Looong post on Sim definition

[Silmenume]

Hey contracycle!

I am going to do my best to clarify the terms "ritual discourse" and "social meaning structure."  The problem is that the terms are so specific the fields from which they sprang and are so intertwined with each other that a simple definition will in all likelihood not suffice.  Or at least I am not certain that I can create a simple definition.

Ritual Discourse

Discourse, being the easy part to illumine, is dialogue.  It means that the process, whatever it is, is one that involves a verbal (or written) exchange among its practitioners.

Ritual is much more difficult to define – I will do lots of lifting from Chris' article and thread as a starting point.

First of all ritual is not a thing but a process.

...we can read ritual as a mode of theorizing, a way of thinking and analyzing in relatively abstract terms.  

In ritual, participants manipulate a range of signs within a constrained structure. That structure can change through such manipulations, but only within narrow limits.

Social meaning structures.  I use the word social because the meanings of the structures are determined by the individuals present.  To help elucidate what I mean by meaning structures I quote the following again from Chris (clehrich) -

The question, in short, is not how players read a text produced for them by a game-master, but rather how the whole group in combination produces signs and texts that they themselves read. The structural model of signification fits well here, as the primary issue is to understand ritual or mythic activity as a mode of discourse production.

To put this differently, and more specifically, RPG play enacts theory, in the sense that standing behind and prior to play is a series of theoretical constructs: system design, GM notes, pre-play agreements and social contract, genre expectations, and other theoretical tools. From this perspective, RPG play acts out this prior structure; this is equivalent to the old reading of ritual as acting out a liturgical text. At the same time, the prior structure is to a degree open to challenge within game play, and furthermore does not fully constrain particular game actions, determining a range and a set of priorities rather than laying out a script.

Broadly, the question in practice theory is how people choose, from a limited range of culturally-available options, which techniques to apply at a given moment. This depends on strategy: we want to maximize rewards in a specific situation. But in order for strategy to work, we have to play the game; that is, one cannot go outside the structure of the system to manipulate signs as one likes, because to do so annuls the power of the strategy in the first place. Thus every strategic use of signs is at once a free, liberated exercise of power by a situated person, and at the same time a contribution to keeping the system stable and intact without significant change. The possibility of real change is thus undermined by the very strategies which seek to change the system, because they depend for their efficacy upon the structures in question.

These aforementioned structures are what I am referring to as the "social meaning structures."  Again they are social because it is the players who legitimize them when they agree to be subject to them at the social contract level.  They are all theoretical constructs until the players agree to regard them as objects for the sake of Exploration.  This is all social contract stuff, but it central to my thesis that these things that are agreed to in the social contract level are "social meaning structures."  IOW we all agree to accept the elements of Exploration, goals (CA) and what ever else that directly relates to Exploration as legitimate and worth supporting.  It is important to note that just as these "social meaning structures" exist outside the SIS (CA) they also exist within (political structures/governments, social mores, cultures, worldviews, etc.).

I would like to come back and spend someone time on the subject of signs.

Technically speaking, every sign is thus constrained and yet free. On the one hand, it is not constrained to the degree of a percept, a particular contingent mental encounter with an actual object; this percept is what is called a "perception" in the formalist model to which Kim refers. A percept is entirely constrained, because when a person looks at a given object on two successive occasions, his or her mental equipment has altered -- to use a cliché, one cannot enter the same river twice. At the same time, a sign is not fully liberated, as is a concept, an idea arising in reaction to a particular person's connections to a percept: when I look at the lamp on the table, I may think of my grandmother (who perhaps owned a similar lamp), and thus "grandmother" is a legitimate conceptual link, but no such connection may arise for you, and even if it did, it would be a different grandmother. So a sign (Lévi-Strauss means the Saussurean version of the sign) is both constrained (the iron cannot be a refrigerator) and free (it can do a whole range of things involving local intense heat). In Lévi-Strauss's linguistic analogy, this iron is a sign in the same way as a word is: the word "iron" can mean a range of things (the metal, the instrument) but it cannot mean anything at all. Furthermore, this word only acquires meaning by its relations to other words: if I say "iron," you do not know until I go on with "a pair of pants" what sort of meaning I intend, even whether it is a verb or a noun.

This percept/concept duality of a sign is a profoundly important concept that provides one such tool that I have been badly needing.  Gamism and Narrativism are deeply committed to concept.  Tourism is not concerned about creating concepts; it is primarily concerned with percepts – what do I find here, what happens if I do this without a particular interest in assigning or creating concepts.  Simulationism is committed to concept creation.  

All the Creative Agendas are committed to concept creation.

As the above quote indicated, a sign only acquires meaning by its relations to other signs.  Creative Agenda is a sign (a type that I refer to as a social meaning structure).  It gives meaning to the actions (sign manipulations) the players make.  The key here is that a new concept can only come into play when it displaces an old concept.  This implies challenge to the SIS.  A concept cannot just be declared, it must be inferred from percept and measured or matched against the social meaning structures in effect to see if the percept creates that desired concept.  So in order for a new concept to be created a new percept must be created.

"I swing at the orc."

"Roll a 20 sided."

"19!"

"You Hit.  Roll damage."

"6 points!"

"You kill the orc."

"Woohoo!  I win!"

That the player can say he won is a concept/meaning (victory) that he generated because he created a new percept (a dead orc) that was measured against the social meaning structure provided by, among other structures, Challenge (the first player to kill 10 orcs wins).  In order to create a new percept the player had to challenge the SIS.  That the player wished to create a new concept meant that he had to challenge the SIS via Situation.  Given Ralph's definition of conflict, that a player chooses to face a situation and escalate it to a conflict means he is hoping to create a new concept/meaning by creating a new percept.  As long as his signs (statements) make it into the SIS he will always create a new percept, its just that that percept must reflect something important in the CA (given the current state of the SIS) in order for a meaningful concept to be created.  A player can always attempt to create percepts, but until he faces conflict he cannot create new meaningful concepts.  The key here is that the player, by choosing to escalate to conflict under a given set of social meaning structures (elements of Exploration as related to CA) is risking social esteem to earn the right to make his statement/concept which is reflected in the same social meaning structures (elements of Exploration as related to CA) should he succeed.

This last part is still new territory for me, and I am seeking a more robust link between conflict and concept creation.  Once that is established I can more definitive demonstrate why Sim (which also is about concept/meaning creation that is measured against some yet to be defined social meaning structure) too is solidly rooted in conflict as well.

Some thoughts.  I hope that I have made some headway in clearing up some of the phrases I have been employing.  To those I have not addressed directly, I apologize and will do so as soon as I can.

[contracycle]

All the Creative Agendas are committed to concept creation.

Why, and how do we know this?

Creative Agenda is a sign (a type that I refer to as a social meaning structure).

I'm noty sure whther a CA should be construed as a sign, or a manipulation of existing signs.  I would lean toward the latter - especially as CA is only a sign here, to us, who have coined and defined the term.  A player unfamiliar weith the forge will not be aware of CA as a sign.

[quoet] That the player can say he won is a concept/meaning (victory) that he generated because he created a new percept (a dead orc) that was measured against the social meaning structure provided by, among other structures, Challenge (the first player to kill 10 orcs wins).[/quote]

OK; but then your "creation of meaning" is identical to "exhibited a CA".  This seems to render the terminology less than useful, as it is obfuscating something we have already expressed more elegantly.

[Silmenume]

I'm noty sure whther a CA should be construed as a sign, or a manipulation of existing signs.  I would lean toward the latter - especially as CA is only a sign here, to us, who have coined and defined the term.  A player unfamiliar weith the forge will not be aware of CA as a sign.

I think you are correct.  Until the player understands that he has a CA he cannot employ it as a sign.  I think, however, that CA is better regarded as a concept that has the role of serving as a meaning structure.  It is the yardstick by which we measure the events in game to see if they "mean" anything.  Conversely that same meaning structure can be employed to give events "meaning/significance".   Whether players are aware of this or not is irrelevant.

Addressing Challenge at the conflict level means that the player is going to challenge the SIS by employing signs in such a way as to create a new sign (percept) that can be, hopefully, assigned or associated with a concept (the CA meaning structure) that furthers his CA.  These concepts, Challenge and Premise, exist outside the SIS and thus can sometimes conflict with causality within and thus can be diagnosed.  IOW the players do things in the SIS that sometimes contradict our baseline understanding of human behavior.  Why is this not a problem for Gamists or Narrativists?  Because they are using a different set of social meaning structures during ritual time than from ordinary time.  As meaning structures inform our daily lives (they ground us and give us a point of reference and a point of view), these different meaning structures inform the players actions within the SIS (grounding us and giving us a different point of reference and a different point of view).  What is not part of those meaning structures is essentially "off radar."  Thus that a character would go about risking his life killing one monster after another for money would seem insane by our ordinary (non-ritual) meaning structures is perfectly acceptable under the ritual meaning structures.  In this particular example why someone would choose to such things is not part of the meaning structures so falls off the radar screen as irrelevant.  (This is not meant to imply that Gamists don't care about such things, I just used this as an overt example).

IOW the expression of each CA requires the adoption of certain social meaning structures.  Simulationism is the adoption of the social meaning structures that are limited to the element of Exploration.

Simply put Simulationism is the donning of a fictional set of social meaning structures (as delimited by the elements of Exploration) that can only be made manifest through conflict.

Player actions shall be constrained to the INTERNAL SOCIAL STRUCTURES!  Because we adopt these new meaning structures in toto – we have a completely different view of life – we have The Dream.  The Dream exists because all the tools we use to make sense of life (social meaning structures) are now re-presented in a new and different fictional form.

We test these new meaning structures and respond in ways that are different from our ordinary lives.  Conflict is the means by which we get to test and add to those meaning structures.  We also get the added bonus because conflict adds to the intensity of the Dream.  By responding to these conflicts in ways that are different from our ordinary lives not only do we get to think like a different person, but because of the intensifying effects of risk, we get to feel an experience that is different from our norm.

Internal Causality is important, but I wish to generalize the idea more; thus I would say that the integrity of the social meaning structures of each CA is what must be maintained.  In Sim it is the integrity of the fictional social meaning structures which are partially rooted in the fictional world itself which are what must be maintained.  This is why Setting is so important in Sim.  Note that Eskimos have 15 different words for snow. (Lots of caveats here, but you get the general gist.)   In Gamism it means that the goals and the means by which the players will achieve the goals are fixed.  In Narrativism it means that the players will address premise is fixed and for whatever allotted period of time the actual premise will be fixed.  What is not fixed is open to negotiation and in some cases not important at all.

The Adoption a new meaning structure is only truly made manifest by the decision making process.  Decision making implies conflict – that one must choose implies at least two options that are in contention.  Conflict facilitates the exhibition of the new meaning structures, either by challenging our old ones or by exhibiting the new ones (or both!  Are we willing to commit murder if our character has no qualms with that?)  Sim as a CA must have conflicts or the players cannot implement or exhibit the adopted meaning structures.  The hang up most people have about Sim is that they think that the players are wondering through with their own point of view.  That is simply not the case.  We are moving through the fictional world with a fictional point of view.

Concepts created without conflict are nothing more than free associations.

We still need conflict just as much as Gamists and Narrativist do and for the same basic reason – the creation of new concepts.  The difference however stems from where the meaning structures lie.  In G/N there are outside the SIS.  In Simulationism they lie in  Setting and Character which are influenced by Color.  Given that Internal Causality is in force in Simulationism it is important that the conflicts arise from the internal circumstances and reflect concerns that are relevant to the Character.

So to Ralph's "what if's..." I would modify that to "what would my character do if...?"  Its not so much a series of random experiments, but tests of character.  It's the DM posing the "what if" questions, not the players.

Hey Tim!

Um... yes.  I think I said that in my last post, but I probably wasn't as clear as I should have been.  I won't belabor the point.  Suffice it to say that I agree: when a CA is part of a Social Contract, any player who isn't actively pursuing that CA is in violation of the Social Contract.  For clarity, change "he's not damaging the CA" to "he's not actively damaging the CA."

The best response to that is the following quote; again from Chris (clehrich)

An obvious first step in proposing this model is the formulation of a definition of ritual. Unfortunately, perhaps, such definitions have been the focus of extensive debate for more than a century now, with no clear end in sight. More models have been proposed of what ritual "is" than many readers might believe. I have no intention of summarizing this whole history; I will instead simply propose a starting-point.
The above-mentioned disjuncture between "Collaborative Storytelling" and "Virtual Experience" parallels, in a number of respects, two recent emphases in ritual theory.
Virtual Experience correlates well with Ronald Grimes's and Victor Turner's focus on "performance," which ultimately amounts to a notion of total involvement in ritual activity.[7] In ritual, according to this perspective, humans engage the totality of hearts, minds, and bodies, setting them to work creatively and dynamically to produce effects within the social and mental worlds of the participants. Thus in zazen (Sitting Zen), one does nothing but sit, generally in an approved posture; one's mind and heart should be similarly focused on nothing but sitting, not in the sense that one should think continuously, "I'm sitting," but rather that one's mind should be in a state parallel to the body's state, thinking nothing, resting, yet remaining alert and awake, receptive to outside contact. In the Catholic Eucharist (Mass), to take a quite different sort of example, liturgical tradition emphasizes that the communicant should be fully involved in the process, such that when the miraculous transformation of the substance of wafer and wine (Transubstantiation) occurs, and when in fact the communicant receives these into the mouth, it is not only one's body that receives the body and blood of Christ, but the totality of body, mind, and soul. Thus this understanding of ritual emphasizes what in RPG terms is called "immersion," a total involvement in the activity. Failure on this score would be seen as ineffective (zazen), impious (Eucharist), or shallow (RPG).

