walking on limbs (split from 1/3 baked)

[apparition13]

Ron Edwards wrote:

One of the key "tells" of a particular sort of Sim play is to be willing to drop investment in the current imagined situation for a while and really nail down a few details.

clerich wrote, to much aclaim:

The ideal goal is seamlessness. If the Dream were seamless, there would never be any need to break from Situation-Focused play, because the answer to every potential question of fact, however picayune, would already be known to all the players as it is in fact known to the characters. In such an extreme ideal, there would also be a near-total adequation of player to character, which would probably manifest as extreme Turku-style immersion.

The trick is, such perfection (which is unrealizable) has a number of different factors. Any game group must decide, usually largely unconsciously, which factors to prioritize. Some groups prioritize immersion, and gloss over slippage elsewhere in order to maintain this. A group like that Ron describes does not do this; they prioritize the depth and facticity of the Dream. Thus when a slippage occurs in facticity, it requires external handling. Similarly, an immersion-oriented group would presumably consider techniques to assist immersion when it fails, such as enforcing a rule that players must speak in-character and so on.

I've said elsewhere (I forget where; Jay might remember) that it is when the Dream can potentially break that the Dream is most strongly bolstered, because abductive failure leads to deductive success and all that. I think I'm sticking to that in Sim. Basically what I mean here is that when there is a slippage, i.e. a break in the seamlessness of the Dream, it is the resolution of that slippage that enforces the claim of the Dream's being seamless.

That sounds paradoxical, I know, so let me be clear.

This is what's called the logic of the "supplement". Suppose we assert, because we are Sim players, that the Dream itself is seamless and perfect. In a perfect world, we, the players, would interact with it as a real world. The claim is not that we are constructing the Dream through play, but that we are interacting with an already perfect Dream. To my mind, this is a crucial part of the ideology of Simulationism. I'm pretty sure that this is part of what Dr. Xero describes in his games: the aesthetic of the game is that the players do not construct the Dream, but discover a story or pattern or whatever within it, already present and waiting for them.

Now because we have accepted this in advance (which you notice is not typical of Nar or Gam aesthetics), any construction is undesirable. When we do what appears by other criteria to be construction, we read it differently: we read it as discovering what was already true. For example, we the players may not know whether phazer-fire induces current sufficient to wipe a memory disk, but the world already does know this. It's built-in, a fact of nature. When we debate the point, we're not inventing something new but figuring out how it always already worked. The players did not know the answer, but it was already determined.

The effect of this is that of the supplement: by supplementing perfection, we demonstrate that it needed no supplement. In other words, if we can resolve the question about the phazers, we have established that the game-world was indeed already perfect, that this was already known, but not to us. Thus resolving the question of phazers reinforces the Dream.

Provided, then, that your dominant aesthetic agenda is to reinforce the Dream, which more properly would be to bolster the claim that the Dream was and is and always will be seamless and complete, the handling of fine detail not only isn't CA-irrelevant but is in fact powerfully constitutive of CA. Thus, as Ron says, it's a Tell of a lot of Sim players.

What it isn't, though, is Situation-Focused. Situation-Focus by my sketch definition is the ideal baseline, the continuity of play when there are no apparent breaks in the Dream. Oddly enough, this implies that for Sim, Situation-Focus is not an especially strong locus of the manifestation of CA, because when the Dream needs no reinforcing there is no CA-activity that needs to take place.

All of which also goes some way toward explaining why Sim often seems incoherent and weird to non-Sim-committed players. It seems as though Sim players keep stepping outside of exactly what they think they want, i.e. the Dream, in order to focus on detail that really doesn't matter very much. Furthermore, they keep doing this even when there does not seem to be a very strong reason to do so, i.e. when the details seem trivial. My proposal here implies that such players may be doing this because they want CA-meaningful activity, which is difficult to effect without an apparent break from the Dream. From their point of view, such activity is not a break from the Dream, only a break from the ideal perfection of interaction with the Dream, which isn't the same thing. By reinforcing the Dream by these means, they help constitute for themselves the certainty and perfection of that Dream. It's worth considering that in doing so they also reinforce their own necessary distance from the Dream, putting the ideal quite clearly a bit beyond reach, which would be an interesting point to follow up elsewhere.

