The Process Model of Roleplaying

[Eetu]

Hello all,

the just published Knutepunkt Book contains an article by me and a few friends, titled "The Process Model of Roleplaying". While waiting for the electronic version of the book, the article can be accessed at http://temppeli.org/rpg/process_model/KP2005-article/.

The article introduces a descriptive framework for the act of roleplaying, remotely similar to the Big Model. The abstract:

This paper presents the Process Model of Role-Playing. The model provides concepts to describe and analyze role-playing sessions, to describe role-playing preferences, as well as to plan and convey visions of future role-playing sessions and campaigns. The core idea of the model is to look at role-playing as a set of interacting processes, distinct aspects of the act of role-playing that go on over a period of time. On top of this, a model is built that identifies the various processes, as well as the end results of role-playing, the individual methods used, and the interactions of all these components.

From the introduction:

The Process Model of Role-Playing is a set of concepts and tools to describe, analyze and discuss the act of role-playing. The design goals of the model were as follows:

  1. to identify distinct elements and components inside the act of role-playing and create a vocabulary of such concepts, and
  2. to describe how these components interact to make or break a game.

The model can be used for the following:

  1. to describe and analyze singular or typical gaming sessions from the viewpoint of an individual or a whole group,
  2. to plan and communicate visions of future sessions and campaigns, and
  3. to describe play preferences of an individual or a whole group.

The article contains an effort to create an internally coherent vocabulary of elements in roleplaying, including an attempted categorization of the end results of roleplaying. There is also an appendix relating the model to various other models of roleplaying, including GNS and the Big Model.

I'm very interested in hearing any comments on the model. Especially on the following:
  1. Is the model understandable?
  2. Can you fathom the model being of use? Where in particular?
  3. As a whole, how does the model relate to and compare with the Big Model?

- Eetu

[xenopulse]

Give me a couple of days for an actual review.

From a first look:

- naming the SSoI something very close to the SIS just invites confusion. It might be better to pick a different name, because the names themselves give no indication that the SSoI is broader than and inclusive of the SIS. Your goal is to give a vocabulary to work with; I would try to make it as effective and clear a vocabulary as possible.

- "The GNS definition of Gamism maps neatly and completely to the
Process of Competition." Let's not forget Challenge--a lot of Gamists want to beat the system, not necessarily other players in the same group. I might add Tension, if I understood how that's a Process in its own right.

More later.

[Eetu]

Thanks for the quick comments.

As quick responses to the quick comments: I hear you on the SSoI, actually got the same comment at Knutepunkt. I'm loathe to change it at this point, though.

On the GNS gamist thing, I'm going strictly by the definition given in the authority source 'GNS and other matters of role-playing theory', not common use. Tension and Challenge get lumped into gamism in the threefold definition, but not in the original GNS one (in my current opinion, atleast).

You'll also note how I've treated the Big Model CA's and GNS as separate theories. I think there is significant evolution between them, but one that doesn't invalidate looking at the historic GNS from our article's point of view - which here is to test the power of the vocabulary in describing concepts, playe types and styles as described in other models.

- Eetu

[John Kim]

I'm very interested in hearing any comments on the model. Especially on the following:
  1. Is the model understandable?
  2. Can you fathom the model being of use? Where in particular?
  3. As a whole, how does the model relate to and compare with the Big Model?

I think the model is fairly understandable.  I'm not sure I would use it directly.  Then again, I'm not a big fan of, say, diagramatic structural models used in study of novels and films.  They have their place, I suppose, but I'm not drawn to them.  There are quite a number of breakdowns of "why gamers play" -- which would correspond to your six categories of rewards (4.1).  I'm not particularly drawn by these six as compared to the various others (Allston's or Laws' types, the Threefold, etc.).  Ultimately, classifying someone's preference isn't necessarily enlightening.  i.e. It's not clear to me that saying someone pursues the goal of Meaning gives more insight than saying that they are Immersionist, say.  

How it would be of use, I think, is in facilitating debate over the relation of processes to rewards -- even if the particular named categories are changed or redefined.  i.e. It is the style of diagrams and analysis more than the listed categories of reward and process.  

And I've mentioned at Knutepunkt itself, it's really important for these diagrams that there be the larger field -- the Shared Space of Imagining -- which encompasses beyond the SIS.  That's where a lot of meaning generation and other processes occur.

[Eetu]

[reposting after the site hack]

Hi John, it was good to meet you.

We disagree with the categorization of Benefits being just another breakdown of "why gamers play". Here's why:

While the categorization of benefits is not unique (as we note by citing another categorization by Jonathan Walton, and there's a short stub for one here), we do think these categorizations have something more in them than the more traditional Threefold/Three-Way/Robin Law's Player Types/GNS -type classifications.

The difference is that most of the other classifications concern themselves with "what brings enjoyment". Our classification of Benefits and those cited, on the other hand, concern themselves only with "what form does the enjoyment take". We think that such a question is useful in itself, and brings added clarity to the whole equation, which, in our model, then involves the Processes, which are actually the components that bring a response to the first question of what creates the enjoyment.

Which is actually also just what I think you were saying, talking about the relationship between processes and results. This formulation allows us to talk about the relationship between these two parts of the "why gamers play" equation.

With respect to Jonathan Walton's The Five Values Model classification, we do not believe ours to be inherently superior, it just fits better with the rest of our model.

I've placed this answer, along with responses to other critique up here at the site of the Process Model.

- Eetu