exactly.  That was the whole reason behind me writing up the essay in the first place.  And the answer is:  because the parts the player controls are enough.

When I play a Participationist game, I completely control Player Intent, most of Character Initiation, and at least can predict what'll happen in the rest of IIEE.  'Butterfly Effects' and the rest of Plot I don't control and I don't *want* to control.  I have plenty going on in my corner as it is.  I'm creating a Character.  That's inherently interesting to me, and I don't need a hand in Plot, too.

Imagine an actor in a TV show.  They portray the same character, week after week, and never even get to write their own *dialogue* let alone have a say in the plot-of-the-week.  OK, maybe they get to improvise now and then.  Maybe some writer really screws up their characterization and they go have a chat with the producer.  But they don't have control of anything...except Characterization (and more limited characterization than players have in an rpg, at that).  Why do they do this?  Because the parts they control are enough.  They see their contribution as meaningful.  They do it *well*.

One last bit:

Quote from: Joshua BishopRoby on September 12, 2005, 01:54:00 PMAnd you still haven't resolved the extent to which plot development impacts characterization.

Sure, plot developments can impact characterization (another example of the 'fuzzy borders' of my axes), but to some extent, the plot can have about as much impact on my character as the character can have on the plot--reverse Butterfly Effects, so to speak.

Like, if the GM kills my brother, I could choose to make that a character no-op (enh, I never really knew him that well anyway), do what the GM expected ('you bastards!  You'll pay for this!'), or do something unexpected, (commit suicide; try to get him resurrected; accept his death as inevitable; show kindness to those that killed him).  All those responses are back in my court.  They're under my control once again, and I can use them to continue to build my character.  The same is even true of the fumbling doctor--how the doctor reacts to failing to save a number of people says more to me about 'character' than the fact that he failed.

(I'm now thinking of exceptions--the alignment system in D&D and the 'Hubris' in 7th Sea, for two.  Neither of which seem to get much use, in my experience.  Which is probably revealing.)

Maybe it's part of the Sim mentality.  Controlling aspects of the story that my character could not reasonably be expected to control just seems unnatural.  Since the character wouldn't say, "Hey, let's have him kill my brother, because that'll be interesting to the plot," it's weird to have me-the-player say that.

Not that it can't be done!  You all do this all the time, and have a great deal of fun doing so.  In the proper setting, I think I'd have fun doing that, too.  But it's weird seeing the apparant mentality "If you're not able to control the plot, there's nothing for you to do."

-Lucian

Quote from: lpsmith on September 12, 2005, 02:57:07 PMLike, if the GM kills my brother, I could choose to make that a character no-op (enh, I never really knew him that well anyway), do what the GM expected ('you bastards!  You'll pay for this!'), or do something unexpected, (commit suicide; try to get him resurrected; accept his death as inevitable; show kindness to those that killed him).  All those responses are back in my court.  They're under my control once again, and I can use them to continue to build my character.

Well, your desire to pursue those responses are back in your court -- actually getting to exercise those responses may or may not be possible (and hence out of your control) based on the system you're playing under.  If you had, say, the Bad Temper flaw, the GM could make you roll to avoid flying off the handle and attacking your brothers' killers, or some such.  I understand that the games with which you are familiar, there are systemic structures which preserve your ability to control character initiation of action, but your argument is founded on a lot of such assumptions.

See, it drives me batshit crazy when my character can't take actions and get the success/fail result that I prefer for his characterization.  It drives me up the wall to be limited to having only my character's hands and feet at my disposal for characterizing him.  I want access to his family, to his job, to people on the street.  I want the metalworking arts projects that he creates to say something about him as a person (which in the game systems you cite would only happen if I succeed at a Crafts roll).  I want the freedom to just make shit up as I go because it forwards his characterization -- I want to invent towns and threats and past historical events that frame who he is, and I want to do it outside the bounds of whatever canonical source material the game is based on.  There are these thousand other tools to perform characterization, and ever since I got ahold of them, I don't want to give them up again.

I can't see your Plot/Character distinction as anything other than what usually gets attributed to the GM and what usually gets attributed to the players.  As far as I can tell, you might as well label the Character axis as 'Player' and the Plot axis as 'GM'.  As we've discussed in this thread, both of those axes have many different pieces, the responsibility for which can be split up a thousand different ways, but you have yet to come up with a unifying definition or principle that says "X falls under Character, Y falls under Plot" besides "that's how it usually works".

You've whittled 'Character' down to "Player Intent and Character Initiation" with the assumption that the system allows players to specify character initiation, but you have under 'Plot' the outcomes of those initiated actions, the 'butterfly effect' ramifications of success and failure, the addition of new elements, pacing, a sense of coherent story, resolution of conflict, and creating the conflict in the first place.  Why are all of those elements under 'Plot'?  What unites them together and makes them one thing, rather than a collection of things that the GM is usually responsible for?  If your answer is "everything that is beyond character" you have created an elaborate definition of Actor stance.

Josh?  Nobody is here to take your new-found toys away.  You are welcome to keep them.

It seems to me that I've already answered all your increasingly-hostile questions, and that half the things you claim I said I didn't say.  Which means it's time to move this out of a public forum--if you still have questions, feel free to e-mail me (lpsmith@rice.edu).

One more attempt at summarization:  My first point:  You can break down the 'stuff' of an RPG session as answers to four questions:

-Where did the story take place?  (Setting)
-Who were the characters?  (Character)
-What happened to them?  (Plot)
-What was it like?  (Tone)

Yes, there can be bleed-over, and answers to one question might have to refer to answers to the other questions.  But you can do this for a RPG story just like you can a literary story.  Surely we've all read books where we liked the characters and were bored by the plot?  Where we liked the setting, but thought the writing sucked?

My second point:  calling something 'the impossible thing' when it can be resolved 27 different ways doesn't make it actually impossible.  It makes it unclear.

In traditional roleplaying systems(/rule sets), this is resolved by giving the players about as much control over their characters as they have over themselves in real life.  This is a very natural way to think about things.  It gives many players enough control to think of the characters as 'theirs'.  There are many, many, other options.

My third and final point:  When you design an rpg, you do yourself a favor if you consciously assign control of various aspects of the story to different players of the drama (yourself, the GM (if needed), and the players).  Do you want to keep control of the setting?  Set your borders carefully.  Do you want to more strongly influence tone?  Have rules that reinforce the tone you want to set.  Do you want your system to explore only certain types of plots?  Have rules that restrict them.  Who do you want to control the plot?  Tell your players.

Restrictions foster creativity.  If your players wanted no restrictions at all, they would do improv theatre (and some do).  But even improv theatre has restrictions--for some reason, it's simply easier to think of 'a noun that starts with A' than it is to think of 'a noun'.

(For the record, I read up on Actor Stance, and can't see how it relates to any of the above points--it's talking about Stance, not control.)

Lucien has given me much to consider, and much to which I need to reply. This is in the order I find it in the thread, so it's going to be a bit disjointed.

Quote from: Lucien on September 09, 2005, 02:18:40 AMI'm definitely *not* saying that roleplaying is always either participationist or trailblazing.  That would be kind of a dumb thing to say, since clear examples to the contrary abound.  What I'm trying to say is that participationist and trailblazing play *can* happen when the GM is solely in control of what-I'm-calling-plot.  Does it help if I say that I believe 'bass playing' can *also* happen when the GM is solely in control of the plot?  And that if both players and GM are given control of the plot, you can have 'bass playing' but you can't have participationist or trailblazing play?

