Narrativism without premise, simulationism without sim?

[Simon Kamber]

I've been trying to identify my own CA for a while. I think I've gotten a handle on most of the GNS terminoligy here, and I can place most of the other players in my group. But the specific aspect of play that I find to be central to my characters, and the type of play I prefer, just doesn't seem to fit anywhere.

I'll try to explain by pulling out a few actual play examples:

In a D&D campaign run by a friend, I am playing an elf bard. During the campaign, his home forest was corrupted by evil (reason as of yet unknown). Here, I told the GM that my character would go in there partly to recover what songs and poems he could, thus keeping the culture he grew up in from being completely lost. At that point, this personal quest of his became quite all-encompassing, leading to several cases of director stance where I placed these bits and pieces to have my character collect them.

In a vampire game that we're about to start, I've created a scientist who is, before his embrace, fully and utterly convinced that "there is no such thing as a vampire". Play hasn't even begun yet, and I'm already envisioning his spiralling into madness in an attempt to figure it out and, even more importantly, make the world conform to the way he views it.


So, the central aspect I'm looking for in a game is some sort of story about the character, sort of like the one found in a novel. I can't really figure out whether that particular CA qualifies as sim, nar or something in between. On one hand, I'm playing for the story. But often I can't identify any involved premise (might be because the GM's in those games definitely aren't running with a narrativistic agenda). On the other hand, the center of the simulationist agenda is supposedly the dream the exists while playing. But that's unimportant to me, what intrigues me is the story, and that story is not confined to the actual roleplaying situation. So could someone help me out here, does this fit into the CA model somewhere, and if so, where?

[ethan_greer]

Be careful about pigeonholing yourself and others into specific CA. CA refers to the reasons behind a single decision made during play. So, technically, a person can't have a Creative Agenda. When you see someone refferred to as having a specific CA, that's a shorthand that means, "This person tends to make decisions in the interests of X Creative Agenda." Likewise, games don't have CA either. A "Narrativist game" is shorthand for, "This game tends to support Narrativist decisions to be made in play."

With that in mind, both of the examples you cite seem to exhibit decisions being made in the interest of Narrativism, specifically character-driven premise. That's my take on it, anyway.

However, that isn't to say that all of your play is Narrativist. In other circumstances in the game with the bard, it is quite possible, perhaps even likely, that you are making decisions from a Simulationist perspective. Perhaps when you're dealing specifically with Character, you tend to favor Nar, but in circumstances relating to Setting, Situation, or Color you tend to go with Sim priorities.

Also, keep in mind that even if you don't know the premise, that doesn't mean you're not addressing it. If decisions you make in play seem satisfying or moving from a thematic standpoint, chances are you're playing Nar at that moment.

Hope that helps.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

I suggest that you are trying to classify aspects of role-playing as Creative Agendas, when these aspects are simply not in that category.

Your example with the elf bard is simply your commitment to Situation, wanting to play a character who is "doing something." That's an Exploration issue. Your specification of Director Stance stuff is an Ephemera issue, itself a subset of Techniques.

Your example with the Vampire character is merely Character, which is an Exploration issue.

Nothing you're posting about these characters or your playing of one of them tells us (or you) anything about Creative Agenda. You're looking in the wrong places.

What I recommend is reading the first page of the Glossary - not to memorize terms, but rather to examine the diagram and to see how Creative Agenda relates to the entire structure. What you're describing are isolated parts of the structure, and leaving out the "unifier" (Creative Agenda) entirely.

You'll see, I hope, that we won't be able to talk about Creative Agenda until we understand what your interpersonal interactions are like during play itself.

Ethan, please try to be less quick about assigning GNS categories to others' descriptions of play. No single concept you posted is incorrect. However, "What GNS that would be like for me" observations about Techniques always lead to red herrings of others chiming in with "Well it could also be" posts. It also leads to someone else later claiming that that particular instance of play was labeled, for everyone and for good, as whatever was claimed. It's an enormous pain in the ass, in some cases lasting for years. It doesn't matter how much you qualify it with "for me" and similar.

Best,
Ron

[ethan_greer]

Hey, good call. Folks, please disregard paragraph 2 in my post above, and take paragraph 3 with a grain of salt.

So, to follow up: If the goal is to get assessment from others on what CA is going on in an instance of play, what sort of information is most useful? Ron, you indicate "interpersonal interactions," but what kinds of things do you mean? Can you give an example or two?

Can an outside assessment of one's CA in an instance of play be obtained?

[Simon Kamber]

Be careful about pigeonholing yourself and others into specific CA.

