[Deceit] Self-Deception as a Design Consideration

[John Kim]

So take our imaginary WoD game.
...
(This is not intended to be skewed or tweaked or anything; it is intended to be a description that fairly matches a happy group of committed WoD players.  Please do let me know if I've bent it unfairly.)
...
So what's occurring here is this: the players' engagement in meta-play is being mystified.
...
Here's an off-the-cuff set of first guesses.  Since this isn't a real group, and we don't have serious data, we can do no better.  If we were analyzing a real group and had good data, we could get specific.

Well, I'm doubtful about your data here, since it's based on an imaginary World-Of-Darkness (WoD) game.  As for whether you've bent it unfairly -- well, what is it that you would be bending (i.e. what is this based on)?  Notably, this doesn't match Wolfen's description of his WoD experience.  

In your imaginary group, the WoD players reliably generate story by mystifying their engagement in meta-play.  In Wolfen's description of his experience, they were not generating story in a literate sense -- the self-deception was in believing the WoD rhetoric about story, when in fact he was enjoying the experience of being a vampire.  

Some aesthetic or other principle, espoused consciously or otherwise by the players, tells them that meta-play is a bad thing.  Possibly they perceive this as "cheating," or something of the sort, which may arise from the culture of gaming as it extends from earlier games such as D&D which made this explicit.  Possibly they feel that something about "story" requires non-construction; that is, they feel that "story" should tell itself, or be discovered, rather than being deliberately invented.  At any rate, they believe that if they engage in meta-play, they are sufficiently violating some basic principle that their results -- having fun and telling stories -- will be invalid.
...
It seems to me more plausible that they are having fun and are telling stories, but that they wouldn't be having fun, and would consider their stories illegitimate, if they felt that these results had been generated (in part) by meta-play.

So, here you are suggesting self-deception contradictory to what Wolfen reported.  In Wolfen's experience, his group did not generate literate story.  While he thought he was enjoying story, in retrospect he realized he was enjoying something else -- i.e. the experience of being a vampire.  This was the basis of my suggestion of an alternate self-deception: i.e. that "story" was really the goal.  To contrast these two,

1) Lehrich hypothesis:  WoD players have the false belief that meta-play isn't fun, when in fact it is.  They engage in such meta-play to create stories in the literate sense through their games -- and this story creation is indeed the basis of their fun.  However, they deceive themselves into thinking they do not.  

This matches the imaginary description of WoD players, but doesn't match Wolfen's description.  It may match others -- I don't personally have much experience with WoD to compare.  My experiences with WoD play (in the Chicago Requiem LARP and convention games) was that it did not generate story in a literate sense.  

2) Kim hypothesis:  WoD players have the false belief that their enjoyment is derived from storytelling.  Their play does not create stories in a literate sense.  However, they deceive themselves into thinking that the transcripts are indeed literate stories.  In fact, they are enjoying other facets of play.  However -- because society values literate story over games, dreams, and/or simulation -- the players feel better about themselves by telling themselves that they are "storytelling" rather than simply "gaming" or "dreaming".  

This seems to match Wolfen's description of his experience.  

Based on my limited knowledge, I (unsurprisingly) find the Kim hypothesis more convincing.  However, I'd be interested in other data.

[Lance D. Allen]

Thanks for articulating what I didn't have time to, John. While I see Chris' example as possible, and even valid, it isn't what I was describing. Nor, given my knowledge of WoD and a decent sampling of WoD players, is it particularly likely.

I have seen groups that are hard against "meta-play" as well, though. They feel it's unfair, unrealistic, etc. Yet, in fact, there is a lot of meta-play going on.

But this is a theoretical example. I can't give solid cases to back me up, so that's that.

[clehrich]

1. Safe vs. Nice
It's okay not to be nice. But I think it's a mistake to assume bias in our subjects and not in ourselves. This makes observations of self-deception very, very suspect. It takes an extreme case (alcoholism) or some specific training (psychonalysis) and conversation (therapy) to make that statement in real life.

Oh no, no question that mystification occurs all the time in everyone, including the exterior analyst.  Certainly.  That's been the big thrust of a lot of the so-called postmodern theoretical stuff.  The only advantage the exterior analyst has is that he or she probably doesn't have quite the same biases as those of the insider-group, and so can see them relatively readily.  But it is certainly the case that a member of the insider-group could, under different circumstances, shift chairs and analyze the observer.