That only helps in a very backhanded sort of way.

In participationism, plot control is indeed with the referee completely.

In bass playing, plot control cannot at all be with the referee, as his responsibility is to respond to what the players cause to happen.  For example, in a bass-playing sort of game, the player could say, "I'm going to search this room for evidence that the villain is tied in with the mayor." He then uses whatever resolution mechanic is required (e.g., rolls dice), and if he is successful, then the villain is tied in with the mayor, whatever the referee thought originally. That's an extreme example, but the point is that if I'm running the game as a bass-player referee, it is up to my players to decide where the story goes, and up to me to support their decisions. That makes it impossible for me to control the plot at all, beyond that I can set it up and handle the pacing.

Meanwhile, trailblazing poses the peculiar circumstance of the sort of shared plot control you suggest for bass playing, but in a different sense. The referee controls the plot in that he decided what should happen; the players still control the plot in that they decide what does happen, but their choices of what to do and their successes and failures along the way.

Using the Cinderella example, in participationism it doesn't matter what the player wants to do, Cinderella will wind up at the ball somehow. In bass playing, it doesn't matter what the referee wants to have happen, Cinderella will go where the player wants her to go and do what he wants her to do. In trailblazing, the player is free to make Cinderella do whatever he wants, but if she doesn't go to the ball it's a breach of the social contract, because from the beginning of play the player has implicitly agreed to try to find the story that the referee has prepared.

You suggest what could happen if the player character decided that Cinderella should commit suicide. "...the success or failure of my suicide attempt is up to the GM....Surprise!  The gun wasn't loaded.  There was a pile of hay at the base of the tower.  The fairy godmother shows up (a blatant GMC if I ever saw one) and hits you with her wand."

Those are all illusionist techniques. Any style of play can use them to achieve desired goals, but as they are used here they are very much participationist in application--they are being used to prevent the player from doing what he wants and force the referee's story on the scene. This approach is completely inimical to baseplaying and to trailblazing, because this is using illusionist techniques to vacate a player's choices of their intended effect on the shared imagined space.  This is the referee saying, "No, you're going to the ball, darn it, because that's the story I have planned," while the player is, through this action, screaming, "I don't want to go to your darn ball, and you can't make me." Because the participationist/illusionist referee has so much credibility, he wins--what the player wants does not count, does not matter, he's only there to hear the story and add color.

Which, incidentally, is what your "characterization" amounts to. This is the little girl on her grandad's knee telling him that the princess' name is the same as hers when he's telling the story. It means nothing in terms of what is happening, but only provides background color. If you want to play a heroic character, and all that matters to you is that this is his attitude, you can do that in this game. If you want to be a hero, you can't really do it, because the referee has already determined all of that, and even if your character winds up saving the day, it won't be because of any decision you made but because that's what the referee wanted to have happen.  What you're doing here is no different from identifying with Luke Skywalker in Star Wars:  A New Hope. "Did you see what I did, man? When I blew up that death star?" You did nothing but identify with a character in a story. You drew a picture of that character on some imaginary canvas, saying, "this is what the hero looks like", but that was completely irrelevant to the story, to which you contributed nothing of substance.

This is not merely a narrativist concern. It is equally a concern in gamism, and to some degree in simulationism.  Your analysis limits role playing to "I'm going to describe a character and you're going to tell me a story about him which doesn't really care who he is."

Concerning Multiverser, one of the reasons the players took the directions they took is that the game is primarily about the character, not anything else. With something like The Postman, I as referee may have an idea of a story that is happening, but what matters is what the players decide to do within that story and how that impacts those events. My story will never be told, because I can't direct their actions.  That's not my job.  That is not to say that I cannot use illusionist techniques. I use them all the time--but I use them to facilitate player choices, not to restrict them. The story is the account of what the characters did. That means that the players must control the story if they really do control character choices, because the story must flow from what they choose.

There are also some mechanical restrictions on what I as referee can do. You suggest a number of possible ways I could force the player characters into my program, but under Multiverser rules I would have to use a general effects roll. If it favored the player, he would get his way, the ease of which would be based on the roll; if it opposed the player, there would be something in his path, the severity of which would again be based on the roll. Those blatant illusionist efforts to put the character where I want him would be a violation of the rules. If the player wants a certain outcome, he has the mechanics on his side to get them. I don't "control" the plot. I have input just like anyone else, but my input is limited.

Your analysis does not account for games like Legends of Alyria where the referee is optional and players are simultaneously playing against each other and working together to craft the best story. Who controls the plot? Whoever decides what the characters do, he controls the plot. Who controls what the characters do? Whoever controls what the characters do, he controls the plot.

I don't mean to minimize what you've done; I just think you're tied in to a view of role playing that's outdated. Sure, people still play that way, but they play a lot of other ways as well, and actually have been doing so for a very long time. The cited article about The Impossible Thing Before Breakfast (http://ptgptb.org/0027/theory101-02.html) made the point that interpretations of the conflicting statements "the players control the characters" and "the referee controls the story" demonstrate that the statements are themselves incompatible until interpreted as compatible, but that there are completely different ways of making them compatible.

Quote from: Lucien link=topic=16690.msg178116#msg178116To clarify:  I'm trying to talk about *systems*, not Social Contracts.  Any social contract must work with what it is given by the system.

This actually makes the discussion a bit murky, because of the peculiar way we use the word "system" here as in conflict with how it is used elsewhere. I think what you mean is that you are talking about game designs, which are not systems but authorities used to support systems. "Systems" (see Lumpley Principle) are the social contract rules that govern how we interact in agreeing on the content of the shared imagined space. They are not the rules in the books, but what we actually do in play. Thus "system" is not something used by social contract but something incorporated into social contract, and "system" determines the degree to which "rules" matter or will be cited during play.

That's why it seems that "social contract" and "system" get confused here to some degree. They are distinct things. Trailblazing is a good illustration of the distinction. The system involves techniques for resolving outcomes, but above that in the social contract level is the commitment by the players to attempt to unravel the story planted by the referee. Similarly, with participationism, the system gives the referee the illusionist techniques necessary to railroad the game to the plot outcome he desires, but above that in the social contract level there is the agreement that the referee is allowed to do this and the players are only in it for what you call "characterization".

That also is why I keep saying that you're describing participationism. That is the only form of which I am aware in which the players are only interested in characterization. In Illusionism they are desperately interested in controling the plot, but are unaware that they have been completely eviscerated in this.  In trailblazing, they are earnestly attempting to bring about the plot that the referee has planned for them. In bass playing, they are quite definitely creating the plot themselves. It is only in participationism that players cede total control of "plot" to the referee and satisfy themselves with the color of characterization. In any other form, for the referee to take control of plot is a violation of social contract, and that's where it matters.

One more passing point, on Actor Stance. If you read System and the Shared Imagined Space (http://ptgptb.org/0026/theory101-01.html), which is the first article in the three part series of which we've been discussing the second, you'll see that stances are definitions of the apportionment of credibility--that is, who has control over what. Actor stance specifically is "I have control over what my character does, constrained by what it is plausible for that character to do in pursuit of his goals." It is different from Pawn Stance ("I have control over what my character does, which can be whatever I want to do"), Author Stance ("I have control over what my character does but can backwrite aspects of what he wants to do to match them to what I want to do."), and Director Stance ("I have control over more than what my character does, as I can manipulate the environment of the game world directly in addition to controling him within it, to achieve the story I want told").

