Social Mode Redux/Response to Cruciel

[Sean]

In another thread, Cruciel suggested that the proposed Social Mode was a subset of Sim.

My response:

- One could have Sim play aimed at Exploration of Participants, or (to go to the 'therapeutic' mode) Exploration of Self. This would be using the play to discover things about the players. That would seem to fall under Sim to me: you prioritize discovery/exploration, but obliquely, using the imaginative space of the game to learn things outside it (which act on it and to create it). You could also do this to learn about e.g. real world physics if you wanted (though what game system would facilitate that...)

- On the other hand, it seemed to me that you could also have as a role-playing priority, which might be distinct from Sim, the desire to explore but also to form, strengthen, and modify the social bonds between you and the other players. This is role-playing as community-building. This seems to me to be distinct from the other three CA, and something which could be prioritized at their expense.

- It's a hypothetical CA at this point since I don't know of any design which really facilitates it as the main priority of the design. I do think some people play some games primarily for this reason: to affect the world outside the imaginative space of the game - in this case the relationships between the players. Possible non-RPG examples that come to mind are Truth or Dare, the Ungame, and Twister.

- The thing that made me wonder about this is the constantly mentioned 'social' or 'casual' gamer, who seems to get something out of it but doesn't seem to have any tells for or dominantly pursue any of the three other modes. I didn't like the idea of 'zilchplay' as I understood it, because it seemed to suggest that some people engage in purposive activity (gaming) with no real purpose. On the other hand, one does meet these people who really enjoy gaming, but don't seem to be particularly focused on what's going on in the shared imaginative space of the game. My thought is that one could try to design an RPG just for the interests of such people - an RPG that explicitly highlights, explores, and transforms the real-world relationships of the people playing.

- Some might add, 'well, but of course, all RPGs have the potential to do this'. Yep, I agree. But I think if it's true that goes straight to my point: it's a constant possibility in role-play, this bleeding-into-reality, so why not design systems that promote and help to manage it? The narrativist 'hard core' ramps up the intensity of a certain kind of personal involvement in the game, as does the gamist 'hard core' for that matter, but counts on the social contract and our own maturity to help us manage what comes out of that. It doesn't necessarily guide the social content that emerges outside the imaginary space of the game. And there's nothing wrong with that, but it may be that something else is possible.

- Is all of this already handled at the level of social contract? I'm just not sure what to say. All role playing involves exploration, but if you prioritize exploration you're playing Sim, and that is a priority. Similarly, all roleplaying involves a Social Contract, articulated to greater or lesser degree. But what about roleplaying that prioritizees exploration and development and transformation of that Social Contract itself, and the people involved in it?

- There's money in this if it works, because you can sell team-building exercises to big corporations.

- It may be possible to do early experimentation on this dimension by drifting Universalis, if there's a there here for Universalis to get drifted to.

That's all I have to say for now. My level of conviction on this wavers back and forth, but it's never quite gone down to 0, even if it still hasn't ever quite climbed up to 1 either.

[clehrich]

Sean,

I think you're on to something, but you're in a sense thinking too small.

It seems to me that you're talking about a CA in which the primary focus, in terms of ultimate effect, lies outside the game itself.

A little while back, Emily proposed a notion, which I seconded, of a CA about self-exploration, something you've mentioned here.

In my article on ritual theory, I also remarked that it would be valuable to focus a little more directly on the purpose and meaning of the formal dividing-line that separates in-game from out-of-game.

Now you propose social gaming, in which it's not a focus on self-examination but on group formation, strengthening, bonding, friendship, and so on.

I suggest that this is all the same thing.  Where Sim, Nar, and Gam are all CA's focused on the game itself as the "product," i.e. that which is produced and affected by the gaming process, this CA is focused outside that.  I can think of several possible formulations of this:

1. Social gaming, which you've described well in one form
2. Self-examination gaming, as in the thread above-noted
3. Therapeutic gaming, which I don't think is quite the same thing as #2
4. Political gaming, in which the object is to "raise consciousness," to borrow that old tag
5. Romantic gaming, where the point is to produce a specifc social effect
6. Social-therapeutic gaming, for example gaming to help people improve their marriages
7. Pedagogical gaming, in which the point is to teach something specific

All of these have many forms, many possibilities, and would necessitate all sorts of interesting ways of doing things.