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

This also explains why CA conflict is soooo annoying.  If you aren't supporting the ritual you are taking away from it.  If you are actively conflicting with ritual then that is even more of a problem.  But suffice it to say that if your not supporting the ritual then it is a problem.

The Hardcore Gamist and the Intense Premise Addresser are the equivalents of the Immersionist Simulationist.

edit - a quick adendum - This is where the confusion about lots of details became identified with Sim.  The more meaning structures we have the richer, the fuller the process.  Its not more things that is important as more structures.

[contracycle]

Sil, I still think you are butchering the jargon here I'm afraid.

It is the yardstick by which we measure the events in game to see if they "mean" anything.  Conversely that same meaning structure can be employed to give events "meaning/significance".   Whether players are aware of this or not is irrelevant.

Chris's text describes meaning structures as external to the user.  However, you seem to be arguing that a CA is inherent to the user, especially if you agree that anyone unfamiliar with the forge or similar is also unfamiliar with the sign "CA" or the sign "Sim".

This CA cannot be a social meaning structure on the terms given.
CA is a motive for engaging with existing meaning structures.  Those meaning structures are essentially System, and they are social because they are formulated out of the social contract.

What is not part of those meaning structures is essentially "off radar."  

Correct.  System does matter.

The Dream exists because all the tools we use to make sense of life (social meaning structures) are now re-presented in a new and different fictional form.

Right.  System does matter again.

We test these new meaning structures and respond in ways that are different from our ordinary lives.  Conflict is the means by which we get to test and add to those meaning structures.  We also get the added bonus because conflict adds to the intensity of the Dream.  By responding to these conflicts in ways that are different from our ordinary lives not only do we get to think like a different person, but because of the intensifying effects of risk, we get to feel an experience that is different from our norm.

Yes, agreed.  But I have always had the position that conflict is useful; your position is that it is necessary and definitive.  That still does not appear sufficiently demonstrated to me.

In Sim it is the integrity of the fictional social meaning structures which are partially rooted in the fictional world itself which are what must be maintained.

This is where your argument appears to use "social meaning structure" erroneously to my eyes, applying to to multiple levels of the model.  Above you say "I think, however, that CA is better regarded as a concept that has the role of serving as a meaning structure." And here you say that the SIS contains social meaning structures.

I don't think it can be meaningful that the SIS contains a CA.  I do think it can be meaningful that the SIS contains fictional social meaning structures, but as I have observed, they almost never actively explore them, but merely utilise them in the same way we would in real life.

The Adoption a new meaning structure is only truly made manifest by the decision making process.  Decision making implies conflict – that one must choose implies at least two options that are in contention.

But not meaningful conflict.  Let me try to illustrate my difference in perspective.  In Star Wars, the uniformity of the Storm Troopers allows an allusion to the real life signs we are familiar with, specifically those of Fascism and autocracy.  So this fictional (narrative) space contains "fictional meaning systems" that relate to our real social meaning systems and thus informs the audience.  But Star Wars does not particularly explore Fascism; it explores a rather orthodox morality.  And this does in turn manipulate and feed back to the standing meaning system as we saw when Bush was recently drawn as Vader by cartoonists

Yes its true that this was brought about by a "decision making process", and that it used and interacted with existig signs, but there is no meaningful conflict here.

Sim as a CA must have conflicts or the players cannot implement or exhibit the adopted meaning structures.

In as much as it is true that if I adopt the sign "knight" and seek to exhibit an interpretation of the meaning system "chivalry", yes its true that I cannot do so without some degree of adversity.  But what bugs me about this is I can't put a fork in my mouth either without overcoming the adversity of gravity, so this does not appear to be saying much other than "shit happens".

I agree that it is implicit in every CA that there be "relevant stress"; I'm not sure your formulation shows that for sim, relevant stress is capital-C Conflict in the dramatic sense.

So to Ralph's "what if's..." I would modify that to "what would my character do if...?"  Its not so much a series of random experiments, but tests of character.  It's the DM posing the "what if" questions, not the players.

That woud relegate player activity vis a vis Sim to reactions, rather than actions.  And that negates the ostensible starting point, which was to establish a diagnostic feature of Sim that was not the absence of other CA's.  All players respond to a GM's what if by this formulation, it seems to me, and so once again the Sim player would be identified only negatively; they would be the individual who only responded to what ifs instead of actively posing questions and enacting a CA.

[Valamir]

So to Ralph's "what if's..." I would modify that to "what would my character do if...?" Its not so much a series of random experiments, but tests of character. It's the DM posing the "what if" questions, not the players.

True, if you have the Character Exploration dial cranked.

But you could ask that same question with a focus on Setting also:  What would the Kingdom of Karmon do if a horde of Orks decended on it and its allies abandon it.

In other words "how would the Character respond to a given Situation", or "how would the Setting respond to a given Situation".  To which the answer would be "Lets find out using System as Constrained by Color".


And it can be either the GM or the players posing the question because the players, through their characters, can act as catalysts to trigger or establish Conflicts just as much as they can use them to respond.

Traditionally, Character has been the only way that the player can interact with the world; but I happen to be a believer that Director Stance is quite useable in Simulationist play.  So, using Director Stance, the player's ability to pose the "what if" question is increased substantially.

[Silmenume]

Hey contracycle,

I may be guilty of butchering jargon.  Let's go through your points and see what can be cleared up.

Chris's text describes meaning structures as external to the user. However, you seem to be arguing that a CA is inherent to the user, especially if you agree that anyone unfamiliar with the forge or similar is also unfamiliar with the sign "CA" or the sign "Sim".

This CA cannot be a social meaning structure on the terms given.
CA is a motive for engaging with existing meaning structures. Those meaning structures are essentially System, and they are social because they are formulated out of the social contract.

Chris' text describes meaning structures as being taught.  Meaning structures are an entirely memetic in nature.  They don't exist as things outside of minds.  They cannot be external to persons.  A person may generate their own meaning structures and they can also be unfamiliar with a meaning structure and thus can be acculturated with a different one, but they have them nonetheless.

A person does not need to be self-aware of the behavior in order to express said behavior.  A Creative Agenda is an expression of behavior.  Contained within that expression of behavior is a drive.  That drive is attempting to accomplish something.  In order to determine if the drive's desires are being met, a person must monitor their surroundings to see if their actions are creating a meaningful response.  In order for something to be determined as being meaningful it must be measured against a meaning structure.  This can all happen on a level that person is not self-consciously aware of.  The Forge has maintained that CA's are exhibited all the time without the players being aware of the behavior.  As far as the players are concerned, it's just what they do – "what other way is there?"  Basically for any event to have meaning it is because an individual has been acculturated with meaning structures.  Language is a profound one.  Social mores are another.  People have been using both for millennia without being aware that what they were doing would later be described as a process that uses things called symbols and that these symbols are informed by meaning structures.  People have been using ritual long before they understood what constituted a ritual process, doesn't mean people weren't using ritual.

As you said a CA is motive.  It is also provides a meaning structure.  How else can a person determine if their motives are being satisfied?  There is nothing ontological about meaning structures that they must only come from some special place, the can be derived, created and taught/learned by the bucket load and many are employed at the same time.

Maybe you're misconstruing my saying CA carries a meaning structure to mean that it only functions as a meaning structure or that it is the only meaning structure.  I am asserting neither.  Mechanics does serve as a meaning structure, as do all the elements of Exploration.  The idea I am working on is that Setting, especially for Sim, should not be construed be just the physical elements.  Setting should include such things as social mores and values, cultures, the culture's relationship with the physical world, etc.  To the Western world nature was something to be subdued and exploited.  To (some/all?) Native American Indians nature was something to be treated with honor and respect.  How individuals related to nature was informed by meaning structures.

What is not part of those meaning structures is essentially "off radar."

Correct.  System does matter.

The Dream exists because all the tools we use to make sense of life (social meaning structures) are now re-presented in a new and different fictional form.

Right.  System does matter again.

You are right in that System does matter.  But I was not speaking about System.  System is the means by which credibility is assigned to statements.  It is a process.  Meaning structures are for the sake of this argument objects.  They are reference points by which we can function within and understand our world.  You missed the point entirely.

We test these new meaning structures and respond in ways that are different from our ordinary lives.  Conflict is the means by which we get to test and add to those meaning structures.  We also get the added bonus because conflict adds to the intensity of the Dream.  By responding to these conflicts in ways that are different from our ordinary lives not only do we get to think like a different person, but because of the intensifying effects of risk, we get to feel an experience that is different from our norm.

Yes, agreed.  But I have always had the position that conflict is useful; your position is that it is necessary and definitive.  That still does not appear sufficiently demonstrated to me.

If you agree where is the contention?  If you agree that conflict is the means by which we get to test and add to those meaning structures and that Sim is basically the process of adopting fictional meaning structures, how can one demonstrate this adoption if there is no conflict by which they can be demonstrated?

In Sim it is the integrity of the fictional social meaning structures which are partially rooted in the fictional world itself which are what must be maintained.

This is where your argument appears to use "social meaning structure" erroneously to my eyes, applying to to multiple levels of the model.  Above you say "I think, however, that CA is better regarded as a concept that has the role of serving as a meaning structure." And here you say that the SIS contains social meaning structures.

I don't think it can be meaningful that the SIS contains a CA.

I never said or implied that the SIS contains a CA.  Nor did I ever say or imply that CA equals meaning structure.  Finally I never said or implied that CA was the ONLY meaning structure – the players do not lose track of the fact that they are "playing" and they retain the capacity to make reference to mechanics.  I asserted that CA provides the meaning structure which we as players use to gauge the effectiveness of the discourse – IOW is my/our actions meaningful regarding the addressing of Challenge/Premise/the internal social structures?  The Sim CA basically says adopt all the social meaning structures contained (explicit or otherwise) within the SIS and any additional source material that is relevant (reading the LOTR if one is playing a game set in Middle Earth).  That is to be the primary source and delimiter of the character's meaning structures – he will be tested on them.  In this CA, as in Gamism and Narrativism, some of the structures are up for negotiation within the SIS and others are not.  In Sim the physical elements and physics as implied in internal causality are pretty much closed to alteration.  On the other hand, character actions are fairly open to discourse and challenge.  As the players never really lose their ordinary time (non-ritual) meaning structures (conscience frex.) this leads to some interesting dynamics.  Is the player really ready to have his character (which is an extension of himself or at least his will) commit murder or lay his life down for another or commit treason or scam an old lady out of her house or forgive a bitter enemy?

(Is this where stakes comes in?)

(This is another thought aside – not sure what to make of it, but here it is - In a certain way I would almost say that Sim is about the relationships of all the parts but mostly settling upon character as that is the primary instrument of player input and conflict address.)

The Adoption a new meaning structure is only truly made manifest by the decision making process.  Decision making implies conflict – that one must choose implies at least two options that are in contention.

But not meaningful conflict.

You're correct in the process I listed didn't demonstrate anything about a meaningful conflict.  But you disputation actually serves my ends.  When a decision must be made because of conflict – as Ralph has defined it – not only is it meaningful, but the new meaning structure (concept) created is meaningful as well.  You're right, its not just any decision, but an important one (again I refer you to Ralph's definition of conflict.)  And that is precisely why Sim must have conflict.  Without it there would be no meaningful conflicts and thus no meaning-ful changes to the meaning structures (concepts).

Sim as a CA must have conflicts or the players cannot implement or exhibit the adopted meaning structures.

In as much as it is true that if I adopt the sign "knight" and seek to exhibit an interpretation of the meaning system "chivalry", yes its true that I cannot do so without some degree of adversity.  But what bugs me about this is I can't put a fork in my mouth either without overcoming the adversity of gravity, so this does not appear to be saying much other than "shit happens".

Which is EXACTLY what it means; because overcoming the adversity of gravity is soooo trivial in this case as to make the act of putting the fork in the mouth equally trivial – it effectively says nothing

So to Ralph's "what if's..." I would modify that to "what would my character do if...?"  Its not so much a series of random experiments, but tests of character.  It's the DM posing the "what if" questions, not the players.

That woud relegate player activity vis a vis Sim to reactions, rather than actions.  And that negates the ostensible starting point, which was to establish a diagnostic feature of Sim that was not the absence of other CA's.  All players respond to a GM's what if by this formulation, it seems to me, and so once again the Sim player would be identified only negatively; they would be the individual who only responded to what ifs instead of actively posing questions and enacting a CA.