Here, I think it's not supportable. Bringing pop-psychology into the theory is going to be problematic on a number of levels. For instance, it's going obscure questions about the model itself,

Why does pop psychology come into this?

I think that your interpertation of the model does have a flaw: getting story is not as rare as Monkeys Flying Out of My Butt so long as there is an organizing principle at work.

Getting story is, claims the model, that rare -- if play does not occur mindfully.  Where we disagree, I think is on what "mindfully entails," as seen here:

That principle need not be meta-game on the part of the players and can, in fact, be had from the position the WoD player take. So while we could assume they are deceiving themselves, we have to have a basis for that.

If all meta-play occurs with the GM and not the non-GM players, then the players cannot follow the GM's lead for any reason exterior to the game-world concerns.  I find that difficult to believe.  What I think is actually impossible is to set up a Social Contract without making meta-decisions: Social Contract is necessarily exterior to the in-game experience of play.  So I don't see how completely non-meta-play is possible when that play is also structured based on prior or current decisions.

I think it's critical to question whether or not this is correct before concluding self-deception. As I pointed out in the thread on Storytelling, there are many ways your group, as described, could get Story on a reliable basis without self-deceiving or mystifying their meta-game involvement.

Well, this goes to your point in that thread about handing over control of certain kinds of decisions to the GM.  That is a meta-choice.  In fact, the whole issue of ritualization and so forth is also meta-choice, i.e. the delineation of what is in-game as opposed to out- is a meta-choice, or rather a whole complicated set of meta-choices.  What is fascinating to me is that when we say "meta-play," we agree, tacitly, that these meta-choices don't count.  How did that get decided?  How is it possible for a game group to say that they do not do meta-play, do not make meta-choices, and that such things are bad -- and then go right ahead and make such choices and say that they don't count, not what they meant, etc.?

If you'd prefer another term, how about "strategy"?  This is strategic decision-making.  We have a goal, and a set of principles.  We then make strategic decisions about how to achieve that goal by means of those principles.  Equally strategically, we decide to suppress some choices we make in that process as exterior to what really counts.  But from an outside perspective, why should these things be exterior?

I've elsewhere given the example of a wedding ceremony, in the middle of which the 3-year-old announces that she has to pee.  We all know that doesn't count.  How do we all know that?  Because we have a social structuring mechanism in place that says what a wedding really is, and how it ought to go, and when events occur that could violate that but do not have to violate it, we suppress them.  After the fact, people may not even remember that this occurred.

This is mystification at work.

I'm really struggling here.  Why is this such a problem?  Let me put it another way, so that it's absolutely clear that I'm not pointing fingers at particular sorts of play.  Forget about the WoD game group, OK?

1. All RPGs, as far as I know, make decisions about what is and is not part of the gameplay.  These are both made in advance and during the game.  Dave eating an M&M is not usually considered part of gameplay, as in it doesn't have any effect on the game.  Right?

2. Why not?  We know it's possible to count such things; somebody set up a game idea a while back that was about cannibalism, in which what you the player ate during play had a mechanical effect on what your character ate in the game-world.  So clearly a decision is being made that eating things doesn't count -- except in the cannibal game.

3. But who actually sets that up?  I mean, people occasionally post Social Contracts here, and I've never seen one that specifies that players' eating doesn't count.  So it just sort of happens, right?

4. The thing is, the ultimate outcome of the game, in terms of how people feel about what happened in the session, is dependent on what happens in the game session.  In particular, it's dependent on what counts of what happens in the game session.  It's accepted in advance, without anyone saying so, that whether Dave eats that M&M or not has nothing whatever to do with whether the game session is fun or not.

5. So when we evaluate the success or failure of a game session after the fact, we are suppressing a certain amount of what went on.  Indeed, we may be suppressing a great deal of what went on.

6. More subtly, let's suppose we're playing and Joe's character is sort of getting hosed.  Everyone in the group, including Joe, is clearly having a good time -- fun is being had.  "Oh man, I'm getting hosed here, ha ha!" cackles Joe.  Now let's suppose the same initial setup, except nobody's having fun.  "This sucks" is the general impression given off by everyone.  Now the GM is clearly going to make some meta-choices here, if she's any good, to get everyone back on the fun track, right?  How did the GM know to do this?  Because the players indicated what they, the players, wanted.  They made meta-statements about gameplay.  Which then affected actual play, because the GM acted on them.  This is meta-play.

