Identifying One's Priorities and Tells

[clehrich]

In Actual GNS Discussion there's been a fascinating discussion going on, and at first I thought I'd respond to it.  Then I realized that it would probably derail things, so I'm starting fresh over here.

One of the most interesting latent questions has been about the difference between what Neil thinks Storn wants and what Storn thinks Storn wants.  Furthermore, there's some question as to whether either of them is actually entirely sure about what he himself wants.  So looking at just Storn himself, there are 3 possible preferences:[list=1][*]What Neil thinks Storn wants
[*]What Storn thinks Storn wants
[*]What Storn actually wants[/list:o]And there's no way to tell, so far as I can see, how many of these are in accord.

When you think about the occasional habit of saying, "Gamism is munchkin weenie stuff" or "Narrativism is about story; everything else is just hack-and-slash," there are clearly conscious preferences expressed.  Certain folks (I'm not pointing fingers; you all know the type of rhetoric I'm talking about) want to be Narrativist-preferring players.

Part of that is probably just because Ron is into Narrativism and he expresses himself perhaps a bit better on that end than elsewhere, but that's a side concern.  At any rate, for some reason people think they like Narrativism and think they don't like Gamism.

But I suspect that this is often not the case.  I don't just mean, as Mike Holmes has periodically remarked, that a good gamer will probably enjoy every coherent CA.  I mean that even given that a specific player may have a general preference, this may not be the same as what that player thinks he likes.

The only way I can see to determine this is to play a number of quick, coherent games from all CA's.  But if GNS is a useful analytical tool for diagnosing problems in games (among other purposes), there should be some way of figuring out what people actually want as opposed to what they think they want.

For example, let's suppose I think that addressing Important Issues is the most important thing, so I decide that I prefer Narrativism.  But let's further suppose that every time I play a Nar game, I get kind of bored.  When you set me down with a kick-out-the-jams Gamist game, where I can beat the system tactically, I get way into it and have a great time.  I clearly have a disconnect between what I think I should want and what I actually do want.

Now suppose several people in my gaming group are feeling disaffected.  Could be that we're playing an incoherent game.  Could be that we're incoherent ourselves.  But how will we know?  If we just talk about it, I'm going to say "Oh, Narrativism all the way," but I am totally wrong to say so.  But, as we very often see in Actual Play discussions, the group may have a strong preference for a particular type of setting and structure, such that playing a whole lot of one-shots is not a real possibility.  How do we diagnose?

I suspect that examining a lot of actual play dispassionately might reveal "tells" of various CA preferences.  So what I'm asking (yes, finally there's actually a question) is this:

Given that running a lot of one-shots is not a possibility,
What sort of "tells" suggest specific CA preferences?
How can I know that maybe my intellectual preferences are incoherent?
How can I know if I have a player who doesn't know what he wants?

And related questions.

Any ideas?

Chris Lehrich

[Ron Edwards]

Huh. Good set of questions.

As a starting point, I think the best way to work at this issue is from analogy. Not to other fictional media (no! agghh!), but rather to other social, interactive pursuits.

Romance: people say "what they want" all the time, but geez does it play out differently in reality. How do you know what your friend "really wants," after enduring ten years of supporting her through a variety of relationships?

Martial arts: people talk about "spiritual growth" or training "for the street," or a whole raft of other things ... but only upon working out with them for a while do you learn a bunch of stuff that shows what really matters to them.

What tells are involved in such things? I'd like to include tells, actually, among a set of indicators.

1. Observed behavior during the activity (actual tells). This is what I'm always talking about in terms of social reactions and reinforcement during play itself. I think I'd like to emphasize that in role-playing, unlike poker, one's tells are often expressed about someone else's play rather than about (or in addition to) one's own.

2. Large-scale outcomes - does the romance turn out well, does the person stay in that martial arts school, does the role-player develop a richer social and creative life through this group ... that kind of thing. This is obviously pretty long-term, and unfortunately is best understood through the more dramatic outcomes, whether positive or negative.