.

Not so.  A valid question could be, "What would my character do if I decided that he wanted to kill the king?"  By your formulation if players playing Gamist did nothing but wait until the DM presented a suitable conflict for them to address Challenge then they wouldn't have a CA either.  Reactivity or proactivity does not qualify or disqualify play as a CA.  You are operating under the old thinking style that players must pursue conflict for a CA to be defined or in evidence.  There is nothing in CA that mandates conflict must be pursued, it need only be present.  That it is directly employed in some CA's and indirectly in another is irrelevant.  All that matters is that conflict is present and used to create meaningful changes to the SIS so that new meaningful concepts may be born.

Hey Ralph,

So to Ralph's "what if's..." I would modify that to "what would my character do if...?" Its not so much a series of random experiments, but tests of character. It's the DM posing the "what if" questions, not the players.

True, if you have the Character Exploration dial cranked.

But you could ask that same question with a focus on Setting also:  What would the Kingdom of Karmon do if a horde of Orks decended on it and its allies abandon it.

In other words "how would the Character respond to a given Situation", or "how would the Setting respond to a given Situation".  To which the answer would be "Lets find out using System as Constrained by Color".

There are several things I would like to touch on here.

First, I don't know why, but that Situation just rocks!

Second, in Sim I believe both questions are always on the table.

Third, implicit in the "how would the Kingdom of Karmon respond" is how would the inhabitants respond.

If this situation was actually to be played out, and not just a matter of setting (something that does not involve the players directly) then it would require Characters who are in someway vested in the Kingdom to respond.  Once again we are back to how Character responds to a given Situation.

This does not have to mean that the players are interested in playing out all the inner intricacies of a tough decision, they can be much more interested in the effects such decisions have on situation.  IOW they can be more interested in solving the problem than delving deeply into their character's decision making process.  However, whatever interests the player more, the inside or the outside, both are changed and something is revealed about both.

Traditionally, Character has been the only way that the player can interact with the world; but I happen to be a believer that Director Stance is quite useable in Simulationist play.  So, using Director Stance, the player's ability to pose the "what if" question is increased substantially.

Given the example I offered to contracycle it is possible for a player to pose a "what if", its just limited to what the character is capable of having influence over.

However, I am not dismissing your assertions about Director's Stance out of hand.  I think a discussion on that might be fruitful, I just have never really thought about it and I am kinda burnt out at the moment.  My apologies.  As a final note I did argue that Universalis could be employed as a Sim facilitating game system, which is one where I do believe the players are given overt Director's powers.  Maybe on another thread, eh?

I'm gonna take a few days off, so if anyone posts and wishes a response from me, I won't be posting back right away.  (I still owe M. J. Young a response too!)

[contracycle]

Chris' text describes meaning structures as being taught.  Meaning structures are an entirely memetic in nature.  They don't exist as things outside of minds.  They cannot be external to persons.  A person may generate their own meaning structures and they can also be unfamiliar with a meaning structure and thus can be acculturated with a different one, but they have them nonetheless.

Yes... and no.  Necessarily, these meaning systems occur in human minds.  But equally necessarily, they are externalised in material objects, symbols, structures, signs et al.  National flags are an excellent example of an externalised symbol; and we are familiar with the way people can be offended by the abuse of a flag as representative of the abuse of the state.

It is important to realise the externality and pseudo-objectivity of these symbols.  To the individual, mostly they appear as tangibly real and un-subjective as material objects, becuase thye individual wields no power over the consent granted to those symbols by other individuals.

A person does not need to be self-aware of the behavior in order to express said behavior.  A Creative Agenda is an expression of behavior.  Contained within that expression of behavior is a drive.  That drive is attempting to accomplish something.  In order to determine if the drive's desires are being met, a person must monitor their surroundings to see if their actions are creating a meaningful response.  In order for something to be determined as being meaningful it must be measured against a meaning structure.  .... Basically for any event to have meaning it is because an individual has been acculturated with meaning structures.  

Yes but: inasmuch as my desire are mediated through system, that system is the meaning structure to which we are acculturated.  It is because all the players share an understanding of what "strength 6" means that a given player can pursue having strength 6 and that it can be meaning-full.  That is why it seems to me that your formulation above is only really a restatement of "system does matter".

As you said a CA is motive.  It is also provides a meaning structure.  How else can a person determine if their motives are being satisfied?

The desire for food motivates some of my actions; but the desire for food is nnot a meaning structure.  To procure food, I engage with and interact with others using a meaning system including such signs as "money" and "supermarket" to obtain from others what I need.

This is where it appears to me that you are applying "meaning system" on two levels.  CA is not a meaning system; CA is a motive that must engage with meaning systems (in this context, social game systems) in order to fulfill its aims.

The idea I am working on is that Setting, especially for Sim, should not be construed be just the physical elements.  Setting should include such things as social mores and values, cultures, the culture's relationship with the physical world, etc.  To the Western world nature was something to be subdued and exploited.  To (some/all?) Native American Indians nature was something to be treated with honor and respect.  How individuals related to nature was informed by meaning structures.

Absolutely true.  Honourable mentions in this regard go to HeroWars/Quest and Aria, for its social priorities or whatever they were callked... flick flick... Philosophical Orientations.  Thus the Just Tyrant governmerntal archetype is usually motivated by the Tradition, Conviction and Prevention philosophcal orientations.

It seems to me the value in recognising the similarity between RPG and ritual space lies in the fact that this gives us an opportunity to explore elements of meaning in our own social structures.  Given that a system is entirely a meaning structure, it can represent other meaning structures for exploration.  Aria could facilitate the exploration of those philosophical orientations, and HW/Q could explore the meaning of "we are all us".  Coinversely, because RPG system is a kinda meaning system, we cannot in fact be "realistic", we can merely represent our own take; this is what makes RPG necessarily polemical, as Jonathan Walton recently remarked.    Seeing as RPG system contains only what the designer included, it must necessarily reflect the designers  understanding of the meaning systems they themselves inhabit.

You are right in that System does matter.  But I was not speaking about System.  System is the means by which credibility is assigned to statements.  It is a process.  Meaning structures are for the sake of this argument objects.  They are reference points by which we can function within and understand our world.  You missed the point entirely.

No, I didn't.  The System which is "democratic elections" apportions to the president the credibility to say "we will go to the moon" or whatever.  Not the same kind of credibility?  But it is, because society does not exist except inasmuch as we adhere to a social contract.  Yes its true that to the individual, meaning systems appear objective because of the consent given by, and consequent behaviour of, other people (primarily in their capacity for violent enforcement), but people can attempt to change these systems through public dialogue, debate and propaganda.

In your first paragraph I quoted above, you say that meaning systems are necessarily personal and reside in the human mind; and here you say they are externally objective, impinging symbols.  Both are true simultaneously at different levels, and it seems to me you are not clear which level is operational where.  Once I have entered into a social contract to adhere to a meaning system it takes on an objectivity and externality because it can be enforced by others, but in our selection of meaning systems we can be entirely subjective and preferential.

If you agree where is the contention?  If you agree that conflict is the means by which we get to test and add to those meaning structures and that Sim is basically the process of adopting fictional meaning structures, how can one demonstrate this adoption if there is no conflict by which they can be demonstrated?

Where I disagree with you is that demonstration is the point, and that therefore this conflict is significant.  And if this conflict is not significant, then it must be operational any time the slightest whim is even mildly furstrated.  Thus the diagnostic feature of Sim we would so identify is that "the player shows up and plays".  And this seems to be wholly useless.

I never said or implied that the SIS contains a CA.  Nor did I ever say or imply that CA equals meaning structure.  Finally I never said or implied that CA was the ONLY meaning structure – the players do not lose track of the fact that they are "playing" and they retain the capacity to make reference to mechanics.  I asserted that CA provides the meaning structure which we as players use to gauge the effectiveness of the discourse – IOW is my/our actions meaningful regarding the addressing of Challenge/Premise/the internal social structures?

I can't see how that can be true.  Above we have been discussing the way in which socially expressed meaning systems can be - in a sense must be, to meaningful to this discourse as it happens - external to the individual and able to impose themselves on that individual.  Where is the external representation of Gamism or Simulationsim or Narratavism that exists elsewhere in society and is able to impose itself on me; which I encounter as an externality?  In written system.  CA is not a meaning system; Game system is a meaning system that can be used to achieve a CA.  We engage with such a meaning system motivated by our CA.

The Sim CA basically says adopt all the social meaning structures contained (explicit or otherwise) within the SIS and any additional source material that is relevant (reading the LOTR if one is playing a game set in Middle Earth).  That is to be the primary source and delimiter of the character's meaning structures – he will be tested on them.

More specifics would help; what particular representations of middle earth do you mean?  Yes certainly, the player will be obliged to acknowledge "the Dunedainn view of family" or whatever, as a sample of a fictional social meaning system.  But what is the basis for thinking the player will be tested on them?  Many games totally ignore social meaning systems and instead explore systematic causality.  Therre seem to me to be very few that have addressed social meaning structures as the subject of play, and therefore no reason to think that fictional social meaning structures are significant to Sim.  One of my Sim interests, as seen in the Wilderness threads, is actually representation of physical tasks and techniques.

As the players never really lose their ordinary time (non-ritual) meaning structures (conscience frex.) this leads to some interesting dynamics.  Is the player really ready to have his character (which is an extension of himself or at least his will) commit murder or lay his life down for another or commit treason or scam an old lady out of her house or forgive a bitter enemy?

In fact I think this paragraph demonstrates the problem I see with your analysis; it seems to me that audiences do frequently adopt different mores depending on the context depicted.  If I watch a movie set in the medieavl period, I will understand the use of violence in relation to the characters motives in the context of the medieval appreciation of violence, not my own.  Similarly, if I set up a game explictly dealing with Aria's philosophical archetypes, I will be doing so with the intent of constructing for myself an alternate meaning system which priviliges those concepts, in order to explore them.  This is why your emphasis on FICTIONAL SOCIAL meaning systems that occur within the real social meaning system of rules applies only to the subset of sim that is exploration of character.  Your argument would make ALL of sim exploration of character, and I don't think this can be true.

You're correct in the process I listed didn't demonstrate anything about a meaningful conflict.  But you disputation actually serves my ends.  When a decision must be made because of conflict – as Ralph has defined it – not only is it meaningful, but the new meaning structure (concept) created is meaningful as well.  You're right, its not just any decision, but an important one (again I refer you to Ralph's definition of conflict.)  And that is precisely why Sim must have conflict.  Without it there would be no meaningful conflicts and thus no meaning-ful changes to the meaning structures (concepts).

But unfrotunately, that falls afoul of my criticism of Ralph's definition of conflict - it looks too much like G and N conflict for me to accept.  If the only forms of conflict which would exhibit a sim CA are the same kinds of conflict that would trigger N and G activity, then we still cannot identify sim.  This would be true, IMO, for a character directly engaged with exploration of character; the kind of situation that might trigger a character re-examining the feudal obligation to their liege, for example, is also the kind of situation that would facilitate a narratavists address of premise.  In this case it might well be that Char-Ex sim and Narr react to very similar conflicts.  But a gamist might encounter this situation only as an opportunity to switch to a liege with better resources, and sim Ex-System might only be interested in regards some new reaction modifiers or whatever.

Is that Meaningful to a sim player?  This is essentially why I find the emphasis on Conflict valueless - it must either be so universal that all actions constitute conflict, and thus devalue the term, or they must be the same type of capital-C Conflicts that are primary in N and G - but why a sim player who is NOT engaged primarily with Sim ex-char, which may coincide with Narr Conflict, or perhaps Sim Ex-Sys, which might coincide with Gam Conflict, would care about these capital-C Conflicts is not clear.   While I can see what both G and N have to gain from seizing on the opportunity presented by such situations to fulfill their CA's, I can't see trhe equivalent for Sim.

Which is EXACTLY what it means; because overcoming the adversity of gravity is soooo trivial in this case as to make the act of putting the fork in the mouth equally trivial – it effectively says nothing

Exactly.  Firstly, why do you think anyone wants to say anything at all?  And secondly, why preference "significant" conflicts and fictional SOCIAL meaning systems?  Perhaps, if I wanted to say anything, it was about the care and feeding of horses, or the design of castles.  All of these are resisted by little-C conflict, not significant Situations.   It seems to me that the bulk of sim players would have little interest in the kind of Situation you think sim requires.

Not so.  A valid question could be, "What would my character do if I decided that he wanted to kill the king?"  By your formulation if players playing Gamist did nothing but wait until the DM presented a suitable conflict for them to address Challenge then they wouldn't have a CA either.

No, you are confusing what I think is happening with whether or not there is a diagnostic feature.  I agree the question above is suitable as a significant conflict for sim Ex-Char (in terms of your argument), I don't think its suitable as a significant conflict for Sim ex-colour, and therefore I think as a diagnostic characteristic it fails.

