Using Author Stance for good instead of evil

[ptevis]

Metagaming: It's that dreaded topic in RPGs where the rulebook warns you "be sure to keep player and character knowledge separate." This is quite clearly a prohibition against anything except Actor Stance.

Why is this? I notice that text like this most often occurs in Gamist and Simulationist games, while Narrativist games often encourage the player to favor other stances. Why is Author Stance evil in some games, but good in others?

A theory: In a Gamist setting, Author Stance is "cheating." (I'm not sure this is quite right, though. Help me out here.)

--Paul

[Alan]

Hi Paul,

I think you might be confusing Author and Director Stance.  

In Author Stance, the real person makes decisions for the character based on what he (the player) would like to have the character do.    Author stance doesn't control anything outside the character.

Author stance is discouraged in much simulationist game text, but doesn't crock playing that creative agenda much.  Also Author stance is popular in Gamist games -especially as pawn stance: moving the character according to player-perceived strategy.

From Ron's Glossary in the Gamist Essay in the Articles section:

Director Stance
the real person determines aspects of the environment relative to the character in some fashion, entirely separately from the character's knowledge or ability to influence events. Therefore the player has not only determined the character's actions, but the context, timing, and spatial circumstances of those actions, or even features of the world separate from the characters. Director Stance is often confused with narration of an in-game event, but the two concepts are not necessarily related.

Director stance is the stance which sim games often discourage and which traditional gamist play might see as cheating.

But your question remains interesting: why do some games, especially traditional ones, restrict players to Actor stance?  Why not use the others?

[clehrich]

My personal cynical theory:

It started with the origins of gaming in wargaming, where (traditionally anyway) it really would be cheating to rewrite the universe around your units.

This then merged into the DM-is-god personal power trip.  If you have too much power, I must stop you, because I am the DM and you need to be stopped.  So I write up the rules to say that you must obey me, and I make that effective by saying that if you don't obey me, you are a bad player.

Next, of course, everyone knows that RPG's aren't about winning at all.  That's why it's so important to see who's got the most powerful character, you see, and to figure out who can kill more orcs.  Not about winning at all.  So obviously, since it's not about winning <repeat until you fail to see any contradiction>, if you were given the opportunity you would make yourself infinitely powerful.  Therefore, anyone who has power will do this, and will apparently think the game is about winning.  <huh?>  So clearly I have to prevent you having power of any kind so that you don't get confused and think it's about winning.

So clearly, anyone who has power will abuse it to win, because it's not about winning. <huh?>

Logically, of course, if it's (1) not about winning, and (2) you have lots of power, there is (3) no way to win by abusing your power.  But don't tell the DM that: he's a god and should never be taunted.

Do Not Taunt Happy Fun DM.

And no, that's not synecdoche.  I forget which fallacy that is, but if you care, you should check out this list of fallacies, which is wonderful.

Chris Lehrich

[timfire]

I'm sure someone more experienced than myself will chime in, but I think the whole Actor Stance thing has to do with the dominance of Sim-oriented design, rather than Gamist design. I believe gamist play encourages a certain level of meta-game thinking.

I believe Ron said in the Sim article that internal cause is king in Sim play, and that meta-game knowledge breaks the rule of internal causation, which translates to the promotion of Actor Stance rather than Author or Directorial Stance.

[coxcomb]

I think Chris is pretty much on the mark.

The persistent notion in RPG rules (particularly in "old school games") that the player should maintain Actor stance at all times serves two purporses:

1.) It brings some "game-like" elements to a hobby that is not a game in the traditional sense. That is, limiting player action in this way brings a more structured, "rules" vibe to play.

2.) It supports the notion (long held) that the "adventure" should be a series of events scripted before hand by the GM (or by the game company), and that the players' only input in the adventure should be via the reactions of their characters in the imaginary context of the game world.

Both of these things support the idea that the GM is telling his story with some input by the players. Which idea can quickly devolve into the GM as god dysfunction.

As soon as you let the agenda of the players enter into things, it becomes a different game. Take a look at (in general) how slowly the concept of metagame mechanics evolved in mainstream games. For years (at least in my experience with '80s systems) the only vague Author stance built into mechanics came in the form of "do overs".  You fail your roll, but you can spend some currency to succeed. Even the inspiration rules in Adventure!, which include at least the intention of a good deal of player control is very wary of giving those pesky players too much control.