3. And in-between the two above things, what might be called "meta-talk" about the experience. This might be carried out among members of the same group or among other people who are interested in the activity but not necessarily in the same group. What's important about this is that meta-talk (awful term, sorry, no extant plan to keep it as a jargon term) is not necessarily honest. One can try to look cool and tough by talking up one's sparring, for instance, to some guy from another martial arts school, while feeling fairly secure that one won't have to put his or her talk on the line. What matters to me is whether this kind of interaction is or isn't honest - that says a lot.

I'm not sure whether any of this really helps, but it's what rambled through my mind, anyway.

Best,
Ron

[Jonathan Walton]

One of the reasons I originally had to wrestle so much with GNS is that it's based on demonstrated behavior, which requires (1) actual play, not just theorizing, and (2) recognizing those "tells" that are associated with particular Creative Agendas.  Note too that Creative Agendas, then, aren't to be equated with intentions or any sort of thoughts going on in the players heads.  They are categories in which to place these demonstrated behaviors.

Basically, trying to determine Creative Agendas has nothing to do with the actual experience of play.  It's related to what it's like to watch other people play.  It took me forever to get that, and I still find it highly confusing and contradictory on some levels.  In the end, it seems impossible to accurately diagnose your own play preferences, simply because it's impossible to watch yourself play in an objective fashion.  It seems the only way to learn anything about your own use of different Creative Agendas is through analogy, which is often based on analysis of Techniques or speculation about intentions.

I have always been distrustful of self-diagnosis and the nature of the GNS categories makes me even more wary.  Additionally, I think there are real epistimological issues at stake here.  Just from reading posts in Actual Play, I think it's clear that it's really easy to mis-diagnose Creative Agendas, or think you enjoy one kind of play when you always end up drifting it to become something else.  Sure, the GNS model may be based on demonstrated behavior, but once people seperate the different Creative Agendas in their head, it ceases to be about anything demonstrated and becames an abstract idealization of play.

Sorry if that's not a ton of help, Chris, but that's how I've been feeling about the whole project lately.  I think I've been reading too much emerging art theory... ;)

EDIT: Cross-posted with Ron.

[Bill Cook]

I think I'd like to emphasize that in role-playing, unlike poker, one's tells are often expressed about someone else's play rather than about (or in addition to) one's own.

. . . trying to determine Creative Agendas has nothing to do with the actual experience of play. It's related to what it's like to watch other people play.

This seems non-functional.  I think I've read that CA is not intent.  And now I'm reading that it can't relate to your own play experience or any actual play, for that matter.  These assertions smack of shyness toward inference and don't, I feel, bring clarity to the use of GNS.

[Gordon C. Landis]

Hi all,

Hmm . . . the intent thing gets overstated sometimes.  The point is just that intent is neither required nor definitional to GNS, not that it is entirely unrelated.  That is, you don't get G or N or S  play just because you intended it, and play can be G or N or S whether you intended it or not.  But sure, you can intend G (or N or S) play and get G (or N or S) play - as long as we agree not to try and resolve the philosophically problematic question of what it *means* to say "I intended X but got Y", there's no likely mischief I see there.

That's also the key (for me) in getting useful self-diagnosis, as well - just stay aware of the fact that what you intend and what you get are quite possibly (though not inevitably) two different things, and you'll have a GREAT shot at gettin' useful GNS insights through simple, old-fashioned self-observation.  That's my best thought on Chis's "How can I know that maybe my intellectual preferences are incoherent" question - recognize that intent does not equal result, and look to se eif that's happening all the time.

But - shyness towards inference?  Maybe, if we take "shyness" to mean recognition that inference isn't 100% reliable.  But don't be shy about inferring up a storm anyway.  Just just try and stay aware of the various influences on the "tells".  I'm agree that this poker analogy is just *great* in terms of where look for GNS-determination - that is, the kind of thing to look at.  And just like in poker, connecting the tell to the meaning can be tricky - you notice the player is nervous, but is that being caused by a good hand or a bluff?  Experience - with that particular person, or trends with types of players (novice/intermediate/veteran, passive/aggressive, etc.) - can help, but ultimately isn't ever a sure thing.