Reactivity or proactivity does not qualify or disqualify play as a CA.  You are operating under the old thinking style that players must pursue conflict for a CA to be defined or in evidence.  There is nothing in CA that mandates conflict must be pursued, it need only be present.

Yes but - we cannot detect it if it is not behaviourally exhibited.  I fully agree that  within the context of your argument about conflict, it is consistent that a sim player may encounter conflict passivley, and without exhibiting much berhaviour.  Separate from my disagreement with your argument about conflict, I also point out that even if your argument were true, then we would end up back where we started.  Despite having defined sim as a relationship to significant conflict, we still have no diagnostic feature.  In the face of a significant conflict, the gamist will engage, the Narratavist will emote and address premise, and the Simmer will go "oh, I see"; Sim will once again be identified by the absence of another CA.

[M. J. Young]

This thread has gotten away from me during some time away forced upon me by a computer crash. It does not appear to have closed, though, so I'm giong to extend it a bit.

I do agree with Ralph in that simulationism requires consistency in the controls for the impact of the variables to be properly assessed. That is, the point of internal causality seems to be that it allows us to examine the effects of specific changes, comfortable in the knowledge that the things we did not intentionally change were maintained consistently.

I also want to agree that director stance is compatible with simulationist play, even though it is uncommon; and that it's not necessary for simulationism (or any other agendum) to focus on character specifically. These are artifacts of history, not limitations on the form.

Mike, your point that what matters is whether the outcome feels right, not is right, is well taken, but with one caveat. Would you agree that play sometimes requires that the outcome is right? That is, obviously when we're playing to see what would happen in Middle Earth or Star Wars or James Bond, there are "rules" in force in the world which would create outcomes that seem right for that world but would be silly to expect out here where we live. Yet at least sometimes the point of play is to learn something about what would happen or would have happened in the real world. Neither of the two examples that leap to mind are exactly role playing games, but both are, I think, relevant to simulationism as an agendum.

The first is the real battle wargame simulation. In the hands of hobbyists, this is usually played as a "what if" situation, in which we see whether cancelling Pickett's Charge would have significantly altered the outcome at Gettysburg (sorry--my favorite example of such things), and we're interested in how the battle would have ended with that change, not whether it "feels" like it would have ended that way. In professional use, such games are applied to determine the outcomes of various strategies for battles that have not been fought, from tabletop infantry miniatures to computer simulations of nuclear war. In such cases, we don't want to know whether we get the outcome that feels right; we want the outcome to be reliable enough that we can stake the lives of soldiers on it.

The second is economic modeling, in which we create a rules set (usually in a computer) by which we can input economic events to predict economic trends. Economists do this with hundreds of variables as part of long term business and government planning, but it's reproduced in such games as Sim City--on a less reliable scale, certainly, but with each generation of such a game more reliability is incorporated.

As I say, those aren't role playing games; but they are games that focus on play that sometimes are aspects of role playing games. I would agree that in the majority of play what matters is that the outcome feels right; but as long as you're not excluding those forms of play in which "is right" is the objective, I'm good.

I don't want to overlook Contracycle, whose posts here are excellent. "What he said."

I also disagree that Sim is an experimental medium.

Perhaps, though, that's what this thread is addressing. I do think that simulationism is fundamentally an experimental medium, in which we are attempting to learn something from play. Sure, gamism and narrativism ask "what if" questions, but they do so to obtain an answer that is used to achieve something else. Simulationism is seeking the answer for the sake of knowing the answer.

You make a mistake here.  Challenge does not impede the player from proving himself, it is the VERY means by which he does prove himself.  A Gamist cannot prove himself without Challenge.  Unless faced with a Challenge that he must overcome, he cannot demonstrate skill, cunning, guts, or what not.  To not have Challenge would impede a Gamist is his search to prove himself.

Ah, but in order to get the glory he must overcome the challenge. Thus although the challenge is the necessary foundation for the glory, it is not the sufficient condition. A player would not prove himself if he said, "Look at that giant. I think I'll go back to the inn and have another pint." A player would not prove himself if seeing the giant he charged full bore at him with a handful of darts and was promptly flattened to the ground by the adversary's foot. The challenge is necessary to the glory of the player, but overcoming the challenge through the character is also necessary to the glory of the player. Thus the challenge which faces the character also impedes the player--he must overcome it to get his desired reward.

I've got a lot of catching up to do, so I hope this makes sense, and I'm moving to more threads.

--M. J. Young

[Silmenume]

Hey Gareth,

I will have to respond to your post quote by quote, I hope you don't mind.

Yes... and no.  Necessarily, these meaning systems occur in human minds.  But equally necessarily, they are externalised in material objects, symbols, structures, signs et al.  National flags are an excellent example of an externalised symbol; and we are familiar with the way people can be offended by the abuse of a flag as representative of the abuse of the state.

Here's your first error.  You are conflating meaning structures which can only exist in the mind (concepts), and signs which are always external, (we are referring to a type of dialogue here - roleplay) employed to evoke a certain concept in a recipient – which is by no means guaranteed.

It is important to realise the externality and pseudo-objectivity of these symbols. To the individual, mostly they appear as tangibly real and un-subjective as material objects, becuase thye individual wields no power over the consent granted to those symbols by other individuals.

The externality of the symbols was always part of the argument.  Your argument that the material objects inherently contain no objective meaning is what I have been arguing and that is why I have proposed that CA's do help provide some of that subject meaning.  Chris' article is all about the fact that roleplay is a ritual process, which states that all those involved in the ritual do give consent to the power as well as the meaning of the symbols.  The process of ritual, among other things, is one of reification - To regard or treat (an abstraction) as if it had concrete or material existence.  With regards to roleplay that means taking the spoken words of the players (the signs) and treating them as if they were real.  IOW "I swing my sword," is regarded as "real" even if the player does not have a sword in his hand or does not physically move his arm in a swinging fashion.

Yes but: inasmuch as my desire are mediated through system, that system is the meaning structure to which we are acculturated. It is because all the players share an understanding of what "strength 6" means that a given player can pursue having strength 6 and that it can be meaning-full. That is why it seems to me that your formulation above is only really a restatement of "system does matter".

You being a little disingenuous with your assertion.  System with regards to roleplay and The Forge is a means of distributing credibility.  To whit -

System -
The means by which imaginary events are established during play, including character creation, resolution of imaginary events, reward procedures, and more. It may be considered to introduce fictional time into the Shared Imagined Space. See also the Lumpley Principle.

Lumpley Principle, the -
"System (including but not limited to 'the rules') is defined as the means by which the group agrees to imagined events during play."

Emphasis mine.

System, via mechanics only (a physical process) may in and of itself impart some meaning (frex - 192 pages of rules that focus solely on combat without a paragraph about premise could be construed to indicate that combat is more important that addressing Premise), but that is not the role of system as defined here at The Forge.  I am not arguing that that "system does matter", I am arguing that in Sim the meaning structures within the SIS matter – allot.  Furthermore I am arguing that that in Sim those fictional social meaning structures are the ones we are supposed to be employing, not the ones provided by Gamism via Challenge addressing or Narrativism via Premise addressing.

The process of granting a player credibility is not the same as generating a sign which is then associated with a concept.  These are such completely different things that I am baffled by your arguments.

As you said a CA is motive.  It is also provides a meaning structure.  How else can a person determine if their motives are being satisfied?

The desire for food motivates some of my actions; but the desire for food is nnot a meaning structure.  To procure food, I engage with and interact with others using a meaning system including such signs as "money" and "supermarket" to obtain from others what I need.

You've done nothing here but create a straw man.  I do not know if you did this out of misunderstanding of everything that I have written or that you did this on purpose.  We are discussing ROLEPLAYING (a communications process) not the physical needs of a body.  They are so staggeringly different as to make me wonder why you bothered to compare the two.  In all your arguments you seem to leave out the fact that I am speaking about ROLEPLAYING.  We voluntarily engage in roleplay, we don't voluntarily create a desire for food.  Thus it follows that we engage in roleplay for a reason.  That we voluntarily engage in roleplay implies that we are trying to do something – that we are trying implies desire – we desire to accomplish something.  The model says that reason is expressed at the CA level and can be categorized in three broadly defined general areas.  The model also says that the players seek satisfaction.  Thus it follows that in the process of this specialized ritual communication (roleplay) we are seeking to find meaning in the actions that are transpiring.  How do we know that what we are doing is satisfying?  Because we assign meanings (concepts) to the signs that are being employed.  How do we assign meanings?  By comparing the signs with our internal meaning structures to see what concepts can be assigned and to see if those concepts match with our goals - our goals being the satisfaction of our desires via the employment of signs.  Signs can only be decoded or assigned concepts by existing meaning structures.  CA in the model covers both the goals and the meaning structures.  Narrativism – Story Now – player engagement; process – addressing Premise; meaning structure - Theme.  Gamism – Step on Up – player engagement; process – addressing Challenge, meaning structure - Victory.

It seems to me the value in recognising the similarity between RPG and ritual space lies in the fact that this gives us an opportunity to explore elements of meaning in our own social structures.

The value in recognizing that roleplay as a ritual process is manifold.  Not least of which is giving us the tools do deconstruct what is going when these human beings get together for this particular repast.  Much in the same way the Lumpley principle highlighted the fact that in all actuality mechanics was really a process whereby human beings decide what enters into the SIS, so does the recognition that RPGs are a ritual process highlight that roleplay is a communication process where the intent is to create and manipulate a delimited set of symbols for the purpose of creating new concepts – Victory, Theme, the Dream.

Given that a system is entirely a meaning structure, it can represent other meaning structures for exploration.

You are committing synecdoche here.  Not all systems are meaning structures.  With regards to the Model, system as defined, is not a meaning structure per say, rather it is a process used for distributing credibility, not creating or manipulating meaning.  The Lumpley Principle, aka system, is meaning blind.

In your first paragraph I quoted above, you say that meaning systems are necessarily personal and reside in the human mind; and here you say they are externally objective, impinging symbols. Both are true simultaneously at different levels, and it seems to me you are not clear which level is operational where. Once I have entered into a social contract to adhere to a meaning system it takes on an objectivity and externality because it can be enforced by others, but in our selection of meaning systems we can be entirely subjective and preferential.

I never said that meaning structures were symbols or that meaning structures were externally objective.  I have said that meaning structures are necessarily personal and reside in the human mind, and that symbols were external and could only be interpreted because we had internal meaning structures.  Yes we agree to the meaning structures in roleplay.  Once one has entered the social contract they can become codified and other players can attempt to enforce them, as meaning structures are in ordinary life, but that does not make them external to an individual.  They can never become external.  Meaning structures are memes/concepts.  Signs (language) are the means by which they are attempted to be conveyed.  Nevertheless meaning structures are heavily influenced by the physical parameters that an individual contends with.  This is why Internal Causality soooooo important.  Change IC and you change the meaning structures.

Where I disagree with you is that demonstration is the point, and that therefore this conflict is significant. And if this conflict is not significant, then it must be operational any time the slightest whim is even mildly furstrated. Thus the diagnostic feature of Sim we would so identify is that "the player shows up and plays". And this seems to be wholly useless.

You make the assertion that the slightest whim qualifies as a conflict.  I do not.  For the N'th time please refer to Ralph's description of conflict.  In all your counter arguments you have not used any definition of conflict.  I have.  You have not.  "Slightest whim frustrated" does not meet the definition of conflict – thus "the player shows up and plays" is your second straw man argument.  It misses the point of Chris' essays and my essays.  You offer up a counter argument that doesn't employ all the elements that I am using.  Of course slightest whim will poke holes in my argument because slightest whim does not meet the standards of conflict that I am employing.  Slightest whim frustrated is not a conflict.  Straw man argument.  Pointless.

What does it take to realize the potential Conflict in a situation?

1)   At least one player must be interested in the situation and committed to seeing the situation change.  The engine for that change in most role-playing games is the player's character.

2)   The situation must involve adversity.  The change that the player desires to see occur cannot happen without effort or sacrifice. Typically it is the player's character that experiences the effort or sacrifice.

3)   For a Conflict to be relevant there must be consequences that alter the SiS for both success and failure.  Whatever the outcome, once a Character gets involved, the SiS will be changed.  There must be something at stake.

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?p=130146#130146

I can't see how that can be true. Above we have been discussing the way in which socially expressed meaning systems can be - in a sense must be, to meaningful to this discourse as it happens - external to the individual and able to impose themselves on that individual.

As I have indicated several times, social meaning structures are not external to an individual; they are memes and can only reside within a mind.  Signs are external, they are not social meaning structures.  Nor can social meaning structures impose themselves upon an individual.  Just like the LP, one can attempt to convince/coerce an individual to believe something, but it is entirely up to said individual to accept such a belief despite all attempts both other individuals to force/impose meanings.  The LP says that rules cannot enforce themselves, only the players can attempt that process.  Well the same goes with meaning structures.  Individuals can attempt to inculcate them in others, but it always up to the one being inculcated to accept the new structures or not – especially regarding RPG's – which is the only referent that this thread is dealing with.