Add to these a couple things I wrote earlier:

The few details need to be nailed down because the fact that they were not nailed down ejected one to all of the participants from the imagined situation. At this point it is impossible for play to continue until the details are fixed.

and:

My initial hypothesis would be that while situation is the nucleus around which the other component of exploration orbit in nar, mechanics is the tool that is the nucleus of gamism, character to what I called poetic (what Silmenume does) sim, and setting to what I called rational sim. What about colour? Well, how about comedy?

Now, substitute "the dream" with "setting" in clerich's post and I think you get sim.obj (objective, what I referred to as rational, sim), substitute "character" in and I think that becomes sim.subj (subjective,character immersive, Turku, what I called poetic, sim).  If the aesthetic is seamlessness in situation, that would be Narrativist;  seamlessness in mechanics would be gamist.  If this is the case, then each CA would have a tell related to resolving a disturbance in seamlessness.  Some examples of what I mean might help, so using Buffy:

1.  Sim.obj
Player:  "What do you mean Dracula turns into mist?  Vampire can't do that!"
GM:  "Fancy gypsy tricks."
P:  "Gypsy tricks?  Since when do gypsies turn to mist?"
P2:  "They did do that whole curse thing on Angel.  Who knows what else they could do.
P:  "Well, maybe that kind of makes sense.  I swear though, I think you're just making this stuff up as you go."

2.  Sim.subj
P:  "What do you mean Xander summoned the song-and-dance demon?  He been around awhile, he wouldn't do something that stupid!"
P(Xander):  "You guys have been all angsty and self-absorbed.  Somebody needed to lighten the mood.  Besides, a demon that's all song-and-dancy?  Sounded fun."

3.  Nar.
GM:  "What do you mean you want to go to LA?  We can't play if Buffy's not in Sunnydale!"
P:  "Look, she just killed Angel. What point is there in being the Slayer if you not only can't protect the people you love but have to kill them as well.  She can't just go on as if nothing happened.
GM:  "But..."
P2:  "Hey... I've got an idea.  How 'bout we do a transitional episode.  We'll be in Sunnydale being all scooby, trying to carry on without her, and Buffy can run away to LA.  While she's there you could do something to remind her why being the Slayer's important.  She comes back, we do senior year."

4.  Gam.
GM:  "What do you mean you use your "fear of bunnies 5" SA?  Those are primordial vampires, not bunnies!
P:  "Anya's psyching herself up.  If she can be brave enough to face bunnies, vamps should be no problem.  Besides, you've never let me use it before."
GM:  "How am I supposed to integrate that?"
P2:  "You could have done a were-bunny episode..."
P3:  "Or the bunny form "Holy Grail..."
P4:  "Yeah, is poor Anya feeling put-upon.  "Help, help, I'm being oppressed.""
Others, as P4 gets pelted with popcorn:  "NO PYTHON!"
P:  "See, you coulda done it.  Besides, you've stuck me with Andrew;  he's useless."
GM:  "Okay, you can use it.  But you're losing a die every couple rounds, since you're just psyching yourself up."
P:  "But..."
GM:  "Take it or leave it."
P:  "...okay.  I'll take it.  I swear, I think you're trying to get me killed."

One nice thing about this idea is that it's fairly easy to test.  Look as actual play: focus on disturbances in seamlessness, and see if the nature of those corresponds to CAs exhibited during decision making in play.  If it works out, we have another tool for identifying CAs, and one that I suspect will be easier to use.

Tentative (very) hypothesis:
Walking a little further out onto the branch,  it seems to me that each of the CAs (or major sub-CAs in sim's case) is primarily (though not exclusively) focused on one of the components of exploration.  It is also simultaneously constrained by that same component;  seamless play happens inside those constraints.  The other components then become the tools that are used to explore the primary component.  So, restating my earlier post, in sim.obj, setting is the focus of, and constraint on, exploration;  with character, mechanics, situation and colour taking on a secondary role as tools used to carry out that exploration.  In sim.subj, character would be primary, with the others in the secondary role.  Nar would be characterized by situation (addressing premise) as primary; and in gamist play mechanics (the rules of the game) serve as the focus and constraint.* **  ***

Flipping this around,  each of the components of exploration can therefore be, depending on context, the focus of exploration and simultaneously the constraints on exploration and also be a tool for exploring one of the other components when that component is primary.  Focus, constraint, tool.

*I'm not sure how well this formulation works with respect to Gamist play.  Challenge/competition seems to be the focus, but the game is defined by the mechanics.  

