Ramblings on the role of Mechanics in CA's (fishing)

[M. J. Young]

Of course I'm a big proponent of the Beeg Horseshoe and dont see any problem with nar decisions like this popping up in a sim game.

I'm not at all impressed by the Beeg Horseshoe (apart from the fact that it raises some very intelligent questions), but I don't have any problem with "nar decisions" "popping up" in a "sim game".

The question isn't whether players in a simulationist game ever make moral or ethical decisions for their characters. The question is when those choices appear, do they become the reason for play (narrativism) or are they incidentals that are part of the overall experience of this character's life (simulationism)? We accept just as readily that combat may arise in simulationist play, but not make it gamist--the question is whether the game drifts to being about player skill in combat or treats the combat as another incident in the overall picture.

--M. J. Young

[Silmenume]

Hey M. J.,

While it may be said that all (good) premises are about interesting conflicting claims laid upon a character, not all situations where interesting conflicting claims laid upon a character are Premises.  The claim that all interesting conflicting claims laid upon a character is synecdoche.  This goes all the way back to when I was saying that while conflict is the heartbeat of play, in isolation any given conflict is CA neutral.  It is how the players approach and attend to the conflict which indicates whether this particular conflict is being seen by the players in the light of Challenge, Premise, or Sim opportunity.  You can't just look at the conflict from outside the game and say what CA is contained within.  You have to look and see how the players dealt with it to make a call as to what form that conflict could be categorized into.  Without context you can't make the call.  Conflict is just that, conflict.  The only thing that has a CA identifiable aspect is the players' actions.  IOW there is no such thing as a Premise conflict.  Rather you have a conflict that the players treat as a Premise (or a Challenge or Sim conflict).

Hey Xect,

... the mugger and the mugged, can be described, at least partly, through mechanics.

... you can have the mechanics describe what happens to the society when he does it. What do the norms of the mugger dictate?

The problem is that muggers are individuals who belong and interact within a society first and are muggers second.  This is where class based "sim" games got into so much trouble.  By having mechanics for a "thief" class what happened was the players did not treat their characters as individuals functioning within a society who committed muggings, but rather treated their character's "vocation" as character and context.  Other than the fact that muggers steal from people violently their responses to such a situation as I indicate in my post are going to be as individual as people are.  While it is assumable that most muggers would have antipathy towards a law enforcer such a preconception virtually smothers any possibility of glimpsing the vast sea of human conditions.  What is the nature of the friendship between the cop and the mugger?  I had indicated that they were friends.  To mechanize that relationship between that cop and the friend who had committed a mugging is to deny the player of the cop the opportunity to plumb that very relationship, which is the Sim game action, with any subtlety or complexity.

Hey Chris,

Jay's example was, I thought, about how the police officer is trapped in webs of social meaning not of his own making. What I think Jay is saying is that such social webs are important to the characters, and part of what makes Sim play interesting is watching how characters grapple with these things.

Exactly.  This requires the GM to be as complex and confounding as real people are.  Not only is it interesting to watch how the players grapple with things, it is interesting as a player to work through such difficult situations.

Hey Marco,

Yes, but I think that's pretty implicit to the model. That's one reason why the Beeg Horseshoe theory has a lot of traction.

The problem with the Beeg Horseshoe theory is that it was based on an incorrect understanding of Sim.  If Sim is a mythic process, which is about the construction and manipulation of meaning structures then Sim categorically cannot sit in the middle of the horseshoe.  The best you can get is a pitchfork with Gam and Nar as the tines and Sim as the handle and Zilchplay at the intersection of all three.

I'll say this again and again and it is getting very old saying this – engagement has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with determining which CA is in operation.  Watch any Gamist in the middle of an intense/important Challenge and I sure that you will see and they will tell you they are thoroughly engaged in the Challenge at hand.  I just wish this idea about engagement would die the ugly and ignominious death that it so thoroughly deserves.  If the players weren't engaged then they would not be playing – it's really that simple.

Hey contracycle,

I'll start off by saying that on the whole; we are very much on the same page.  On a number of issues I think we are only a small matter of clarification away from agreement and on the very little that remains we'll go from there.

Now there does not seem to be any reason to not set up such social structures as laws as thing that CANNOT be changed by character action. Part of the exploration of the setting might be exactly the fanaticism with which such structures are maintained. I think that is rather different from the broader case of not writing game mechanics that mandate player action. The law may not be changed by you but you can still 'physically' break it.

I understand what you are saying, and it makes sense.  You are right in that there is a difference between mechanics that mandate player action and those in-game social structures which do "demand" behavioral norms from the characters.  Not only am I fully with you that such demands can have an effect on the player actions, I'm saying that they should/ought have an effect on player actions.  That's the whole point of playing another being from another culture with its own set of social norms.  This is why I keep bringing up the notion of consequences to player actions.  