[John Kim]

Hold on -- topic check.  Alan is write about the difference between Author and Director stance in standard Forge usage from Ron's glossary.  And I think Paul is correctly using these definitions: i.e. Author stance indicates having the player control her character using meta-game information or desires.  So ptevis/Paul is talking about Author stance, not Director stance.  

It started with the origins of gaming in wargaming, where (traditionally anyway) it really would be cheating to rewrite the universe around your units.

This then merged into the DM-is-god personal power trip.  If you have too much power, I must stop you, because I am the DM and you need to be stopped.  So I write up the rules to say that you must obey me, and I make that effective by saying that if you don't obey me, you are a bad player.

Well, I'd sort of agree, but I think that came later.  In most wargames, everyone has equal power over the game.  Further, there is no distinction of in-character vs out-of-character knowledge.  It isn't cheating to use player knowledge in the slightest.  Early D&D was close to this.  In strict early dungeon crawls, the DM had very little power.  With a written dungeon map and key, the DM was reading off the entries and rolling dice for monsters and little else.  He was more of a referee and accountant.  

It was with the misguided introduction of story emulation goals that the GM role turned into a power trip.  Now rather than merely reading off a map, the GM was directing the story.  Rather than two-dimensional maps where the players could choose where to explore, the story-oriented adventures were linear railroads.  

Now, that said, I think the bias against "metagaming" or Author stance play isn't from wargaming or from the GM-story-creation per se.  It is a Simulationist aesthetic -- i.e. a preference for cause-and-effect.  

As soon as you let the agenda of the players enter into things, it becomes a different game. Take a look at (in general) how slowly the concept of metagame mechanics evolved in mainstream games. For years (at least in my experience with '80s systems) the only vague Author stance built into mechanics came in the form of "do overs".  You fail your roll, but you can spend some currency to succeed. Even the inspiration rules in Adventure!, which include at least the intention of a good deal of player control is very wary of giving those pesky players too much control.

This is different usage of terms.  Using Ron's definitions, virtually all games have both Actor and Author stance.  What you are talking about is Director stance.

[RDU Neil]

To my mind, the use of metagame information that does not further the integral consistency of "the world" is inappropriate.  The world is mroe important than characters, and players may have characters with personality and great impact on the world, but "the world" is for them to explore... creating only in limited amounts.

Call me old school, but I firmly believe in power being vested with one leader in a game.  The Vision flows down, and is manipulated by the players, affected and carried out by the players, but the GM/leader is at the heart of it.

What I find weird is this implication that Nar play can't exist without use of Director stance by players.   Isn't it possible to address premise without utilizing Director stance?  I have no problem with Actor or Author stance... and even have a mechanic I use to give limited use of Director stance at times... as well as limiting the GM's use of Director stance as an active opposition to the players.

The issue here being, while all stances are useful, my main focus is to create a believable, immersive world that players WANT to inhabit, and I do that by filling it with not just my priorities, but those events and people and ideas of interest to the players as well.  The metagame talk happens, but it does so outside the game... and premise is very often addressed without ever breaking into Director stance in a blatant fashion.

To me, this feels like Nar play... but discussions I've read tend to indicate that is not the case.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

I was just about to post to this thread, but John Kim nailed it first - in terms of the basic point, the history, the terminology, and, well, everything, I guess.

Best,
Ron

[Andrew Cooper]

The issue here being, while all stances are useful, my main focus is to create a believable, immersive world that players WANT to inhabit, and I do that by filling it with not just my priorities, but those events and people and ideas of interest to the players as well.

Actually, this sounds more like Simulation play to me and Sim is where you find the players that dislike Author and Director stances the most (at least in my experience).  Gamists don't mind taking the Author stance rather than Actor and Narrativist (from what I've heard) likes both the Author and Director stances.

My understanding of GNS leads me to believe that even in Simulationist games, one can address Premise.  Perhaps that is where the confusion lies.  In Simulation though, Premise isn't the main priority.  It can happen, though.

Andrew

[M. J. Young]

Neil, you're old school.

Sorry; you asked for it. Don't take offense--I do a great deal of my play that way, on both sides of the screen.

Chris, I think you're overly cynical. I've been playing for decades in games in which only the referee had director stance, and in which author stance was never acknowledged if it was used. I think the reasons for this are not at all about power, but about achieving the desired agenda.