I don't think very many of these have been explored terribly directly, though I can think of at least partial examples of all of them.  You mention the business world, and there have been business group-training things that are founded on role-playing according to some sort of rules.  Psychologists have certainly been known to use role-playing, again usually with some sort of rules, for therapeutic reasons.  Eero Tuovinen has mentioned two games he's written that teach languages, and there's a game the name of which I forget whose purpose is to teach 3d space physics (which isn't an RPG, but it could be done that way).  And so on.

In fact, it could even be said, maybe, that the arguments currently raging about whether little girls playing house in order to establish a pecking order are doing this CA, not Gamism or Sim, and that this is why there is still such argument about it -- nobody's identified this CA, so the desire is to lump it into something else.

The thing is, I'd go even farther, and postulate that without coming to grips with this extra-gaming focus as a legitimate CA, not a technique or some sort of weird subset of social contract, the Big Model is not going to be able to deal effectively with any of these things as something other than "weird" or "irrelevant."  Furthermore, I think that the desire to avoid analogies to stuff like Improv theater actually stems from this same avoidance: Improv is role-playing, and it's got rules, and all that, but somehow its purpose isn't the same as G, N, or S.  But if the point is to develop performance skills of one sort or another, it certainly fits this CA we're talking about here.

No, I can't at the moment think of a clever name for it.  But this is important, and needs hard thinking.  Thanks for bringing it up -- your post really clarified some things for me.

And if you find this a threadjack, by the bye, let me know and I'll just start a new thread.  I don't think it is, but it's your thread!

[M. J. Young]

I'm reluctant to disagree with Professor Lehrich, or to throw a damper on a subject he thinks has someplace to go--but my gut instinct is that this is entirely a social contract level matter, not a creative agendum per se.

The strongest argument I have for that assertion arises from this: all of those things which arguably can be done with role playing games can be done while prioritizing any one of the three creative agenda as we now understand them.

Sean's suggestion that games promote bonding is absolutely true, and I will agree that you could construct rules that would promote this aspect of the function of games. How do they do that? Some of them do it by putting the players on the same team against an obstacle they must overcome--there's nothing that bonds guys together so much as working together against a common enemy, whether it's at the basketball court, the battlefield, or the board game. Cooperative gamist play does this by being cooperative gamist play. At the same time, bonds form with the opponent as well--in the iron sharpens iron sense, whether it's chess or wrestling or high-stakes financial maneuvering, I come to know and appreciate my opponent, and adversarial gaming can do that for us as well.

Does that mean that this is a subset of gamist play? No, I think that you can do the same thing, in different ways, through narrativist play, by cooperatively addressing premise and so interacting with each other about moral and ethical issues. When I was maybe in eighth grade, a couple of other boy scouts and I formed a club to which we gave some presumptive name which suggested that we were all brilliant philosophers, and in long rides to and from scouting events and on late nights around the campfire we would debate such questions as whether the world actually existed. Through those discussions, we became friends. In the same way, narrativist play is a means of discussing issues, both of revealing our beliefs and challenging them, and so becoming closer as friends.

I'm sure I could show how shared discovery in simulationist play can similarly be used to those ends; I'm sure in a long enough post I could show how all those concepts on Chris' list could be addressed through any one of the identified creative agenda.

If, then, these things can be addressed while pursuing any of these agenda, it follows that they are not themselves agenda, but are rather social matters somewhere above the level of agenda. They may indeed be "why we have come to the table at all", but they aren't about "why we play the way we play."

I'd be pleased to have someone shoot me down on this, but this is where I think it lies.

--M. J. Young

[beingfrank]

I'm reluctant to disagree with Professor Lehrich, or to throw a damper on a subject he thinks has someplace to go--but my gut instinct is that this is entirely a social contract level matter, not a creative agendum per se.

The strongest argument I have for that assertion arises from this: all of those things which arguably can be done with role playing games can be done while prioritizing any one of the three creative agenda as we now understand them.

Snip examples

If, then, these things can be addressed while pursuing any of these agenda, it follows that they are not themselves agenda, but are rather social matters somewhere above the level of agenda. They may indeed be "why we have come to the table at all", but they aren't about "why we play the way we play."