You're example of –

Now this makes the discussion of mechanism in RPG quite thorny. If I appreciate what you are saying, it is something like this: the setting may have a rule like 'thous shalt not covet they neighbours ox', but if I want my character to covet his neighours ox, that rule should not be interpreted as a mechanism that prevents that coveting as a character action. On the other hand, the social mechanism here is very definitely intended to prevent that coveting from happening in the first place. I think this is where we have previously parted company over whether "social norms" are mutable or immutable. If my character covets an ox that it is unlikely to feed back to the law and cause it to be changed - all its likely to due is to bring down retribution on my characters head.

- is spot on with what I have been trying to get across.  You're right in that such actions are likely to bring down retribution on the characters head.  And in my opinion, such actions given the social climate should stir up such responses.  My point is that as long as sentient beings are involved the response cannot be perfectly uniform.  Conversely if the players do manage to create circumstances in play whereby they overthrow the controlling social structure (government) they should be allowed the freedom to try and change whatever seems appropriate to their character's interests and history.  IOW the players should not be forbidden mechanically from trying such an act.  However, just because the players try to change a social structure (government, body of laws, etc.) does not mean that they can or ought to succeed.  It is all dependent on the local situation.

You're example of the more on theft is a great example.  I'm not arguing that the players should have the authority or capability to outright change such a more, all that I am arguing is that the possibility should be removed utterly by fiat.  The possibility of success could be so remote that for all practical purposes it is impossible, but that is something that should be demonstrated in-game, not forbidden outright for the players to try.  We are entering into tricky realm here, though.  This is where local skills are vitally important and why I think that Sim is so very difficult to pull off.  It is because so many judgment calls need to be made that individual skill is so vital.  Mechanics cannot lead the way – its all aesthetics and local choice on this level.

Certainly two people in an organisation have a relationship that operates on at least two levels - the formal and the informal. Now the formal relationships are properly described as structures IMO, and they often impose themselves on the individual very firmly and an in a manner that implies a completely independent ontological existance. That is, "ignorance is no excuse in the eyes of the law." Now it may be true that the structures power arises only as a result of human action, and it may also be true that the informal relationships between individuals modify the actual execution of those patterns of action and response, but it is still true that the structure exists in some degree, if only as a kind of social contract.[/qutoe]

Your take is, again, spot on.  What I had been trying to say, however poorly, is that how the players respond in relation to such a structure will have some bearing upon it, however miniscule – I did not mean to imply that it will change in a large way or the player will overturn it or have it tossed out.  All I'm saying is that the players can have an effect on how that structure is understood, implemented (or not!).  Frex - "ignorance is no excuse in the eyes of the law" – unless you've saved the Lord's/President's/King's life.  However, even supporting that structure without any intent to undermine at all will alter the nature of that structure just due of the circumstances under which that structure was affirmed and reaffirmed.  Finally suppose the players were responsible for the downfall of that segment of society which enforced that structure?  I'm just saying that change to a social structure is not impossible, even if seemingly unimaginable, and for that reason they should not be codified into a game mechanic.

Finally, I should note that perhaps the reason the players have chosen to play a certain setting might just be because of the social mores implicit in the source material.  All that I am saying is that all that stuff is inherently open to "commentary", as you put it, in Sim.  The key here is that what is or isn't open to challenge is something that is set at the local level, much in the same way that what the Premise question is is set at the local level.  I think many times that decision is made implicitly (one example of this is in the choice of source material) and never really openly articulated.  So let's say the players enjoy playing flawed good guys, and a new player comes to the table who enjoys playing really evil characters.  I don't think that any of the players' predilections can be negotiated – they like playing the way they play (supporting certain social structures).  If the new player does not desire to play flawed good guys then the only recourse is for everyone else to change their desires or for the players to vote with their feet.  All this makes Sim very difficult to run.  Because if one player is supporting one structure as his means of enjoyment and another is tearing down that same structure as his means of enjoyment, you are going to have some serious inter-player conflict.  (I'm getting frustrated because I know that I am only confusing matters more than helping – I hope you can see through my shortcomings and get what I am trying to get at.)

Anyway I would like to extend what I understand of your argument a little further. As corollary to your claim that the player is 'commenting' on the 'rangers of ilithien' simply by choosing to be one, and for there actions to be interpreted in relation to that label, then my claim is further: the 'social structures' with which the players have chosen to engage dictate the true topic of play. If you have a player who is one of these rangers, and another who is the priest of some god, and another who is a renegade ork or whatever, then surely the conduct of play will comment on the relationships between the orks, the rangers, and the church, in various unpredictable ways.

