Art? Science? Black Magic? Whatever...

[Andrew Martin]

Which is not to say (I hope) that what the characters do is irrelevant - after all, what the characters do IS something that the players are doing.

One has to remember that what the characters do is a result of the player's actions in reaction to other player actions, which means it's another layer of information/disinformation to hack through to get "inside" the heads of the players. And that's where I see where there's a lot of these problems on this forum; trying to interpret what's going on through the player's calculated actions (PC actions) after their reactions (as an audience). If one looks at the player reactions through a session, it's a heck of a lot easier to figure out what's going on in a group.

[M. J. Young]

Excellent insight. Oddly, one of my earliest RPG articles was http://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/columns/mjyoung99.html">Intuition and Surprise at RPGnet, in which I outlined something very like this: defining intuition as subconscious processing of subliminally acquired information.

John's point is well made--and yes, he did mean to write what he wrote, but not in an offensive manner.  The point is that it might be that he's not seeing the details you are seeing that lead you to GNS conclusions, or that he's seeing greater nuances of details between the cracks that blur the distinctions you're making. As Ralph notes, it's not entirely a matter of how observant you are; it's in part a matter of what you tend to observe. When I did a lot of counseling, I often found I was able to get to the heart of people's problems that they had failed to recognize themselves, because there were cues in what they told me (often over the phone) which pointed to their blind spots. Back in college I used to correctly guess people's majors based on first impressions in meeting them. Yet I don't have near the practice observing creative agendae in games, and probably don't notice them so readily. I will spot a grammatic error in a forum post as obscure as wrong antecedent or improper parallelism or a split infinitive (and it will often irk); but I can walk through a room and not know whether anyone was in it, nevermind whether there was anything on the floor. To a degree, we train ourselves to observe what matters to us and to ignore what doesn't, and breaking out of those boundaries is not so easy.

I don't know how relevant that all is, but I do agree that there is something intuitive--in my sense of the word--in identifying creative agendae.

--M. J. Young

[GreatWolf]

Christopher,

Thank you.  That was a very helpful post.  I think that this post dovetails nicely with Ron's recent essay discussing Creative Agenda.  And also, I think that you have managed to overcome any lingering objections that I may have had to GNS.  Well, sort of.  Read on.

First, some history.  I've been around the Forge for a while, and I have been one of the voices who insisted on the existence and validity of roleplaying that focused exclusively on Exploration (i.e. Simulationism).  I will confess to throwing my hands in the air at several points and saying to myself, "Fine!  Let them be that way."  But, like a moth to a flame, I was always drawn back to the discussion.  But I think that, this time, I've figured it out.

I've been sold on the idea of GNS for a while.  The idea of seeking a coherent playstyle makes a lot of sense to me, and indeed, GNS has enabled me to enjoy a broader range of roleplaying games than I might have otherwise.  Before GNS, I probably would have turned up my nose at a game like Rune.  Now, I can revel in the obvious Gamism and enjoy it, rather than trying to Drift it to something more "story-oriented" or "immersive".

However, I have always been turned off to the scientific overtones that it has taken.  I have been of the opinion (and continue to be of the opinion) that the heart of any creative activity resists analysis.  In other words, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.  Much of the labeling that has been done around here has seemed to operate on a different principle.  Oft times, GNS discussion has seemed to revolve on a "higher" theoretical plane, without coming home to roost in a practical way that affects actual play.  And, most importantly, GNS discussions seem to float in the realm of the ideal, without any of that horribly messy mucking around with actual people.  ;-)

Now, I'm not saying this to open old wounds.  Rather, I am saying that this post is the missing piece in the GNS puzzle which solves most of my problems.  Ron, you asked about what you have been failing to communicate regarding GNS.  I think that this is it.  I believe you when you say that this has been your goal all along; I know that you have expressed frustration in the past because you have desperately wanted to get past having to prove GNS over and over and over again.  But I think that you have communicated this entire model as a scientific abstraction, instead of what it is:  a way of understanding people.

Now, I want to draw attention to the words that I just chose.  You'll notice that I did not say that GNS is a way to classify people.  Rather, it is a way to understand people.  To explain what I mean, I'm going to cite to the old "four humors" personality typing.

I'm sure that many of you are familiar with this.  There are supposedly four general type of people:  melancholics, phlegmatics, cholerics, and sanguines.  Each type has different characteristics that manifest in different ways.  For instance, I would probably be classified as a melancholic (and anyone who knows me would agree).  I'm a perfectionist, detail-oriented, artsy, and easily depressed.  (Thus the reason that Alyria is taking so long, but I digress....)  Many folks cite to this model as being helpful to understand people.