The rest of your analysis falls apart because it is based on the erroneous assumption that meaning structures exist outside of minds.  That simply cannot be.  Period.  Signs exist outside of individuals, but not meaning structures.  Also your employment of the word system does not meet the common usage here at the Forge.  Until both are understood it will be impossible for any meaningful dialogue to continue.  There is nothing left to go over.  We have no common referent.

Yes certainly, the player will be obliged to acknowledge "the Dunedainn view of family" or whatever, as a sample of a fictional social meaning system. But what is the basis for thinking the player will be tested on them?

Because he is playing Sim.  Why should he think that he would never be tested?

Therre seem to me to be very few that have addressed social meaning structures as the subject of play, and therefore no reason to think that fictional social meaning structures are significant to Sim.

Just like there were no Narrativist supporting game designs at the time when D&D was published does not mean that Narrativist game interests were not real or significant.  All that means is that no one has yet published a game set which fully promotes Sim priorities, it is not evidence that Sim has been fully understood and exploited.

One of my Sim interests, as seen in the Wilderness threads, is actually representation of physical tasks and techniques.

That particular phrase as presented here says absolutely nothing about CA.  It merely mentions mechanics.

Your argument would make ALL of sim exploration of character, and I don't think this can be true.

That would certainly be one of the logical conclusions.  I am arguing that Sim is the Exploration of Character via/AND his relationship to the rest of the world.  I don't have any problems making that assertion.

But unfrotunately, that falls afoul of my criticism of Ralph's definition of conflict - it looks too much like G and N conflict for me to accept.

Then we cannot come to a consensus.

Firstly, why do you think anyone wants to say anything at all?

Because we are engaged in a ritual dialogue.  Since it is a voluntary ritual dialogue one can only assume that a player is doing so for a reason.  That reason is what informs his dialogue – we call that Creative Agenda.  If you don't subscribe to the idea that roleplay is a ritual discourse then we cannot come to a consensus.

And secondly, why preference "significant" conflicts and fictional SOCIAL meaning systems?

Because those conflicts which are "significant" to a Gamist are Challenge and those conflicts that are "significant" to a Narrativist are Premise and those conflicts which are not "significant" are not engaged and are not recognized as even being conflicts and are thus not "significant".  I say social because meaning systems can only exist in minds.  In roleplay the only other minds are the fictional ones in the Characters.  Definitionally, there can be no meaning structures outside of minds.  Social meaning structures refers to that most meaning structures are socially acculturated.  Refer to Chris' articles again.

Despite having defined sim as a relationship to significant conflict, we still have no diagnostic feature. In the face of a significant conflict, the gamist will engage, the Narratavist will emote and address premise, and the Simmer will go "oh, I see"; Sim will once again be identified by the absence of another CA.

Not so.  A Sim player, as opposed to a tourist player, will engage in conflict.  So that distinguishes that style of play from the non-CA Explorationist.  Regarding diagnosis between G/N and Sim, the Sim play can be diagnoses by Character internal plausibility.  Just like a Gamist/Narrativist instance of play can only be diagnosed when not congruent with other creative agendas, the same is true of Sim.  This is not to say that Sim is the absence of G/N rather that Sim can only be diagnosed, like Gam/Nar, when there is not confusion about what is being addressed.  In Sim that is character plausibility and the plausibility of his actions with regard to his relationship to the rest of the world.  IOW is he playing true (plausible) to his character and his culture and his circumstances?  Remember one of the tells of Gam or Nar is the breaking of that plausibility.  IOW causality is foundational to Sim, but plausibility with regards to the social meaning structures is the metric of the actions.  If the actions break plausibility then the alarms start going off that another CA is being expressed.

[Silmenume]

Hey M. J.,

Sorry to hear about your computer problems.  They always suck big time.  Welcome back.

I also disagree that Sim is an experimental medium.

Perhaps, though, that's what this thread is addressing. I do think that simulationism is fundamentally an experimental medium, in which we are attempting to learn something from play. Sure, gamism and narrativism ask "what if" questions, but they do so to obtain an answer that is used to achieve something else. Simulationism is seeking the answer for the sake of knowing the answer.

Let's take a close look at this statement.  No one has yet established that Sim is devoid of goal.  No one has established that the question asking in Sim is not used to achieve "something else."  That there might be a "something else" in Sim is the one of the very things that is being investigated.  You haven't provided any cogent arguments that demonstrate that given the starting point of ritual discourse (in our specific case Exploration) that a Creative Agenda can function without conflict.

Also the example you give that scientists seek answers for the sake of finding answers denies certain realities about the scientific process.  First of all real human beings are involved who always have motives.  One could argue that "to find the answer" is a motive.  Fine.  However "to find the answer" presupposes a question that we are seeking an answer to.  The person who is asking the question is not indifferent to whether the question is answered or not.  So what is such an individual doing?  Collecting data points or attempting to create a model (rules - inductive logic) to explain some phenomena?   If someone is attempting to create a model it must be tested to determine whether it will hold or fail (conflict).  Such a person at this point is not indifferent to the success of his own model - he is trying to prove something.  Even the Mars or Saturn researchers who appear to just be collecting data points are not doing so just to collect data points for their own sake, that data will be used to prove or debunk existing theories as well as provide data that hopefully will lead to new insights that will be the fodder for new, more accurate and encompassing theories.  Seeking answers is linked to models and goals.  Even collecting raw data about the inorganic physical world requires that those things that are being observed are subject to stresses (tests).  Conversely Darwin didn't sail out on the Beagle just to collect raw data on animals for its own sake; he had something that he was trying to prove.  Even conservationists who collect data on indigenous wildlife populations are doing so with a goal in mind, they are not indifferent to what they find.  If someone is going to great troubles to find something out (seek answers posed by questions) they have a goal which is directing their efforts.  There is always "something else" when seeking the answer of questions.  Note – this does not preclude such goals as discrediting an "enemy" researcher, seeking a government grant, trying to discover something that can be later exploited for private or public gain, etc.

The question then becomes what is that "something else".  That "something else" is deeply rooted in the arena in which the answers are sought.  That arena in which I am referring to is ritual discourse, specifically Roleplay.  The main difference between scientific reductionism and roleplay is that there is no objective world in roleplay there is a shared imaginary space which is mediated by human beings employing a process that at the Forge is called System.  There are no objects.  It is an entirely subjective process (shared imaginary space and an agreement process {note – not a scientific process}) that functions by treating symbols as objects (reification).  The process is no more effective in determining objective truths (seeking answers without proving them in the real world) than the Socratic method.  The only objects that roleplay can be said to make truths available are the only objects that are tested in the process – the players themselves.

So what does that make ritual discourse/roleplay?  A creation process, not a reductionist process.  There is nothing to reduce to – its all imaginary.  We are creating imaginary things leading to the creation of new concepts.  Let me argue by analogy – a disastrous process to be sure, but the only one I have the faculty for at the moment.

Let us treat Exploration akin to the process of baking a cake.  We have several categories of ingredients that we have decided are mandatory and that we are baking cakes.  One class of ingredients could be sweeteners, another could be flour, another shortening, etc.  We have not indicated what exact sweeter to use and in what proportion that sweetener is to be employed other than it need be present.  Even the baking process is open to variety.  Each different set of ingredients, proportions and baking procedure will produce a different style of cake.  The cake is more than the sum of its ingredients due to the baking process.  Roleplay is a similar process – we are making something which is more than the ingredients/elements that are employed.  As such there is no effective way, using the instruments we have available, the elements of Exploration, to determine the effect of a specific element of exploration.  The best we can hope for is to note the difference but that difference is known only by its effect on the cake as whole.  The problem with that process with regards to Exploration is that we can never reset the conditions exactly (or make the differences as close to zero as possible) and thus eliminate the effects of other variables.  Exploration (an entirely subjective process – a product of the imagination) is a lousy place to learn objective (real world) truths.  Again the only thing we can say that we have learned objectively about (possibly) is the other players for they are the only real world things that have been subjected to tests.  Unless some other tool was introduced that was outside the objects being investigated it is impossible to come to some objective understanding.  Exploration cannot be effectively reductionist.

Does that mean "what if" questions cannot be asked?  No.  I stand corrected.  What it means is that those "what if" questions cannot be effectively used to ask questions about the ingredients themselves (the elements of Exploration), but only with reference to the created product itself.  IOW "What will happen to the cake if I do this?"  Conversely one could ask, "Will doing X (changing this ingredient – in quality or quantity) get me what I hope to achieve (Frex - make the cake richer)?" However, unlike cake baking, there is no effective way to go back and ask the same question again objectively in roleplay – it's a one shot every time.  It is thus impossible to determine the exact qualities or the exact effect of an ingredient or the employment of an ingredient (element of exploration).

Yet, one does not pose such questions without looking for something of the players, via their characters, in roleplay.  Do you have what it takes to Step on Up effectively?  Do you have anything meaningful to contribute to this conversation about the peccadilloes and foibles of mankind?  By what means can you effectively function and deal with the problems that exist within this artificial reality (setting – social and physical), while limiting yourself to this artificial point of view (character – psychological and physical)?  As these questions are ultimately pointed to the players these questions are really a test of the players' resourcefulness and character (lower case "c" - as in the qualities of the individual).  Thus if one is playing Tourism (collecting data points) without interest in conflict (no theory creating {induction} and no subsequent testing {deduction}) there is nothing that plain Exploration can provide that just reading about the same setting can provide the player that is qualitatively different.  This is NOT to disparage such play in any way shape or form, but rather to make an observation.

Ah, but in order to get the glory he must overcome the challenge. Thus although the challenge is the necessary foundation for the glory, it is not the sufficient condition. A player would not prove himself if he said, "Look at that giant. I think I'll go back to the inn and have another pint." A player would not prove himself if seeing the giant he charged full bore at him with a handful of darts and was promptly flattened to the ground by the adversary's foot. The challenge is necessary to the glory of the player, but overcoming the challenge through the character is also necessary to the glory of the player. Thus the challenge which faces the character also impedes the player--he must overcome it to get his desired reward.

That a player may fail does not negate the centrality of Challenge to Victory.  Actually it is precisely because a player might fail that glory is awarded should one be Victorious.  The greater the risk, the greater the glory.  No risk = no glory.  A player must face the risk of losing something in a conflict in order for glory to be awarded.  That a player turns away from a risk could imply that he is either prudent or a coward, only the circumstance of the whole situation including player standing at the table (social meaning structures) can answer that question.

A player cannot claim Victory until he has gone through at least one conflict cycle.  Your argument (as I understand it) avers that that conflict keeps the player from Victory.  Definitionally impossible.  If you remove conflict, all conflict, from the process there can NEVER be a Victory because there is no contest (one form of conflict).  In fact, the very definition of Victory is defined by contest.  One cannot use the term Victory without invoking contest.

[list=1][*]Defeat of an enemy or opponent.[*]Success in a struggle against difficulties or an obstacle.[*]The state of having triumphed.[/list:o]The defeat of an enemy in battle, or of an antagonist in any contest; a gaining of the superiority in any struggle or competition; conquest; triumph; -- the opposite of defeat.

Something that is part of the definition of a state of being cannot be removed.  One cannot be in a state of Victory without having grappled through at least one conflict.  Conflict is integral – definitional - to Victory, it simply cannot be oppositional to it.  Thus a player cannot view conflict as being in opposition to his goal of Victory.  It would be a logical conundrum.

Let us bring this back to ritual discourse/Exploration.  As there is no objective reality, we employ signs with an intent to impact the Shared Imaginary Space (with the hope that those signs would eventually be reified – treated as if they were real objects), Victory can only be a concept that we are trying to create.  How are new concepts brought into play?  First one must provide a set of meaning structures prior to Exploration that the player can use as a reference point for the creation of new concepts.  These particular structures are not open to direct alteration/negotiation once Exploration has begun, are made manifest as Creative Agenda and are seen in operation in Techniques and Ephemera.  (They can be renegotiated outside the SIS, but not from within.)  Failings to respect these particular structures from a Gamist priority are seen as CA conflict, Calvin Ball, "Cheating," Wheedling, Wimpiness, etc.  Second by challenging the existing meaning structures employed within the SIS.  Why existing?  Because if no meaning structures were previously extant, the obvious problem would be that it would be impossible to understand any of the signs being employed.  But just as important, the meaning structures provide a degree of predictability regarding actions that are being attempted – internal causality.  Even if nothing has even been entered into the SIS, the person who has the role of DM has a certain amount of authority/credibility to place the initial pieces into place.  This process is made especially overt in games like Universalis, but is more is more or less assumed when the DM just starts with recap of a previous session or begins with description.

...RPG play enacts theory, in the sense that standing behind and prior to play is a series of theoretical constructs: system design, GM notes, pre-play agreements and social contract, genre expectations, and other theoretical tools. From this perspective, RPG play acts out this prior structure...
At the same time, the prior structure is to a degree open to challenge within game play, and furthermore does not fully constrain particular game actions, determining a range and a set of priorities rather than laying out a script.