7. After the fact, these groups may well say, "We didn't do meta-play," and mean it.  That's mystification.  Now let's say it's a very mindful sort of hard-theory Nar group or something.  They may say, "We didn't use Director Stance."  That's mystification.

8. The very fact that RPGs are social activities in which there is a radical division made between what counts and what doesn't, what's included and what isn't, tells me in advance that there is mystification going on.  Some of it may be so slight that it isn't interesting to analyze, or more likely it may be extremely difficult to dredge out.  But I suspect that in the vast majority of cases, close analysis would pick out a number of strong, consistent ideological tropes by which the group formulates its understanding of what happens in the game.

9. After the fact, we revise again.  Partly our memories aren't really that well suited to verbatim transcripts, but partly we color our memories impressionistically and subjectively.  In a lot of cases, that's when story pops up, as we've discussed elsewhere.  That revision or redaction is mystification: it's an attempt to reformulate "raw" experience in a more meaningful and subjectively satisfying manner, conditioned by not-very-well examined preferences, ideals, and theories.

In short, all role-playing games necessarily involve mystification.  I think the point could be argued, though I'm not quite sure how to go about it, that mystification is one of the central principles of gaming, as it is of any form of ritual behavior.

Thus the question at stake is, again, not whether but what and how.

This thread seems to be provoking my tendency to long posts, but as long as I've gone this far I might as well finish up.

As far as I can see, the point of the Big Model is, at base, to demystify a number of common structures in RPGs.  It is reasonably successful at this, for those people who take it on board.  The Big Model does not, and does not claim to, demystify all common structures of RPGs.  Why should it?

What I think Mendel has brought up in this thread is that cutting crosswise through what the Big Model calls CA and also to some extent Technique, there are other common mystification strategies at work in RPGs.  He'd like to identify some of those and try to figure out how they work.  The ones he's chosen are the ones in which there is an apparent mismatch between what we might call CA-rhetoric and CA-choice; that is, where the players say they are motivated by aesthetic criteria fitting one CA but their play choices match very well a quite different CA.  Rather than simply branding this "incoherent," Mendel observes that these groups may well be very functional, which suggests that "incoherent" is a problematic term, implying dysfunction as it does.  He then suggests that what is at work here is a strategy of what he calls self-deception, and I'd call mystification, by which the players are able to overcome the apparent contradiction between aesthetics and play-choice.  This allows them to play in a way that they enjoy, and at the same time have their aesthetic priorities fit what they do.  This makes for functional, happy gaming.

(Mendel, you out there?  Am I getting this right?)

What I absolutely do not understand is why this is even remotely controversial.  We have barely begun to talk about how this process works, which is what is interesting and should be the focus of discussion.  Instead the debate seems stymied over whether it's okay to say that maybe these people aren't entirely self-aware about everything.  Of course they aren't --- they're people!

[rant]

Can anyone explain to me why it's difficult to accept that normal people (by which I don't mean "common masses" or something, but rather people who are not seriously damaged by some sort of grave mental illnesses) make a lot of choices and do a lot of things in ways that aren't absolutely clear to themselves, and for reasons that they may well not only not know about but really not be very happy about?  And if that is part of how people work, and what makes social activity operate, why would we want to think that gaming is different?  If it is, it's sick --- there's something deeply wrong and inhuman about it.  I don't buy that.  I think it's absolutely normal, a unique but at the same time really very ordinary kind of human interactive process.  So I assume that there is mystification going on all the time.  I'd really like to follow up Mendel's ideas about this particular form of it, and how it works, and so on.  But we really do have to wrap our minds around the basic concept!

[/rant]

[clehrich]

In your imaginary group, the WoD players reliably generate story by mystifying their engagement in meta-play.  In Wolfen's description of his experience, they were not generating story in a literate sense -- the self-deception was in believing the WoD rhetoric about story, when in fact he was enjoying the experience of being a vampire.  
....
So, here you are suggesting self-deception contradictory to what Wolfen reported.  In Wolfen's experience, his group did not generate literate story.  While he thought he was enjoying story, in retrospect he realized he was enjoying something else -- i.e. the experience of being a vampire.  This was the basis of my suggestion of an alternate self-deception: i.e. that "story" was really the goal.

So far, I agree.

To contrast these two,

1) Lehrich hypothesis:  WoD players have the false belief that meta-play isn't fun, when in fact it is.  They engage in such meta-play to create stories in the literate sense through their games -- and this story creation is indeed the basis of their fun.  However, they deceive themselves into thinking they do not.

