But a Model of What?

[Valamir]

Ok, so what we're looking at is:

People interact socially
They explore some imagined event / situation
They bring with them their own agenda relative to the event / situation which colors their social interaction.
They engage in various techniques in pursuit of their agenda and those techniques could be broken down further into various ephemera.

Observing the individual ephemere can tell us something about the techniques they're using.
Examining the combinations of techniques they're using can give us insight into their Agenda.


And this overall model can be applied to a variety of social interactions where where there is a shared imaginary space (like negotiating over what the implementation of a contract or policy decision will actually look like once its in place).


Is that pretty much the idea?
If so you get no real arguement with me, you've just constructed a generic social interaction model out of a specific roleplaying model.

You'd need to substitute different things for "what's being explored", and the types of techniques and ephemera used and a different selection of Agendas.  

Now that you've had this epiphany, what are you thinking of applying it to?

[Matt Snyder]

Matt, I agree with you 100%, but you're missing my point completely.  The two guy going to the movie is not, in my view, creation or modeled by Ron's description.  It's EVERYTHING BEFORE THEY DECIDE TO GO THE MOVIE.  All that negotiating.  All that imagining.  That's the creative process.  Going to the Matrix drunk is not necessarily creation (though Lisa does have a few good points), but imagining what it would be like to go to the Matrix drunk IS.  That's my point.

Ok, then that's precisely why I wrote what I did -- like "Does the "Game of Universalis" end before they actually see the movie. You response above tells me, "Yes." I also tried to get you to say whether the VERB was "watch" or "drink and imagine." It has nothing to do with "watch," it seems. That's why I asked. I'm not missing your point, I saw it. But I saw others, too. Your example did not make it clear for me.

Is that clearer, Matt?  Pete?

Yes, it's clearer. But to me it seems you moved the goal posts. I may just be misreading or mis-remembering. I think in the other thread you said this model applied to any collaborative creation. Now you're saying it's "shared imaginative space." I do not agree that those two terms are synonymous, for many of the same points I raised above. That's just me, and I suspect you'd disagree. <shrug>

Finally, for God's sake man! Answer these people! Yeah, it applies to social situations. So what? Why does the Forge care? Please don't answer with something like, "Because they're human beings, social people. They should care." Well, I don't. I'm just not interested unless you can explain to me what you're so jazzed about in a Forge context (assuming you still want to discuss on the Forge). If you're jazzed for some other reason entirely, I humbly and respectfully ask you to "take it outside."

In other words, you seem to be excited that you've discovered something helpful, which is great. But how does it 1) help me with my leisure activities that are in some vague way connected to role-playing or 2) expand my definition of what we should be talking about here on the Forge or 3) do something I haven't yet conceived that you think is perfectly suitable to the Forge?

[Mike Holmes]

Well, the idea would be that if Jonathan's supposition were correct that we could apply theory from the linked areas of activity to RPGs. But I think that happens already. I mean, we already do disuss psychology as it pertains to the different levels of the model.

I guess my point is that we sorta already do assume that it's all connected and bring in applicable theory from other areas. Is there some area that we've ignored? If so, that's probably less because we didn't think it was applicable, and more because we just hadn't thought of it.

Mike

[Jonathan Walton]

I may just be misreading or mis-remembering. I think in the other thread you said this model applied to any collaborative creation. Now you're saying it's "shared imaginative space." I do not agree that those two terms are synonymous...

Me neither.  Sorry, Matt, I was underestimating the degree to which you understood my point.  Apologies.  Moving to "shared imaginative space" was my effort to make things clearer.  I do still believe the model has relevance in any collaborative creative endeavor.  You're correct that the process doesn't have to stop after some "imagining phase" and usually doesn't.  Usually, after people collaborate on a imaginative level, they actually go and carry it out, trying to realize their vision.  Is that the piece that you think I've dropped?  But still, that doesn't explain the relevance to roleplaying, just what Mike implied...

Well, the idea would be that if Jonathan's supposition were correct that we could apply theory from the linked areas of activity to RPGs.

Which was my original purpose.  But he's right, we do this already.  It just makes it easier when the connections between things are more readily apparent.  I hadn't made the "roleplaying as making decisions" or "roleplaying as all collaborative creation" connections yet.

Now that you've had this epiphany, what are you thinking of applying it to?

