Groping for Coherence: Am I G or N or just plain wrong?

[Xose Lucero]

Long time reader, first time poster. Finding the Forge was an eye opener experience. After a long time grasping at the straws of comprehension I'm finally beginning to formulate intelligent questions. At least, that's my naive belief. After you read my questions you might have another opinion.

The system I've been working on in my garage has finally started to condense into something real. It's my hope that analysis by someone who really knows what they're talking about will help fill in blanks in my GNS understanding that abstract theory hasn't yet.

All system examples are highly simplified (Does this need to be said?). Questions in bold.

Players divide points among three attributes, each of which governs a discrete sphere of activity. These attributes do not represent any concrete property of their character. Rather, the number of points in different attributes represents the players' interest in influencing these areas of play via their characters.

It's important to know that "player" means anyone at the table. The system can be used in the traditional 1 GM / N players mode, or with GM duties distributed among fully equal players. Also, "character" means any entity in the imagined reality and can correspond to an army, a political faction, the weather, an individual, PCs, NPCs, or even inanimate objects that play a key role in a conflict, all depending on how the group agrees to play.

Characters of the traditional "PC" type are created with individual Premises and relationships to other characters. These are the usual family / friends / enemies relationships as well as links between similar Premises and intra-player determination to challenge or support these Premises. I think this is the right word but I might mean "kicker" or something in between.

Play is divided into scenes [scene framing omitted for clarity]. A player acts in the scene by stating their character's intent, setting the stakes, and stating the attribute / sphere of activity that governs their character's intent. Other players may allow the action to occur uncontested, may contest the stakes, or may contest the resolution. In a contest, the acting player and the opposing player bid points from their appropriate attribute pools (which pools depends on their characters' intended actions and intended results) while other players may bid points to support either player or oppose one or the other on their own. It might help to think of it as superficially like betting in Poker. Players receive bonuses to bids depending on whether their action, opposition, or support addresses a Premise of the acting player(s).

The very simple version is that bidding continues until one player (acting player or any opposers but not supporters) "folds" or runs out of attribute points. The winner of the bidding receives primary narration rights as do their supporters to a much lesser degree. The loser receives secondary narration rights and they and any supporters lose the attribute points they bid.

1. I would call this (karma + resource management) in-the-middle conflict resolution. Does that sound right?

It's a balancing act between bidding enough to get what you want and risking so much that you will be unable to further influence the scene if you lose. This is in fact one of the main Premises addressed by the system as a whole: how hard are you willing to push for what you want and how much are you willing to give up to get it? It should be obvious that a player can arrange things to win a bid easily, but this is a Pyrrhic victory and almost guarantees they'll win once and only once. The key to continued influence is to push just hard enough, but not so hard that you leave yourself without resources. It's also important to compromise and please other players enough that they will support your actions in the bidding. Hopefully a side effect is playgroup cohesion since no one can run away with the story without majority support.

Attribute points are regained over time and there are bonus points (used like attribute points but not limited to a sphere of activity) to be gained and lost in various circumstances. Players can also transfer attribute points to other players and those transfers can be opposed as outlined above.

2. I intend for this to support Narrativist play but I'm worried that the resolution system makes it Gamist Exploring Character / Situation. Is this a valid concern or does it represent a fundamental misunderstanding on my part? I don't yet have a firm enough grasp of GNS theory to spot coherence / incoherence with any certainty.

3. One of my design goals is for there to be minimal difference between Game and Metagame. Does this make sense and How'm I doin'?

4. Maybe this should be question zero but, does this vague simplified description of the game make sense at all? It feels like it needs to be horribly abstract or thirty pages plus detailed play examples and that's a ways away.

5. Unrelated to this but a couple of the articles around the Forge disparagingly mention "fiction thinly disguised as setting / source material" when discussing RPG supplements. What would proper setting material look like?

Thank you very much for your insight and your indulgence!

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Xose, and welcome!

Everyone, I'd like to address these questions myself without interference, just this once.