Nevertheless, these two views are always in dynamic, creative tension: the available range of manipulations of ritual signs stands within a structural context only slightly accessible to interior challenge. For example, radical transformation of Catholic liturgy cannot proceed from within ritual performance itself, while small-scale local transformation and contestation are fully expected.

For example, a particular wedding ritual may be used, at a given moment and in a particular contingent historical situation, to enable deep consideration within the congregation about the traditions of marriage, divorce, and childbirth; these same issues can be discussed by the College of Cardinals, as indeed they are, but not at the level of particular people in particular time, since they can only formulate principles and cannot apply them individually.

Precisely the same dynamic obtains in RPG discourse. While a given structural situation of notes, game system, theoretical models, and so forth formulates a contextual model within which play occurs, such structures do not extend to the level of individual particularity that is central to play experience...

How does this relate to Victory – a theoretical construct that is being employed by the players outside the SIS?  Because a CA provides the contextual model, the meaning structures, that the players employ to make sense of the signs employed with regard to events transpiring within the SIS.  While other elements do contribute to the theoretical constructs (system design, GM notes, pre-play agreements and social contract, genre expectations, and other theoretical tools.) they are all employed by the players to support CA expression.

To get back to how meaning structures promote a degree of predictability consider the following.  If an act was to result in something totally unbounded by the existing meaning structures then we would have no idea how to relate to that result.  It would be meaningless.  We would not be able to relate to it or describe it any meaningful way.  It is precisely because the meaning structures provide some predictability (internal causality within the CA), which implies a certain expectation, that a slightly different result from the expected creates a new concept/meaning.  Thus the only way to generate valid/meaningful new concepts is through challenge of the existing structures.  If one was to introduce or generate concepts without the process of challenge to the existing structure, you would get non-sense statements – one would essentially be free associating.  Given Gamism this could be made manifest by a player just declaring Victory and being done with it without having faced a Challenge and satisfying the theoretical structures - CA.

Where does that leave us regarding Sim?  It would appear that the Sim CA does not have a CA based theoretical construct/meaning structures.  That is not so.  Sim tells us to adopt (not necessarily identify with) the meaning structures of the fictional world - which are informed by the physical setting but are made manifest as the fictional cultures, mores and other social structures.  This is precisely why Sim is both creating the Dream and conflated with Exploration.  Exploration, like the Lumpley Principle, is concept/meaning blind.  It is merely the process by which elements (percepts/objects) are introduced into the SIS.  Whereas the LP mediates how that happens, Exploration encompasses the elements that are employed.  Creative Agendas are concerned with concepts.  CA's are the expressions of the goals that the players are trying to accomplish as well as providing structure and meaning (including the point) to the Exploration process.  Concepts require conflict in order to be created.  Thus the Sim CA, in order to create new concepts, must include conflict or it is not a Creative Agenda.  This is the absolute difference between Exploration and Simulationism.

The question then becomes, what concepts are created in the Sim CA?  While in Gamism one addresses many Challenges and their effectiveness is measured in terms of Victory, and while in Narrativism one addresses a couple or one premise and their effectiveness in commenting on the human social condition is put to the test, in Simulationism one address conflict not for any specific goal, but to create more concepts which define, expand and support the Dream which is itself a meaning structure.  Do not be fooled into thinking that meaning structures are objects, rather they are the very means by which reality is understood – the are points of view.  As more structures are created via the address of conflict, the more of The Dream that is manufactured during play.  Thus Sim is the creation of more Dream (meaning structures/concepts), not the understanding of its constituent components.  The Dream and fictional meaning structures are identical.  The Dream is not just something it is a different point of view – it a different way of looking at reality.

What is at risk personally when a player faces conflict?  The loss of that which is important to the player regarding the SIS – whatever that might be.  An NPC.  The player's Character.  Shame from his tribe.  Treachery to his government.  Loyalty to his friend.  His own self-respect.  What is being measured socially?  His ability to steward the Dream.

[contracycle]

Here's your first error. You are conflating meaning structures which can only exist in the mind (concepts), and signs which are always external, (we are referring to a type of dialogue here - roleplay) employed to evoke a certain concept in a recipient – which is by no means guaranteed.

And I assert your error is to see them as distinct; signs do not emerge from a vacuum or ex machina, but necessarily from human action in an objective world, that is, they are expressions of concepts.

The externality of the symbols was always part of the argument. Your argument that the material objects inherently contain no objective meaning is what I have been arguing and that is why I have proposed that CA's do help provide some of that subject meaning.

I don't dispute that – but I have asked repeatedly for you to explain what you mean by meaning in this context, and why the CA's are not already sufficient to explain this meaning and thus why this argument needs to be introduced.

You being a little disingenuous with your assertion. System with regards to roleplay and The Forge is a means of distributing credibility.

I'm not being disingenuous at all.  Would you care to offer a counter argument or are you simply going to rely on repeititive assertion to carry the point?

System, via mechanics only (a physical process)

How can mechanics possibly be a physical process ONLY when it and its meanings exist primarily in the minds of the players?

I am not arguing that that "system does matter", I am arguing that in Sim the meaning structures within the SIS matter – allot. Furthermore I am arguing that that in Sim those fictional social meaning structures are the ones we are supposed to be employing, not the ones provided by Gamism via Challenge addressing or Narrativism via Premise addressing.

I'm well aware of what you are arguing and I'm trying not to simply repeat myself as to why I think you are mistaken.  I can only tell you: this does not accord with my experience.  Can you please give examples, from your experience or from that of others, that show what leads you to this conclusion?

At the moment it seems to me that you have erroneously derived this conclusion from a mis-application of the ritual theory argument; do you have reason to believe that this is an actually existing phenomenon in the real world, and can you point to instances or products that reflect this actually happening?

The process of granting a player credibility is not the same as generating a sign which is then associated with a concept. These are such completely different things that I am baffled by your arguments.

So you assert – again.  Can you please provide a reason for this?  I have already suggested that the system of character creation explicitly creates externalised signs (numbers on a sheet) that are  associated with concepts (an understanding of this ability).  

You've done nothing here but create a straw man. I do not know if you did this out of misunderstanding of everything that I have written or that you did this on purpose. We are discussing ROLEPLAYING (a communications process) not the physical needs of a body. They are so staggeringly different as to make me wonder why you bothered to compare the two.

To demonstrate that motive is not method.  I may have had a physical need, but I can resolve that need through resort to a communications process.  The identification of RPG as a ritual process does not make it distinct from other ritualised processes with which we routinely engage, and does not imply that it should be directed to different ends.

We voluntarily engage in roleplay, we don't voluntarily create a desire for food. Thus it follows that we engage in roleplay for a reason.

That seems to me main issue I have with your argument – your apparent elevation of RPG to higher plane of "meaning" when none such seems required to me.  This is why I have repeatedly asked you to explain what you mean by meaning in this context, and why I have given examples in which ritualised structures are used for essentially mundane purposes.

The value in recognizing that roleplay as a ritual process is manifold. Not least of which is giving us the tools do deconstruct what is going when these human beings get together for this particular repast. Much in the same way the Lumpley principle highlighted the fact that in all actuality mechanics was really a process whereby human beings decide what enters into the SIS, so does the recognition that RPGs are a ritual process highlight that roleplay is a communication process where the intent is to create and manipulate a delimited set of symbols for the purpose of creating new concepts – Victory, Theme, the Dream.

But, my argument is that you are essentially restating the principle, except in much more specific and less accessible jargon.  When you say "a delimited set of symbols" I hear "use system", and when you say "create new concepts" I hear "exhibit CA".  Thus, I see no value in this analaysis, and I believe it misconstrues the ritual nature of RPG in the first place by wrongly assuming that because it is ritualised it must be about something more fundamental than CA.

You are committing synecdoche here. Not all systems are meaning structures. With regards to the Model, system as defined, is not a meaning structure per say, rather it is a process used for distributing credibility, not creating or manipulating meaning. The Lumpley Principle, aka system, is meaning blind.

No, system must be a meaning structure; it represents signs that have meanings.  It seems to me you are making the error of using meaning to indicate "ethically or emotionally significant", which is NOT implied by the ritual theory argument.  This would be much clarified if you could give specific examples of the kind of "meanings" you think ritual RPG discourse" is used to produce or address.

I never said that meaning structures were symbols or that meaning structures were externally objective. I have said that meaning structures are necessarily personal and reside in the human mind, and that symbols were external and could only be interpreted because we had internal meaning structures.

Does the traffic code qualify?  A green light indicates something specific; it is an external symbol that is only comprehensible to someone familiar with the social convention of the meaning of a green light.  If you were not appropriately enculturated, this sign would be meaningless to you.

The fact that it occurs only within the human mind does not alleviate the fact that BECAUSE it occurs in the minds of others, and those others are capable of acting upon us, they can and do confront us as externalities.

Yes we agree to the meaning structures in roleplay. Once one has entered the social contract they can become codified and other players can attempt to enforce them, as meaning structures are in ordinary life, but that does not make them external to an individual.

And in real life, I may not have endangered anyone by exceeding a 30mph speed limit, but my violation of that element of our social contract can make me susceptible to another's enforcement of that contract through a fine.  In RPG, they are enforced through the distribution of credibility through system.

You make the assertion that the slightest whim qualifies as a conflict. I do not. For the N'th time please refer to Ralph's description of conflict. In all your counter arguments you have not used any definition of conflict. I have. You have not. "Slightest whim frustrated" does not meet the definition of conflict – thus "the player shows up and plays" is your second straw man argument.

Firstly, you cannot use an argument I disagree with as support for another argument I disagree with.  Secondly, I have already pointed out the inadequacies of both your and Ralph's argument about conflict as I see it.  Of course I have not proposed a definition of conflict, because I am not the one claiming that conflict is central and necessary.  I fully agree that slightest whim frustrated does NOT make for a meaningful use of the term, and that is exactly why to my mind the argument to conflict fails.

It misses the point of Chris' essays and my essays. You offer up a counter argument that doesn't employ all the elements that I am using. Of course slightest whim will poke holes in my argument because slightest whim does not meet the standards of conflict that I am employing. Slightest whim frustrated is not a conflict. Straw man argument. Pointless.

Not at all pointless, because if it then obliges you to move on to "significant conflict", whereupon you fall afoul of my second criticism: significant conflict looks too much like gamism or narratavism for me to accept.  Neither you nor Ralph have successfully dealt with these criticisms; waving the term "conflict" about by itself demonstrates nothing.

It is my contention that any time one of your "significant conflicts" appears, the response to it will be either gam or narr not sim.  Can you propose a significant conflict that is definitely sim and can only be responded to by sim, or to which a gam or narr response would be inappropriate?

As I have indicated several times, social meaning structures are not external to an individual; they are memes and can only reside within a mind.

That abstraction's too fluffy – to me, a mind is an entirely physical entity, and so to say it "resides in the mind" is only to say it is an alien physical entity.

Signs are external, they are not social meaning structures.

I say nonsense, as I have indicated with the traffic code, with currency: signs are inherently only meaningful as a communication process between individuals.  They are necessarily social and cannot be anything else.  As I often remark, if this were not the case, the fact that most people share the religion of their parents would be inexplicable.  The fact that you speak the same language as the people you grow up with would also be inexplicable.  The fact that you and the grocer both share an understanding of the dollar note would be inexplicable.  Meaning systems are social or nothing at all.

The rest of your analysis falls apart because it is based on the erroneous assumption that meaning structures exist outside of minds. That simply cannot be. Period. Signs exist outside of individuals, but not meaning structures.

Yes we have a fundamental disagreement there.  It also seems to me this contradicts your own argument at multiple points – at the very least, there cannot be communication if meaning is not shared, and yet you claim that RPG is a communication process.  The same applies to all aspects of the ritual theory as I see it; it must proceed on the presumption that the participants do all share the same set of signs and conventions and referrants for the ritual to be meaning-full.  It seems to me that you are confusing meaning SYSTEMS with private ethics and morals.  But all societies do educate their children in ethics and morals, and these cultural meaning systems are definitely external to the individual.

Because he is playing Sim. Why should he think that he would never be tested?

This in response to the proposition of a character held to the nominal "fictional meaning structure" that is "the dunedain view of family".

What is it about Sim that elads you to expect that "the dunedain view of family" will ever arise in play?  Or indeed, ANY fictional meaning structure?

The reason I think it is quite plausible that such a player will never be tested is because in my experience RPG as a hobby is singularly uninterested in such things.  That is why we ended up with the absurdity of the corner magicke shoppe or the ridiculously postmodern multicultural polyglot of Waterdeep.  By default, most sim appears to me to have been simulation of the world, of cause and effect, of physical things, that presents little in the way of ethical or moral problems.  It very seldom even addresses simulation of social problems.  So I see no basis for thinking this is a prominent, inherent quality of sim play; in my experience, it simply does not happen.

WHEN that happens, I would expect it's likely to be Narr.  Therefore I ask again: what is the reason you have for thinking that in actual sim play, play will be purposefully directed to explore "the dunedain view of family" or any other meaning system that nominally exists in the game world?