Actually, I'm primarily trying to place that specific aspect of the way I play into something. It's been nagging me for some time. There's other situations where I'm somewhere else (aforementioned bard has been played quite a lot in Pawn stance due to the game's nature). But since the aspects I mentioned above are the ones that interest me the most about the game, it bothers me that I can't get them to fit into the model because just when I thought I had it figured out, something somewhere contradicts it.

What I recommend is reading the first page of the Glossary - not to memorize terms, but rather to examine the diagram and to see how Creative Agenda relates to the entire structure. What you're describing are isolated parts of the structure, and leaving out the "unifier" (Creative Agenda) entirely.

Sorry, I'll need you to clarify that one a bit. I've looked at that diagram, both before and after this post, but it seems extremely abstract. I can't really relate it to anything.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

All right, Xect, let's see what I can do.

1. Please describe a time during play, let's say with this bard of yours, which really paid off. The moment, or one of them, in which you really felt like playing this guy was worthwhile - you had fun, the group had fun, you knew they were on board with what you were doing, and they really enjoyed whatever it was you did.

2. How did they let you know these things? How, in fact, do members of your group let anyone know anything about how (whether) they are enjoying play?

That'll help us both continue the conversation.

You mentioned you are trying to place certain aspects of play "into something." What do you mean? Classify them into Creative Agenda? I'll tell you straight up, you cannot say something like, "Oh, I used Director Stance, so it must be Narrativist." That makes no sense.

I'm going to keep pressuring you to use the diagram in the Glossary. It is not abstract if you use it properly. To do that, you have to actually insert the details of your play-experience at the appropriate levels. Questions #1 and 2 above, for instance, are aimed at examining your Social Contract and how it might pertain to a Creative Agenda.

You've already provided some things about your contribution to Exploration (e.g. the bard's situation), which is good, and some things about Ephemera (e.g. Stance). That's a little bit. That's fine - but you aren't telling me anything about play as a unit.

Here's what I mean by a "unit" or "instance" of play. Take me through a cycle of concept, adversity, and reward using this character. Show me how you were socially rewarded in playing him, which entails talking about the group as a whole (the real people). Then tell me a bit about how the system may or may not have been involved in that cycle - for example, how leveling-up or EPs in general were utilized in it.

Once we do that, then we can finally say we are looking at "System." Only then would we talk about combinations of Techniques and the flashings in-and-out of Ephemera that are related to that cycle. And then we'd turn back to talking about how the Social Contract is fulfilled by enjoying the Exploration, which in turn is accomplished by using the System, which in turn is composed of Techniques, themselves expressed and composed as Ephemeral events during play. Any unity among you about flowing down that process is the Creative Agenda.

Right now, you're showing me the fingernails, and I'm trying to find the body.

Best,
Ron

[Simon Kamber]

Sorry about taking a while to get back on this. Needed to do some thinking about this one.

1. Please describe a time during play, let's say with this bard of yours, which really paid off. The moment, or one of them, in which you really felt like playing this guy was worthwhile - you had fun, the group had fun, you knew they were on board with what you were doing, and they really enjoyed whatever it was you did.

Personally, the point where I felt playing the bard really paid off was when he set off to do that quest in the forest, collecting these pieces of elven lore. There's been a few returns to this (his recruiting an elf in the forest who'd been inspired by his goal and his music, for instance), where I've pulled out that major aspect of his character. However, it's nothing that affected the gameplay per se, since it was pretty much given that we were going into this forest. But the times where this aspect of the character showed where the times where I got that "whoo, this is interesting" feeling.

As for when the group had fun, that's somewhere completely different. Our GM in that game is reacts on something close to complete gamism/powergaming/whatever. For him, it's a game, it's a matter of winning and losing. And with a game like D&D, and a GM like that, the times where the game has become really involved for the whole group include 100% pawn stance and each character as a row of stats.

But while that sort of play can be interesting, in the "game" sense of the word, it's not what I'm looking for.

2. How did they let you know these things? How, in fact, do members of your group let anyone know anything about how (whether) they are enjoying play?

See, that's a tough one. I'm not even sure about that. For the gamist thing, I can tell it's important to people because we spend time after the game discussing what our characters would be gaining at next level. The story aspect of the game surfaces from time to time, but there's not much sign of it being interesting to other players (which doesn't prevent me from enjoying my attempts to weave it into the game).

You mentioned you are trying to place certain aspects of play "into something." What do you mean? Classify them into Creative Agenda? I'll tell you straight up, you cannot say something like, "Oh, I used Director Stance, so it must be Narrativist." That makes no sense.