Xose, unfortunately I'll have to get back to this tomorrow, so please forgive the delay. But I'm on it.

Best, Ron

[Xose Lucero]

Thank you very much; I'm looking forward to your reply. Obviously I know what my design's like inside my head but I'm not necessarily fluent enough in GNS theory to express it clearly in the proper terms so if you need any clarification I'll try to provide.

Thanks again.

[Eero Tuovinen]

I can see why Ron wants a go at this alone. Good luck, I'll follow this with interest.

Also: do you know about Universalis, Lucero? It's a game with sort of similar ideas, you might like it.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Xose! Sorry about the delay.

First, have you looked at the diagram of the Big Model in The Provisional Glossary? Your use of the phrase "GNS" to describe the ideas makes me want to confirm that.

I want to make sure that you know the Model applies to play, so the point is to see what your system/game provides to facilitate play. And finally, by system, I mean a whole bevy of techniques applied over a significant amount of time – more on that point in a minute.

So far what you're talking about looks sound, although I'll make a few comments about the details and answer some of your specific questions.

That GM/no-GM distinction isn't trivial, and I strongly suggest not saying "either or" without thinking about it. Have you seen the thread in which I outline the layers of necessary Authority during play? What we all call "GMing" in the hobby actually represents a broad constellation of ways to distribute those types of Authority, and so it'd be useful for you to define what kind of GMing you consider functional (if optional) for this game.

Characters of the traditional "PC" type are created with individual Premises and relationships to other characters. These are the usual family / friends / enemies relationships as well as links between similar Premises and intra-player determination to challenge or support these Premises. I think this is the right word but I might mean "kicker" or something in between.

Um – yeah, we should talk about it. The thing is, if you mean Forge-vocab bona fide Premise as written by me in the essays, then you might be better off leaving it  under-analyzed and to development during play itself. Granted, some games are ambitious about this, Primetime Adventures most especially in that each character's Issue is defined in the abstract. But it's not easy to do or to design.

But if you're talking about fictional content, like a Kicker but not limited to that particular technique, then great!

So let's start with an example. I make up a character. What do I write that fits this bill, as you currently see it?

Play is divided into scenes [scene framing omitted for clarity]. A player acts in the scene by stating their character's intent, setting the stakes, and stating the attribute / sphere of activity that governs their character's intent. Other players may allow the action to occur uncontested, may contest the stakes, or may contest the resolution. In a contest, the acting player and the opposing player bid points from their appropriate attribute pools (which pools depends on their characters' intended actions and intended results) while other players may bid points to support either player or oppose one or the other on their own. It might help to think of it as superficially like betting in Poker. Players receive bonuses to bids depending on whether their action, opposition, or support addresses a Premise of the acting player(s).

You'll do 1000% better (and yes, I mean all three zeros) by omitting the phrase "setting the stakes" from that paragraph. Really. Take it out, then read it again. You've lost nothing except the potential for some shitty un-fun play.

I also suggest giving some thought to play that surrounds the conflict in action. What I mean is, let's have a scene start, and don't do anything about conflicts and contests and whatever. What does play look like at that point? And when – and if – do we shift into bidding mode?

Without that matrix or tissue or whatever you want to call it, constructed of fictional characters moving through space and talking and doing stuff, then what you're describing is perilously close to story-boarding, or (yeccch) story-conferencing.

The very simple version is that bidding continues until one player (acting player or any opposers but not supporters) "folds" or runs out of attribute points. The winner of the bidding receives primary narration rights as do their supporters to a much lesser degree. The loser receives secondary narration rights and they and any supporters lose the attribute points they bid.

1. I would call this (karma + resource management) in-the-middle conflict resolution. Does that sound right?

Yes indeed, you are.