That particular phrase as presented here says absolutely nothing about CA. It merely mentions mechanics.

Right. You'll note a gamist sub-CA is Purist for System, so mechanics are not beyond exploration nor beyond CA.  But you are mistaken I think to see this interest as an interest primarily in mechanics – I want to learn about the things in the game THROUGH the mechanics.  Why is that not a suitable expression of a CA?

Because we are engaged in a ritual dialogue. Since it is a voluntary ritual dialogue one can only assume that a player is doing so for a reason. That reason is what informs his dialogue – we call that Creative Agenda. If you don't subscribe to the idea that roleplay is a ritual discourse then we cannot come to a consensus.

But Sil, you are conceding my point here: all your verbiage about meaning is reduced to the expression of a CA, which we already know.  That's why I don't understand what point this is supposed to achieve.  And I do agree that RPG is a ritualised discourse but think you misunderstand much of what this indicates.

But you still have not answered the question I asked, to whit, why do we think the player has something to say?  There are many rituals in the majority of participants are essentially observers or functionaries; why do you insist that participating is indicative of a desire to make a statement?  That seems to have no basis.  You are ruling out the participationary role peremptorily and not explaining why this should occur.

And secondly, why preference "significant" conflicts and fictional SOCIAL meaning systems?

Because those conflicts which are "significant" to a Gamist are Challenge and those conflicts that are "significant" to a Narrativist are Premise and those conflicts which are not "significant" are not engaged and are not recognized as even being conflicts and are thus not "significant".[qupte]

I'm afraid this is totally circular.  I'm aware that non-significant conflicts are non-significant, that's why I asked the question.  Why does your construction place special emphasis on significant conflicts?  That appears to have no basis either, at least none that I can see without calling on Narr or Gam to explain "significant".

I say social because meaning systems can only exist in minds.  In roleplay the only other minds are the fictional ones in the Characters. Definitionally, there can be no meaning structures outside of minds. Social meaning structures refers to that most meaning structures are socially acculturated.

There I believe is your multiple level error.  There are no character minds – characters do not exist.  There are only player minds.  Any meaning systems must exist in those player minds, not in the notional character minds.  It seems to me that you are imagining a ritual within a ritual.

And, above you once again explicitly denied that meaning systems can be imposed on individuals, and here you acknowledge again that you can indeed be acculturated to social meaning systems – like the meaning systems of currency of traffic.

Not so. A Sim player, as opposed to a tourist player, will engage in conflict.

You are arguing your conclusion again.  This has not been demonstrated at all; in fact I don't even think the argument for it is coherent or sensible.  Certainly as a simple assertion, it's unacceptable; it reduces the dialogue to "T'is/T'isn't".

[M. J. Young]

In regard to Darwin, it is my understanding that the trip on the Beagle was for other purposes. Much like Paul Bettany's doctor in Master and Commander, Darwin was a functional member of the crew who took notes and created drawings of fauna and flora on the islands; it was from these data points that he subsequently derived the theory which explained them. He didn't start with the question and look for the answer. He started with a questioning attitude, gathered as much information as possible, and then realized he had an answer amidst what he had gathered.

That I think says something to understanding simulationism. Perhaps we are attempting to create and test theories. But what is that other than achieving a greater understanding of the data? We seek to discover for discovery's sake.

I found the more recent version of The Time Machine disappointing for a lot of reasons (detailed http://www.mjyoung.net/time/machine.html">elsewhere). High among these (and cause of many of them) was the restructuring of the character of Alexander Hartdegen. In the film, he is a shy romantically involved but distracted professor who devotes himself to time travel specifically to find a way to change the past and save his fiancee. In the book, he is another of the wealthy tinkerers, the independent scientist-inventors that captivated the imagination of the nineteenth century audience. In the book he needs no better reason for his adventure in time than the pursuit of knowledge. He travels to the future (and never to the past, save only to return to his own starting point before again venturing into the future near the end of the story), solely to learn what the future will reveal. He is driven into his adventures by the desire to know. He theorizes about the causes of that which he discovers, but the theories are rather a way of organizing the information so that he understands it better than the objective of the investigation.

It is clear from spot interviews that the filmmakers made this change intentionally. They believed that the modern audience would be unable to relate to the story of a man who acted solely for the sake of gaining knowledge. That's not the twentieth century mind. We had to be given a reason for him to care about time travel; doing it in the pursuit of knowledge was not sufficient or believable for the modern audience.

I feel like you're representing the modern audience here, Jay. You can't accept that Hartdegen built the time machine solely so that he could learn what was going to happen in the future, or that Frankenstein created his monster to see whether he could, or any of the other heroes of science and invention of that age. Nor can you believe that anyone would play a role playing game solely to learn about the elements of exploration--to cross the road to get to the other side, to go over the mountain to see what he could see, to play solely for the joy of discovery. Certainly discovering and creating theories to explain what is discovered adds to that; but in the end those are just that which is discovered, taken to a greater level. I'm reminded that when I was exploring NagaWorld, I determined that the yellow nagas were yellow because at some point in their development they had been exposed to sulfur, a mineral element I had not yet found. I began searching for the sulfur. I never found it; I didn't learn where it was until much later, when I helped E. R. Jones put the world to paper. I found many other things in the process of searching, and developed additional theories to explain the world in which I was stranded. It would have been satisfying to find the source of the sulfur, but it was equally satisfying to find what I did find, and understand secrets of that universe that no one before me had learned. Discovery may lead to theories and models, but these only illustrate what is meant by such phrases as "exploration squared"--exploring for the purpose of understanding.

The problem with that process with regards to Exploration is that we can never reset the conditions exactly (or make the differences as close to zero as possible) and thus eliminate the effects of other variables.

I'm surprised that you've never run the same scenario twice, unaltered. I've done it. I've even done it with overlapping player groups introducing new characters (that is, some of the players were the same, but none of the characters), and observed the impact that different characters and some new players had on how the game ran.

I'd say that my experience falsifies this. We got very close to reset, even with many of the same people involved.

...Thus the challenge which faces the character also impedes the player--he must overcome it to get his desired reward.

That a player may fail does not negate the centrality of Challenge to Victory....

Your argument (as I understand it) avers that that conflict keeps the player from Victory.  Definitionally impossible.

I'm sorry; I used the word "impedes". That's something less, in my understanding, than "prevents". I think we're in a terminological misunderstanding. It may well be that the challenge facing the character and that facing the player are not identical (the character must defeat the giant with his sword, while the player must do so with his brain), but glory is dependent on the player overcoming the challenge. If the challenge is not an impediment to the player, then the player has nothing to overcome, and overcomes nothing, and wins no glory for doing so. It's a bit like betting on those electric horse race games--the winner is completely random, so there's no reason to congratulate you if you bet on the winning horse because you didn't really do anything. In the case of gamist play, the player did something to overcome some obstacle. That was an obstacle, an impediment, to the player. If it wasn't, he didn't do anything impressive, and he gets no glory for it.

If you thought I meant that the impediment prevented success, you misread me. The impediment gives the player, in your words, something to "struggle against". Without that, you don't have victory.

Like Gareth, I don't see what this is getting us.

--M. J. Young

[Silmenume]

We voluntarily engage in roleplay, we don't voluntarily create a desire for food. Thus it follows that we engage in roleplay for a reason.

That seems to me main issue I have with your argument – your apparent elevation of RPG to higher plane of "meaning" when none such seems required to me.  This is why I have repeatedly asked you to explain what you mean by meaning in this context, and why I have given examples in which ritualised structures are used for essentially mundane purposes.

OK – I am glad you phrased your comment this way, as I can now see where at least one of our miscommunications lie.  I thought it felt that we were talking past each other, now I see that we were.  Let me try and see if explain myself more effectively now.  Thank you for sticking to your guns and trying to get at an understanding.

By "meaning" I am neither attempting to denote nor connote a higher plane of "meaning."  I do not mean profound or epiphanic or the like.  Rather, because the whole process of roleplay is one big communication/dialogue process, what we are attempting to do is create meanings aka concepts.  I see where my usage could be confusing so let me set up a usage paradigm that may help clarify matters.  We reference common (to the players engaging in play) meaning structures (hopefully ironed out in the social contract) and employ signs (explore) to attempt to create the desired (creative agenda driven and referenced) concepts.  The product of roleplay is concepts.

This begs the question of what a concept is.  I will quote the following since this source is common and states matters better than I can ever hope.  Beyond that we get into epistemological arguments which I have neither skill nor desire to delve into.

[list=1][*]A general idea derived or inferred from specific instances or occurrences.[*]Something formed in the mind; a thought or notion. See Synonyms at idea.[/list:o]Synonyms: idea, thought, notion, concept, conception
These nouns refer to what is formed or represented in the mind as the product of mental activity. Idea has the widest range: "Human history is in essence a history of ideas" (H.G. Wells). Thought is distinctively intellectual and stresses contemplation and reasoning: "Language is the dress of thought" (Samuel Johnson). Notion often refers to a vague, general, or even fanciful idea: "She certainly has some notion of drawing" (Rudyard Kipling). Concept and conception are applied to mental formulations on a broad scale...

Underlining by me.

Let me know if that helps regarding concept and my poor usage of the word "meaning".  I have a feeling you will balk even at this level wishing a concrete example of this concept creation process in rich detail.  I cannot offer that in rich detail yet as I am still working out the process even until this moment.  But generally speaking I refer to the ritual conversation that produces concepts such as victory or success or loss or premise or theme or in the case of Sim, treachery, selflessness, or more externally "this is definitive of Elf behavior", or "this is definitive of Dunedain behavior", etc.

Regarding your examples of mundane usage of ritualized structures for mundane purposes I don't believe your examples were indicative of the ritualization process.  The term ritualized structures is confusing.  Strictly speaking there are no ritualized structures as things that are self-evidentially ritualistic.  IOW just asking for an orange is not self-evidentially ritualistic.  Ritual is a process demarked by the process of separation and aggregation.  Your examples never discussed that process so I missed them entirely as examples of ritual.  The key about ritual is that the ritual structures are not inherently different from ordinary structures – that is why we need the process of separation and aggregation.  This process of separation/aggregation informs us that we are going to be employing new meaning structures that attach new concepts to symbols which will then be manipulated.  This can only happen if we have been through the ritualizing process of separation.

If you recall, in the ritual article I talked about the old initiation-rite model, made most famous by Victor W. Turner: Separation, Liminality (or Margin), Aggregation. This is really a specific version of an older division: the Sacred and the Profane (on which see Durkheim especially, but also Eliade's book of the same title).² The idea is that "ritual space" and "ritual time" are in some sense different, distinct from other kinds of space and time. Now that notion of "sacred" shouldn't be taken to mean "holy" — as A. R. Radcliffe-Brown pointed out, it really just means "marked" by special interest; Lévi-Strauss drew an analogy to terms that are "stressed" in language.³...

So back to RPG's, what does this mean? Well, it means that from an exterior standpoint, there isn't any absolute way to define "play" as something inherently different from other modes of behavior. This is why, for example, nobody has yet come up with a workable and fully accepted definition of RPG's or "play": there's nothing there to define! ...This is because "play" isn't a thing: it's just practice, like all other practice. Why do we think of it as different? Ritualization. That's precisely what makes RPG gaming fundamentally ritual action: we are quite deeply invested in the idea that such practice is distinctive and different, and are even willing to go to considerable lengths to prove this.

...Given that there is no inherent ontological status to ritual or gaming (or text, quite importantly, or to take another example, law), that is, there is no absolute difference between these things and other modes of practice, why do we see them as so different? Furthermore, how do we keep them distinct and discrete, to such a degree that in fact we will stake identities and other things on this dubious basis? ...

A couple posts back in this thread, I talked about semiotic logic, and a circularity that arises when you move from Aabduction to Induction.  Let me recap for a sec:

Abduction: Given a Rule (x -> y) and a Result (y), we Abduce a Case (x)
Induction: Given a Case (x) and a Result (y), we Induce a Rule (x -> y)[/list:u]Now this becomes circular if done in this order, because:

Abduction: Given a -> b and b, therefore

a
Induction: Given a and c (some other present factor), therefore a -> c
But we've never actually established certainly that a is actually true.  We now have a rule that associates an uncertain Case with a potentially random, unrelated fact about the current example.[/list:u]The thing is, we're not stupid.  We recognize, not exactly consciously perhaps, that this logic is dubious.  So what we do is go look for d, e, f, and g – further factors that occur in the present instance.  If we get lots of these, we feel justified about our logic, although it's totally invalid.

Ritual is a specialized process of sign manipulation for the process of transmitting/communicating concepts.  It is inherently not mundane in the sense that the ritualization process of separation/aggregation is invoked for the specific purpose of marking the time as not mundane but special.  To an outside observer it doesn't appear to be special yet to those who do accept the process, it is special.  Again, it is only because the participants voluntarily agree to participate.  What this means is that there are no ontological ritualized structures that can be identified as such unless one has been through or witnessed the actual process of separation.  IOW asking for an orange because one is hungry is not a ritualized structure because one has not gone through the process of ritualization.  I did not respond to you examples because they are not examples of ritual and thus I did not recognize them as such – at least not as indicated in your posts.