I said nothing of the kind.  Absolutely not at all.  I said that this, particular, hypothetical, WoD group felt that way.  Period.  The point of the example was to demonstrate mystification in a straightforward fashion.  Nothing more.

By contrast,

2) Kim hypothesis:  WoD players have the false belief that their enjoyment is derived from storytelling.  Their play does not create stories in a literate sense.  However, they deceive themselves into thinking that the transcripts are indeed literate stories.  In fact, they are enjoying other facets of play.  However -- because society values literate story over games, dreams, and/or simulation -- the players feel better about themselves by telling themselves that they are "storytelling" rather than simply "gaming" or "dreaming".

Interesting.  Of course, it's based solely on a single data-point, so I don't know how reliable it is as a hypothesis, but it's interesting.  Like you, "I'd be interested in other data."

But none of this is dealing with the question you actually asked, in reply to which I posted that hypothetical example.  You asked about method.  I supplied one.  Why is a hypothetical example now suddenly a mis-interpretation of Wolfen's game?  That makes no sense.  Apparently you like the method, in fact, since you just applied it.  What the hell?

(cooling off)

Okay.  So John and I are apparently entirely in agreement about mystification.  We have said nothing in the last few posts that actually is in disagreement.  Wolfen's agreement with John tells me that he agrees as well.

Marco and I seem to continue to disagree about whether mystification (or self-deception) is a workable concept.

Mendel, you can come on back now, I think the air is clear again.  We're all on board with self-deception, although Marco has doubts.

[John Kim]

Of course, it's based solely on a single data-point, so I don't know how reliable it is as a hypothesis, but it's interesting.  Like you, "I'd be interested in other data."

But none of this is dealing with the question you actually asked, in reply to which I posted that hypothetical example.  You asked about method.  I supplied one.  Why is a hypothetical example now suddenly a mis-interpretation of Wolfen's game?  That makes no sense.  Apparently you like the method, in fact, since you just applied it.  What the hell?

Sorry, I thought I made this clear.  I felt that self-assessed cases of mystification are fine methodologically.  Thus, I feel comfortable applying some analysis to Wolfen's reported experience with WoD games, because he knew what he was thinking and thus is able to accurately report on the self-deception involved.  Also, and not insignificantly, I can talk to him about the self-deception without the conversation breaking down.  

I am not comfortable with drawing conclusions from cases of self-deception reported second-hand and/or without involving the subjects.  i.e. Someone posts on The Forge  saying "My players are deceiving themselves", so we take his word for it and analyze them based on that.  Even worse, someone posts on The Forge describing his play, and someone replies "You're deceiving yourself."  I agree with Marco here.  I'm not saying that mystification doesn't happen, but there is an enormous hurdle of how to analyze it -- particularly in an open forum.  The choices are (1) no input from the actual people you're analyzing; or (2) flamewars as people accuse each other of self-deception.

[Marco]

Marco and I seem to continue to disagree about whether mystification (or self-deception) is a workable concept.

Mendel, you can come on back now, I think the air is clear again.  We're all on board with self-deception, although Marco has doubts.

Well, as far as it goes, I'm just not sure self deception is necessary for the group you describe. In other words: if they said what you said they said and we ask the GM, he might say: "Yeah, they're right. They're all immersed and I throw a continual string of Premise-type Bangs at them and if they disengage with one bang, I just follow it up with another along the same themes."

In this case the player's aren't self deceiving and aren't providing the structure and there's no need for mystification.

So could there be self-deception? Sure--maybe--but from that write-up we don't know.

(and I agree with John that tossing around suggestions of self-deception doesn't get us very far. It's much better to work with self-assessment in that department)

-Marco

[clehrich]

[Edit: in reply to John Kim's post]

Why would this cause a flamewar?

Because you're hooked on the notion that self-deception or mystification is a bad thing.  Which Mendel and I keep saying it isn't.  This is completely normal, healthy, appropriate behavior, performed by healthy, normal, happy people.

Actually, it's part of how healthy, normal, and happy occur.

Here's a little experiment.  I'm telling you, right here and now, that you are deceiving yourself about a number of things in your games, your life, and so forth.  You've accepted that already, so there's no bone of contention.  I'm also telling you that there's nothing odd, unusual, or undesirable about that.  I'm also telling you that I don't think there's necessarily any reason to change any of that.  Any bones of contention there?  Okay, last part: I'm interested in trying to figure out some of how that works in you, based on what you say and do, because I'm interested in people and what makes them tick.  So far as I can tell, this is what sets you off.  Apparently that's something we shouldn't do without express permission.  Why not?