It's a balancing act between bidding enough to get what you want and risking so much that you will be unable to further influence the scene if you lose. This is in fact one of the main Premises addressed by the system as a whole: how hard are you willing to push for what you want and how much are you willing to give up to get it? It should be obvious that a player can arrange things to win a bid easily, but this is a Pyrrhic victory and almost guarantees they'll win once and only once. The key to continued influence is to push just hard enough, but not so hard that you leave yourself without resources. It's also important to compromise and please other players enough that they will support your actions in the bidding. Hopefully a side effect is playgroup cohesion since no one can run away with the story without majority support.

OK, that paragraph is awesome, it really lets me know what you're after. Which is why it is absolutely so hyper-crucial in your design to have lots and lots of play in a scene long before the conflict appears. As it stands, we're jumping into immensely consequential, resource-eating mechanics without any in-the-moment investment in the fictional events. Play needs to permit that investment to develop and grow. We don't have scenes in order to have conflicts, we have conflicts in order to make scenes consequential. So the scenes, including content, have to be in progress first before the conflicts become recognized.

Quick question: all points bid are lost, right? You don't keep all your points if you lose?

Here's my big mechanics advice for you. How points come back, and how often, is also crucial. That will be the real (literally, real-world) engine for how effectiveness works in your game.

2. I intend for this to support Narrativist play but I'm worried that the resolution system makes it Gamist Exploring Character / Situation. Is this a valid concern or does it represent a fundamental misunderstanding on my part? I don't yet have a firm enough grasp of GNS theory to spot coherence / incoherence with any certainty.

Gah. To start, you're committing a big error simply by looking at the resolution system alone. Resolutions concern the ends of conflicts; conflicts exist within fictional scenes; fictional scenes are sequential and consequential. So, to understand the Creative Agenda best promoted by your game design, if any, you'll have to step back and think in terms of a series of conflicts, proposed by different people at different times, and if (with any luck "when") people get really excited about what's just happened and what it means for what's happened next.

If that happens, then identify what they're excited about, and that's the Creative Agenda. As I understand it, you're hoping that the game will be really fun, and sustainable in play, for people who want to get excited about human-interest crisis situations, especially – for lack of a better world – illuminating or relevant situations. Not that they know or say that in such abstract terms, but it's like getting jazzed about responsibility and sacrifice while watching Spider-Man – purely in fictional terms, no analysis necessary.

To assess whether the game does that, don't stay at the micro-level of the Techniques for finishing conflicts. Those are important and shouldn't be ignored, but they're only one gear and definitely not the biggest one.

3. One of my design goals is for there to be minimal difference between Game and Metagame. Does this make sense and How'm I doin'?

I think I know what you mean, but we have to be sure we understand each other. Would the phrase "playing on purpose" work for that? I've taken that from a former Forge contributor named Lisa. It's a great phrase. It means that when you utilize the system, it's part and parcel with caring about the character and/or the outcome and/or the fiction as a whole. Role-playing kicks the mechanics into gear and the mechanics kick the role-playing into gear. So play never feels like stop-and-go "talk" vs. "roll."

Let me know if that's what you mean and we can move on from there.

5. Unrelated to this but a couple of the articles around the Forge disparagingly mention "fiction thinly disguised as setting / source material" when discussing RPG supplements. What would proper setting material look like?

I suggest that effective textual setting material inspires people to play. It doesn't suck them into merely reading the setting material as an end in itself. Very few authors can achieve this effect with fiction. Dav Harnish was good at it in the rulebooks for Obsidian, and John Wick did a great job with Orkworld. There are a few others. But the vast, vast majority of texts which try to do it fail badly, partly because the fiction doesn't help or inspire play (for instance, substituting for it; for instance, failing to depict anything play could possibly produce), and partly because in many cases the fiction is so wretchedly bad (let me count the ways; wait, let's not).

Let's go back to my first sentence in the above paragraph. I'm saying that there's no one single way to do it "right" or "proper." Any way is good as long as it works toward the end of the game text, which is to inspire play – to communicate to the reader why you, the author, are so freaking jazzed and excited about playing again yourself. I contend that it can't be faked.