But this is the real question that all three of you asked.  I haven't really had time for all of the implications to really sink in, but here's a few things that I've been chewing over:

-- "Freeform" or "systemless" roleplaying is perhaps the most natural, the most instinctive thing there is. People do it all the time, based solely on a vague understanding of social norms. You can do it with people you've never met before, simply by watching their body language, the way they talk, how they interact with others, etc.  The Social Contract is already in place, instantly.  If you work within the kinds of interactions that people are used to being a part of, you can design a beautiful game without changing the dynamics of the Social Contract that already exists between them.  I've been really focused, recently, about thinking about roleplaying from the Social Contract POV and looking at ways of constructing a Social Contract that would get the players to have the kinds of interactions I want, but I may have been trying to reinvent the wheel here.

-- It's really, really easy to reach Exploration, if you accept the Social Contract that already exists.  How easy is it to walk up to somebody you know only vaguely and ask them to imagine something with you?  You ask them "What do you think about Hamlet?" and, through your conversation, your agreements and disagreements, you create an shared vision of what Hamlet is like.  Even if you don't agree, your vision includes the disagreements and you gain a greater understanding of each other.  Taken to extremes, almost all interactions are, in some way, Exploration, because they deal with constructing mental images of other people through what they say and do.  However, very rarely do we, as designers, trust that these kinds of interactions will produce interesting play.  We create systems to facilitate or inhibit them.  In some ways, we take all the processes that already work and have been "playtested" for years and years and hotwire them to work in unnatural ways.  This can be fun, sure, and broadens the possibilities of interaction, but doesn't have to be the only way.

-- Creative Agenda is an interesting question too.  I think you can see these play out in natural, everyday interactions as well.  Say I ask somebody "What do you think about Hamlet?" and choose to Explore our interpretations of the play.  Imagine the different kind of purposes I might have:

A) To show the person that I know more about Hamlet than they do, or have better insight, or, in other words, am correct in my interpretation or judgement of the work.

B) To better understand the other person's perspective, by listening to them, and by bouncing ideas off them and seeing which ones appeal to them and which ones they object to.  Even seeing how they reject ideas can tell you more about their perspective.

C) To understand more about Hamlet, by examining someone else's interpretation and comparing it to my own.  Perhaps I could gain even deeping insight into the play.

D) etc.

-- As for Techniques and Ephemera, those would seem rather difficult to talk about because we take them for granted.  You'd need to talk to Anthropologists or people who were strongly knowledgable in human behavior to even get a glimpse of how we manage to communicate with each other, how we observe and break the unspoken rules of the Social Contract, how we let others know what our Creative Agenda is in any interaction, etc.

-- So I guess what I'm ultimately wondering about is, if Ron's model is so generally applicable to what naturally occurs when a group of people is considering the same issue (in classrooms, in casual discussions, in trying to come to a decision, etc.), could there be room for a naturalist, minimalist game design philosophy, based on the kinds of normal interactions people take part in on a regular basis.  Some freeform games (like Killeror the negotiation phase of Diplomacy) already do this.  They don't tell you how to become the leader of your group.  They don't give you ways of solving internal problems.  They trust you to interact and come to decisions based on normal social interactions.

Ultimately, what I suppose this is doing is making me reconsider even more of what I take for granted.  It's making me recognise that "System Already Exists," to coin a phrase.  Too often, perhaps, when designing games, we reinvent the wheel instead of considering what's already in place.

And that's why I think this is important to roleplaying.  If we're going to tell people how to interact, it seems critical to understand how they already interact with each other, which, it seems to me, can already be modeled using similar systems.  You're not giving people new Creative Agendas or Techniques, you're adapting the ones they already have.

I apologize if that doesn't seem like a big payoff to anyone, but it's a nice revelation to me.  The rest of it is still sinking in, so there could be more later.

[Valamir]

Well, its no big surprise that roleplaying and social interaction overlap.

Most every person you know spends the majority of every waking moment of their lives roleplaying.

In the meeting at work where you play the part of dedicated employee who fully buys into the new corporate initiative.  To the lunch with your co workers where you play the part of the disgruntled employee who thinks the corporate initiative is a bunch of crap.

How many of us have played the part of the dutifull spouse when what we really want to do is say "screw this I'm going out with my friends"?

With one group of friends you tell raunchy, disgusting, tasteless jokes.  At Grandma's house your jokes are so clean as to be corny.

What are all of these if not roleplaying.  One might say that what makes our Roleplaying different is that the world we're sharing is an imaginary one.  Hmmm, seems to me the world of the dedicated employee and dutifull spouse is also often pretty durned imaginary too.

So no surprise at all to me that structureally these activities have a lot of similiarities.

But where I think they depart from each other is when one starts to break open the little black boxes of the Venn diagram.

I don't think "Gamist, Simulationist, or Narrativist" has any real meaning for a broader social context.  Sure the "Agenda" box is still there; but it isn't the same selection of Agendas.

Likewise I think the "Explore" box is also there, but the elements being explored aren't character, setting, situation, system and color.