Thus "stance" is entirely about "control" in the sense you mean.

--M. J. Young

Quote from: M. J. Young on September 15, 2005, 04:44:05 PM
Lucien has given me much to consider, and much to which I need to reply. This is in the order I find it in the thread, so it's going to be a bit disjointed.

Quote from: Lucien on September 09, 2005, 02:18:40 AMI'm definitely *not* saying that roleplaying is always either participationist or trailblazing.  That would be kind of a dumb thing to say, since clear examples to the contrary abound.  What I'm trying to say is that participationist and trailblazing play *can* happen when the GM is solely in control of what-I'm-calling-plot.  Does it help if I say that I believe 'bass playing' can *also* happen when the GM is solely in control of the plot?  And that if both players and GM are given control of the plot, you can have 'bass playing' but you can't have participationist or trailblazing play?

That only helps in a very backhanded sort of way.

In participationism, plot control is indeed with the referee completely.

In bass playing, plot control cannot at all be with the referee, as his responsibility is to respond to what the players cause to happen.  For example, in a bass-playing sort of game, the player could say, "I'm going to search this room for evidence that the villain is tied in with the mayor." He then uses whatever resolution mechanic is required (e.g., rolls dice), and if he is successful, then the villain is tied in with the mayor, whatever the referee thought originally. That's an extreme example, but the point is that if I'm running the game as a bass-player referee, it is up to my players to decide where the story goes, and up to me to support their decisions. That makes it impossible for me to control the plot at all, beyond that I can set it up and handle the pacing.

Looking at the essay (linked from the original post again) I think I'm going to disagree. What he's calling Plot is what might more clearly be referred to as Starting Situation (it isn't completely clear because he breaks down plot into four stages and then assigns parts of them to GM control under certain circumstances).

But, notably, the system MLWM is listed as being totally in control of the plot: clearly there is a need for disambiguation here.

I've never felt that plot in an RPG applied to a pre-ordained (and therefore railroaded) series of events cooked up by the GM so maybe that's why I don't read him that way and think that it is indeed possible for a GM to control the plot and still play bass (the example given where the players can control starting sutation after the start of the game, retconning NPC relationships is, I think, a non-traditional game as much as it may be described as a playing-bass game).

-Marco

OK, much is cleared up by my realizing that we all meant two different things by 'system'.  In any of my posts, you can safely strike the word 'system' and replace it with 'game design'.  I'll try to be consistent in the future.  I'm also not sure if there's any difference between what I called 'control' and what you called in your essay 'credibility', so I'll try using your term to see if that helps me make more sense.  Slowly, I will assimilate the Forge verbiage, at which point I will be able to talk to nobody else.

[I'll note, though, that in Marco's last post he used 'the system MLWM' to mean 'the MLWM game design'.  But that's fodder for a different discussion ;-]

So, let me re-state one of my hypotheses:  If the game design gives sole control('credibility') of the 'plot' to the GM, some styles of play available to the GM include Participationism, Trailblazing, and Bass Playing.  If the game design gives credibility of the plot to both the players and the GM, Participationism and Trailblazing are no longer options for play, leaving Bass Playing as the only (listed) example left.

(This assumes that players are playing 'by the rules', of course.  The case where they don't may be interesting from the perspective of a player, but isn't that interesting from the perspective of a game designer, unless drift is intentional.)

I feel a bit exposed talking about My Life With Master, since I haven't actually played it myself, but I've read enough to still posit that the 'plot' of a MLWM game is mostly under control of the game design, and those bits given to the players to control have heavy restrictions on them.

My five bits of plot, again, are setup, initial conflict, rising action, climax, and denoument.  Someone can fill in some details here, but here's how I understand that MLWM controls and distributes credibility to each:

Setup:  There is a 'master', who controls characters played by the players.  The details aren't set, but mostly means that there's little game design controlling 'setting' (which the players and GM control, though I don't know who gets to say what, or if it's simply communal).

Initial Conflict:  This I'm not sure on.  Where do MLWM games begin?  Are there game rules that control it?

Rising action/Climax:  There are two possible climaxes the game can progress to, set up to be opposed to one another--one where the servant breaks control from the master, and one where they finally give in (am I right?).  This is nicely set up--any step that takes you closer to one climax takes you further from the other, and visa versa.  The credibility involved ("I am now more likely to break control" "I am more of a slave") is precisely parcelled out by the game design.  Any external-to-the-plot actions may be interesting, but don't move the characters any closer to or further away from either climax, and therefore don't fit under what-I'm-calling-plot.

Denoument:  In other RPGs, the denoument can contain some of the setup for the next story.  Not so here--once you're done, you're done.  You could take your characters and play a MLWM sequel in a different system, but you're no longer playing MLWM.  I believe there are no rules constraining this part of the plot in the game design; the GM and players probably jointly control it (again, tell me if I'm wrong here).

So, given the above, I'd say that all games of MLWM are participationist, with the game design itself in the role usually reserved for the GM in such games.  Everything the players (and GM!) control are 'color'; they're the little girl on her grandad's knee telling him that the princess' name is the same as hers.

But of course, there's tons left of the story left to control--there's Setting, Character, and Tone.  And there's the discovery of how Character impacts the Plot--it may be basically set up in advance, but there's still a lot of 'roller coaster butterfly effects' to experience  (unanticipated actions causing unanticipated repercussions that nevertheless advance the plot towards a predetermined climax).  And, hey, while a choice between two climaxes isn't much of a choice, it's still *a* choice.

OK, a few specific responses:

Quote from: M. J. Young on September 15, 2005, 04:44:05 PM
In bass playing, plot control cannot at all be with the referee, as his responsibility is to respond to what the players cause to happen.  For example, in a bass-playing sort of game, the player could say, "I'm going to search this room for evidence that the villain is tied in with the mayor." He then uses whatever resolution mechanic is required (e.g., rolls dice), and if he is successful, then the villain is tied in with the mayor, whatever the referee thought originally.

OK, that's an example where the game design handed control to the players.  I agree that in that case, the Participationist style is impossible.  I still think that even if the game design hands plot credibility only to the GM, that GM can still craft a bass-playing game.

But if I understand Ron's definition of 'Actor Stance' correctly, the above statement is an Actor Stance statement, even though it affects things outside the PC's actual control.  In your article, you seem to define it differently, bringing credibility into the mix.  Has the definition changed with time?

Quote from: M. J. Young on September 15, 2005, 04:44:05 PM
This approach is completely inimical to baseplaying and to trailblazing, because this is using illusionist techniques to vacate a player's choices of their intended effect on the shared imagined space.  This is the referee saying, "No, you're going to the ball, darn it, because that's the story I have planned," while the player is, through this action, screaming, "I don't want to go to your darn ball, and you can't make me." Because the participationist/illusionist referee has so much credibility, he wins--what the player wants does not count, does not matter, he's only there to hear the story and add color.