Here's a hypothetical about method and its implications, but the question, the real question, remains: why is this in any way something we shouldn't analyze?  Why should this be set aside and out of bounds?  Anyway, the hypothetical.  Since the last one didn't work for you, I'm going to get quite serious about this one:

Let's suppose you post a long, detailed piece of actual play, with lots of detail and crunchy bits to work with.  I analyze this.  Among many other things I find interesting, I conclude that you, the GM in this instance, are invested in a notion of some kind of free-market economics, or free competition, or something like that.  I find that a lot of how you as a GM arbitrate complicated situations appears to rest on an implicit notion of what's "fair" or "plausible" which in turn appears to fit this sense of competitive equilibrium.  And I suggest that the way you GM involves interpreting situations such that this conception of how competition "ought" to work is imposed consistently.

Now let's suppose you deny this.  You say that in that particular game, you were actually being scrupulous about not imposing some sort of framework, but were, for whatever reason, quite consciously doing nothing but arbitration by dice: you just roll, you don't interpret, and you let the chips fall as they may.

So are you right?  

I say that we cannot know.  Further, there is little to suggest a likelihood here.  The fact that you were the GM in question is worthless.  Just because the opnion you express is about yourself doesn't make you particularly likely to be right.  The fact that I'm looking at it from the outside doesn't make me particularly likely (or unlikely) to be right.

So what we have is two plausible, but unproven, hypotheses.  And the chances are, we won't ever be able to prove one or the other.

So then what?

Well, suppose I now use this interpretation, and this data, in an examination of the game system you were using.  And I use a couple of other pieces of actual play.  And I propose that this particular game system, and in fact a number of others closely related in some way, are founded upon this notion of free competition as necessarily leading to fairness and equity.  And this leads me to contextualize the games in question as specifically part of American cultural life, prompting me to ask questions (the sorts of questions Eero Tuovinen has asked here and there) about the expansion of American cultural hegemony in the RPG hobby.

Now suppose you, or some other gamer (probably American), respond by saying that I've got it all wrong.  The RPG hobby is counter-culture, and not at all an instrument of the expansion of American late capitalism.  And you know this because you don't like extreme capitalism, vote Democrat, and so on.

Now I think I am on pretty solid ground.  Now I really can say that I think you're caught in a web of mystifications.  Of course you disagree, but so what?  That's the whole point of mystification: to allow you to feel reasonably decent about yourself.  

If you are in fact promoting American capitalist hegemony through a hobby close to your heart, and when put that way you don't like the sound of it, of course you're going to tell yourself you're not doing that.  Because what else are you going to do?  Stop playing?  You like playing.  Change your style radically?  But it's fun!

You may consider this a bizarre example, but somewhere Eero posted something about American cultural hegemony in RPG culture in Europe, and everyone got very freaked out and confused.  To him it was obvious; to American posters it was bizarre.  Well, sure --- he's outside the system that has a vested interest in that particular mystification.

Remember over on Jonathan Walton's "Fine Art of Gaming" forum at RPG.net, when all those people jumped on him for suggesting that gaming could have a serious purpose of any kind?  Remember how they all said, "Hell no, fool, it's just entertainment"?  That's mystification.  Of course gaming participates in larger cultural processes.

Which gets to the heart of your objection: you think that this all may be true, but we shouldn't say so unless people give us explicit warrant to do so.

Um, no.  Not at all.  The entire point of mystification is to conceal itself from those who do it.  If you sit back and wait for people to say, "Hey, I'm deceiving myself," the only things that will pop up are necessarily quite unusual examples, or examples entirely from hindsight.  And if, as in these two examples (one hypothetical but extremely plausible, and the other not at all hypothetical), someone happens to find the larger implications problematic (i.e. if one thinks it's a problem that American counter-culture is complicit in spreading McDonald's late capitalist culture among people who think they hate that), then you could reasonably argue that it's immoral to keep quiet about it.

But what usually happens in these sorts of situations (as we saw with Jonathan's colum) is that people get very angry.  They furiously denounce the idea of anything resembling such complicity.  They furiously denounce the idea of analyzing gaming seriously.  They denounce the idea that they themselves might be complicit in some things they don't like.  All of which reveals rather clearly how powerful mystification is, why it's interesting, and why it's worth analyzing.