Now, there are any number of problems with this model, but I'm going to cite the most obvious one.  No one fits neatly into any of the categories.  For all that I tend to fit well into the melancholic mold, I also exhibit behavior that can fit into any of the four categories.  So what am I?  There is really only one answer to that question:  Who cares?  Because, in the end, the goal is not to understand the model.  The goal is to understand me.  And no scientific model will gain you this knowledge.  It's a matter of developing a relationship with me.  Being my friend.  Getting to know what I like and don't like.  Figuring out what excites me in general, or what scares me, or what bores me.

To those that have been taking notes, this is what Ron calls Social Contract.  And I completely agree that this is the foundation for roleplaying.  How can it be otherwise?

But, you see, something clicked as I read Christopher's excellent post.  You see, I've never had to diagnose the Social Contract of my gaming group.  Until I moved to Peoria, my gaming group was comprised of my wife and sisters.  I already know them.  I know what they like and don't like, what "taboo" topics are acceptable and where the "off-limits" areas are.  I even knew what they were looking for in a roleplaying game and was able to balance their desires in a way that was pleasing to both of them.  It was all clicking well because we already knew each other.

Now, I could take the tools of GNS and pick apart our gaming, but I don't think that it would be helpful.  GNS is supposed to be a starting point to help players to achieve a better understanding of each other.  But we were already there.  No wonder I haven't cared to discuss or develop the tools.  I haven't needed them.

Now, if I'm right, and the goal is to understand other people, not classify every player behavior, then the nature of our questions change.  For example, there is an ongoing discussion about Exploration of Character vs. Narrativism.  May I advance the question, "Who cares?"  I speak as someone who has run a game for players who fell somewhere on both sides of this fuzzy divide.  Is there a difference between the two?  Maybe.  The only difference that I can think of, though, is fairly small.*  But if the goal is to understand people, how big of a difference is it?

In the companion thread, Walt Freitag uses the example of weapon selection in his critique of the "few key decisions" paradigm.  He questions whether we can determine GNS from such decisions.  I would agree.  However, I would also ask that we step back from the question even further.  Is the goal to classify this decision (weapon selection) into a GNS category?  Or is the goal to understand why the person made the decision?  The first question is, ultimately, unanswerable.  The second question is much more helpful, although the answer may not fit clearly into a GNS category.  To run with Walt's example, I could easily see two of the players from my old gaming group selecting a weapon from a large number of choices with a great deal of flourish.  Gabrielle would have wanted to pick a weapon that symbolized her character's method of dealing with conflict (or at least the particular conflict at hand).  So the selection of (say) an electrified two-handed sword would have been for the purpose of character exposition.  Crystal would have wanted to pick a weapon that would "feel natural" to her character and fit with her internal image of her character.  On the gripping hand, Adiel would not have cared to make such a selection for exactly the same reasons that the other players did care to make the choice.  Similar GNS priorities, completely divergent decisions.  Analyzing these decisions in a vacuum to determine GNS priority would be difficult, if not impossible.  (Again, Walt's post discusses this well.)  However, for me, understanding these decisions was easy, because I understood my players, and they understood each other.

And, I've got to say, some of the best roleplaying I've ever done was with this group.  I can honestly say that every single roleplaying session that we had ranged from good to great.  And I think that there were really only two reasons for this:

1)  We understood each other
2)  We were willing to put each other's desires first

On Friday we're heading back to Erie, and I'm planning on doing some roleplaying with my family.  (I'm planning on running Jailbreak for Unknown Armies.)  I'm really looking forward to it, and I think that you can understand why.

Seth Ben-Ezra
Great Wolf

*The ony difference that I can see is that the Narrativist pursues a Premise for the story as a whole and sees his character as fitting into that Premise, while the Explorationist pursues a Premise that is contained within his character.  These two goals can peacefully coexist, so long as the selected Premises do not clash with each other.

[GreatWolf]

P.S.  I just realized that the tone of my post may have come off as strident or accusatory.  It is not intended to do so.  Rather, it was a flash of revelation that I wanted to share with all of you.

Seth Ben-Ezra
Great Wolf

[John Kim]

First, an answer to Christopher's question:  I'm not angry.  As MJ correctly interprets, my phrase of me- unobservant vs you-unobservant was an exagerration showing two extremes among many possible truths.  What I want is to analyze more about how GNS decisions get made, especially the Nar/Sim distinction.  