Gordon

[M. J. Young]

First, a quick aside on the intent problem: creative agenda is not about what you think you intend or what you say you intend or what you "want to want"; it's about what you actually do intend.

One of my sons tells me he really does intend to get a job; but every day he goes out and hangs out with his friends. Now, does he really intend to get a job, or does he really intend to hang out with his friends? It doesn't matter how guilty he feels about hanging out with his friends, or how much he wishes a job would fall into his lap. His actual intention, his agendum, is revealed through his actions, not through his words.

So an agendum is an intention, but only in a very narrow sense of that word. Most people use the word "intent" to mean too many other things, and it thus tends to cloud the issue.

Now, to the main question, how can you get a player to find his creative agendum?

Let me suggest this. Start the player in solo play in a fully driftable game system run by a bass-player-type referee who is skilled at responding to the player's direction. Be certain that there are opportunities for interesting neutral exploration, introduction of premise, and challenge. Cut him loose, and see what he does. Give him enough time to get oriented, certainly, and let him decide what interests him. Does he stay with safe, interesting aspects--exploring Loth Lorien or Fanghorn Forest? Does he take on challenge, helping the dwarfs reclaim Moria? Does he move toward the issues? The player might not know what he likes cognitively, but he will be drawn toward it if it's available to him and the game isn't telling him to do something else.

That, anyway, is one way to do it.

--M. J. Young

[clehrich]

M.J., I think you're slightly missing my point.

Your suggestion seems to me plausible, but not practical for lots of folks.  As you know, one of the big things we get in Actual Play threads is "I GM a group, I think we're GNS-incoherent, we want Narrativism [or whatever], but we don't really want to change our game system much."  Now it's all very well to say, "Well, you have to change your system," and that may be the most efficient solution, but it's not going to help these groups.  Mike's noted that you can't just sort of sneak up on a CA instead, and I think I mostly agree.  But my question is different:

I suspect that lots of folks who say, "We want X" don't (1) know what they mean by that or (2) actually want that.  This is one of the disjunctures that provokes, "I'm a Narrativist guy, but my inner Gamist loves to slaughter," which is a meaningless statement under GNS (or close to it).

As Jonathan Walton and others have noted in current threads, it's very difficult to identify what CA's are actually at work in a game.  Let me postulate a hypothetical (but I think rather common) gaming situation:

[*]The game chosen is semi-coherent, and mostly Sim.
[*]The players "want to be Nar," by which they mean that they want meaningful stories post facto; they want to look back and say, "What a great story that was, it would make a great book."  [Yes, this isn't Nar, I know that.]
[*]The players enjoy Gamist stuff, tactical winning and such, but don't consider that a "cool" way to play -- it's "weenie munchkinism" and so forth
[*]The GM has heard that the Forge crew have some nifty ideas and are all over Narrativism, and he thinks, "Yeah, gimme some of that Nar magic, man, that'll make it go!"[/list:u]So what's going to happen?

You're going to get one very incoherent game.  The players will on the one hand be working at the meta-level to push for Story Now, but will simultaneously be slipping into Step On Up every time the opportunity arises.  The game isn't strongly CA-determined enough to give much guidance, so they find themselves constructing all sorts of house rules to drift the game.  But they don't really know where they want to drift.  When they talk out-of-game, they say, "We need more story, we need more Big Stuff, we need more Things That Are Important."  But when push comes to shove, what they get off on is beating the puzzle of the situation.  They're sort of happy, but only because all the players are actually on the same page, and mostly they're convinced that there's a better way.

So what do they do?  They post to the Actual Play forum and describe the game.  But of course, in doing so, they emphasize as much as possible the supposedly Nar elements, because they perceive these as the really good things that should be emphasized more.  If you tell them, "Go play the following totally different games and see what you like," they're going to say, "No, no, I came here because I want help with this game, not to go back to the drawing board."  And they're right, even if it's not the most efficient method.

Do you see the problem?  I think this happens all the time, and I think it's very hard for folks to see what they actually like unless everything sort of "clicks" in some game where everything is also very clear in GNS terms (which I think is rare).  Honestly, I don't even know what would happen to me if I sat down with a good group of players and played a whole series of great, coherent GNS games, again and again, trying all CA's sequentially with an honest intent to give them the old college try.  Maybe I'd discover that I've thought of myself as liking X when actually I prefer Y, or whatever.  Are you totally sure you know?

