Address vs. Bricolage

[Landon Darkwood]

Hello,

Warning: Long post ahead.

First: In regards to the original title of the post, I don't really think that "Address vs. Bricolage" exists in any kind of operative, observable sense. It's telling that Chris Lehrich ultimately chose to stick his "Bricolage Applied" thread into the RPG Theory forum and not this one. I don't think he's talking about anything necessarily specific to CA at all.

At the risk of murdering the man's theory with my thorough lack of qualifications, what I think he's talking about is that apart from all else, people play RPG's (to a great degree, anyway) to socially reinforce one another and create a sense of community and bonding. The bricolage analogy was one he picked out as a means of demonstrating how the manner in which people add stuff into their local play accomplishes that.

The ramifications are pretty sweeping, offering up a probable explanation for why incoherent designs continue to sell, how Drift can be a feature and not a bug, why groups with seemingly incompatible GNS preferences can actually get along and play nice with one another and be none the wiser... it's a ton of food for thought.

The act of associating things into your local game and having to deal with the complete ramifications of those things - this happens in just about every gaming group, everywhere, CA notwithstanding. Like in Lehrich's example, if you let someone do a fancy sidestep maneuver in your game, you have to accept that he's going to want to use it every time in a similar scenario - the addition extends beyond that moment of play, and carries things with it that are unanticipated yet must be made to work in the framework of the SIS.

As far as my play experience is concerned, just about everyone who roleplays does this. Being able to define the phenomenon and being conscious of it can aid the group on a purely social level, most of all, and prevent decisions that could, perhaps, jar some of the social dynamic of the group.

Yeah. We're still not talking about CA. Like any other technique we might use, bricoling (or whatever we're calling it) will be used in support of the predominant agenda at the table. The fact that it has a potentially unique presence in Sim play, to me, just has to do with the fact that it's a basic phenomenon over time in Exploration, and hence gets "squared" in that Sim way.

Ultimately, I think trying to bring bricolage firmly into a parallel with any CA is doomed to create confusion where none (or less) previously existed.

Second: IME, it's really, really difficult to discern CA "tells" if the gameplay is generally functional and everyone is having a good time. As per Ron's essay, he invented the theory because he observed that a lot of people just don't have fun playing RPGs, and no common vocabulary existed with which to diagnose why. It's easy to take GNS out of scope and try to tether all sorts of things to it that it, IMO, was actually not designed to do. Analyzing functional play is one of them, I think.

This is important, because devotion to any CA does not have to be a conscious process. I'd go so far as to say it isn't conscious more often than it is. You don't have to be "gaming on purpose" to do Nar. You don't even have to know you're doing it. What you know is that you totally dig playing RPGs with these people. The actual technical content of the stuff that happens is not as important as why you enjoyed it, for the purposes of determining your CA preferences. And if everyone's having fun, it stands to reason that it really doesn't matter.

In Jay's game, address of Premise might occur regularly as the result of the GM giving the players free reign over tough decisions. But if no one in the group gives that social support (read: acknowledgement) as being cool, and Jay really doesn't think about it (or sees it and doesn't care as much), but he /does/ get super jazzed about how believable and seamless Middle-earth becomes through the process of play... well, then he's got Sim preferences. The fact that he made a decision that could have been supported as Nar isn't relevant. What's he's interested in using Exploration for primarily is supporting Sim. If Gam moments or Nar moments occur in that, it's inconsequential.

Ultimately, any input in play is a tool to achieve a CA, and can be used in support of any mode. Solid story structure (or Situation-structure) can be a tool to achieve ideal Dreaming, or a tool to pinpoint appropriate moments to Step On Up. Precise world details can be used as a tool to provide stepping stones to situations, that then give opportunities for inserting thematic statements into the SIS. Challenging encounters can be used as a tool to enhance the drama and meaning behind a Premise-oriented decision. In some modes, these things are Why We're Here... in others, they're a means to another end. But they're all still there. The fundamental structures of Exploration never change... just the end that they are put to.

Now, the above would become relevant if, say, address of Premise took supremacy over time and started to make Middle-earth less seamless for him. And then the dichotomy would show itself - he has less fun, and says "things just don't feel right", and everyone else says, "But the story is so interesting," and he says, "Not in Middle-earth." It would be equally relevant if he found himself getting into it anyway, regardless of the break from "world-sense". Emotional committment is a red herring in this too, because it's going to appear as a natural consequence of that enjoyment, or vice versa, regardless of agenda.

Here's the thing: that relevance occurs when Jay is having significantly less fun than everyone else, or when a lot of people in the same game aren't really having fun. Being too conscious of how GNS functions in a coherent group can be almost as much of a hindrance as a help. You can easily get into the realm of trying too hard, and it can bust up things on a social contract level because you're no longer acting within the expected dynamic.

(Obviously, Jay's being used only as a hypothetical example here - In no way do I intend to comment with authority on what actually goes on in his group.)

So, Marco, what about your group's play are you trying to fix? Who's not having fun and why? What have they said about it? Do you think that understanding the bricolage analogy will help you in these aims? Is it worth it, if in fact the group is just fine without it? What's going on in your group right now that makes it so essential for you to identify their play as primarily Sim or primarily Nar?

I'm not trying to be critical. I'm just curious, in light of the above, and I think the answer could bring focus to the thread.


-Landon Darkwood

[Caldis]

I'm going to do some self policing and split off to a different topic since this really has drifted away from anything to do with the thread title. (Apologies to Ron should have done this long ago.)

The one thing I want to leave here is an explanation of the tale of Turin Turambar and how it relates to Jay's play.  It's a long tale but the part of it that relates to Jay's game comes at a time when Turin gets captured by a group of orcs.  They torture him and leave him hanging tied to a tree.  Turin's best and possibly only friend Beleg Strongbow manages to sneak  in and rescue him.  With a disoriented Turin laying on the ground Beleg uses a special named sword to cut the bonds.  Tolkien describes it as fate taking a hand when the sword slips and pokes Turin in the foot.  Turin wakes and fears the orcs have come back to torture him.  A scuffle breaks out he gets the sword and kills Beleg.

Note all the similarites here.  Captured by orcs, named swords, confusion, fate, important person killed by accident.  It's all directly inspired by the story.  While I wont say that the events were predetermined here I will say you can definitely see the GM nudging the game to play out in exactly this manner.  

Ian noted just above that narrativism is about making a comment on the human issues, which I think is bang on, in this example no one is making a comment on the issues they are making Tolkiens comment.