As Ralph notes, it's not entirely a matter of how observant you are; it's in part a matter of what you tend to observe. When I did a lot of counseling, I often found I was able to get to the heart of people's problems that they had failed to recognize themselves, because there were cues in what they told me (often over the phone) which pointed to their blind spots. Back in college I used to correctly guess people's majors based on first impressions in meeting them. Yet I don't have near the practice observing creative agendae in games, and probably don't notice them so readily.  

I certainly agree that intuition is a real thing, and that objective results can come from intuitive processes.  However, an important difference from MJ's example is that there is no verification step for GNS.  If you guess someone's major, the student can decide on another major and thus prove you wrong.  On the other hand, if you classify your game as Narrativist, it isn't a falsifiable prediction.  It seems more like, say, classifying the genre of a film or Seth's example of classifying people by humor.  There are real trends that these classes try to model, but there can be many ways of dividing them up, and one can compare and contrast among these.  

To a degree, we train ourselves to observe what matters to us and to ignore what doesn't, and breaking out of those boundaries is not so easy.

I don't know how relevant that all is, but I do agree that there is something intuitive--in my sense of the word--in identifying creative agendae.  

This I definitely agree with.  Ralph may have a point that he pays more attention to players' OOC cues while I pay more attention to IC actions.  I will try looking more at OOC cues for GNS in future games.  On the other hand, this also works both ways -- i.e. there may be things I am seeing in IC actions which may be missed if you are looking at reactions.  

A specific concern of mine is Nar/Sim when premise is not an overt, declared thing.  So something happens and the players' smile and nod.  Now, you know that the players' reacted well -- but how do you know whether it was Premise or Exploration that they reacted to?  I have a specific example in mind -- Gordon and I discussed in particular a line which Tor said in the Shadows-in-the-Fog playtest, where his character said about women doctors "One can talk about women doctors in theory -- but I ask you this: If you needed an operation, would you want a woman holding the knife?  And that, I think, is all that need be said."  

People definitely loved that line.  However, as I recall, Gordon initially judged it to be Sim, meaning it was just Exploring Character and had no thematic significance.  However, I pointed out that it took a strong stand on a moral issue -- and illustrated graphically how he felt threatened by women.  This (along with other conversation on the topic at dinner) created theme, which was reinforced later that session when the woman (Arabella Majors) helped Dr. Westerbrock to save a man's life.  

My point is this -- if an action isn't overtly melodramatic, the theme and premise often aren't obvious.  A good story, I feel, can be read many times and you keep finding new significance when reading the same words.  By the same token, I think in a good RPG session there is all sorts of significance which will be missed.  If you focus more attention on the reactions of players, then you are paying less attention to subtleties of the in-game actions and their thematic significance.  So it seems like a trade-off.  You can see more of the player's reactions, but then you see less of the in-game stuff they are reacting to.  Which is just in part a way of saying that no one is perfect.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi John,

I'd like to draw your attention to the scope of what I call an "instance" of play. I've usually said, a full session and quite likely more. Another poster (Gareth? in a rush, sorry) recently said he'd want 100 hours of actual play, if not more.

Your example of Tor's line of dialogue illustrates a major procedural problem with how you're looking at the model, in this case, Creative Agenda. I already think your focus on Explorative content (what the character did, what the character said, etc) is in the main misplaced, but this is something different: Your scale of real-time real-people observation consistently seems too short.

One line? One scene? One character-decision? To me, this is like looking at a strip of eight frames in a film reel and talking about the theme or social significance or what-have-you of the whole film.

Best,
Ron

[The GM]

Christopher said a lot of excellent stuff about observation, intuition, etc...including:
>> one of Ron's aggressive points: that gamers tend to hide their hobby, tend to dissaciate from their actual desires and taste when gaming, and generally hide their true interests in the cause of "at least playing a game." In short, the hobby of gaming, which Ron loves, currently produces people who are socially disfunctional.(snip)<<

Now, I haven't actually read any of Ron's articles in this regard (was it an article that he wrote, or was this in different threads?) However, I recently wrote an article about this very topic, and why it is that gamers feel compelled to 'hide' their hobby. My point was that the act of role play doesn't have a bad wrap, just the act of role playing for entertainment because of the perceived content and broken business models upon which the 'industry' rests. I guess I see the broken hobby in the big picture, which is in the marketing techniques, the kinds of materials produced, and how and who they are distributed to. So maybe I don't see GNS as a specific way to fix all of these ills. It could be applied to 'materials produced' to be sure, but there's other reasons why the hobby fails. I have said once, and will say again, I truly believe that gaming could be a mainstream hobby if presented correctly. Although getting into that really shoots this thread in a different direction. As far as using observation skills and all of that other goodness you were talking about, yes. Yes. And yes. Beautifully put. I really enjoyed what you had to say on the subject. :)

[John Kim]

Your example of Tor's line of dialogue illustrates a major procedural problem with how you're looking at the model, in this case, Creative Agenda. I already think your focus on Explorative content (what the character did, what the character said, etc) is in the main misplaced, but this is something different: Your scale of real-time real-people observation consistently seems too short.