The one major argument for strict actor stance is that anything else is unrealistic. In this context, the word means simply that the character wouldn't do that. The big deal here would be if player characters come into conflict, and one of them announces that he is going to do something that will affect the other but which the other could not know he was doing, and the other "just happens" to take precautions against that at that moment. "When Dimitri walks through the door, Nikolai is going to dump this bucket of water on his head." "As Dimitri walks through the door, he instinctively raises his umbrella, just in case it might be raining (even though he can see that it's a perfectly sunny day)." A similar case arises when the player whose character is not present informs the player whose character is present of a condition or situation for which the character could not be forwarned: "When we came through that passage, we fell into a pit trap and were captured." "As I enter this passage, I check for traps."

Those are egregious cases; however, it is the possibility of the egregious case that makes the reasonable case unacceptable in this context. If we let you have your character do things that the character would not do but for your knowledge of things outside the game, we can't stop you from doing it in these outrageous cases. Therefore players are not permitted to communicate game information to each other if their characters cannot communicate, and players are not permitted to act on player knowledge not shared by the characters.

Those may seem to be concerns that simulationists would have regarding gamist creep (and in many ways they are); however, simulationism is entirely possible without such restrictions, and gamism has also frequently incorporated such restrictions on other grounds.

The other grounds are that out-of-game knowledge is a violation of challenge. It may surprise people that I ran a D&D game for half a decade and played in Star Frontiers and Gamma World games over that time, and not once did any of the character players read the "referee only" rules for the games in which they were not the referee. It was considered cheating. Similarly, if a group is playing a published module, it is considered cheating to read the module. It may be, however, that a particular group is playing a module which for one reason or another is familiar to one or more of the character players. In this case, they are expected to disregard any knowledge they have of the contents of the module, and play as they would had they no such knowledge. To do otherwise undermines the challenge. If at any point a player feels he cannot fairly contribute to a decision without using that knowledge, he must let the others make the decision without his input. It's the only way to assure that the challenge will be maintained. In short, to act on what your character doesn't know is to undermine the "point" of play, to cheat in order to win. Sure, there is a tacit recognition that we are trying to win (the notion of no winners and no losers is usually a mistatement of the reality, that we all win or lose together--thus what it is supposed to mean is that players are not going to compete against each other). The key here is that we have to win on the terms of the game, and that means without bringing our own knowledge to the game.

One of the more difficult things to get across to players in Multiverser games is actually that this boundary is largely blurred. If you recognize a world or story or adventure because it's something you read somewhere, then since your character is you, he read it (it's more complicated if you read it since you started play, because in that case he didn't--but that's an odd exception). Thus to a large degree player and character knowledge are nearly the same, and characters can act based on what the player knows. It's not exactly author or director stance, but it is similar and usually plays as author stance.

So I think that within simulationist and gamist play there is a place for such restrictions, although new designs have shown that it is not necessary to play in those agenda. (I am also not persuaded that director stance is necessary to narrativism, although actor stance makes it more difficult--not, though, impossible.)

--M. J. Young

[clehrich]

John,

I didn't mean that the DM-as-god thing entered immediately after things moved away from wargames.  I certainly accept that time passed.  I just think that a prime concern was always to interpret everything in terms of some sort of conflict, and to be sure that it was "fair" and "balanced," meaning that the DM had final arbitration rights and generally trumped everything.  Which is to say, everything was really about winning, and the DM always won.  You can certainly do this well, and happily, but the idea that this isn't about winning is nonsense.

On a related note, to M.J.,

The one major argument for strict actor stance is that anything else is unrealistic. In this context, the word means simply that the character wouldn't do that. The big deal here would be if player characters come into conflict, and one of them announces that he is going to do something that will affect the other but which the other could not know he was doing, and the other "just happens" to take precautions against that at that moment. "When Dimitri walks through the door, Nikolai is going to dump this bucket of water on his head." "As Dimitri walks through the door, he instinctively raises his umbrella, just in case it might be raining (even though he can see that it's a perfectly sunny day)."

You know, I used to agree with you, but increasingly I don't.  I know what you're saying, I really do.  But I think this is an artificially-limited sense of "realistic" that actually stems from a kind of abashed "winning" concept.

To take a deliberately extreme example, consider the slapstick comedy.  An especially wonderful example would be Roberto Benigni's The Monster, in which there's this fantastic scene which I will briefly (and weakly) describe -- you just have to see it.  A lot of Peter Sellers Pink Panther stuff would fit this model too, incidentally.

