Looong post on Sim definition

[Silmenume]

Hey everyone – thanks for taking the time to explore these ideas!  

Though this thread has scattered into a number of different directions, I will make an attempt to narrow the focus by clarifying my positions.

There seems to be a number of objections that stem from the use of and the role of conflict in Simulationism.

To Mike who has stated the following –

Yes, you must have situation. But, as Ron points out, Situation is merely Characters engaged with Setting in some way. Somewhere along the line, that engagement was said to require conflict, but I'd go to the mat to defend the idea that it doesn't require that at all.

I quote you the following –

By definition, a character faces "relevant stress" for the Creative Agenda. The term used most often for that is "adversity," and it is required in all three modes of play. Without it, there is no Situation. Without Situation, there's no role-playing, just sitting around and diddling.

emphasis mine.

Adversity cannot exist without conflict.  There is no adversity without conflict.

I think it's actually quite easy to identify play in any of the three modes without conflict ever occuring.

Actually it is quite difficult.  We don't know to what ends a player has a character do something until conflict occurs and rewards are meted out.  I argued this in the Player action/reaction to Situation key to CA thread.  I have diagrammed this process in the I have a question thread.  It all boils down to how are the players prepping, engaging, and rewarded for engaging in conflict that demonstrates which CA is in operation.

Gamism is expressed when the player addresses Challenge.  Challenge is based in conflict.  Having a player build a Character to face conflict and to not present him with a relevant conflict would be dysfunctional play.  The same applies to Narrativism – a premise is conflict laden.  Conflict is the heartbeat of CA expression.  Note that does not in anyway imply player motive or why a player has chosen to roleplay.  Nevertheless, one cannot play Gamist or Narrativist without conflict.  Conversely, it is impossible to diagnose play without at least one instance of addressing conflict.  It's the how players address conflict that demonstrates which CA is in operation.  Not only that, it is conflict that literally drives play in both those CA's.  You can't have Challenge or Premise addressing without conflict.  It is definitional.  A character may be out buying lots of gear for war but we don't know what that means in isolation.  For what purpose is he doing this act?  Until we get to conflict, we don't know.  Is he doing this to address an upcoming Challenge?  Is he doing this to address Premise?  We don't know until we get to Challenge or Premise (conflict in either case) to see how he employs the weapons of war.  The same holds for Sim.

Why so?  For several reasons.  First Exploration demands that all five elements of Exploration be used for that activity to be labeled Exploration.  A CA is the employment of Exploration to some directed end.  How is CA identified?  By the addressing of Challenge, Premise, or Sim X – IOW conflict. (I'll address what Sim X is later).  What does that mean to observers?  We watch to see how the players approach conflicts.  This too means that Sim must employ conflict to some end.  Because Exploration demands the employment of all five elements of Exploration, and because CA's are the directed employment of Exploration, then all CA's are forms of Exploration.  This means that Sim too must employ conflict.  The requirement for conflict in Sim is no mystery.  What is the mystery is to what end conflict serves in Sim.

If, for instance, a player goes looking to see if there's a monster to fight, isn't it possible to define this looking as Gamist exploration?

Your example is the equivalent of a sentence fragment.  Like a sentence fragment we don't have all the pieces in place.  Whereas we can't determine the meaning of a sentence fragment, we can't deduce the meaning (CA) of play until we have a full instance.  Thus if a player goes looking to see if there's a monster to fight could mean anything until the whole instance of play, which includes the conflict itself and the rewards that are eventually meted out, are accounted for.  Until the cycle has been completed we don't know what is going on.  Is the player attempting to demonstrate effectiveness?  Is the player attempting to fight the monster so as to be able to address Premise?  Is the player attempting to fight the monster because he swore an oath to destroy that which killed his wife and family?  We don't know just because the player is searching for the monster.  As I stated earlier, raw conflict is CA neutral.  It is everything (the players actions) that surrounds conflict that determines which CA is in operation.  However, one does need conflict in order to express CA.

There is also this notion that seems to be implying that the elements of Exploration are homogeneous – that they can be swapped or excluded as needed and it is not important which ones go or which ones are employed.  That is not the case.  All must be employed and all serve different roles.  So the question becomes,  "What is the role of conflict?"  In Gamism and Narrativism the role of conflict is readily apparent.  Conflict drives play.  Without it there is no Challenge or Premise.  So what role does conflict serve in Simulationism?

In Simulationism conflict serves a variety of roles, the most important of which is providing risk so that the vividness of the Dream can be enhanced.  However, like the two other CA's, not any conflict will do.  To support the CA the conflict must be relevant and the engagement of which must be rewarded in a relevant fashion.  OK, certain conflicts support Gamism and Narrativism.  IOW players set up and engage certain conflicts because the results will hopefully further some metagame goal – addressing Challenge/victory or addressing Premise/theme.  