Anyway, I'm thinking that this is something the GNS forum ought to think about, as far as the practical, diagnostic aspect of the model is concerned.

Chris Lehrich

[Silmenume]

I think that your questions beg further questions.

For example - Not all exhibited behaviors are coherent, they may be dysfunctional.  Just because someone exhibits consistent behavior does not mean that said behavior represents the true desires of an individual.  It only means that such behaviors are dominant, not that the demonstrated behavior will bring the most satisfaction.  A junky make shoot horse frequently.  One may assume said junky enjoys the "high".  However, said junky may just be "self-medicating" and be trying to put to rest internal pains.  They may not be enjoying the "high" as an end to itself as they are trying to put an end to pain.  They are not seeking ecstasy as much as they are seeking pain relief.  Why would exhibited GNS behaviors be any more "honest" or be more representative of "true desires."

Interesting problem.

Aure Entaluva,

Silmenume

[clehrich]

Jay,

Eek.  Just what I needed, another monkey wrench!  :-)

No, but seriously, I think you're probably right.  My theory is that CA's aren't particularly addictive as such, so when people relatively non-consciously act in accordance with a given CA, this indicates a kind of wish-fulfillment.  Which of course has the potential to lead into a nasty sort of Freudian or Lacanian theory of RPG's, but that's going rather farther afield than I had in mind!  (If everyone really wants to do this, I'm up for it, but I'm sort of skeptical....)

I guess I'm sort of thinking something like this:

You've got someone who has all these complex and compelling reasons why post-Schoenberg atonalism is the "right" kind of music, and the rest is all atavism.  He further thinks that popular music is a trash opiate for the masses, and so on (sort of a radical post-Adorno loon).  The thing is, if he's reading a book or something, not really paying attention, and he dimly hears some rock playing a ways away, he starts tapping his foot to the beat.  He doesn't mean anything by it, he's not thinking, but actually he quite likes that sort of thing.  If he were to approach it with an open mind, he might actually find himself totally into headbanging.

Did you ever see "The Jerk"?  Remember how he gets adopted by a black family, and has no sense of rhythm or anything, and then he hears Lawrence Welk on the radio and starts tapping his foot to the beat?  Like that, I guess, but not so idiotic.

Okay, that's a stupid example, but people talk about "playing bass" and all that.

Another possible example would be the 17-year-old self-conscious guy who won't dance because he's afraid of looking uncool.  If he had a good partner, and could feel comfortable about what he was doing, and had no audience otherwise, he might actually find that he could let his hair down and really get into it.  But he's convinced that there's this "cool" way to behave, and that dancing isn't it.  He wants to be the strong, silent type or something.  And of course, the sad thing is that the girls actually like dancing, and they like the guys who are (apparently) unselfconscious and let it all hang out when they dance, so this guy ends up seeming uncool and being unhappy.  And you notice, he always goes to the dances, and tries to be cool, and fails.  Again and again.

Does that make sense?

Chris Lehrich

[Bill Cook]

I think I may have been throwing cold water upthread.  Sorry about that.

So what do they do? They post to the Actual Play forum and describe the game. But of course, in doing so, they emphasize as much as possible the supposedly Nar elements, because they perceive these as the really good things that should be emphasized more. If you tell them, "Go play the following totally different games and see what you like," they're going to say, "No, no, I came here because I want help with this game, not to go back to the drawing board." And they're right, even if it's not the most efficient method.

You really take me into their minds.  I thought by changing our system from D&D to TROS that we'd end up with player-driven stories.  Ha!  I look back and laugh.  Different system, same group.

A number of things occur to me.