Hmm.  While "I don't want to go to the ball!" is a *possible* thought going through the head of the player in question, it is by no means the *only* possible thought.  Maybe the player is having fun watching the GM sweat.  Maybe the player wants to make this re-telling of Cinderella about a suicidal Cinderella.  This 'shared imagination space' is much bigger than you're giving it credit for.

Quote from: M. J. Young on September 15, 2005, 04:44:05 PM
What you're doing here is no different from identifying with Luke Skywalker in Star Wars:  A New Hope. "Did you see what I did, man? When I blew up that death star?" You did nothing but identify with a character in a story. You drew a picture of that character on some imaginary canvas, saying, "this is what the hero looks like", but that was completely irrelevant to the story, to which you contributed nothing of substance.

Wow, it would be hard for me to disagree with this statement more.  What I would be doing is like *Mark Hamill* identifying with Luke Skywalker in Star Wars.  If you don't see the difference between me identifying with Luke and Mark Hamill identifying with Luke, I'm not sure we even have the capacity to have a conversation about the topic.  Star Wars would be a *hugely* different movie with the same script, but with Carrot Top playing Luke.  Or Jerry Seinfeld.  Or Pamela Anderson.  Do you see the difference?  That's what a player contributes in a participationist game!  It's what they do!  And it's why I get annoyed every time that contribution is called 'irrelevant to the story' and 'nothing of substance'.  Irrelevant to the *plot*.  No substantive changes to the *plot*.  But *crucial* to the story.

And speaking of Star Wars, wikipedia tells me "Much of the plot and characterizations were borrowed from the 1958 Japanese film The Hidden Fortress".  A lot of the rest was taken from Joseph Campbell.  Who controls the plot of Star Wars?  Akira Kurosawa!  Lucas 'just' replaced the Setting, and rejiggered some of the events, roller-coaster style, in service of the exact same climax. 

Quote from: M. J. Young on September 15, 2005, 04:44:05 PM
Your analysis does not account for games like Legends of Alyria where the referee is optional and players are simultaneously playing against each other and working together to craft the best story. Who controls the plot? Whoever decides what the characters do, he controls the plot. Who controls what the characters do? Whoever controls what the characters do, he controls the plot.

Grar, everyone keeps telling me this.  What I was *trying* to say in the essay was (in your terms) that the game design should parcel credibility to those that play it, and can do so with restrictions if it likes.  I said outright that there has been a lot of experimentation with different distributions of this credibility of Plot in more modern games.  In 'Alyria', credibility to affect the plot is apparantly given to the players.  That's great!  But what about experimentation with the *other* bits that make up a full-fledged Story?  Setting credibility tends to be either 'Here is your setting' or 'Make up your own setting'.  What about a political setup with an undetermined technology level?  (There's a king here, and he does this sort of thing, and if you give him lots of magic he'll do this type of thing, and if you give him lots of technology he'll do this other).  The 'catch phrases' rule in 'The Dying Earth RPG' is a good use of restricting Tone; what else could be done?  Would it even be possible to assign credibility of tone?  Universalis plays with credibility of Character by making it possible for everyone to influence the same character; what else can we do?  What about a game that was about a particular set of characters, and everyone decided beforehand what the Climax was going to be, and there was a single 'referee' whose sole contribution was to make up the Setting?  OK, that probably wouldn't work.  But *that's* the sort of thing I saw in my head when I wrote the essay, and it's frustrating that all anyone else sees is Participationism.

I only used Participationism as an *example*, because that's what I'm most familiar with, and because I think it's been given a short shrift because people don't understand it.  I believe the specific though that went through my head when I read your little-girl-on-grandad's-knee example of the girl suggesting the character's name was, "The hell?!?  The character's *name* is *unimportant to the story*???  What planet does he live on?"  I finally worked out that what you desperately care about is *plot*, and that you didn't care nearly as much about characterization.

[It was obvious, to be fair, that you were trying to be even-handed in your descriptions of the different techniques.  But it was equally obvious that you were failing.]

Quote from: M. J. Young on September 15, 2005, 04:44:05 PM
[Participationism is] the only form of which I am aware in which the players are only interested in characterization. In Illusionism they are desperately interested in controling the plot, but are unaware that they have been completely eviscerated in this.  In trailblazing, they are earnestly attempting to bring about the plot that the referee has planned for them. In bass playing, they are quite definitely creating the plot themselves. It is only in participationism that players cede total control of "plot" to the referee and satisfy themselves with the color of characterization. In any other form, for the referee to take control of plot is a violation of social contract, and that's where it matters.

The differences you describe are differences in player desires, and are mostly beyond what I wanted to talk about.  I subtitled my essay "A mechanistic approach" because intent is too slippery--who's to say what the desires of the players are in a game where the GM is using Trailblazing techniques?  Or if the GM is using No Myth techniques?  Or even bass playing?  If the player isn't told and isn't given plot credibility, can they even tell the difference?  There's too many variables.  I wanted instead to simply talk about what actually happens, regardless of who wants what when.

Mechanistically, I liked the description I came up with in this thread of different types of 'Butterfly Effects'.  Here, it seems to me, is where the differences in GM techniques really stand out.  In addition, they allowed pretty good descriptions of a wide variety of GM techniques, beyond the three described in your essay.  (Discounting Illusionism, since the only difference between it and Participationism is player awareness and possibly intent--probably significant, but beyond my scope.)  In particular, they allowed a good description of the techniques of 'No Myth', a style I became quite enamored of once I found out about it.

I wrote up those descriptions with the example of GM-credibility-over-plot in mind, but it seems to me they could describe useful things even when you gave the players credibility over plot.  If everyone agrees beforehand what the climax of the story is, for example, then everyone can use Participationist techniques to move the plot to that climax--basically, you just don't use the 'brave new world' technique, and try to limit no-ops.

*Ping*, back atcha.  Even if I sound frustrated above, I really appreciate you all taking the time to discuss this with me.  There's a lot of stuff I'm examining closely for the first time here, since before it just mostly seemed obvious to me.  It's kinda neat to see it all dissected ;-)

Quote from: lpsmith on September 16, 2005, 03:32:56 AM
[I'll note, though, that in Marco's last post he used 'the system MLWM' to mean 'the MLWM game design'.  But that's fodder for a different discussion ;-]

When I said that I was refering to the usage from your essay "the system itself retains control and responsibility for the plot" (talking about MLWM). That's okay though: I'm not taking you to task for not knowing what The Forge means by System. Your usage is pretty common and, I think, reasonably well understood--even here.

Quote
So, let me re-state one of my hypotheses:  If the game design gives sole control('credibility') of the 'plot' to the GM, some styles of play available to the GM include Participationism, Trailblazing, and Bass Playing.  If the game design gives credibility of the plot to both the players and the GM, Participationism and Trailblazing are no longer options for play, leaving Bass Playing as the only (listed) example left.

On the other hand, the term "plot" isn't well understood here. Here plot means "railroaded game" and if the game design gives control of the railroaded game to the GM then what MJ calls Playing Bass isn't an option.

If, by using the term "credibility," you are talking about the case where the GM theoritically can control everything and chooses not to, while that might be technically correct, I'm not sure that I agree with you. Impossible Thing or no (and I think that concept is perhaps the worst one to come out of The Forge) and even barring questionable GM advice in the back of the book, I think there is an extant division between railroading (for the GM's "plot") and the GM adjudicating an action ineffective because of cause-and-effect in the imaginary game-world.