Absolutely!  You haven't extended my point at all, you've just restated it in your own words!  I see Sim something like this:

Character <---> Social Structures <---> The Dream/Source material.

So while our main vehicle of input is the Character in the long run what we are doing is building and expanding upon the Dream.  Thus if one were playing a game in Middle Earth one would likely play character types that more or less reflect the social structures contained with the books that one liked while expanding on them (the social structures) at the same.  IOW the characters reflect the Dream and the Dream is reflected in the characters.  How we play our characters builds the Dream.  The collective Dream effects our choices regarding our characters.  This collective part in important.  If we aren't all on the same page, more or less, on what social structures are being celebrated, which one are open to change and which are essentially closed there is going to be much friction at the table.

In a strange way I think that Character and the Dream are all social structures.  Yes, I understand that the physicality of the world is important and is not a social structure, but the social structures in the world are informed by them and thus are accounted for inherently.  Think of the Freeman in Dune being so adapted to the harsh desert life and how that rang though all their customs and social structures.  In essence the physical world's effects are co-opted into social structures and are thus already accounted for.

I think that what you have identitifed is the underlying cause of some deprotagonisation in sim. I may choose to play a character of type X, but really the game has no need of a type X and my Xness is in fact irrelevant to the course of play. That is unsatisfying. The 'structure' with which the player sought to engage has been removed from the locus of play.

Absolutely!  And all this stuff is worked out on the local level.  Which made me wonder in the first place how mechanics fit in with all of this.  My response was that player level mechanics (not in-game social mores, laws, etc.) really cannot aid in this portion of the game process.  The best mechanics can do is get out of the players way as much as possible.  There can be much prose written about the in-game social mores, laws, customs but I don't believe they can or ought to be rendered into mechanics.  Like you said, "the 'social structures' with which the players have chosen to engage dictate the true topic of play."  That topic is totally dynamic.

It's getting late, but I hope that I have in some small way cleared up some minor discrepancies.

[Marco]

Hey Marco,

Yes, but I think that's pretty implicit to the model. That's one reason why the Beeg Horseshoe theory has a lot of traction.

The problem with the Beeg Horseshoe theory is that it was based on an incorrect understanding of Sim.  If Sim is a mythic process, which is about the construction and manipulation of meaning structures then Sim categorically cannot sit in the middle of the horseshoe.  The best you can get is a pitchfork with Gam and Nar as the tines and Sim as the handle and Zilchplay at the intersection of all three.

I'll say this again and again and it is getting very old saying this – engagement has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with determining which CA is in operation.  Watch any Gamist in the middle of an intense/important Challenge and I sure that you will see and they will tell you they are thoroughly engaged in the Challenge at hand.  I just wish this idea about engagement would die the ugly and ignominious death that it so thoroughly deserves.  If the players weren't engaged then they would not be playing – it's really that simple.

You can call it what you want, but look at the recent thread wherein the analysis of someone's play is that it's Incoherent because there is no social-reinforcement and no engagment with other elements on the part of the poster.

I think that for the description of play to be had without player engagement then it's something like "it was a dysfunctional episode of play with Gamist hallmarks."

-Marco

[Silmenume]

Hey contracycle,

This is basically a PS to my previous post.

As corollary to your claim that the player is 'commenting' on the 'rangers of ilithien' simply by choosing to be one, and for there actions to be interpreted in relation to that label, then my claim is further: the 'social structures' with which the players have chosen to engage dictate the true topic of play. If you have a player who is one of these rangers, and another who is the priest of some god, and another who is a renegade ork or whatever, then surely the conduct of play will comment on the relationships between the orks, the rangers, and the church, in various unpredictable ways.

The one key to remember is that Rangersness is not only thing that is being focused upon.  It a fictional person who has the vocation of Ranger who is being depicted.  That "Rangerness" certainly does form a great deal of that "individual's" identity, but it is not the only component.  That individual has other roles in that society/social structure at large.  At the very, very least his is the son to someone, which means he does have (or would frequently have depending on the culture) filial responsibilities.  (He is a member of a unit so he has responsibilities those other individuals – he has responsibilities to the crown – he has responsibilities to his friend who saved his life, he has responsibilities to another from whom he borrowed money from, etc.)  I'm trying to get across the idea that Sim isn't about "a" thing, its about the "web of many things all at once," that happens to find its central locus and expression in that player's character.  But from that character we address and add to the Dream as a whole.  Thus it is not just the character, but the character, the social structures and the Dream as a whole.  You can't separate one out and focus on it to the exclusion of the others in Sim.