[*]Recognize your house rules and drifting ways.  Choose to take a new approach to your favorite game: only play what the text supports.  Make yourself stick with every silly, confusing line of it.  Then you'll really know what that game is for.  And (assuming it's not what you want) how much and in what way it totally sucks.
[*]Sneak up on mode.  (Dodges tomatoes.)  Not to be "in" mode and therefore superior and therefore finally, supremely happy.  (What nonsense . . .)  Do it as an investigation of putting new ideas into practice.  The process becomes closing the gap between how excited you got when you first heard about . . . IIEE, for example, and how changing the way you play according to your understanding benefits or hampers the experience.

e.g. During one session of TROS, I tried to convince an NPC to let me into the warehouse office where records were stored.  My character had skills as his highest priority with emphasis on Persausion.  I bragged about this.  My Seneschal got this constipated look and made some excuse about how I still have to role-play plausibly.  Well, Hell!  I spent for that advantage -- why the Hell shouldn't my roll stand?  And then I thought: it's a DFK thing.  He prefers Drama, that's all.  So I settled down and gave it a shot.

It makes sense to try to make real what inspires you.  I can't think of a more natural urge.  Relating the new to what you know makes for an easier approach.

Anyway, I guess I'm at the Technique level.  They may be "handled," I think, whereas CA is more of a trend analysis thing you present at the close of the quarter.
[/list:u]

I think the real reward for opening yourself to new goals for play is how it develops your group.  There's no priveleged zone and there's no rush to convert.  Each step is an adventure.

(Edited for spelling.)

[Rob Carriere]

Chris,
Wonderful topic! I've been head-banging about how to do GNS determination given only actual play (I can construct classes of examples on all three boundaries that I can only distinguish by knowing motivation) but this is so much better an angle into the question.

You say to Jay that you think CAs aren't particularly addictive and I agree, but to many people, playing is addictive. They may be adjusting their CA to fit in with a group they like. They'll exhibit the agenda and emit happy signs because they are satisfied at a model level above GNS. Suppose a group whose membership has evolved over time and you could have everybody drifting to a CA no current group member actually prefers.

One sneaky tell that might help is to ask people to describe a game they played several years ago. Most likely they only remember well the parts that really impressed them and that might help diagnose. The danger among people who are GNS-aware is of course that not only is memory storage selective, so is recall and they might--unintentionally--recall mostly those things that support their conscious agenda.

As for how you tell about yourself, slowly and with difficulty, I suppose :-)
Taking myself for an example, I thought for a long time that I am GNS-S. I do prefer games with heavy Exploration and I had emotional reasons for wanting to be S (experience with badly-run G and N games). What troubled me (there's your tell, I suppose) is that I kept having to construct myself as a funny boundary case. In the end, I constructed two `real' open-ended examples for myself. One was from a campaign that is still running, the other from one that was aborted; both involved characters and campaign set-ups that I really liked.

So I had two examples that I cared about, with characters I felt I was playing well, and they were examples where I didn't know the final outcome, since both campaigns were `in the middle of things'. Then I asked myself, ``what would make you happier, continuing those campaigns staying perfectly within the genre conventions for the characters, or having a situation come up where where you might decide to go some other way?'' Or rather, I phrased that question twice over in terms of the actual campaigns. Specific types of events that would or would not occur. And the answer was very strongly that I craved that freedom to make a choice as well as the Situation where the freedom would be exercised in a significant way. Vanilla N with a lot of Exploration.

I think this trick would generalize. Everybody with significant gaming experience has had a couple of campaigns that promised to be really good, but had to be aborted because real life intervened; by definition, everybody who posts questions of kind that you refer to has at least one unfinished campaign they can use for such thought-experiments. Of course, you can still fool yourself this way, but that will always be the case with introspection. I think that if you construct the example in a concrete enough way, you are likely to get a fairly strong response out of yourself.

SR
--

[RDU Neil]

The game chosen is semi-coherent, and mostly Sim.

The players "want to be Nar," by which they mean that they want meaningful stories post facto; they want to look back and say, "What a great story that was, it would make a great book." [Yes, this isn't Nar, I know that.]

The players enjoy Gamist stuff, tactical winning and such, but don't consider that a "cool" way to play -- it's "weenie munchkinism" and so forth

The GM has heard that the Forge crew have some nifty ideas and are all over Narrativism, and he thinks, "Yeah, gimme some of that Nar magic, man, that'll make it go!"