So what is being addressed and what is being created in Simulationism?  Internal Causality and The Dream, respectively.  Internal Causality does not mean just physics, but everything within the SIS – including Character.  Not just character but social structures (cultures) as well.  Why character and social structures and not just physics?

Lets go back to the very act of statement making and validation – the very act of adding to the SIS.  In Chris' essay this process is one of Abduction and Deduction which employs Signs (statements) as the means of communication.  IOW we are using Abduction when trying to make sense of the SIS (intuition) and Deduction when we are attempting to make statements (employ Signs) based upon our Abduction, the validity of which is then tested against the validation method (the Lumpley Principle in action!)  It is important to note that Signs refer both to Objects and to Interpretant ("signs say things to someone").  All in all the process is one where the attempt to validate Abduction is a process of creating Signs and treating them like Objects, from which one can then make Deductions.  (Much of what I said above is a direct paraphrase from Chris' (clehrich) thread.

To continue a little further I'll do some direct quoting –

The social world is made up of an extraordinary number of intertwined structures, slowly shifting over time as people use them in different ways and for different purposes.  Everything from language to basic orientations, social relations and personal goals, is made up of such structures...
...They have categorical notions sort of semi-embedded, and they encounter real things and think about them, but most of all and most importantly, they are told what to think by their cultures...
...So given that, we see that there are a bunch of structures in place in our heads, arising primarily from social cues.  Whenever one acts,[1] one therefore manipulates structures already in place.  Such manipulation is generally strategic, in the sense that it aims to accomplish something not already true.  This is dependent on such structures already being in place, because without them it is impossible to predict the outcome of behavior.

The Objects spoken about above are the social structures discussed here.  Finally –

...in order to employ a symbol effectively, you have to conform to existing structures...
...When we employ structures, to sum up simply, we both produce and reproduce structures...
...In an RPG context, the application is I think obvious.  Structures are handed to us, most obviously in everything from social agreements to rules systems to setting to whatever...
...At the same time, every manipulation of any structure within that system necessarily changes its meaning, however slightly; over time...

So what does all this boil down to?  Exploration is a meaning creation and manipulation process.  New meanings are created when the prevailing structures are challenged.  This is why Situation/conflict is at the heart of each CA.  It is here that new meanings are created, meanings that are made relevant to each CA by the framing process and the rewards system that surrounds the conflict.  So the question becomes what is guiding and to what end are we engaging the meaning creation process in Sim?

I propose that in Sim the guiding force behind the meaning creation process is Internal Causality.  This may sound vague but upon further investigation I believe that it is possible to narrow down what that means.  In any Event (a conflict instance) something is revealed about both forces.  For the sake of argument I define a conflict as any moment when Character goal contacts an antithetical force.  If this antithetical force happens to be nature this process will reveal something about the Character as well as the physics of the world.  However, as the world is typically under the control of the DM in Sim games, this limits player contribution to meaning creation to the Character side of the equation.  IOW the player may wish to establish some fact about the physics of the world by conflicting with Setting, however as Internal Causality is the governor in Sim how the world "responds" should be fairly consistent.  After a few times there should be little new information to reveal about the physics of the world.  Because players have creative control over their Character that leaves Character as the primary topic of new meaning creation.

How is this different from Nar?  Simply put Nar is about creating meaning regarding Premise.  Or stated another way, the structure by which conflict finds meaning is based in the Premise question. In Sim the structure by which conflict finds meaning is based in Character and culture.  While much may be revealed about Character in the Premise addressing process, if the Internal Causality of a Character would indicate that a Character would break off from addressing the Premise conflict, this means that Internal Causality (this is not the same as Character Integrity) can be sacrificed if necessary so as to be able to prioritize the addressing of the Premise Conflict.  Basically Nar asks the question, "Is the Character willing to do X?"  Sim asks, "What would the Character do?"  These are wholly different questions.  The player who answers the latter question is deciding, "What do I wish to reveal about the Character and or his culture?"   The player who answers the former is deciding, "What do I wish to reveal about the Premise?"

Thus the main tension in Sim is how and what do I wish to reveal about Character and what are the internal (within the SIS) social ramifications of this action?  The Dream then is the human and social act of making decisions from the perspective of another (fictional) person.  What is at risk is the Dream itself.  As we understand our waking world via our own culturally informed structures; make the wrong decision and you either break the Dream by going too far outside the social meaning structures of the fictional the world, or the Dream itself suffers as the consequences of the decision cause much calamity within the social structures within the SIS.  That is the risk of Sim on the Social Level.

Just a quick note, Ron had noted that John Kim had complained about the essay not listing dysfunctional forms of play.  I would postulate that one form of dysfunctional form of Sim play is one where the consequences of any act are not taken into account.  I can't tell you how many times I've read the plaintive wail of DM's about players who go about killing NPC's without much fore or after thought.  I don't know about anyone else, but murders are not thought of lightly and the reactions of lords and/or others in power would not be gentle.  I would do the level best of the NPC's involved to put an end to the murders.  Let the consequences of their actions bear down upon the PC's.  I would say that one form of dysfunctional play in Sim is one where the actions of the PC's do not carry plausible consequences.

