A huge difficulty in Sim

[Silmenume]

I think one of the great difficulties of Sim, especially where character (persona) exploration is involved is in the difficult mastery of personas.  I know my phrasing is wonky, but stay with me for a moment please.

Many recent threads I have read recently, including the Narrativism article made me realize something about roleplay.  There were several good threads and rants on the difficulty of designing a good Gamist game that fostered good created challenges in play.  I read, I think it was in the Narrativist article but shoot me if I am mistaken, a big complaint was the difficulty in constructing a good Premise.  The common thread between these two is that the "thing" that is most interesting to the players (or that which they will be most critical of because of their intense interest) is the very thing that is hardest for the DM (and/or the players; depending) to come up with.

In Sim there are 3 basic elements (Character, Setting, and Situation) that are created/discovered, things that are added into the SIS via the Lumply Principle.  I may be completely off my chum but as a DM,  I believe that of the three elements engaging character effectively is the most difficult.  

Important note - I am NOT saying, nor am I implying, that all Sim games prioritize character exploration, or that exploring character is THE reason people play Sim.  Finally I am not saying that character is not important in the other modes of play, but rather it is not prioritized because exploration is not prioritized.

As we are social animals, our minds are acutely attuned to social interaction cues.  Normally, in direct face-to-face communications, huge volumes of non-textual or covert communications are ripping back and forth.  Most of these communications are below the level of awareness, yet it is just these subconscious communications that bring a "conversation" to life.  These communications forms can include inflection, pacing, eye contact, physical contact, vocabulary usage, body language, conversational dominance to name a few.  Conversely the absence of these subconscious or sub-textual cues makes the conversation, and by way of extension, the speaker/character seems hollow, empty, or false.  So the act of communication to the player needs to rich to keep the "dream alive".  The DM can't just say what he wants to say, but has to do so in a manner that flows from within the conversation.  If the either side is not listening and responding to what the other has said (or at least giving some cue that they are at least considering what has been said by the other) then you are not having a conversation.  The conversation does not feel "real".  Then layer on personality.  Then there is the matter of actually creating conversational text that that is just plain interesting to the player and justifiable to his character.  And I am sure there are a ton of other things that I have missed.

The key here is that is very difficult as a DM to engage a PC directly in a fashion that is sufficiently "real" to keep the "dream alive" and actively manage and engage the other players and still attend to all his other duties at the same time.  Plainly put a DM needs to act well, (improvise) write well, and keep in mind the game at large.  All these he must do while trying to do one of the most difficult of all creative acts seem interestingly, convincingly human.

Also, if the players wish to explore character as a priority, then the DM needs to be extremely tuned to what it is exactly that the players are looking to explore.  As in all dramatic works where character is revealed through conflict, the DM then needs to create conflicts that will afford their players the opportunities to explore those aspects of their characters that they find interesting.  If this conflict is presented via a NPC then the task becomes even more demanding.

In a certain sense I would say "creating the dream" successfully as a goal is more difficult to satisfy than in Gamist or Narrativist play in that the players in those modes of play have a greater hand in shaping the very thing that they are pursuing.  I am not saying that G or N play is less demanding, but rather that fact that the players are more directly involved in the shaping of their own goals takes a huge pressure off the DM and inherently makes the players more amenable to their efforts.  An analogy might be a passenger, who is highly critical of the driving skills the driver of the car they are riding in, is very forgiving of the exact same driving skills merely because said passenger had now become the driver.  Being enfranchised makes a huge difference.

I don't know if I made a lick of sense.  Maybe someone can find a kernel that is useful in here.

Aure Entaluva,

Silmenume

[Ian Charvill]

I'm afraid, Jay, I'm going to be a little glib.

There is no reason in simulationist play for the players not to have strong  creative powers over the shared imagined space - for them to have a stake in the SIS just as narrativist players have a stake in premise.  That they should do so is key to a substyle of sim I tend to call inventionism.

In other words: if you allow the players to invent things about not only their own characters but also about the world and the NPCs and so on, they will invest in those things and treat them as real.  Let players play NPCs in scenes where their characters are not present, let players invent important NPCs.

Actually - two caveats: if players are putative sim-by-habit narrativists they will tend to use this power not to focus on the SIS but to address theme; and it makes use of GM force a vanishingly slight option.  Illusionism/Railroading/et al are not easily compatible with inventionism.