Since when did "making nice" become a legitimate reason to accept the command, "pay no attention to the man behind that curtain"?  Since the man behind the curtain hasn't given you explicit permission, and has in fact told you not to look, should you pretend you don't see him?  Should you in fact pretend you don't see the curtain at all, and that asking questions about the curtain is automatically illegitimate?

[John Kim]

[Edit: in reply to John Kim's post]

Why would this cause a flamewar?

Because you're hooked on the notion that self-deception or mystification is a bad thing.  Which Mendel and I keep saying it isn't.  This is completely normal, healthy, appropriate behavior, performed by healthy, normal, happy people.

No, I have completely agreed on this point in principle.  But if I (John) start in all honesty exposing what I think your (Chris') self-deceptions about role-playing are, I guarantee you that you are going to argue back with me and furthermore be defensive and mad and hurt.  I fully believe that the same thing goes for your exposing mine, though I can't picture it as well (because they're my self-deceptions, obviously).  That isn't rhetorical.  That is a completely serious prediction.  There will be a flamewar where real people and real friendships are hurt.  

I agree that there is truth there to be revealed, but I do not consider the price worth it.  I value you as a friend and the Forge as a community.  I'm not saying that no one should ever expose self-deceptions, but in this case (i.e. in this community and for the knowledge in question), I don't think it is worth it.  

Which gets to the heart of your objection: you think that this all may be true, but we shouldn't say so unless people give us explicit warrant to do so.

Um, no.  Not at all.  The entire point of mystification is to conceal itself from those who do it.  If you sit back and wait for people to say, "Hey, I'm deceiving myself," the only things that will pop up are necessarily quite unusual examples, or examples entirely from hindsight.  And if, as in these two examples (one hypothetical but extremely plausible, and the other not at all hypothetical), someone happens to find the larger implications problematic (i.e. if one thinks it's a problem that American counter-culture is complicit in spreading McDonald's late capitalist culture among people who think they hate that), then you could reasonably argue that it's immoral to keep quiet about it.

But what usually happens in these sorts of situations (as we saw with Jonathan's colum) is that people get very angry.  They furiously denounce the idea of anything resembling such complicity.  They furiously denounce the idea of analyzing gaming seriously.  They denounce the idea that they themselves might be complicit in some things they don't like.  All of which reveals rather clearly how powerful mystification is, why it's interesting, and why it's worth analyzing.

Since when did "making nice" become a legitimate reason to accept the command, "pay no attention to the man behind that curtain"?

When you care about the man behind the curtain, and wish to show him respect.  I don't see anything immoral about the self-deceptions that I see in gaming.  Exposing this isn't saving people's lives or feeding the poor or anything.  You yourself say quite clearly that the people will get very angry.  So, quite simply, I see two possibilities here:

1) We analyze the mystifications of each other here on The Forge.  As you say -- and I completely agree with you -- people will get very angry and denounce the analysis.  Real feelings will be hurt.  We will end up with contradictory conclusions as the Forge fragments over which side we're analyzing.  

2) We restrict ourselves to analyzing people who aren't at The Forge.  In practice, this will mean that we sit around and bitch about those stupid White Wolf players or D&Ders or whoever else we think are "safe" targets, and talk about how they deceive themselves.  We have no first-hand information and don't want it, and The Forge's reputation in the wider world gets worse.  

I feel that #1 is not worth it, and I find #2 distasteful and hypocritical as well as lacking useful data.

[Marco]

I simply don't think there's nearly enough data here to make any kind of self-deception assessment based on the evidence we have here. In most real RPG scenarios the person doing the assessment has a stake in the outcome (i.e. being right about something or feeling victimized or finding themselves superior or whatever). There's observer-bias built into the system.

We simply do not have the conditions or the tools necessary for there to be assessment of self-deception.

If we want to analyze IRC logs (and have the kind of real knowledge of the participants to understand some basic context) then, you know, maybe we could talk about what we see in those games.

Outside of that, I think your example of the analyist telling the guys that they were not storytelling and hated the game is exactly what that conversation is gonna look like if we don't stick to self-assessment.