I think the framework may have some universal application, but the contents of the individual boxes are very specialized for RPGs.  To apply to other activities one would need to invent different contents for the boxes IMO.

[Ben Lehman]

-- "Freeform" or "systemless" roleplaying is perhaps the most natural, the most instinctive thing there is. *snip*

-- It's really, really easy to reach Exploration, if you accept the Social Contract that already exists.  How easy is it to walk up to somebody you know only vaguely and ask them to imagine something with you?  You ask them "What do you think about Hamlet?" and, through your conversation, your agreements and disagreements, you create an shared vision of what Hamlet is like.  Even if you don't agree, your vision includes the disagreements and you gain a greater understanding of each other.  Taken to extremes, almost all interactions are, in some way, Exploration, because they deal with constructing mental images of other people through what they say and do.  However, very rarely do we, as designers, trust that these kinds of interactions will produce interesting play.  We create systems to facilitate or inhibit them.  In some ways, we take all the processes that already work and have been "playtested" for years and years and hotwire them to work in unnatural ways.  This can be fun, sure, and broadens the possibilities of interaction, but doesn't have to be the only way.

BL>  Tell it to Plato.

yrs--
--Ben

P.S.  To explain more fully -- the idea of thinkers and debaters creating an abstract virtual "space" with which to understand the world dates back to at least Plato, who thought that this was the real space, and real life was the problem (the original Mazes and Monsters victim?)  What you're saying is that, when we role-play, we are really just dicking around in Platonic thought-space, which is true, and interesting.

[contracycle]

I'm afraid I think there is a massive practical difference between shared imagination and a creative agenda, and that the categories are not as broad as they appear.

I think that deciding whether to go see a movie or not does constitute shared imagining, but it does not consttute a creative agenda.  And that has an important consequence for the *significance* of the coherence of the imaginative space.  That is, if you are going out to implement something, you have a vested interest in everyone sticking to one concept; coherence of the imaginatiove space is important where there is an actual CA, whereas this is not true of every act of shared imagining.

It is precisely because there is a disagreement in the shared imagining about the movie that the proposed action, to see it, is NOT enacted.  The plan fails becuase the participants do NOT agree in the imaginative space.

Now, if you set out with a social contract to achieve a specific thing, then this form of disagreement is not possible.  A better example would be something like Scrapheap Challenge: mechanics let loose on a junkyard have to build some device to achieve a specific goal.  The other night they were trying to curl mini's across ice.  For each team to even go out an scavenge components, they must all first agree what the machine is going to look like and on its operating principles: without such knowledge, they cannot make useful selections from the available junk.  Failure to agree on an shared imaginative space means failure to even start building the machine.

It is the intent to create which gives the need for a coherent imagniative space its bite.  Without that context, the problems inherent to a contradictory imaginative space are not important problems, and you can go onto something else.  The social contract is governing real people in the real world with a real objective, not merely a notional or abstract interest in creativity or exploration broadly.

[M. J. Young]

I'm with Paganini: I've long said that GNS categories apply beyond roleplaying games. (I've also said the same about DFK mechanics.)

Most sports, the vast majority of board games and card games, and many war games are gamist in their priorities. This is hardly surprising. No, they aren't fully integrated into the theory because in most cases the amount of imaginative creativity is very low--but given gamist priorities, those are generally the "trappings" of the game, the context in which we place our competition. It's a bit like the difference between a miniature golf course which lays out difficult golf-course-like "sand" and water traps versus one that has moving dinosaur statues to play through--it's background to the game, not the point of the game.

Improvisational theatre frequently represents narrativist priorities, but there are other types of games and interactive entertainments that do.

Simulationist priorities can be found in reenactments and in some wargames (those played to find out what would have happened, rather than in competition with the opponent).

I think that GNS priorities also apply to some writing styles. Travelogues are almost certainly simulationist. Some adventure books reflect gamist priorities (the excitement comes from the challenges that arise and how the hero overcomes them, without any reference to moral, ethical, or personal issues), and genuine mysteries (Conan-Doyle, Christie, James, Peters) are almost certainly gamist, as they challenge the reader to find the solution before the detective does so. The vast majority of that which is designated "literature" by professors of English is narrativist, exploring issues.

So the model expands beyond roleplaying at many points. It is a model which discusses a specific intersection between social interaction and creative recreation, and it will inherently be related to social interactions, creativity, and recreation at many points.

Certainly there are places where they differ, even when they're close, and sometimes there are aspects of the model that address that (how does stance relate to the original example?). Meanwhile, yes, the theory is descriptive of much that is not roleplaying, at least in some aspects.

--M. J. Young