If this is the case then there's no game mechanics (and very few reads of GM advice) I'm familiar with that really gives the GM "credibility" over "the plot."

-Marco

Quote from: Marco on September 16, 2005, 07:46:07 AMIf, by using the term "credibility," you are talking about the case where the GM theoritically can control everything and chooses not to, while that might be technically correct, I'm not sure that I agree with you.

No, that's not *quite* what I meant.  I meant that in a game like D&D or 7th Sea or Nobilis, the GM gets to say what happens outside of the immediate zone of control of the characters.  That credibility must be used to describe the plot of the story, so the GM can either use PC actions as inspiration to take the plot in new directions, can use PC actions to take the plot in expected directions, or ignore PC actions and take the plot in expected directions.

Let's say the GM's idea is to have the PC play the part of Cinderella.  We'll say it's a system like d20 where the GM has control of everything but the physical actions of the PC.  The PC picks up a gun and shoots herself.  The next thing the GM had planned was to have the fairy godmother show up.  He hadn't considered the possibility of the PC trying to commit suicide before that moment.  Here's some possible options that GMs using different styles could use:

- The Railroader:  "*Click*.  The gun wasn't loaded.  *Poof*  Your fairy godmother shows up!  'Having trouble getting to the ball, dearie?  Let's see what I can do to help.'"  [ignore character action, continue with the plan]

- The Trailblazer:  "*Click*.  The gun wasn't loaded.  What do you do now?"  [wait for character action to match up with the plan]

- The Participationist:  "*Click*.  The gun wasn't loaded.  *Poof*  Your fairy godmother shows up!  'Thank goodness!  I thought you'd *never* get desperate enough to try to kill yourself!  They don't let me appear until you do, you know.'  She shakes her head.  'Guess you never found the noose in the attic or all the rat poison in the pantry.  Well, here I am!'" [use character action to justify the plan (a sort of GM-version of the sort of justification that can happen in Author Stance)]

- No Myth:  "*Boom*  Your body slumps to the floor, blood pooling around it.  And... you're watching, standing over it, oddly detached.  You hear a sigh from behind you, and turn to find a see-through figure of a girl about your age in very old-fashioned clothes.  'And the house claims another victim.  We had such hopes for you, you know.  But now you're trapped here with the rest of us.'" [use character action as inspiration to improvise a new plan]

- The Bass Player:  [after an OOC discussion with the player about what they wanted to have happen] "The retort from the gun alerts the night watchman, who, hearing no answer at the door, breaks in to find your dead body in your room.  Horrified, he searches the room and finds your suicide note and your diary.  He begins an investigation into your stepmother and stepsisters that ends in their incarceration, and new laws are passed that ensure the horrors you went through will not happen again.  OK, what do you want to play now?"  [use your credibility to describe the player's plan]

-The Simulationist:  "OK, uh, you die.  Roll up a new character!"  [allow character action and the game mechanics to force abandonment of the plan]

Note that player intent (beyond "I want to shoot myself") is not considered at all in this analysis.  Player intent could have been anything from "Grar, nothing I do makes any difference--let's try shooting myself," to "I think my character would shoot herself in this situation," to "I wonder if shooting myself is the right thing to do next?" to "Heh, let's see what the GM does with *this*," to "Ah, the perfect end to the story--a tragic death, unloved and alone," to "Hmm, I wonder what the rules are for firing a pistol at point-blank range with no dodge?"  If everyone's on the same page, these intents will match up with an appropriate GM style, but there's nothing in the game design that forces them to be.

If the game design says nothing about which technique to use beyond the "questionable GM advice in the back of the book", all styles are available for use by players of that game.  But in all of the above outcomes, it was the GM who was given credibility to narrate what happens (by the game design, at least).  And 'bass playing' was indeed an option, it was just forced to exist outside of the game design and into the 'Lumpley System'.

Again, I'm only trying to answer the question, "What do you mean by saying 'the GM has credibility over the plot in traditional rpgs'?", and am not saying, "This is the way all rpgs work."  Credibility over plot areas is indeed divvied up many different ways in modern systems.

Now, you'll have to tell me how systems like Multiverser that distribute 'plot credibility' do this, because the mechanics are somewhat mysterious to me.  In the last 'Postman' example, for instance, who decided that the character's death inspired the nation to return to democracy?  The player or the GM?  How did that work out as far as the game design went, and how much was simply agreed upon between the two of you?  Were there dice rolled?  Because I could imagine all of the stories happening in, I dunno, d20 Modern or some such.

-Lucian

Quote from: lpsmith on September 18, 2005, 02:25:16 AMI could imagine all of the stories happening in, I dunno, d20 Modern or some such.

Inasmuch as 'story' is a transscript of imaginary events, sure. But such a transscript tells you nothing about how it was arrived at (e.g. the system used, the agendas pursued etc.).

I suggest you (re)read Ron's essay on "Narrativism: Story Now", at least his take on "story", which has direct bearing on this discussion (scroll down a page or so and start with the paragraph headlined "Story").

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/narr_essay.html

Hope this helps,

Hal

Quote from: lpsmith on September 18, 2005, 02:25:16 AM
Now, you'll have to tell me how systems like Multiverser that distribute 'plot credibility' do this, because the mechanics are somewhat mysterious to me.  In the last 'Postman' example, for instance, who decided that the character's death inspired the nation to return to democracy?  The player or the GM?  How did that work out as far as the game design went, and how much was simply agreed upon between the two of you?  Were there dice rolled?  Because I could imagine all of the stories happening in, I dunno, d20 Modern or some such.

-Lucian

I think we're pretty clear: I understand what you are saying--that a GM can, in most traditional systems, have a go at railroading events (or not). No doubt. What I was pointing out was two-fold:

1. People here were (I think) reading you as saying that where there was "plot" there was automatically railroading. Not potential railroading--not available railroading--but that if the GM had the capability to control plot then s/he must automatically be doing so. I think that was muddying the conversation unecessiarily (because of unfortunate connotations of the term 'plot').

2. Where you say the GM has the "credibility" to have the gun be unloaded, I think that's not really true. In real life a lot of players will not find that statement credible no matter that it comes out of the GM's mouth and no matter what the GM-advice section in their game book says.

I do understand what you are driving at with "control" or "credibility"--however I think the nuances of that are being ignored and are very important. If the GM is not in synch with the lumply-System, the social dynamic of the group, then such methods may very well not be credible or controling at all (and since the GM cannot force play to continue if the players are fed up, if the game is to continue the GM will have to change his or her input to something that is actually found to be more credible).

What gives the GM actual, real, crediblity is a complex issue based on mechanics and social dynamics. That the GM has control over anything but, effectively, ending the game, is, IMO, an illusion.

You could asign a GM some kind of "Domain of Responsibility: the world" and then define it to be that the GM gets most of the direct input as to what happens there (still gated by the player's willingness to accept that and continue playing--thus, responsibily can be 'missused'). Whether that term is any better, I don't know--but I think the discussion about when and how a GM provides input to the game is only part of a larger issue as to what the range and limits on that input can be.

-Marco

O.K., I wrote a lot, I got a lot back--that's reasonable, even if I am having a rough week. So let me see what I can address here.