I'm getting confused here. What is a creative agenda? It was my impression that the CA was the motive that people had for their decisions during play, and that it was something that could change between different instances of play. Does it apply to individual decisions, with players, and groups having tendencies towards specific CA's, or does it describe play as a whole?

You've already provided some things about your contribution to Exploration (e.g. the bard's situation), which is good, and some things about Ephemera (e.g. Stance). That's a little bit. That's fine - but you aren't telling me anything about play as a unit.

Well, mainly I think I can define the whole unit of play, because it mostly does revolve around the very D&D'ish "you walk down the road, you're assaulted by ogres" pattern. But there's something more to MY experience of the game that I'm trying to figure out and define.

Here's what I mean by a "unit" or "instance" of play. Take me through a cycle of concept, adversity, and reward using this character. Show me how you were socially rewarded in playing him, which entails talking about the group as a whole (the real people). Then tell me a bit about how the system may or may not have been involved in that cycle - for example, how leveling-up or EPs in general were utilized in it.

Actually, when thinking more about it, I remember an instance that probably applies better to describing what I'm looking for in the group experience (since the examples with that specific bard didn't really involve the group further than me just telling them what was going on).

It was a game I was running a while ago, in the danish system "Fusion". The players played detectives in a near future.

The group was roughly the same as the one we're using currently in the above D&D game. We'd been creating the characters that same session, which I usually do by raising a lot of questions about the character's, why they do what they do, how they came to do it and how they relate to each other. "Who is max, how does he act, why does Max contact Anders to ask him to join his detective bureau", for instance, where part of that particular character generation. That created a sort of different group dynamic for this session, leading to other players actually coming with these spontanous outbursts ("Max gets all excited about this, he jumps to the phone, calling everyone and gleefully announcing that they finally got a job").

The bureau had just been started with a previous lawyer, Max, who'd gotten this dream about getting into the private detective business. They were working on a completely different case when they stumbled upon a boot in the sand on the beach, with the foot still in it. Now, Fusion uses this system called "Fate", that probably best described as the the "karma" surrounding the character. When the characters experience something traumatic, they roll to see wether this has an impact on their fate. So, they digged out this body that had been lying in the sand for a month by that time. I didn't get into too much detail about the state of the body. I asked Max' player to roll to determine the impact of digging this body out of the sand, which ended up with a double-six (two negative fate points out of two dice, the worst possible outcome for the character's fate). Laughing, the player exclaimed that this was "far out". Throughout that session, we remarked a lot on how Max had been unable to take his first piece of 'real' detective work. The other character that was present when they dug the corpse out of the sand, Brett, rolled one negative fate point, which caused him to gain a negative "fate trait" (A negative character trait that is added to the character with every three negative fate points). He thought a bit about that, swore and declared that he'd think about specifying that fate trait later. The other two characters, who weren't present at the moment, weren't really affected by the corpse when they saw it. They went on to solve the rest of the mystery throughout the session, and the Brett's player figured out that his character would develop a phobia for corpses.
There wasn't any specific "reward" in the system, in fact, the negative fate was more akin to a penalty. However, I liked the way the event added another layer to this high-class lawyer type who suddenly realized that the job was more real than he appreciated. And judging by the remarks the episode got through the game, it seems the players enjoyed it too.

It's been a while since that game, so I don't remember the details clearly. But it's a far better example of the aspect I like in a game than the more recent ones. It's the same group, but it seems the character-creation that had been taking place sort of changed the social contract of that specific session. But I'm not completely sure which aspects you're looking for :/

[M. J. Young]

I'm getting confused here. What is a creative agenda? It was my impression that the CA was the motive that people had for their decisions during play, and that it was something that could change between different instances of play. Does it apply to individual decisions, with players, and groups having tendencies towards specific CA's, or does it describe play as a whole?

Permit me to presume to address this.

One of the problems with understanding Creative Agenda might be described as being at the right "distance" from the events. What I mean is, not every decision made during play reveals the player's agendum, but at the same time it isn't necessarily the case that the player will have had the same agendum in every game over twenty years. Some people are rather consistent in their agendum, playing for the same kick over many years and many games; others drift, sometimes changing agendum in the middle of a game session, and sometimes doing so more than once.