Yes we have a fundamental disagreement there.  It also seems to me this contradicts your own argument at multiple points – at the very least, there cannot be communication if meaning is not shared, and yet you claim that RPG is a communication process.  The same applies to all aspects of the ritual theory as I see it; it must proceed on the presumption that the participants do all share the same set of signs and conventions and referrants for the ritual to be meaning-full.

I am not sure where the problem lies.  I have been arguing that very point.  As Chris points out, a sign (symbol) means something to somebody.  Unless you have a somebody involved in the process you cannot have signs or symbols.  A sign is only a sign because a sentient being recognizes that object as sign – i.e., assigns a meaning to that object.  Signs are the physical representation (percepts) of concepts/meaning structures but they are not meaning structures in and of themselves.  They are only effective if others share a similar meaning/concept assignment to the percept.  This is why I have argued that Creative Agenda provides a meaning structure because certain actions that might me meaningful to a Gamist player could be meaningless (or present an entirely different meaning) to a Simulationist or a Narrativist despite the fact that all the players are employing the same mechanics, setting, etc.  Meaning structures are not mutually exclusive and can overlap or even aid each other.  For example, language is a meaning structure in the employ of Creative Agenda.

To go back to an earlier notion, when I said a player is trying to say something, what I meant was that said player was attempting to create a meaning-full concept which is accomplished via dialogue.  That meaning-full concept is what the player is "saying" in our ritualized discourse/roleplay.  We are in agreement here.

It seems to me that you are confusing meaning SYSTEMS with private ethics and morals.

I am saying that ethics and morals are types of meaning systems.  They are employed to try and make sense of signs.  Look at Chris' example regarding a woman wearing a certain type of dress (which is external and physical).

Now when a young woman gets up in the morning, she can opt to dress like this.  Why would she do so?

To look sexy
To piss off more conservative people
To fit in with a desired crowd
To show off her body
To show that she feels sexy
To show that she feels free about her body[/list:u]And all of these might be true, simultaneously, or only some, or possibly others.

Now in a loose, simple sense, showing off your underpants has something to do with sex.  If a rather conservative person were to characterize the style, he or she might call it "slutty," meaning that in some sense it implies the young woman's sexual availability.

The conservative person employing a different meaning structure than the girl employed, in this case conservative morals, could possibly read the sign (the style of dress) as effort to communicate a message/meaning/concept that the interpretant characterized as "slutty".  This conflict of meanings/concepts is similar to CA conflict.  Though both parties referring to the same sign (percept), two different meanings/concepts are interpreted.  Signs can be employed, among other efforts, to try and communicate meaning structures – written and spoken language for example, but they are not inherently a meaning structure though the two are intimately bound together.

The social world is made up of an extraordinary number of intertwined structures, slowly shifting over time as people use them in different ways and for different purposes. Everything from language to basic orientations, social relations and personal goals, is made up of such structures.

This is the social theory of knowledge, which really begins with Durkheim. The old fight was between the a priorists, e.g. Kant and his followers, and the empiricists, e.g. Hume and his various types of followers-up. Durkheim proposed the encounter with "savage" tribes as a way to challenge both views and propose a social theory.

Very simplistically, the a priorists argued that most major categories of human knowledge arose from inherent, hard-wired, a priori structures of the mind. The problem posed by "savages" is this: if it's hard-wired, how come there are so many radically different views of things like time, space, and so forth?

Similarly simplistically, the empiricists argued that major categories arose from contact with empirical reality; that is, you encounter real things and you come up with your ideas in reaction. The problem posed by "savages" is this: if it's all empirical reaction, how come people agree about so much?

In short, Durkheim argued that the a priorists and the empiricists had proposed radical alternatives, but that real people live in between. They have categorical notions sort of semi-embedded, and they encounter real things and think about them, but most of all and most importantly, they are told what to think by their cultures. If this seems obvious, that's because Durkheim was so devastatingly important: he was pretty much the first to argue this perspective effectively, and one of the engineers of the "culture" concept.

So given that, we see that there are a bunch of structures in place in our heads, arising primarily from social cues. Whenever one acts,[1] one therefore manipulates structures already in place.

Hence my assertions that meaning structures exist only in our heads and that meaning structures are selfsame as signs.  For an object to be categorized as a sign requires the object, an interpretant – a person, and meaning structures that exist in the head of the interpretant to make sense of the object thus indeed validating the object as a sign.  To answer another question of yours, the above quote is why I use the term social meaning structures.  Perhaps you find it redundant?  Maybe.  I did want to emphasize that which Chris emphasized, that it is because of the socially cued meaning structures that we make sense of the world and can communicate effectively.  Meaning structures are a construct of a mind, not some inherent quality of a thing that exists outside of a mind.

I'm afraid this is totally circular.  I'm aware that non-significant conflicts are non-significant, that's why I asked the question.  Why does your construction place special emphasis on significant conflicts?

OK – again there is a vocabulary issue here.  Perhaps a more effective phrasing would be such – "Because those situations which are "significant" to a Gamist are identified as an opportunity to address Challenge (an opportunity to engage in conflict) and those situations that are "significant" to a Narrativist are identified as an opportunity to address Premise (an opportunity to engage in conflict) while those situations which are not identified as "significant" are not recognized at all as opportunities to engage in conflict.

So I should use the phrase "significant" situations instead.  A situation that allows for a conflict that supports a player's expression of his CA is a situation that is "significant".  The point here, that seems to have been missed, is that in all CA's players seek "significant" situations so that they can engage in a relevant conflict cycle.

I say social because meaning systems can only exist in minds.  In roleplay the only other minds are the fictional ones in the Characters. Definitionally, there can be no meaning structures outside of minds. Social meaning structures refers to that most meaning structures are socially acculturated.

There I believe is your multiple level error.  There are no character minds – characters do not exist.  There are only player minds.  Any meaning systems must exist in those player minds, not in the notional character minds.  It seems to me that you are imagining a ritual within a ritual.

You are correct in that there are no real character minds.  However as roleplay/ritual is a reification process where statements are treated as if they were real and that players are assumed to be running sentient beings as if they were real its not unreasonable to consider (not necessarily identify with) the fictional thought processes (the mind and the fictional meaning structures it has in place) of the fictional character.  The question what would my character do, in Sim, is to attempt to step into the fictional meaning structures that fictionally exist in that fictional mind.  Note the liberal sprinkling of fictional.  Yes, they aren't objectively "real", but they are treated if they were "real" (as if they were objectively real – which is what ritual does – treats statements as if they were objects.)

And, above you once again explicitly denied that meaning systems can be imposed on individuals, and here you acknowledge again that you can indeed be acculturated to social meaning systems – like the meaning systems of currency of traffic.

There is no contradiction in what I have said.  Analogously I refer to the old adage, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink."  I maintain my position that a person cannot be forced to adopt new meaning systems if they so choose to not cooperate.  The person being acculturated must cooperate in the process or it will not take.  A person may be coerced thus possibly increasing the likelihood of cooperating in the acculturation efforts, but it cannot be a one-sided effort.  I do not deny that a person may employ coercion (impose) upon an individual in an attempt to forcibly acculturate another, but that does not mean that said social meanings systems can made to be accepted by the victim's mind against the will of said mind.  Said will can be worn down or broken over time, but all that means is that the victim stops opposing and starts to cooperate in the acculturation efforts.  Again as was demonstrated in the quote from Chris' essay above, currency and traffic lights are signs employed in an attempt to convey concepts/meanings, but they are not meaning structures, as meaning structures can only exist within a mind.  We can attempt to enforce adherence (alteration of behavior in others) to those structures, but that process will employ signs and other physical methods, but the meaning structures themselves cannot exist outside of minds as things/objects.

I don't know how else to say it.  If you have issues with those notions then I would suggest bringing it up with Chris.  The best I can hope to do is demonstrate that I am using his thesis in a manner which is consistent with his intentions, but if you disagree with the thesis itself then you'll have to take it up with Chris.

Firstly, you cannot use an argument I disagree with as support for another argument I disagree with.  Secondly, I have already pointed out the inadequacies of both your and Ralph's argument about conflict as I see it.  Of course I have not proposed a definition of conflict, because I am not the one claiming that conflict is central and necessary.

I can, I did, and I will.  It may be ineffective in this case, but like the example of dragging a horse to water, there is no way I can force you to accept Ralph's and by extension my definition of conflict no matter how effective one might be created.  Conversely just because you say you don't agree with something means that you can sit back and demand that I have to jump through my own asshole trying to convince you of the merit of my arguments.  We are trying to hash ideas out here; not just firing holes at theories. I was hoping to engage in a dialogue and have ideas offered and challenged.

Not so. A Sim player, as opposed to a tourist player, will engage in conflict.

You are arguing your conclusion again.  This has not been demonstrated at all; in fact I don't even think the argument for it is coherent or sensible.  Certainly as a simple assertion, it's unacceptable; it reduces the dialogue to "T'is/T'isn't".

Perhaps I am arguing my conclusion.  To be honest I'm not sure what that means exactly, but it sounds vaguely legal.  I'll have to ask.  

Regarding tourism, that it has not yet been characterized, how can you argue that any qualities have been demonstrated?  We have to make some assertions and test them to see if they hold up.  The very notion of defining what something is does rest in saying what something is or isn't.  (Narrativism is the process of addressing Premise.)  It does not reduce dialogue as much as offer a starting point for dialogue.  Your complaint that making an attempt to define Tourism as not coherent or sensible does violence to the process of discussing new ideas.  Again you engage in gainsaying and offer nothing constructive in return.  All you have done is stifle any attempt at debate.

Finally I refuse your notion of acceptable behavior as overstepping your authority and will defer that decision to the board's moderator.  You are not protecting the free flow of ideas; you are attempting to protect your ideas under the implied color of authority which you have not been granted.  Under what authority do you declare such an assertion unacceptable?  You have the right to prove it untenable, but to declare it unacceptable is an exercise of power which is not yours to make.

These posts have grown monstrously long as every little detail is picked apart and the main point is lost.  There is too much focus on the trees and not any effort to look at the forest.  I can only blame myself for my verbosity, but as this conversation has degraded into a deconstructive effort than one of constructive engagement, I'm not sure how to continue.  There has been little or no attempt seeing if any common ground on ideas can be had or where we might go from here in the wild mad dash to shoot every sentence full of holes.  Maybe I'm a terrible poster.  Maybe you're not making an effort to the ideas behind the words.  Maybe its both.  However, it is precisely because this has degenerated into a deconstruction fest, not one constructive notion about Sim or roleplay was brought to bear.  What a collosal waste of bandwidth.

Mr. Young, as this is wildly too long as it currently is, I'll answer your post later.  My apologies.

[contracycle]

These posts have grown monstrously long as every little detail is picked apart and the main point is lost.  There is too much focus on the trees and not any effort to look at the forest.  I can only blame myself for my verbosity, but as this conversation has degraded into a deconstructive effort than one of constructive engagement, I'm not sure how to continue.  There has been little or no attempt seeing if any common ground on ideas can be had or where we might go from here in the wild mad dash to shoot every sentence full of holes.  Maybe I'm a terrible poster.  Maybe you're not making an effort to the ideas behind the words.  Maybe its both.  However, it is precisely because this has degenerated into a deconstruction fest, not one constructive notion about Sim or roleplay was brought to bear.  What a collosal waste of bandwidth.

Sil, you've still spent the whole post re-describing ritual process to me.  I find this patronising, not because I assert mastery of the topic of ritual, but becuase you keep citing an article we have both read and feel we comprehend.  Why don;t you give us instead a short scenario decsripotipon of an RPG and discuss what you mean.  Surely you must have some idea how this idea is to be actually applicable.  Then if there is a difference in our perceptions hoepfully it will be clarified and discussion will be able to procede to something more productive.

Asking for an orange because you are hungry is not engagement with a meaning system, no.  Engaging in an exchange with someone in which you part with a number of tokens that are inherently worthless to obtain an orange, however, is.

[clehrich]

Jeepers.

I realize that this thread is probably pretty much dead for the moment, and I'm not going to try get in any "digs" or anything here.  In a few days, when I've had time to read through the whole thread a couple more times -- once is definitely not enough -- I'll either start a new thread or join in on whatever has become of this one.

Just so you know, I think Jay is on to something really important, but I'm not quite sure what it is.  I'm not saying I think he's completely right.  But I do think that this discussion is very important, and some of the most sophisticated thinking I've seen on the Big Model.  I'm flattered to have been indirectly involved in that discussion, but it's most definitely not something I can sort of step in on and say, "No, you got this or that idea of mine wrong, and the answer is X."  This is really hairy.

Which is very cool and exciting!  I'm looking forward to where this all goes from here, and will be participating in it now that I'm back from my summertime coffin.  :>