One line? One scene? One character-decision? To me, this is like looking at a strip of eight frames in a film reel and talking about the theme or social significance or what-have-you of the whole film.  

C'mon, Ron, give me a little credit.  Am I saying that this single line of dialogue determined GNS for the whole session?  Of course not.  I talked about the session as a whole in earlier discussion.  The response was that I hadn't given enough details -- and in particular that I had to look at OOC cues like when people laughed/applauded/smiled/etc.  Well, giving details requires that I drive down to shorter time scales.  This is one example of OOC cues, and I consider it fairly representative of behavior during the session as a whole.  I can certainly go on to describe other samples of people's reactions during the session.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi John,

Credit given. I hope that others can see the point; it's a big problem in discussing these issues.

Hi Lisa,

I'm with you on all points, especially the industry & marketing ones. I do not offer my notions about GNS as a cure-all, and most especially not an economic one. You might check out my older essay "The Nuked Apple-cart" and my economics comments in my reviews for an introduction to my thoughts on that.

Best,
Ron

[Gordon C. Landis]

Hi John,

You ask "but how do you know whether it was Premise or Exploration that they reacted to?", and I think that's an excellent question.  Here's how my thinking ran in the Shadows in the Fog example - I took peoples' reaction to Tor's statement to be on-par with the reaction to Jim's portryal of Dr. Conybeare.  That is, appreciation of how well-done and "appropriate" the comment was, just as we appreciated how well Jim was able to portray a bright-though-pedantic professor-wannabe whose notions were rejected by his peers.

I contrast that with when Liz had Arabella impressivly assist Dr. Westerbrock.  Perhaps because that moment was rather absent of any personal portrayal by a participant, it seemed more clear to me that the extent to which folks were appreciative of that moment would be more obviously Premise-related.  When in subsequent discussion you brought up Tor's comment in light of what later happened with Arabella . . . yeah, the reaction begins to (possibly) take on a different tone in that light.  At the time of play, I did NOT connect the two.  Your later comments made me see a possible connection, which (if play had continued) might have led me/us to ask folks what it was about Tor's comment that struck them.  Which would then help us see if Sim or Nar was the priority of that play.

And my point in running through that is to say . . . I'm not sure there's an easy answer to your excellent question that is generally applicable, and I don't think anyone claims that there is.  You look in all the places you can look to figure it out, and a lot of the time you will.  If not - you have to keep looking.

Of course, any help about how and/or where to look is always good . . .

Gordon

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

The big issue here is that Exploration and Premise are not alternative or opposed things.

Somehow, some way, someone got the idea that "if I Explore and like it, I must be playing Simulationist."

This is false. All role-playing relies on Exploration. All Creative Agendas are expressed via Exploration (hence the positions of the brackets/boxes).

Another issue is the fascination with one player at a time. Although Creative Agendas are contributed to individually, it's the interaction and usage of play-input among the members of the group that reveals them.

Tor's portrayal was Explorative. Given. But me saying that is GNS-irrelevant.

The only GNS question is whether Tor's portrayal fed into Narrativist leanings in combination with his own later role-playing or with others' later role-playing, over time. The only way to answer that question is to look at the interactions, gestures of appreciation, or any other confirmatory behaviors among the real people when the "pick up Tor's action, use it or reference it here with this action," event occurred.

Best,
Ron

[Gordon C. Landis]

Thanks Ron - that's a very clear discussion, to me anyway.  I don't *think* I said anything to contradict it, and I certainly didn't mean to if I did.  Explorative + prioritize The Dream vs. Explorative + prioritize Story/Premise Now.

In the example at hand, most of the interactions earlier on were looking to me like Explorative + prioritize The Dream, so I saw Tor's statement and the reaction to it as compatible with that.  Subsequent interactions can be seen to call that into question - over time (which, in this example, we probably didn't have enough of), we'd find out which really predominates.

Which is maybe just saying: as long as you just keep trying to answer the question - and remember to look at the real people when doing so - you're likely to do OK.   Leaving the most substantive answer to "how do you know whether it was Premise or Exploration that they reacted to?" (caveats like Exploration meaning  *prioritized* Exploration taken) as simply "over time.  If it's not clear in that set of interactions, look at the next ones."

Which is perhaps not as much help to John as I might hope, but certainly doesn't leave the issue unresolvable.

Gordon