Ok... this had me cracking up.  Pretty accurate description of me & Storn, et al.


Seriously, I've gleaned the following ideas from this thread...

1)  Don't worry about analyzing yourself, but as a group, pay attention to each other.  Look for the "tells" of the others.

2)  On an individual level, analyze yourself through reflection of past games, not current games.  (I really like this idea.)

3)  Changing house rules and or the entire system is one way to change/modify or discover the group CA.


(This last, clearly, is the most problematic.  I don't think the group is inclined, in general, to just change a system.  Some are more into that... I am definitely not one willing to spend the time reading the rules and getting up to speed on new mechanics, when what I have now works fine.  To me it's not about a need for wholesale change, but tweaking things over time to see if something else makes us go "hey... Cool!")

I do think we are in the "technique" zone... but the GNS model is a smart way to analyze the overall experience.  Putting it into practice, by openly discussing GNS with the group, has taught me that it really is about asking "What do you like?" and listening to ALL the details.

"I loved that time when..."   "That hit location rule worked great..."  "It really hurt when Robyn died..."   etc.   The idea is to collect all of these reflections as simple data points.

Then you combine those data points with the observed behavior during a game.  "I saw Storn smile when..."  "The whole group cheered when..."  "Ferrett was frowning and shrugging when..."    Again, a growing list of simple data points.

The most important thing is not to try to make conclusions too quickly... or to be judgmental in those conclusions.

Over time... I'm hoping that we begin to adjust our own behaviors, not so much to further our OWN desires, but to accommodate others.  That, to me, is an achievable goal, using GNS.  If it isn't about furthering your own agendum, but about working better with others to help them achieve that satisfaction... then your own CA will be served, indirectly.  

Maybe I'm just seeing that from the GM point of view, but I know I started to enjoy gaming more when I loosened up my own expectations, and really started paying attention to what I could do for the players.  Doesn't mean I don't want certain things as a GM, but I've found giving more to the player needs, even if neither of us is fully conscious of what we are doing, gains recipricol behavior, and I get more of what I want back.

Ok... going to stop now before I get all sappy.   I sound like an RPG Self Help book.  Ugh.

[Jason Lee]

I think self diagnosis is perfectly feasible, but can be quite difficult for some.

*****

Easy Two Step Program

Step 1

Identify events in game that you really enjoyed and other events that frustrated you.  This is easy.  Once you start talking about how cool X was or how irritating it was when so-and-so did X, you've got your moments.

I usually think about events right after game or the following day.  It's kind of hard to think about this much while playing (if you are actually paying attention to the game).

Step 2

Ask yourself why you found the moments enjoyable/frustrating and answer honestly.  This is the really hard part.  

First, you have to be willing to ask yourself why something bothered you, even if you think it shouldn't have.  Second, you have to answer honestly even if you don't like the answer.  (You don't have to tell anyone the answer, so why lie to yourself?)  Keep asking yourself why until you get to the heart of the matter.

Ok, I'm going to give a really extreme example.

Let's say your loud hispanic neighbors really bother you.  First, you have to admit they bother you.  Even if it seems wrong to be bothered by 'another culture' or whatever other crap you tell yourself so you don't have to admit your feelings.  Second, answer the why honestly.  Don't just say 'because they are loud', because the other answers make you seem like a bad person.  If the real answer is 'because they are hispanic', and you answer honestly, then you can ask yourself 'why should that matter?', and start getting over it.  If the real reason is because they are hispanic, and you say 'because they are loud', then you never have to challenge the real reason.  Then your mind gets to play this nice trick on you where is attaches loud to hispanic, and you get to keep your prejudice without acknowledging it.

Same sort of thing with gaming.  

Let's say it bothers me to lose a roll, which gets my character shot and dead.  I can refuse to ask why, because 'it was perfectly within the rules and being competitive makes me a munchkin', but I'll miss out on the real answer.

I'm going to talk to myself now.