Quote from: lpsmith on September 16, 2005, 03:32:56 AMSo, let me re-state one of my hypotheses:  If the game design gives sole control('credibility') of the 'plot' to the GM, some styles of play available to the GM include Participationism, Trailblazing, and Bass Playing.

I think this is still going to be a point of contention, and I'm going to have to address it, but I'm not sure if it's best to start there.

In fairness, I was called on my example in a private message, and the messager (Elliot Wilen) was correct--that's an example of stance that is not necessarily required for the discussion at hand. I was groping for something that was inconsistent with participationism, and that was the first thing I found.

In terms of the definitions of "stance", I don't know if I can answer your question directly. As with many things, the understanding of stance is still in flux. Some time not too long ago there was a thread in which someone attempted to split stance into two concepts, and as I considered their argument I started to see stance specifically as a matter of player credibility, that is, what sort of statements are legitimate for players to make. As far as I am aware, the Theory 101 article is the first place that that credibility-based explanation of stance was raised, and I have not gotten any feedback from Ron on that point, so I cannot speak for him.  In private messages with Elliot over the past couple weeks, I realized that in a very real sense Stance and Referee Style are definitions of credibility "packages" as it were, in a sense being labels for what kinds of statements specific individuals are permitted to make.  These are of course negotiated within the social contract, but there is a significant degree to which the referee chooses his style and then the players must find their stance in relation to that.

More on point, though, it appears to me that understanding stance as a defined set of limits on credibility solves many of the problems that were being bandied about a year or so ago. As to whether the statement as presented was "actor stance" is more difficult to say; the expectations, though, were probably broader, as the player in my ill-chosen example clearly expected that if he successfully looked for proof of something he suspected, that would make his suspicions true.

QuoteWhile "I don't want to go to the ball!" is a *possible* thought going through the head of the player in question, it is by no means the *only* possible thought.  Maybe the player is having fun watching the GM sweat.  Maybe the player wants to make this re-telling of Cinderella about a suicidal Cinderella.  This 'shared imagination space' is much bigger than you're giving it credit for.

Not guilty here.  While you are correct that the player might not be thinking he doesn't want the character to go to the ball, what matters in our examination here is that the referee has decided the character is going to go to the ball and there's nothing the player can do about it. That's the point of participationism, and really its distinguishing factor (from everything other than illusionism): the character is going to go where the referee wants, without regard for what the player wants the character to do.

I see your point about Star Wars being "different" if someone else played Luke Skywalker, but since it is what George Lucas wanted it to be, I take that as "different in completely inconsequential ways about which very few people would care".  Mark Hamill had little control over what Star Wars was, and if you want to say it's different if we're talking about him identifying with Luke as opposed to you, fine. It's still the case that who Luke is is defined by what he does, and what he does is defined by what George Lucas wants him to do, so Mark Hamill contributed nothing of consequence. He added color to the story Lucas was telling.

Moving to another post:

Quote from: lpsmith on September 18, 2005, 02:25:16 AMLet's say the GM's idea is to have the PC play the part of Cinderella.  We'll say it's a system like d20 where the GM has control of everything but the physical actions of the PC.  The PC picks up a gun and shoots herself.  The next thing the GM had planned was to have the fairy godmother show up.  He hadn't considered the possibility of the PC trying to commit suicide before that moment.  Here's some possible options that GMs using different styles could use:

- The Railroader:  "*Click*.  The gun wasn't loaded.  *Poof*  Your fairy godmother shows up!  'Having trouble getting to the ball, dearie?  Let's see what I can do to help.'"  [ignore character action, continue with the plan]

This would be either illusionism or participationism. It is participationism if the player was already aware that he couldn't get out of the referee's story and was going to wind up at the ball one way or another. It is illusionism if the player doesn't realize that he has no choice about where he's going or what he's doing, but he is in fact going to the ball no matter what he tries to do instead.

Quote- The Trailblazer:  "*Click*.  The gun wasn't loaded.  What do you do now?"  [wait for character action to match up with the plan]

Actually, having identified and named trailblazing, I think I can speak with some authority when I say this is exactly not what happens in that style.

What happens is the referee says, "You're dead, the game is over. I'll see you next week." He then sends everyone home, because the players have mistreated him. His understanding of the social contract (and thus of the rules of the game) is that the players have to do what he wants them to do if he provides sufficient "bread crumbs" to lead them to it. If they ignore everything he has prepared and do something different, they haven't "cheated" in a technical sense, because they are fully in control of what they choose to do; but they have insulted the referee by openly refusing to do what he wanted.

There was a Knights of the Dinner Table strip not long ago in which the referee (I'm afraid I don't follow it well enough to know the character names) says they're going to play a particular module, and the players have mixed feelings about it because they'd heard it wasn't very good.  He starts them in a bar, in which a farmer comes over and wants to talk with them--obviously the hint and hook that's supposed to get them started on this adventure. The players ignore the farmer, not wanting anything to do with him. The farmers become persistent, then the players become angry, then it escalates into a huge bar fight in which all the locals are killed. The players are then raving about what a great adventure it turned out to be after all, while the referee is fuming about the way they completely ignored what they were supposed to do.

That is what makes trailblazing what it is: the players are supposed to do something, but it's entirely within their power to miss it or even ignore it. Because they like the referee and want to continue playing his games, they try to figure out what that thing is that they are supposed to do, and to do it. If they fail, or if they ignore it, it's game over--there is nothing else for the trailblazing referee to do but recognize that for one reason or another they missed the path, and failed to complete (possibly even to start) the intended adventure.

He certainly can't change the facts of the world to prevent them from doing what they want to do. He owes it to them to allow their choices to have full effect; they owe it to him to stay within the parameters of the material he has prepared. That is trailblazing.

Quote- No Myth:  "*Boom*  Your body slumps to the floor, blood pooling around it.  And... you're watching, standing over it, oddly detached.  You hear a sigh from behind you, and turn to find a see-through figure of a girl about your age in very old-fashioned clothes.  'And the house claims another victim.  We had such hopes for you, you know.  But now you're trapped here with the rest of us.'" [use character action as inspiration to improvise a new plan]

- The Bass Player:  [after an OOC discussion with the player about what they wanted to have happen] "The retort from the gun alerts the night watchman, who, hearing no answer at the door, breaks in to find your dead body in your room.  Horrified, he searches the room and finds your suicide note and your diary.  He begins an investigation into your stepmother and stepsisters that ends in their incarceration, and new laws are passed that ensure the horrors you went through will not happen again.  OK, what do you want to play now?"  [use your credibility to describe the player's plan]

Actually, these are both potential bass player approaches, as I understand them. So is, you died, let's start a new game. What matters is that the player could take the story in any direction he wished to take it, and the referee saw his job as facilitating that.

QuoteNow, you'll have to tell me how systems like Multiverser that distribute 'plot credibility' do this, because the mechanics are somewhat mysterious to me.  In the last 'Postman' example, for instance, who decided that the character's death inspired the nation to return to democracy?  The player or the GM?  How did that work out as far as the game design went, and how much was simply agreed upon between the two of you?  Were there dice rolled?  Because I could imagine all of the stories happening in, I dunno, d20 Modern or some such.

Multiverser is tricky in this regard, because it gives the referee a fair amount of leeway in controling the distribution of credibility, but does not allow him to override player choices except in the sense that the dice may indicate failure at an attempted task.