And for what it's worth, I think there is a difference between rationalization and denial and a position that hasn't been thought about a lot. A WoD gamer who was asked if his transcripts would make a story that wasn't in need of any editing for publication might go "Well ... no, I think most efforts at story-writing need editing and paring down for publication so, no--in order for this to be a publishable story you'd need to trim down that bit with the fire-fight in the sewers and cut out that long pointless excursion that didn't pan-out."

Since our language is so impercise on this point (storytelling, for instance) I just don't see how generalizing about what "people" are doing is gonna be anything but  wild speculation and our own personal biases (for a lot of people, here, I think "someone doing 'storytelling'" without playing Narrativist is 'TITBB').

-Marco

[clehrich]

Oddly enough, I think we're pretty close to agreement here.

John --

I think there is a disjuncture here between what it seems to me is interesting about mystification and what you expect such analysis to produce.  You may well be right, practically speaking.  

To me, what's interesting is the ways in which the various strategies of mystification that are pervasive in our culture --- whichever one you feel like taking that to be --- are reflected and manipulated in gaming.  It's a matter of cultural analysis, really.  I'm quite interested in things like the ways in which RPG culture mystifies its participation in mass-media extension of American cultural hegemony, and the ways in which it constructs itself as a counter-culture, and so on.  If you want to demystify these things for me, about me, go right ahead; god knows I've read enough analyses of academic mystification.  You want to add one about academic mystification in the analysis of RPGs?  I want to read that!  Really -- this isn't irony.  I don't think it's going to get written, by anyone, but I'd love to read it.

Conversely, I really couldn't care less whether this or that gaming group does or doesn't think it's using meta-techniques or whatever.  Is their game working fine?  Good.  Glad to hear it.  Anyway, back to cultural analysis.  Is the game not working fine?  Okay, let's all talk about that and try to get it working.  Does it work now?  Good, back to cultural analysis.  Like that.  That's an overstatement, but the point is accurate: that stuff is only interesting to me when I can hook it up to larger concerns, or when I can be involved in trying to help folks get their games going well -- and that does include me, of course, getting my games going well.

I think that the problem is a difference of perspective on the Forge, one I've found myself on the teeeeeny minority end of many times.  I personally think that all the practical analysis in the world is of very limited interest.  It's great when a game is broken, and everyone piles in and tries to help.  It's fantastic when that succeeds.  But ultimately, that's all you can do with it.  What to me is genuinely interesting and exciting is to work at opening up the analysis of RPGs to the much wider world of culture and its various discontents, which is something that has happened very little anywhere, but has a real place here.

So I think I'm saying "wow! cultural analysis!" and you're hearing "oh god! you're going to do this to some actual person?"  We're both right.  Really different focus.  If you're going to think about mystification as a practical tool, god help you.  That's sort of like trying to start a nice Marxist-Leninist revolution by walking into the GOP national convention and handing out copies of the "Communist Manifesto."  Eeep.  No, I had nothing whatever practical in mind, and I think that's exactly where we're talking past each other.

---
Marco --

You're right about linguistic and terminological imprecision, though I certainly think shifting to the analysis of words and rhetoric --- necessarily the heart of mystification and whatnot analysis --- would help.  As to rationalization and denial, I think those are both strategies of the same thing.  To be sure, one would have to analyze carefully, to avoid the total miscommunication you describe.  But I do think it can be done.

But the base point, about having a stake in the outcome, is a variant of the same point John's making, and gets the same response.  For me, there is no stake.  I just don't really care all that much except insofar as this is part of a larger cultural discourse that I want to understand.  But here on the Forge, the usual assumption is the contrary: the assumption is that if I say "there's mystification going on in your game," I'm making a statement that is intended to have a practical result.  Now if that were the case, then HOO BOY would I have a stake, and boy howdy would there be all sorts of problems at work in even posing the question.

-------
To me, this is a purely analytical question about hooking up the analysis of RPGs to the analysis of other modes of culture.  Apparently it doesn't sound that way to you folks -- it sounds like a practical concern.  So long as we agree within those respective domains, I think we're on solid ground together.

As a nice concrete example, which just maybe will finally wind all this up, you may recall that I brought up the question of ritualization, in the big essay on ritual.  I was very insistent, in that article and in discussions of it, that the whole analysis has few or no practical implications, or that if it does, I have no intention of thinking them out.

Now interestingly enough, a bunch of people did that.  There has been some talk about formally delineating spaces, for example, and things like that.  None of that really comes from me; it's practically-minded folks spinning out some practical ideas that are sort of inspired by some theoretical, analytical points I made.

