Defining Roleplaying (According to GNS)

[Gordon C. Landis]

Jonathan,

Ralph seemed to think that your GNS-defined roleplaying led to collective story telling being excluded.  It doesn't look that way to me.  That's what seems on-topic for this thread.

Gordon

(Are they really different?  Damned if I know.  That your GNS-definition reasoning fails to solve that one way or another doesn't mean anything, as far as I'm concerned.  Many definitions fail to resolve things like that.  I do like the notion that we have a GNS-specific definition to look at though . . . )

[pete_darby]

Well, just because the system is defined in play, rather than in a book, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist at the point of play, which is what I'm looking at.

Even the choice of mechanics to determine mechanics is a social contract issue determining system: a metasystem, if you must, but a system none the less.

Creative writing systems... I don't know them well enough to say, but it may well be that they're doing what I would call RP without knowing.

Most freeform RP I've seen has a system, as in mechanics, setting, etc. etc. The mechanics may be pure drama mechanics, but that's still mechanics.

Freeform rp without mechanics... isn't that lying to people in bars?

[Valamir]

Ok, I thought I was pretty clear what I was talking about, but obviously not, which seems to be happening frequently lately.  

If you refer to my first comment on this thread you'll see that I was not talking about freeform roleplaying or Universalis style roleplaying or anything of the sort.

Say...take the group of hollywood script writers who get together to collectively bang out an episode of Friends each week.  Are they roleplaying.  I would say no.  They are writing a story collectively.  

But they do meet all of the criteria for Jonathan's initial definition.

They certainly have a social contract, they clearly are exploring a shared imaginary space, and they even can have (as I noted in that first post) GNS style creative agendas.

So what are they missing?  What does a roleplaying group have that a group of hollywood scriptwriters, or 3 buddies working on fanfic together don't have?  Answer:  System.  They may have Social Contract level rules of precedence for who's ideas get added weight based on who the senior script writer is.  Or maybe the one buddy gets to do all of the high tech trekkie stuff 'cuz he's good in science class or something.  But there is no actual IIEE going on.  There's nothing that is recognizable as roleplaying.

That's why I suggested adding Techniques to the definition.

3 guys sitting around and playing the Star Trek RPG and 3 guys sitting around writing Star Trek FanFic are engaged in two completely different activitied IMO, and the initial definition didn't differentiate that.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

I'm not being all warm and fulfilled by this thread. Ralph and I have presented, I think, a very strong case for adding Techniques to the definition (or "definition").

I should point out that "exclude collaborative storytelling" is not part of the goals of the theory that includes GNS. So whether it does or doesn't is completely beside point of the thread. The goal was, what's GNS describe role-playing as doing? And we've done that.

So this thread is going once, going twice ...

Best,
Ron

[M. J. Young]

Okay, for my purposes, I don't find it very helpful to seperate Social Contract into parts like System and Techniques, but I see how one might do that.

I think the problem arises further back.

So perhaps a modified way of saying this would be:

Roleplaying = Social Contract + Exploration of Shared Imagined Space + 1 or more people with 1 or more Creative Agendas

You see, that suggests that we've got something called Creative Agenda that has been added as an external component to something called Exploration of SIS which has been added to Social Contract. It would be far more accurate to say:

Roleplaying equals Social Contract which includes Exploration of Shared Imagined Space which in turn includes Creative Agendae which in turn includes Techniques.[/list:u]That is, you aren't adding Exporation of SIS to Social Contract; you're devising Social Contract that includes SIS.

The difference is subtle, but very important, I think.

But - what is the distinction between "Social Contract" and "System"? What kinds of things would live in the Social Contract part of the Venn diagram ONLY? As far as I can tell, Lumpley implies that anything we do together socially can be considered as System.

Who gets the pizza; when we break; whether cups are allowed at the table; if the dog has to go out, do we wait for the owner to come back; how to we handle interruptions of children/phone calls/SO's; is the television allowed to be on during the game; who controls the light levels in the room--these are (or can be) social contract issues that are not part of system. System defines what's in the shared imagined space. Social contract defines how the group relates and interacts.

--M. J. Young

[lumpley]

Everything in the Social Contract has potential System application.  You can't tell the difference between System things and "just" Social Contract things by naming them.  You have to figure out how the group is using them; that's where the distinction lies.  Where do we put our cups? becomes System if it contributes to our consensual creation of the in-game.  

Similarly, whole books full of rules can just like hover in the Social Contract, never invoked into System.

-Vincent

[Jonathan Walton]

You see, that suggests that we've got something called Creative Agenda that has been added as an external component to something called Exploration of SIS which has been added to Social Contract.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

You can have a Social Contract without using it to explore shared imagined space.  Every group of people lives and breathes through a Social Contract, but that's not roleplaying.

You can have Exploration without a Creative Agenda.  You can watch a movie with a group of friends.  You're all Exploring shared imagined space, based on the things you see happening on the screen.  However, none of you (unless you count the people who made the movie as part of your social contract group, which I'm not) are an active part of creating the shared space.  You're still not roleplaying.

Likewise, you can have a Creative Agenda as a part of a Social Contract of people.  "I want to prove that I'm better than him."  That doesn't mean you're roleplaying.

But when you get all three of them together, you're finally roleplaying.  At least, that's my argument here.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Jonathan,

I find all of that reasonable, especially allowing for all manner of squishiness regarding consensual storytelling, certain forms of on-line play, and wargaming. In other words, we're not talking about an exclusive definition role-playing; we're talking about its component parts.

Seems everyone's OK with that unless I'm missing something. Time to close the thread? Your call.

Best,
Ron

[Jonathan Walton]

Yeah, close this baby.  I mainly wanted feedback on my restatement of your definition, and I think I have it.  Got some more things to talk about, but they need to be other threads, I think (like just how the game designer fits into the Social Contract of a player group, which has been discussed a bit before, but not really tackled).

You're right that the definition is mostly "throw a ball in this direction and you're likely to hit roleplaying" as opposed to something really concrete.  But concrete definitions of art are just asking to be broken anyway.  I mean, my instinct is to disprove definitions, so I was looking for a definition that I would not approvcingly at, instead of thinking of all the ways I could break it.

So, yeah, this thread's closed (by the pseudo-moderator powers I derive from Ron's post above).