Best, Ron

[Xose Lucero]

Thank you very much for the reply! There's a lot of food for thought there. I was expecting a sandwich with the crust cut off and got a five-course dinner. I'll try to keep my response succinct but I apologize if it ends up running away.

The Big Model is one of the things I'm still groping for. I come from a background of horribly dysfunctional play. A lot of the articles make statements that blow my understanding out of the water and shoot it twice before it hits the ground. When they don't include hand-holding examples I'm sometimes left wondering, "Well, if the only way I thought this worked isn't true that leaves (counts on fingers) zero ways it could work. How else could it be?" I've read all the articles at least twice but, of course, that doesn't mean I've understood or internalized them yet. Hopefully conversations like this will throw my misunderstandings into relief and help clear them up. It's working a treat so far (thank you)!

Anyway, when I said "my GNS understanding" I think I meant the totality of the Big Model, the glossary, the three Creative Agenda articles, and GNS and Other Matters. Maybe a better phrase would have been "my Forge RPG theory understanding"? I take it that "GNS" refers only to the three CAs and I misused the term (synecdoche?).

That GM/no-GM distinction isn't trivial...

I haven't seen your thread about Authority. A link (or directions) would be great if it's not too much trouble. I don't want to say too much without reading that thread but I didn't mean to give the impression that I want a no-GM mode. I think I meant something more like "GM-full" play (as defined in GNS and Other Matters. I hope I'm saying this right but in my head I see the design as a continuum with a single buck-stops-here GM and players on one end and on the other end all the players perform all the duties of a GM. Does that make a difference?

Your (quoted) paragraph was kind of over my head so I might need to file this one away at least until I read your thread. I do see what you mean about the importance of defining functional GMing though. I can't give any examples of GMing until I know what a GM would do, and GMs can do different things in different games, right? ("No, they don't. A GM is a GM," says my dysfunctional background.)

The thing is, if you mean Forge-vocab bona fide Premise...

I thought I might get in trouble with this one. I found two definitions of Premise in the articles. One is in the glossary and Narrativism: Story Now. I think I understand that one and agree that it should be looked at out of the corner of the eye during play so as not to scare it away. The other definition is in GNS and Other Matters: "Premise is whatever a participant finds among the elements to sustain a continued interest in what might happen in a role-playing session." So if I make a character who is a blind gunslinger driven by suicidal urges because he couldn't save the one woman who ever loved him and someone says, "Wow, I want to play in a game with him!" that's Character Premise of the second definition?

The problem is, I don't think that's what I was talking about. I admit I have no idea what to call it but it feels like Premise as defined in the Narrativism essay. Here's an example: you make a Conan clone and for the Whatever that I called Premise you write...

Conan - Premises

• "What is best in life? To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women."
• "Nothing is stronger than Steel (force of arms). Not men. Not women. Not beasts. Nothing is stronger than Steel."

I think I called it Premise because it's a judgment that can be questioned and challenged. "Nothing is stronger than Steel? Not even Flesh?" And they can, through challenge, produce Theme for that character (I think).

(Apologies to the author of Riddle of Steel. It's just an example. I don't even intend this to be a Fantasy game. One of my design goals is for it to be a General system as defined in GNS and Other Matters, not tied to setting, etc.)

You'll do 1000% better (and yes, I mean all three zeros) by omitting the phrase "setting the stakes" from that paragraph.

I'm afraid I don't understand any of this. Would you mind elaborating? I don't understand the problem or the solution.

After that you said give thought to the play surrounding the conflict. Maybe the problem is that I left out that part? Maybe I said, "This is Play," when I should have said, "This is the part of Play that resolves conflicts." This is another "How else could it be?" lack of understanding on my part but I don't yet know how else to describe the rest of play other than, "It's just...you know...roleplaying." It's like "Say yes or roll the dice." The mechanic I outlined comes into play if / when another player says, "That's not what happens," or, "It should happen differently," or, "You're going to have to work if you want that." Otherwise it just happens like the player says.