Why did losing the roll bother me?
Because I didn't want to get shot.
Ok, why?
Because my character is an uber badass and some mook just ganked him.
Hmmm... Ok, why shouldn't the mook be able to kill your character?  Guns kill dumb ass.
Because he should die a heroic death, not get shot down in a back alley by a two-bit crack dealer.  The story is about my character, not the crack dealer.
See, look.  Nice non-munchkin answer, what were you worried about?
Yeah.  Can we fix the mechanics to support this somehow?
You betcha.

*****

I think a lot of players struggle with incoherence with themselves.  I see a lot of gamist-for-defense (must play tactically, lest the dice steal my character concept or thematic opportunities), and actor-stance-by-habit (this is how roleplaying is done, author stance is cheating).  How to break people of this self denial is of particular interest to me, and I've had some success with the people in our group (mostly myself).  However, it's been very slow and changes to mechanics have been necessary.

The nice thing about GNS is that it's founded on the principle that all priorities are acceptable.  Once that's accepted, players have more reason not to be embarrassed about their priorities, and therefore have less reason to lie to themselves.

One thing that really sucks is that even if you think you've identified an internal conflict in another player (by comparing frustrating moments with enjoyed moments, and figuring out how the frustrating moment would block an enjoyed one), it doesn't do you any good at all to tell them unless they are capable of breaking their own cycle of self denial.  I'm not saying don't try, just be prepared for defensive behavior and an impass.  It also wouldn't hurt to open to the possibility that your diagnosis is wrong (which has the nice perk that even if the diagnosis is right you aren't invested in it).

[Storn]

Since I'm the dude who's head is on the chop block of example...

I think that there are times when Storn can very accurately tell y'all what Storn wants... as i did in the example of my smiling during the intitative roll.  I'm very body concious person.  I am a very physcal person and I'm used to reading my own body.  I'm a guy who smiles if I'm drawing someone who is smiling, or frowns if the scene is sad.  I can feel my muscles while I work.  Maybe its the hours and hours of working in solititude...

I was paying very close attention to myself... PRECISELY because of this board and several conversations.

However, that is one time that I remember in the last ep.  There are plenty of events happening, where I am not paying as close attention to myself.  Maybe I'm deep in the game.  Maybe I'm not engaged and I'm drifting.    I do know that I tend to not look at the other players when I'm really deep in a character's conversation or thinking... prefering to unfocus my eyes and see with my mind's eye the scene.  So, I'm aware of THAT Tell at the very least.

This does NOTHING to support any of Chris's 3 preferences for Storn (great.  talking about myself in 3rd person... woo hoo... I'm doomed).  But I think all THREE are valid at the game table. All three happen.  They happen in different degrees at different points in an evening.  Or gaming situation.

[Valamir]

I think that there are times when Storn can very accurately tell y'all what Storn wants...

Yeah, absolutely.  This is certainly possible with someone who's had some experience at self analysis and is really trying to get an honest appraisal.

There are a couple of key times where self appraisal gets squirrley.

1) When someones intellectually stated position doesn't jive with their own self appraisal.  This is especially true when the individual has made certain value judgements about play styles and even more troublesome when they've publically announced their position.  Intellectually someone may be very committed to "story, story, story" going so far to to publically denigrate munchkiny power gaming.  It becomes very very easy then when doing a self evaluation to selectively edit / ignore signs that ones actual behavior tends to be fairly gamist.

2) When someone is less interested in doing honest diagnosis and is more interested in debating the merits of the theory.  Such people will take certain stances about how they think things really work and at times will produce "evidence" from "how they really play" to support their position.  Obviously such evidence carries with it the inherent risk of bias.

These are reasons why self evaluation might not be as useful as observations by others.  But in general, if one is really trying and really being honest with ones self about it, there's no reason why self evaluation isn't perfectly possible.



I will note that I think bcook misinterpreted Ron, however, above.

When Ron said:

I think I'd like to emphasize that in role-playing, unlike poker, one's tells are often expressed about someone else's play rather than about (or in addition to) one's own.

He wasn't saying only other people can read your tells.  
He's saying that your tells are often about other peoples play.

The smile and the fist in the air are more commonly scene as a players evaluation of what he thinks about another player's play, rather than being used in reference to his own play.