Narrativism without Pervy Mechanics?

[Walt Freitag]

But apparently, reducing the amount of refernce time by having the rules well-learned would have an impact on gauging points of contact.

In Trollbabe (when rolling's not involved), there are very clear rules for how Scenes occur and how Conflicts occur within them. Once you understand those rules, they are very easy to apply in multiple different ways without having to reference them and wonder (work out) how they apply.

So apparently it's not whether a rule must be utilized and/or something must be invented, it's the amount of effort required to do so, that determines relative degree of points of contact.

- Walt

[C. Edwards]

Yeah, I read that, but I don't think that what it implies is necessarily true.

I'm going to post my reply in Alans thread here.

-Chris

[Sean]

Hi all.

I wonder a little about "high points of contact" vs. "focus on Exploration of System" re the Vanilla/Pervy distinction.

I like the second definition a little better (for "pervy"), but I think it's not high/low points of contact per se that quite (close, but not quite) makes this distinction. Rather, it's when there are intra-systemic points of contact: when you start exploring the imagined space by exploring the system rather than by, well, imagining things.

This usually in practice corresponds to 'high points of contact' but is not conceptually equivalent. It's easy to imagine a game in which there are a lot of points of contact with the system, but each one facilitates/keeps you bouncing along in the shared imagined space. I think perviness is when thinking about the system replaces grooving on the SIS.

You may be using the term 'pervy' differently, and as I said, in practice this correlates pretty well with high and low points of contact. I'm just pushing for a qualitative difference (not points of contact with the system per se, perhaps, but when one contacts the system and then moves on to another part of thes system maybe, rather than moving along in the SIS) rather than the purely quantitative one. Not the 'how many' but the 'how'.

[M. J. Young]

This is completely off the top of my head, and I may be well out in left field or something on this one; but it struck me, so I thought I'd type it.

It's necessary to distinguish "system" from "rules". "System", as Vincent observed, is the totality of how we come to agree about the content of the shared imaginary space. "Rules" are the individual articulated or articulable fragments to which we refer as part of system.

Points of contact is less about system than about rules; and it's less about how many times you have to refer to the system (a non-question; you refer to the system continuously at all times), nor even how many times a rule matters. It's about how many different rules must be integrated into play.

The easy illustration is to take a D&D example. I need to roll to hit an opponent. These are the rules that must be referenced to do that:

[*]My character class[*]My current level[*]My strength or dexterity bonus (even if I don't get one, I have to know that)[*]Magic plusses on the weapon (again, even if zero)[*]Racial bonus[*]Weapon specialization or other class bonus (again, even if it does not apply)[*]Defender Armor Class[*]Shield value (that is, if the attacker has withstood more attacks than the shield defends, the shield no longer counts)[*]Number of previous attacks defender has faced this round (for shield value to matter)[*]Combat table[*]Die roll[*]Dice of damage done by this weapon[*]Attribute-based damage bonus[*]Weapon-based damage bonus[*]Racial damage bonus[*]Class or specialization damage bonus[*]Die roll for damage[/list:u]I think that's everything. Those are all points of contact, because they represent discrete bits of information that must be referenced or created to resolve the outcome.

At the other extreme would be, flip a coin, on heads the opponent takes a point of damage.

Does that sound more like the PoC distinction?

--M. J. Young

[M. J. Young]

I am replying to myself because I think I did not wrap that post up clearly.

The point is that a point of contact is a discrete rule or bit of information that must be referenced to establish new information within the shared imaginary space. No matter how quickly we can do it, or how many shortcuts we've devised to streamline the process (e.g., the D&D player could have all of the relevant information put together as a THAC0 for the weapon written on his character sheet, with the damage dice and bonuses next to it so he doesn't have to chase it all down), there are still a lot of independent bits of information to include (and sometimes someone has to go through everything and update that number to reflect character or equipment changes). The coin flip example was an effort to reduce everything to a single rule. At that point, it doesn't matter how often you have to reference that one rule; what matters is that there's only the one rule. That's a low points of contact game.

Does that make sense?

--M. J. Young

[Sean]

Makes sense to me, MJ. That's what I think of when I think of points of contact.

I guess the point of my note was just to distinguish between two kinds of perviness. One goes with high points of contact in yours and Ron's senses both. Another goes with cases, like you see with masters of the rules minutia in various versions of D&D, or Champions chargen, where exploration of Rules becomes a primary driver of and securer of interest in what's going on in the SIS.

When I think about the kind of play I would call 'pervy', I really think about the second. But the first often leads to the second. Still, I can imagine a low points of contact game where the few points of contact there are really involve you and wind up taking you off into a little sub-game that really generates its own little separate reality: moments of perviness in a sea of vanilla. Whereas low points of contact that doesn't do this is just vanilla.

A not-totally-satisfactory example, although pretty good, is what it does to Champions play when people start taking variable power pools. The game stops for a chargen-style, ultra-pervy rebalancing act that takes you out of the flow of play and into the system as part of the game.

High-level 3e D&D is full of this, especially with the 3.0 Haste that gets you an extra partial action, since in effect each round becomes a complicated, rules-intensive balancing act where you're trying to maximize your effectiveness before the next round of play comes along. D&D combat is fairly high POC to begin with, but the 'round scheduling' that comes up like this takes it to a whole other level, and that's the level I tend to think of as pervy.

The lab rules in Ars Magica might be another example, a subgame that takes you almost entirely out of role-playing and has all these terms and conditions of its own.