Basically in this scene, Benigni is in a cafe trying to look cool.  He leans against the bar, Mister Cool, and puts his thumbs in his waistband, pulling the front of his pants just a hair away from his shirt.  Now these guys next down the bar are talking, and not paying any attention to Benigni, and one of them drops his smoking cigarette butt into the ashtray -- just as Benigni bounces the ashtray slightly with his elbow while trying to look cool.  Nobody notices, but the butt falls straight down the front  of his pants.  So now he saunters out the door, and there's this hot lady coming up to the cafe.  He looks at her all macho-masculine, Mister Cool (Italian-style).  Suddenly he makes this wild face and grabs at his crotch.  He grips desperately, then starts pounding at it.  He grabs a pitcher of water from a passing waiter and dumps it all over his crotch.  The lady, needless to say, is horrified.

Now this scene is hilarious.  But later on, the police have decided that he's a serial sexual killer, and they have this videotape of the scene in front of the cafe.  The psychiatrist interprets: "He sees the woman.  Suddenly, his masculinity arises.  But it is out of control.  He grabs it.  He beats it -- he must punish his raging male member.  Finally, he can stand no more, and must douse the flame.  Clearly, he is trapped by his uncontrollable masculinity."  And so on.

Okay.  What makes the scene so funny is a combination of a ludicrous situation, a wonderful physical actor making it extra ludicrous, and the fact that it could at least theoretically happen.  This last is my central point: it could happen.  It's just not very likely.

Suppose Dimitri actually does raise his umbrella for no reason, or because he thinks he's got it wrapped wrong, or as a signal to the KGB spy across the street.  This has nothing to do with Nikolai and the water bucket, but the effect is the same.  Interpreted solely in terms of a conflict between PC's, Dimitri's action is implausible.  But life is bigger than that.  His action may be entirely plausible, for other reasons.  And that would lead to some nice slapstick, potentially: the opening umbrella knocks Nikolai off the ladder, and the water bucket dumps out on some poor passing schlep, who ends up sitting in a puddle with a bucket on his head.  All this is funny only if it sort of could happen; if it's actually unrealistic, it isn't funny.

What I'm saying is that this sort of invented situation is only a problem in a game if the notion of reality is so limited that everything has to be interpreted in terms of the simplest possible logic, on the basis of putative conflict.  In other words, it is a problem if what's really at stake is who wins, always.  But if that isn't the case, why do you need this dubious sense of reality?

[RDU Neil]

Maybe changel "unrealistic" to "implausible" and it works better.  Slapstick is not the expected element of the game, so one person imposing the slapstick type situation in an implausible (if possible) way, breaks the social contract.

Also... this really beggars the question, what is the difference between "a sense of accomplishment" and "winning"?

If a situation calls for a plan of action, and a player, through their character, creates a highly plausible plan with a high probability for success in a "plausible" world...

... then another character uses OOC knowledge to change events in a "realistic" but implausible way... therefore the character's plan fails... this is undermining a sense of accomplishment by "cheating."

Now, if accomplishment really is just another form of winning, then aren't all games that have human (or human metaphor) characters trying to do stuff, gamist?  Because no character or player tries to do somethign, hoping to fail.  Nobody is emotionally "ok" with hard work and planning coming to naught, ESPECIALLY if it is implausible, and only seemed to fail because of implausible use of OOC information.

If accomplishment is simply winning, then I'm gamist, hands down.  If I want my character to succeed at catching the eye of the merchant's daughter... and I'm glad when I succeed... and that is "winning"... then hell yes, it's all about winning.

Just seems this might be a too fine a line to parse... accomplishment vs. winning.  Is it even possible?

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

Neil, you're running into a common error: convincing yourself that "winning" is a synonym for "fun." It's far more useful to think of winning very much in the confrontational, score-points way. That's not necessarily a negative thing, although many role-players have been brainwashed to think so, but it's very definitely its own thing. If you start to try to convince yourself that "well, I win because I achieved my goals," or similar, then you'll end up chasing your tail.

More generally, I'm pretty sure that the initial topic for this thread has been dealt with. Neil, if you want to discuss Author or Actor Stance some more, let's do that, but if you want to develop the Gamism issue instead, let's start a new thread.

Best,
Ron