**Can colour take on the primary role?  Would this be where comedy might fit?  If so, what about horror?  Or genre in general?  ie:  if we are doing sim.obj (exploring setting), would genre (science fiction, vanilla fantasy, sword and sorcery etc.) be colour?  What about the same genres if the focus of exploration is situation (nar)?

***I realise that seamlessness can be disturbed by mechanics in other CAs, particularly sim.obj.  However, I'd say the character of that disturbance is different.  Rule problems that break seamless play in sim.obj would be ones that relate to mechanics as setting physics, and therefore ultimately derive from setting.  In gamist play disputes are more likely to arrise from exploitation of rules for competitive advantage and/or issues of fairness.

[M. J. Young]

I really want to buy in on this, but I've got some problems.

Since gamism can be the agendum in a freeform game, mechanics is the wrong word--besides, it's not an element of exploration, so it's the one of these things that doesn't belong. So in my mind I replace it with system--and as soon as I do, I remember the discussions of simulationist exploration of system, where the players are testing the physics of the world, seeing how things work under these rules.

I think that all three agenda can be played with the emphasis more or less on any of the five elements of exploration. I'm not sure I'm understanding the concept of "seamlessness" here, so if it means something distinct from the focus of exploration maybe I'm missing what you're saying.

(Also, I don't know that I don't have other problems with this, but those strike me as the glaring ones.)

--M. J. Young

[apparition13]

From the provisional glossary:

Exploration

   The imagination of fictional events, established through communicating among one another. Exploration includes five Components: Character, Setting, Situation, System, and Color. See also Shared Imagined Space (a near or total synonym).

My bad.  I read that several times, and somehow still managed to turn system into mechanics in my head.  Hack "mechanics" into "system" in my above post.

M. J. Young wrote:

I remember the discussions of simulationist exploration of system, where the players are testing the physics of the world, seeing how things work under these rules.

Yes, but it's as a sub-component of setting;  "physics of the world".  It's testing system through the filter of setting.  Gam doesn't include this filter, system is explored directly for tactical/competitive advantage.  

He also wrote:

Since gamism can be the agendum in a freeform game

Could you go into more detail?  An example of a freeform game would help.

and also:

I'm not sure I'm understanding the concept of "seamlessness" here, so if it means something distinct from the focus of exploration maybe I'm missing what you're saying.

Some examples of seamlessness disrupted:
Soccer:  You're playing, everyone's into the game, action is flowing end to end... and the ref blows a whistle for no discernible reason.  Everyone stands around confused.

Cycling:  You're flying, wind in your face, whipping through turns... and you hear a hiss from the front tire.

Writing:  The muses are with you, the words are flying off your fingertips, ideas clearly expressed, no need for revision today... and you can't remember "the capitol of Iceland".

Music:  ...the cd skips.

TV:  Firefly, episode "Heart of Gold".  The bad guys are coming, the house is getting shot up, there's a scream from inside the house... and she drops the gun before running off to help.

Meditation: ... a fly lands on your nose.

I'd better stop now, I think I could go on for a couple of hours.  Hope that helps.

As for other problems... I'm hardly certain about this myself, bring them up.  I'm curious to see how much weight the branch can take.

[M. J. Young]

I've seen freeform gamism in the old Red Dragon Inn at Quantum Link. Essentially it involved participants one-upping each other in the description of what they were doing (usually in fights), and there being no referee all was pretty much fair. Gamism is about showing off, as it were, getting glory from proving yourself in the situation. There doesn't necessarily have to be an agreed win condition--if a player can walk away from it saying, "I did good, there" or "I showed them", it's gamist.

I don't know that there's a published freeform game--that's almost an oxymoron, isn't it? Theatrix and Erick Wujcik's game (I don't know--I can think of his name, but not the name of the game, is that flattering or insulting to him?) are both diceless, but they certainly aren't freeform.

I think by definition "freeform" means a game in which the rules are not written at all, but developed through consensus among the players during play. Thus I could point to freeform games in progress, or possibly to accounts of freeform play after the fact (I can't think of any at the moment), but it wouldn't be logically possible to be able to point to a published freeform game system, would it?

Also, in response to your observation that simulationist exploration of system can only be done through setting, you're right--in fact, it can only be done through character engaging setting through system. That, however, is also how gamist exploration of system works, so showing that it's true of simulationism doesn't distinguish this.

--M. J. Young