Oh, wait. I said, "A player acts in the scene..." In other words, ever time the player wants their character to do something they set stakes. "I try to sit in the chair. What's at risk is that I fall on my butt and break my pelvis." Is that the problem? If so, that's a real design problem compounded by bad explaining on my part.

I don't want to presume that's what you meant but if it is I can see how it would look like "jumping into immensely consequential, resource-eating mechanics without any in-the-moment investment in the fictional events." Especially since I stupidly left out examples of everything else. The mechanic I outlined only comes into play when "just roleplaying" leads to a point where people care enough to disagree about what happens. I apologize for the lack of clarity. Real boneheaded on my part. And please correct me if I misread you.

Quick question: all points bid are lost, right?

Yes, with some possible softening of the blow via the reward system to prevent a death spiral where losing inevitably leads to losing. Right now I think players regain points after a scene and I think the proposal to end a scene can be opposed like any action. This might prevent it just being an escape hatch for players running low on points, while also giving people an incentive to change scenes after big bloody (in terms of point loss and therefore, usually, investment-heavy(?)) conflicts. Hopefully this would keep the pacing crisp but it needs testing. Thought experiments aren't much help on this point.

Gah.

This part was extremely extremely helpful. I think I see what you mean. But does this mean that all this RPG theory is less helpful as a design tool than it is as an analysis tool? Do you say, after testing, "Ah, I've made a Narrativist game," rather than sitting down and asking, "What should I do to design a Narrativist game?" Did I just reveal that I don't see what you mean at all?

Would the phrase "playing on purpose" work for that?

That's not what I mean but I absolutely want that too.

What I meant by "minimal difference between Game and Metagame" is... Would it surprise you to learn that I'm not sure? Part of it is like the bit above about ending a scene. A player's desire and decision to end a scene is a metagame action having nothing to do with their character. But that decision can be opposed and conflict-resolved using the same exact mechanic that governs their character's actions. Likewise, the point values of attributes the player chooses and uses don't represent properties of their character. They represent the player's relative interest in exploring each of the different areas of play with their character. They're metagame values but they're used to enable the character's actions in the game. If examples would help I'll try to provide.

Like what I said about the GM continuum, I think the conflict resolution mechanic lies on a continuum. Here is a very rough example. On the one side is "standard" Game mechanics where the conflict resolution mechanic affects only player vs. player and player vs. environment resolutions. Moving in an increasingly metagame direction it could be used to settle conflicts of Positioning, Scene Framing, worldbuilding, campaign planning, and in the extreme case, Social Contract issues like who pays for pizza. How much influence over the scene are you willing to trade for free pizza? The scope of the mechanic would be up to the group to decide, and the decision itself could be subject to the same conflict resolution mechanic. I've gone completely off the deep end into Moebius strip territory. This is a bit silly but hopefully it helps clarify what I meant by Metagame. When I say "continuum" I might mean "dial" and it might need to be set via testing rather than left fluid. I don't know enough yet to be sure.

I'm sorry this ended up so long and thanks again for your very helpful answers and your patience in helping translate what I think I mean. I'd really appreciate any more insight you would share if it's not too much trouble.

[greyorm]

...jumping into immensely consequential, resource-eating mechanics without any in-the-moment investment in the fictional events. Play needs to permit that investment to develop and grow. We don't have scenes in order to have conflicts, we have conflicts in order to make scenes consequential. So the scenes, including content, have to be in progress first before the conflicts become recognized.

That sound you heard was me smacking my forehead in realization. This is probably one of the most understated but brilliant things you've ever uttered, Ron. For me, at least.

That realization was: the above is what a whole bunch of games want you to do but don't say to do. For example, 3:16 and ORX. Which is why I've had problems seeing how they work.

And also, that a whole lot of issues regarding how/what/why conflict resolution versus task resolution are tidied up just by understanding you do that thing above there first just to find out what you're rolling for.