I think, though, that there is some confusion concerning what I said about The Postman example. Multiverser is always about the player character. It is rare in the extreme for a player to find out what happened in a world after his character died, because that puts him in another world and another story. Ah, I see the confusion. I wrote, "He was killed in a fire fight about half way there, but before that he built a tideswell for the reestablishment of a constitutional democracy in the United States." You took that to mean that after the character was killed we announced that this was what was going to happen. It didn't mean that. Rather, what it said (or meant to say) was that he built a growing movement pressing for the reestablishment of democracy, which (the movement) existed when he died.

I apologize for any incoherence in this post, as I have been getting short-changed on sleep all week and am way behind on everything to boot, so I might not be fully aware of what I'm writing. I hope it helps.

--M. J. Young

Quote from: M. J. Young on September 22, 2005, 10:33:15 PM
O.K., I wrote a lot, I got a lot back--that's reasonable, even if I am having a rough week. So let me see what I can address here.

Aww, sorry about your week.  I'm just having fun here; no need to continue the discussion unless you're up for it.

It looks like, in general, we've arrived at a basic consensus or at least understanding; there's a few points left over I want to touch on.

Quote from: M. J. Young on September 22, 2005, 10:33:15 PM
I see your point about Star Wars being "different" if someone else played Luke Skywalker, but since it is what George Lucas wanted it to be, I take that as "different in completely inconsequential ways about which very few people would care".  Mark Hamill had little control over what Star Wars was, and if you want to say it's different if we're talking about him identifying with Luke as opposed to you, fine. It's still the case that who Luke is is defined by what he does, and what he does is defined by what George Lucas wants him to do, so Mark Hamill contributed nothing of consequence. He added color to the story Lucas was telling.

I still seriously disagree with you here.  I'm simply never going to believe that the influence an actor has on a film is 'inconsequential'.  Or even that 'very few people would care' about the difference.  *I* care about the difference.  Very few movie reviews neglect to mention how well the actors and actresses did.  There are actors and actresses I like, and ones I don't.  There are movies where the script is blah, but the actors sparkle.  There are movies where the script is scintillating but the actors plod.  And there are particularly good movies where both the script *and* the actors are great.

Do you wonder to yourself why big-name actors get paid so much?  Do you think acting must be easy?  Do you get as much out of reading a script as you do from watching a movie?  Do you think that actors must just do it for the money, or maybe for the accolades?  If the answer is 'no' to any of those questions, the reason you said no is what I'm getting at.  If you answered 'yes' to all of those questions, can you at least imagine a different person saying 'no'? And that they might have valid reasons for doing so?

Now, I certainly am not saying that all people must care about the actors.  Many people care about the plot much more.  Or, you know, the setting or the writing.  All of them have their own unique impact on the overall experience (the 'story'), and different people care about and/or notice these effects differently.  Same's true of books.  And the same's true of RPGs.  That's my thesis.

I get that you personally don't care about who the characters are.  You're much more concerned with what effect they have on their surroundings.  That's all 'plot' to me.  OK, so maybe you could watch Carrot Top in Star Wars and experience the same movie.  There are presumably a variety of other who are the same way.  I couldn't.  I know there are many other people who couldn't, either.

I'm seriously floundering, here.  All I seem to be able to do is restate my premise because it seems so blindingly obvious.  I could enumerate all the things an actor brings to a role, but I feel like I've done that before.  I could enumerate all the things an actor experiences when acting in a role, but that too seems redundant.  And that's just the beginning--there are even *more* things a player brings to a Character in a Participationist game!  But understanding what's going on between an actor and a script seems to me to be key to understanding why people enjoy participationism (and, to some extent, trailblazing).  Remember, my essay was in part inspired by reading the 101 article and thinking, "he describes participationism OK, but he clearly Doesn't Get It."  And in the course of the essay, it was horribly maligned.  And you're still maligning it with terms like, "inconsequential", "few people would care", and "nothing of consequence", and marginalizing it by calling it 'color'.  I dunno what else to say except "no".

Quote from: M. J. Young on September 22, 2005, 10:33:15 PM
Moving to another post:

Quote from: lpsmith on September 18, 2005, 02:25:16 AM- The Railroader:  "*Click*.  The gun wasn't loaded.  *Poof*  Your fairy godmother shows up!  'Having trouble getting to the ball, dearie?  Let's see what I can do to help.'"  [ignore character action, continue with the plan]

This would be either illusionism or participationism.

Right, I know how to lump things into your other four categories.  I was trying to get at a finer gradation here.  In my 'Railroading' example, the plot happened without regard to character actions.  In my 'Participationist' example, the same plot happened, but character actions were used as its justification.  The two GMs will produce very different stories, even while using the same 'plot'.

Quote from: M. J. Young on September 22, 2005, 10:33:15 PM

Quote from: lpsmith- No Myth:  "*Boom*  Your body slumps to the floor, blood pooling around it.  And... you're watching, standing over it, oddly detached.  You hear a sigh from behind you, and turn to find a see-through figure of a girl about your age in very old-fashioned clothes.  'And the house claims another victim.  We had such hopes for you, you know.  But now you're trapped here with the rest of us.'" [use character action as inspiration to improvise a new plan]

- The Bass Player:  [after an OOC discussion with the player about what they wanted to have happen] "The retort from the gun alerts the night watchman, who, hearing no answer at the door, breaks in to find your dead body in your room.  Horrified, he searches the room and finds your suicide note and your diary.  He begins an investigation into your stepmother and stepsisters that ends in their incarceration, and new laws are passed that ensure the horrors you went through will not happen again.  OK, what do you want to play now?"  [use your credibility to describe the player's plan]

Actually, these are both potential bass player approaches, as I understand them. So is, you died, let's start a new game. What matters is that the player could take the story in any direction he wished to take it, and the referee saw his job as facilitating that.

Hmm. That wasn't what I was trying to convey.  In the first example, I said nothing of player intent, but I tried to pick an example that would have come out of left field from the player's perspective.  Maybe they didn't care what would happen.  From their perspective (assuming they didn't recognize the original plot), it could have just as easily been Trailblazing or Participationist.  But in the second example, the player was consulted directly.  They said what they wanted the plot to be, and the GM said, "OK" and made it so.

When credibility is distributed like this, there is no way that a player can tell the difference between a good Illusionist game and a 'No Myth' game.  They perform actions, and things happen in response.  Who's to say whether the GM thought it up beforehand or on the spur of the moment?  And, perhaps more importantly, why does the player care?

Quote from: M. J. Young on September 22, 2005, 10:33:15 PM
Multiverser is tricky in this regard, because it gives the referee a fair amount of leeway in controling the distribution of credibility, but does not allow him to override player choices except in the sense that the dice may indicate failure at an attempted task.

OK, so my tideswell of democracy question was misguided (thanks for figuring that one out), so I'll ask different ones.  Who decided that Eric's attacks terrified the Army so much that he could walk in unopposed?  Did Eric say, "I attack them enough that they'll be terrified of me" or did he say, "I attack them again," and you said, "OK, they're now terrified."?  Who decided that Graeme's pamphlets were brought back into the camp by other soldiers?  Did Graeme says, "I want to have my friends here sneak these to the village, and I want this other group of soldiers to be so moved when they read them there that they bring them back", or did he say, "I want to have my friends sneak these to the village," and you said, "OK, you start seeing them show up in the barracks again, as unknown soldiers start bringing them back."?  How much control, in other words, do Multiverser players have over 'Butterfly Effects'?