[Ron Edwards]

Spot on, Ian! Conceptually, a far more active and mutually-assuring kind of Simulationist play should be possible than is historically common or at least acknowledged. And I'd be astounded if there weren't isolated enclaves of such play scattered all 'round the place.

I'm seeing game designs pop up at the Forge which support such play wonderfully, with perhaps Dread being the first (I'd have to check that).

But Jay, you're right too ... in the sense of describing play experiences that you have actually had. In fact, I think your points here would be far more effectively expressed as actual play accounts, with plenty of details about interactions at the table as well as in-game character-doing-stuff events.

Any hope for seeing a thread like that from you in Actual Play?

Best,
Ron

[Silmenume]

Ian, I think I may have come across your Inventionism theory/style once before.

My question to you, and I guess Ron as well, is how does this form of player "activism" not trip the internal causality alarm?  Actually I think the answer to that might be, "it depends on the social contract."  The internal causality alarm level I guess could be thought of more as a limited range dial than a switch?  Or does it have to be of limited range?

This Inventionism, can it be coded into formalized system, or must it always be on the social contract level because of the nature/demands of Sim?  Is the amount of creative control/input over the 3 narrative elements (Character, Situation, and Setting) equal or is it highest in Character, lesser in Situation (which character has some intrinsic control over) and least in Setting (because there is little or no connection between the character and the physical world)?

I think having a broader creative input can allow for greater investment by the players, but I don't think that broader creative input directly leads to greater player investment.  I think it depends on the interests of the players, but I do not discount the validity of your assertion.  I'm just saying that I don't believe it is automatic.  It is a tool, one of many.  If the players give an aesthetic value to the act of creating in such a fashion, then they will invest.

For some reason, and I can't fathom it right now, but my gut says that the less impact these non-self-character creative acts have on the events at large, the less likely there will be the claxons of internal causality failure.  Is that a matter of traditionalist Sim behavior or is there a real Sim issue with that?

At any rate, you're Inventionism style does support my notion that creating things for consumption results in higher levels of expectation by the consumers, because player/consumer involvement (this is implied) makes it easier for them to become emotionally invested.

I am not saying that having "good" NPC PC interactions automatically makes for a good game, but that of the 3 active elements of exploration in Sim that character via NPC and Player Character interaction is the most difficult to pull off successfully because it is the most layered and most complex interaction in the game.  There are several reasons why this is very difficult.  First is that as interpersonal communications are vital to us social humans, thus a lot of our brain power is automatically tuned to such interactions meaning that "fooling" the brain into believing that said interactions are "real" is extraordinarily difficult.  Second, as exploring character is among the prioritized elements via Exploration, there is a built in expectation that characters are going to be portrayed in a manner that is aesthetically pleasing/engaging in and of themselves even if such interactions are not the point of that particular game.  Thus in Sim there is an inherent/implied onus to portray NPC's as humanly "real"(emotionally real as measured by a part of the brain that operates outside of consciousness), but then to do so in a fashion that is not only believable but also interesting and serving the events as they are currently being explored (aesthetic creativity).  The difficulty lies in the "believable" part as much of that discernment process lies outside conscious consideration, making if very difficult to spoof.  It is much easier to fool the conscious part of the brain, but very difficult to spoof the subconscious part especially when that part of the brain is specifically geared/optimized to decoding and assigning meaning to the nonverbal components of communication as a matter of survival.  Much as it easier for a digital animator to simulate the physics of the movement of spider than that of a human being because we are specifically tuned to human movement, so it is with portraying fictional human characters.  Its not that it is difficult on the creative end per say, but that the consumer has a fantastically high intrinsic understanding that must be met first.

Ron, I will attempt to give an example in the actual play portion of the boards, but the problem lies in the media itself.  It is impossible to relate certain channels of interpersonal communication in this text media effectively.  I cannot effectively portray timing, timber, the effect of somatics or the effect of stepping on someone's dialogue efforts, or physical gestures in this media, or any of the other subtextual elements of communicating.  I would need an audio/video recording to demonstrate what I mean effectively.

Aure Entaluve,

Silmenume

[contracycle]

I say "Yes" in a big way.  Both GM's and players could do with practical study of the methodologies of portrayal, as a layer completely distinct from that what and the why of engaging an RPG CA.  A performance/communication/medium layer.  No matter how awsome the concept or system is, a GM who presents their NPC's in a monotone is doomed.