I'd be pleased to have someone shoot me down on this, but this is where I think it lies.

--M. J. Young

*gets out shotgun*

I think you're approaching this from the wrong angle.  Your argument is like saying gamist play is not an agenda in itself because you can address challenge while prioritising something else.  Sure, you can address these other potential agenda while prioritising one of the classic three, but the real question is whether one can prioritise one of the potential agenda over any of the classic three.

An example of play where one of the 7 is prioritised would be decisive.  I suspect finding such a thing in classic roleplay would be rather tricky.  What would it look like, for one thing?  Of course, disproving is naturally harder.

Ok, did I score a hit?

I think you're closer with the idea that these 7 agenda may throw more light on 'why we come to the table' than on 'why we play the way we play.'  They may only illuminate the former, they may illuminate both, or just the later.  I suspect both, but I don't think we can say either way at this point.

And at some point the theory of 'why we play the way we play' has to interact with the theory of 'why we come to the table.'  I don't think they can be regarded as completely isolated issues.

There's a lot I want to say on this thread, and a couple of others, but I'm going away for a week tomorrow, so I'll just have to wait and read all the insightful things other people have said afterwards.  Please imagine me being witty and erudite until then, it'll be much better than the reality.

[Sean]

OK -

MJ - Again, the parallel with exploration. Exploration is 'above' the level of CA, but the Sim player prioritizes it to the exclusion of doing particular kinds of thing with it. I grant what you say about how all three modes can build social relationships, but note the 'can'. Note also the somewhat unpredictable nature of the relationships that come out of them. To say "fix this at the level of social contract, then pursue a CA within that" is one approach, and it's a good one. But on the other hand, you can also play a game with the specific expectation of altering the people and relationships between them at the out-of-game level, and focus on that as the primary pursuit of your play - the imaginative space as a means to an end which lies entirely outside it.

Some of this - using games for self-discovery, say, or wanting 'realistic' fireballs, where real-world-physics is a constant check on what happens in the imaginative space within one's original conception of that space - is Sim, but I'm tempted by the idea that it's not all Sim. But anyway since the primary exploratory content is not anything that's going on in the imaginary space, but on the real-world adjuncts to that space, that's something it seems to me you can prioritize over the other CA.


Chris - No, no threadjack, I feel like you got what I was saying more or less, and added some interesting stuff to it of your own.

As to this:

"1. Social gaming, which you've described well in one form
2. Self-examination gaming, as in the thread above-noted
3. Therapeutic gaming, which I don't think is quite the same thing as #2
4. Political gaming, in which the object is to "raise consciousness," to borrow that old tag
5. Romantic gaming, where the point is to produce a specifc social effect
6. Social-therapeutic gaming, for example gaming to help people improve their marriages
7. Pedagogical gaming, in which the point is to teach something specific."

I would tend to classify 1 as pretty vague and 2 and 7 as types of Sim. But 3-6 are exactly what I was talking about - the creative agenda of the game space is to transform the people playing in some way. Now all games, especially 'hard core' Gamist and Narrativist games, do this to some degree to another. But just because of that it seems like another thing that could be prioritized out of the whole.


All - I guess my thinking on this such as it is now is that I've formed a plausible theoretical hypothesis. I find these suggestions plausible in terms of CA theory, though it's true that incorporating them at the social contract level, or treating the focus on social consequences as a 'sub-CA' like the vanilla/pervy distinction, might handle the matter just as well.

The way I think to test it further would be to try to design a game or two that aims at doing this and see how it works in playtest. In other words, empirically. I think there's a vague notion here of another possible style of gaming, with at least a minimal sort of prima facie credibility, but unlike, say, Narrativism - which has been developed deeply in actually designed and played games by many of the hands at this site, among others - we might need more data to really make much progress on how exactly the 'socially focused' roleplaying I'm positing fits into roleplaying more generally and into CA theory in particular.