I think that's about it.  Thanks again for the responses; hope your next week is better than your last.

-Lucian

One quick note, when I came up with participationism, I postulated it as a hypothetical. That is, the idea of participationism comes from certain adventure texts, which if played by how they're written, would eliminate almost all of player input, including most of the "acting." Like the adventure At the Mountains of Madness where it says things like, "When the bad guys go running off, the adventurers chase after them, catching up in the next scene."

Or worse, "The PCs stand horrified, unable to respond to what's going on."

In practice, I've yet to find one player who says that they would like to play this way. GMs who at first seem to want to play this way, on examination, turn out to use such texts as guidelines for what might happen, and play pretty much strong illusionism. So participationism may not be categorizable to motive because it may be that nobody plays that way.

Actually the closest thing to Participationism that I can find is reading to somebody. The difference between these two activities is that in participationism (if it exists) the player associates with one character amongst all the protagonists (by default, he can associate with the others as well), and may in certain cases be allowed to deliver lines so long as they match the GM's need for them. That is, as previously indicated, the GM in this style is allowed to simply ignore their narration of dialog or decision, and supplant it with his own in order to get the story to go precisely where it needs to go.

It's also comparable to doing a "reading" of a script in which the dialog has not been decided on, but the director has right to edit the dialog.

Because the defining feature of participationism is that the GM has visible control of plot. That includes "character" to the extent neccessary to make the plot work. In illusionism, the player seems to have control of character, but no so that it affects plot. The impossible thing is not that the player can't add things to the SIS, if the GM controls plot, just that the things they add don't affect plot. Basically both the player and GM can't control plot at the same time (pretty obvious when viewed this way).

Mike

Quote from: Mike Holmes on September 27, 2005, 01:43:55 PMGMs who at first seem to want to play this way, on examination, turn out to use such texts as guidelines for what might happen, and play pretty much strong illusionism.

Wait--I thought the only difference between illusionism and participationism was that in the latter, the players knew what the GM was doing.  Is there another difference?  How could a GM try to play a participationist game but end up in an illusionist game?

-Lucian

That is the only difference. The question is what is it that "the GM is doing"? What the GM is doing is controlling whatever he needs to in order to have the plot turn out as it's supposed to.

Anyhow, what I'm saying is that GM's don't want participationism. That is, even if they write an adventure that seems like it's going to require them to take control of the characters to a great extent, still allow the more illusionist level of control. That is, they'll take At the Mountains of Madness and instead of running it like a script, once they get into play, they realize that's untennable, and come up with ways to cope, strategies that make the play illusionist.

For instance, where the text says, "The chase after..." the GM uses the standard illusionism "You're chasing after them, right?" If the player says no, they then escalate, "They took the only food!"

Now, as Ron points out, the question is how "invisible" all of this is. Is there a "real" illusionism where the players don't know that their actions are being controlled to create an end effect? Or is it in fact that the players do know what's going on, and it's just a matter of everyone pretending like the GM control isn't happening?

Which is to say that these two styles are, possibly, only one actual style that ever occurs (with some nuances, possibly, but nothing to really separate them). Or a spectrum that rarely or never strays to the theoretical endpoints. Given illusionism technique, players always at the very least suspect that the GM is up to something. With participationism-ish play, I can't actually believe that anyone actually does the control explicitly.

It's the difference between "You're chasing after them, right?" vs. "Your characters chase after them." Everyone tacks on the "right?" at the end, thus maintaining the illusion, no matter how badly, that the players have some choice in the matter. In practice, I think this may just be what everyone can agree is bad technique. I don't think that even when it's used, anyone wants to be using it. They'd much rather that the players made the "correct" choice and that this sort of correction didn't have to be used, no?

Mike

Quote from: Mike Holmes on September 27, 2005, 01:43:55 PM
So participationism may not be categorizable to motive because it may be that nobody plays that way.

My Monday night group *might* qualify.

The GM uses all sorts of illusionist techniques all the time and the players are, to varying degrees, aware of this fact, if not the specifics. However, the GM will sometimes allow a look behind the screen.

The other night, the PCs were at a big banquet and a demon stormed in and stole the king's necklace. This was preposterous and not possible by the rules, so the GM described what happened (while holding up a hand to quell protests) and then said something along the lines of "Okay, guys, I know you don't like this and neither do I. It's required for the plot, so let's just move on. Oh, and Gary, don't use up that potion of speed - you can't catch the demon anyway."

We've had similar instances of the GM apologizing for heavy-handed railroading.

Is that participationism?

Regards,

Hal

I think that's participationism only for a moment. This is not a mode of play, so I won't get all "instance of play" on you. But I think that in noting that it's something that the GM had to apologize for, it makes my point. It's seen here as a neccessary evil at best. Not as a way to run a game long-term. I'm sure that most play of the game is heavy illusionism.

But it makes my point that all of these things are on a spectrum in between.

Mike

Hmm.  If the only difference between Participationism and Illusionism is that the players do/don't know what the GM is doing, why would there be a difference in 'control level' of what the GM controls?  Mike, you say, "even if they write an adventure that seems like it's going to require them to take control of the characters to a great extent, [they] still allow the more illusionist level of control."  Where did control come into play?  Is there an assumption that if the players know what the GM is doing, they will cede control of their characters to the GM?  That seems weird to me.

In Hal's example, there weren't even character control issues.  To put it in terms of 'control and restrictions', the issue seems to me to be the GM ignoring some of the restrictions he normally followed (i.e. 'game rules') in order to create a plot point (probably the 'setup', to use my own terminology.)

The 'Lumpley System' was strained in the process, but didn't break because the GM said, "OK, I know, I know, I'll only do this once, and I didn't write the adventure."  I don't think that Participationism/Illusionism come into play at all (as I understand the terms, at least).

-Lucian

If the GM is operating under the assumption that the players think what's happening is a result of their actions, he knows he can get away with taking more liberties. When called on it, he might make some sort of concession ("don't use that speed potion, you can't catch him.")
If playing in an overtly participationist fashion, he'll know what he does has to meet some higher (but still low) level of player approacl - they've aggreed to particpate in his adventure, but if they think he is taking advantage, they have more freedom to challenge him precisely because things are above board. When they don't know if he taking liberties, even if they strongly suspect, as in illusionism, they'll be slower to challenge. They probably won't be happy, but that small doubt will cause them to hold back a little longer.

Quote from: Mike Holmes wroteBut I think that in noting that it's something that the GM had to apologize for, it makes my point. It's seen here as a neccessary evil at best. Not as a way to run a game long-term.

That makes perfect sense to me.

Quote from: Lucian wroteThe 'Lumpley System' was strained in the process, but didn't break because the GM said, "OK, I know, I know, I'll only do this once, and I didn't write the adventure."  I don't think that Participationism/Illusionism come into play at all (as I understand the terms, at least).

The Lumpley Priniciple is always in place. Like a law of nature, it can't be strained. Here, agreement was reached by way of the GM openly apologizing and appealing to the players and the players accepting said apology and the effects in the SIS that went with it.

Regards,

Hal