One way to look at creative agenda (and this might be one of those "say it for yourself" things) is that it is the definition of "fun" during a particular part of play. Some people have a lot of fun doing things that other people find very boring--this is generally true in life. I tell people that one of the most fun summers I ever had was the year I aced the GRE, LSAT, ASFAB, and Mensa tests all in a row. I like taking tests. At the time, there wasn't really anything "at stake" in those, it was just to see how I did, so I sat back and enjoyed the questions, proving myself against the tests. Most people think I'm crazy for that, but I genuinely did enjoy it. Now, the fact that I can say that was fun and others can say I'm crazy means that "fun" comes from different things for different people. The question of the creative agendum is "what is fun for you?" Some people have fun just discovering something interesting, or creating new worlds. Some have fun exploring issues. Some enjoy proving themselves against a challenge, and so winning the admiration of their peers.

If you joined a debating society, would you be more interested in plumbing the depths of the issues debated, or in being the best debater? What appeals to you more about Shakespeare, getting the period costuming and sets exactly right or delving into the issues of the human heart he reveals? There are no right or wrong answers to these questions. They are simply a matter of what is "fun" for you.

Now, if you find a lot of different kinds of things fun, you're probably going to drift more in your play, because when an opportunity arises to have "this kind of fun", you'll go there. If your idea of "fun" is more narrow, or if you have the idea that role playing games are supposed to produce a particular kind of fun and that's why you play them specifically (i.e., you would play something else for a different kind of fun), then your agendum is going to be more stable, in all likelihood.

So the question isn't exactly about individual choices made in play, nor is it necessarily about entire games. It's about "instances of play", some unit of game play during which your play is "about" a particular kind of fun, and what it is that makes that part of the game fun for you at that time.

Does that help at all?

--M. J. Young

[Simon Kamber]

Permit me to presume to address this(...)

Yup, I think I'm getting it now. Thanks.

[jdagna]

I'm still not sure if we have all the right information on any instance of play (since you talked a little bit about several different instances), but I'll venture a guess, and see what you think Xect.

Is it possible that there's some disagreement in the group over CAs?  If you're trying to play Sim, but everyone else in the group is in Gamist mode, then you may in fact be playing Gamist (because that's what gets rewarded), even though you are internally enjoying other things.  It sounds a lot like the situation might be you saying "Hey, I think exploring this character's personality would be really cool," while other people in the group are responding with "Whatever.  Just roll your d20 and see if you can kill the ogre."  In this case, I'd say you're probably playing Gamist most of the time (in terms of what you actually do and what others reinforce), with attempts to go Sim that sound like they generally fizzle when the rest of the group doesn't reward it.

A disconnect like this can make it really hard to diagnose CA preference, especially if you're trying to interpret what's essentially Gamist behavior through the lens of a Sim preference.  But, this could also be Gamist, with emphasis on character-related situations (as opposed to what might be a hard core Gamist in your GM) or even Nar, with a Premise you hope to develop through the character, but you never really get a chance to address it with everyone else doing something different.

Do you see how your examples leave all three possibilities (and more) open as possible explanations?

[Simon Kamber]

If you're trying to play Sim, but everyone else in the group is in Gamist mode, then you may in fact be playing Gamist (because that's what gets rewarded), even though you are internally enjoying other things.  It sounds a lot like the situation might be you saying "Hey, I think exploring this character's personality would be really cool," while other people in the group are responding with "Whatever.  Just roll your d20 and see if you can kill the ogre."  In this case, I'd say you're probably playing Gamist most of the time (in terms of what you actually do and what others reinforce), with attempts to go Sim that sound like they generally fizzle when the rest of the group doesn't reward it.?

That describes most of the D&D sessions pretty well. There's not much of anything but hardcore gamism going on in these games, which drowns most of my attempts. You're probably right that this makes it somewhat difficult to define anything.

I did actually get it to work in that Fusion session though, so it's probably best to go from there.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Fortunately, the last series of posts has led you, xect, to come to the conclusion I reached from your answers to me.

Your group's play is incoherent, most especially because you are involved. "Incoherent" does not mean, in this case, that you are all sitting around making no sense or having no fun. It does mean that you are not, as a group, engaged in satisfying one another's reasons to be there (as M.J. described so well).

So when you ask, "What's my Creative Agenda" (which is exactly the same as asking, am I playing G, N, S, or what combination thereof) ... there's no answer. You are trying to satisfy one or some combination of them. You occasionally succeed. The experience of doing is so fleeting, and so isolated to particular moments rather than to sessions or cycles of reward, that there's not much point in further attempts at definition.

Best,
Ron

[Simon Kamber]

Fortunately, the last series of posts has led you, xect, to come to the conclusion I reached from your answers to me.

Oh well, guess you're right.

Thank you anyway ;)