For inspiration I'd suggest looking at:

- roleplaying as it's used in actual psychotherapeutic contexts
- what has led, in the past, to the most positive and negative real-world social outcomes in 'hard core' gamist and narrativist play
- what the people who organize LARPS which wind up with lots of people hooking up afterwards for sex do to help ensure this outcome
- corporate team-building activities
- the discussions on this very site about social contract negotiation, in Universalis and other games alike
- Sex and Sorcery, and the way Ron's games more generally use real-world stuff to ramp up the intensity of the 'in-game', in-the-imaginative-space kind of action

and probably a lot of other stuff too. But I think we can talk about this until we're blue in the face - there's some plausibility to it, but also some reasons to think that it doesn't really fall outside existing CA theory. What would really help make progress is more games that tried to deal with this stuff directly.

Heck, maybe if I can ever get this damn fantasy homebrew that's cluttering up my garage out of my system, I'll try to work on that myself.

Thank all three of you very much for your attention and comments!

[Jason Lee]

I'm trying to catch up on some of these threads.  Let me see if I can explain where I was coming from on this.

We start with M.J.'s Discovery agenda (we all know I'm talking about Sim, but I'm going to pretend I'm not), which is that the player's agenda is knowledge/understanding.  This may tend toward high causality requirements for Exploration.  That's not the goal of the agenda, but simply a common technique that lends itself to the goal.  The goal is to utilize the SIS to learn something new.

An agenda to learn about the other players or oneself seems to fit nicely with the concept of a Discovery agenda, because the goal is to come away from the SIS with new knowledge.  I wouldn't include the casual gamer in this category.  I think the casual gamer is better defined by zilch-play, because he isn't really into the game for any reason that would involve the SIS.  I'm personally somewhat uncomfortable with lumping interpersonal, intrapersonal, and logical goals together, through it does make a certain sort of sense.  

However, as I write this I think I realize why Chris sees a self exploration and a therapeutic agenda as separate.  With a Discovery agenda you aren't trying to train any behavior, just understand it.  Likewise with an agenda geared towards establishing social bonds.  A therapeutic or social bond agenda is actually trying to establish new social behaviors.

My take on whether or not something is a creative agenda, and hence beds down with GNS in the same layer, is whether the agenda requires the SIS.  If the social bonds are established simply because the people are spending time together, I think we are talking about something at the social contract level*.  If however, the SIS is used to gain social information or establish bonds, such as people becoming friends through the friendship of their characters, then I think we've got a CA.  I do see some of this type of behavior when I play, but not enough that I would ever say it is prioritized over Gam or Nar; which is why I think it's a fringe interest if it exists, but I can imagine it being prioritized over the other two.

So while in the process of typing this, I've seen another division that I didn't before.  A division between gaining knowledge (Discovery) and training behaviors.  Though I'm now inclined to believe that we are actually talking about more than one agenda, that's where I was coming from when I was wondering whether or not the social agenda was a sub-style of Sim.

* The social contract layer could probably benefit from some analysis.  I seems like sort of a dumping ground at this stage in the model's development.  "That?  Oh that's social contract." Dump.

[M. J. Young]

Let me commend the witty and erudite Claire for hitting a solid target. Indeed, it is possible that a social CA exists and is sometimes brushed upon in play driven by another agendum.

I would, however, expect that if such a CA really did exist, we would see examples in which play of driftable games had drifted that direction, such that a particular group was focused on it, or even more so that a group was experiencing dysfunction because one of its members was in conflict with the others through his pursuit of this social agendum.

Jason's notion that discovering self and altering self are distinct concepts has merit. I tend however to think that altering self arises largely from discovering self and being displeased with the content thereof. Still, I can see the idea of playing a role for the purpose of altering your own character--a player who plays brave because he wants to teach himself to be brave, or who plays cautious and thoughtful in the hope that this will reflect in his life outside the game. Indeed, I've at times found that the faith of my character in the game world impacted my own faith positively. This is worth considering. It may still be a form of simulationism; I'm not certain.

I also agree that it would be nice to sort out some of the social contract stuff. I think, though, that the reason that hasn't been sorted out here is it is just too large an area. Social contract means people get together and interact--thus it's everything covered by psychology and sociology as a starting point. Maybe there needs to be a subset between social contract and exploration, something on the order of game expectations, but the bounds of this are never going to be clear (is the pizza break a game expectation or not?). It's a big topic, and narrowing it down to something more than exploration but less than everything is tough.

--M. J. Young