The thing is, ritualization is a particular kind of mystification.  That's the whole point.  I didn't use those terms in the essay, because it didn't seem relevant enough to want to define more terms.  But the basic idea behind the ritualization concept is that the distinction made, a distinction of real ontological difference between in-space and out-, in-time and out-, sacred and profane, etc., is based on nothing but people saying it's so.  Nothing at all.  The thing is, if you really knew that, really accepted that deep down in your heart of hearts, the whole thing would die.  You'd look at something sacred and say, "Yeah, well, I just called it that on Thursday, so what the hell."  So all the power would go out of it.  And thus one of the really powerful things we do as people is to conceal this from ourselves, because we like having that distinction, for all sorts of interesting and complicated reasons.

So when I say that all RPGs are founded in part on mystification, that's one of several reasons.  There's a ritual distinction being made, so it's mystification.  QED.

But the thing that fascinates me is that nobody had this reaction to all that about ritualization.  Why not?

Frankly, because "ritual" sounds cool and interesting, and "deception" or "concealment" or "mystification" sound like lying.  "I'm doing rituals" sounds like a good thing; "I'm lying to myself" sounds bad.

And the other big reason, of course, is because I was explicit (as I wasn't here) that this is all totally impractical, a purely analytical structure that has powerful implications --- but few practical ones I can see apart from some potential for some really unpleasant misunderstandings, as John points out.

---------------
So here's what I want to know:

Does Mendel think this is a practical mode of analysis?  Does any of this fit what Mendel is interested in?  Would Mendel like to continue this discussion, or redirect it?

I'm now going to keep mum on this thread unless and until Mendel comes back.  I think we've all done enough damage, don't you?

[Wormwood]

Sorry for the delay, I've been focusing on work deadlines and design deadlines in the past few days.

Well, to answer a question from a while ago, mystification works for me, assuming it relates, as I suspect it does, directly to the building of a mystery (that which cannot be explained/concieved).

I see there being three different ways to use mystification.

First, in a practical regime, mystification is not useless, but the attempt to extract specific events or properties is hazardous, as John and Marco point out. But the real practical take home of the whole business of mystification is that it is not something to be reviled. It is very easy from a therpeutic perspective to attempt to remove self-deception, but if we truly care about doing therapy and not simply conversion we must concentrate on letting the self-deception lie unless it is actually malignant, and try to honestly portray our inability to be certain of the diagnosis. In essence this later part is the acceptance of uncertainty into the model, and the carrying of it into the practice.

Second, is the arena of cultural studies, which Chris has given a great deal of exposition already.

Third, is an experimental science approach. Perhaps this is not too far from what Chris intends, but I'm still working through my reading list on interpretation and cultural matters. My background is as a scientist however, so I feel I can voice that view most simply. By scientific, I mean specifically the forming of theories and models which can then be tested. In the studying of cognitive science and algorithm theory, one of the very interesting things about mystification is that it can save vast amounts of computation. If I keep myself from conceiving some portion of possibilities, then I don't need to retain the algorithms to handle these possibilities. Thus mystification, especially benign mystification can serve as a method of computational conservation.

What is interesting is that there are actual ways to take behaviors and play content and turn them into approximate algorithms, even accounting for random elements. What I am interested in is developing models of these algorithms over time, observing the dynamics of play as actual dynamics. Mystification with it's ability to change the very context of the algorithms we use to make play decisions is a vital layer to explaining what is happening in play. And assuming that they behave approximately as expected they can be found as boundaries and shadows in the dynamics of play.

I hope that helps,

  -Mendel S.

[clehrich]

Apart from the quibble that I don't like the term "cultural studies" because it has a specific valence I personally disdain, I think I'm on the same page with Mendel.  What do you guys think?

[contracycle]

Well I'm pretty much on board.

I'd like to say though that the value of the recognition of self-deception or mystification in an analytical process is to essentially limit how much self-reporting we take literally.  In my mind this is already inherent  to some of the earliest work on the GNS model becuase of Rons recognition that people say they play "by the rules" but in fact often introduce house rules, or ignore rules, without considering these to be significant deviations from playing by the rules.

This has already been discussed, but I thought I would reiterate that this is the primary virtue of recognising the possibility, never mind the probability, of self-deception when engaged in a play analysis.

I also reckon I could discuss self-deception in relation to America at some length, but that would probably be provocative.  I think the ideology of "American Exceptionalism" would be directly relevant, though.