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

Jay, while I agree with you (and by extension with Ralph) regarding your quotes of my essay and how they relate to Mike's point, that doesn't necessarily make the two of us right.

Regarding your points about dysfunctional Simulationist play, you're right on target as I see it.

Best,
Ron

[Mike Holmes]

To follow what Ron's saying, Jay, it's precisely my point that I disagree with Ron's attribution of adversity and conflict to these things. Ron is wrong here, IMO.

I think it's sad that people think that I always agree with Ron on things. We disagree a lot.

Anyhow, you point out that my Gamism example can't be infered without context, but you don't question that it could be gamism, do you? That is, CA exists whether or not you can determine it. It could be that the decision in question could be seen as evidentiary of gamism. That's all I have to prove. You have to prove that somehow such play can never be evidentiary of CA for your point to be true.

Neither of us is likely to be able to prove our side, in any case, so we'll probably have to disagree. But my point has been that there's no use in saying that this play, these actual choices made by individuals, are not part of an overall CA. If your point is true, what's the implication? What does it mean? What good has saying it meant? I can't see any point to it at all, other than, possibly, to marginalize this sort of play.

Again, again, again, "decisions" as they pertain to CA are not neccessarily "major" in the sense that everything is a decision. We've been over this before, and Ron has agreed - everything that a player does in terms of creating action (whether via character or otherwise) is a "decision" for this intent and purpose. Yes, that doesn't make all of them "tells" but it does mean that any moment of the instance in question could be a "tell." And, yes, I'd agree even that when conflict occurs, it's more likely that "tells" will occur. But they are not the only place that tells occur. I can give many, many examples from actual play if you'd like. Of course, you'll have to trust me, but, again, all I have to do is have a possible place where something could be a tell, that at some points in some games that this sort of thing is a tell. You have to prove that it couldn't be a tell. Burden of proof.

Social reinforcement comes in many, many forms, and I'm surprised that you'd suggest that the only place that rewards are given out is for conflict. For instance, we know that some games don't have mechanical rewards, other than "attendance" rewards. Some have none at all. So you can't be talking about mechanical. If you're talking about socal rewards, I can, and have said, "Coool," when a player said, "I want my character to go to the city of Noragastira because they've got pyramids there." Rewards can be given for anything.

Mike

[Ron Edwards]

Hey folks,

Can everyone see the other's viewpoints? Based on paraphrasing so far ...

Jay: check
Mike: check
me: check

If I'm right about this, then it is perfectly OK to say, "Viewpoints about conflict relative to Situation differ."

Sometimes knowing where the questions and diversity of viewpoints are is the best we can get to.

Best,
Ron

[Mike Holmes]

Like I said, I'm willing to just disagree. But I'm also still willing to listen to any argument that shows how the distinction being made here is useful.

Again, however, it's precisely the atomic viewpoint that allows us to bypass this sort of dicsussion (just to plug my favorite theory).

Mike

[contracycle]

Jay,

I follow along with the bulk of your argument but I reach a conclusion 180 degrees from yours.  Where I start to disagree is here:

Basically Nar asks the question, "Is the Character willing to do X?" Sim asks, "What would the Character do?" These are wholly different questions. The player who answers the latter question is deciding, "What do I wish to reveal about the Character and or his culture?" The player who answers the former is deciding, "What do I wish to reveal about the Premise?"

What is the basis for expecting that the player wants to reveal anything at all?  In fact, what is the basis for thinking the the player has anything to reveal?  I would think that if a player exhibited an interest in, say, a period or setting then mostly they will be asking questions rather than giving answers.  The above sort of suggests the sim player is interested in engaging with ther SIS in order to reveal what they know about the local context, but this seems to me the reverse of the sim interest.  It would be legitimate/inevitable for a Nar player to give their own answer to premise, because moral issues are universal, but it is not true that that a Sim player is entitled or equipped to interpret the game world.  If they were so equipped and entitled, the SIS would not pose an antithetical force to their desires or expectations.  Thus, I see this in the exact reverse light that you do; I think the Sim player is there to listen, not to speak.

I don't think such relationship as there is between Sim and conflict has anything to do with the players self expression, but rather what the conflict says about the local setting context.  I think to the abstract Simmer conflict, like shit, just happens.  I do not see a reason that Sim should necessarily have a relationship to conflict analogous to the relationships that Narr and Gam have to conflict.  Rather, I see the particular synthesis of S and G and N as being mutually supporting; they do not need to be alike.  I think that Sim benefits from the presence of the N and G components of RPG because Narratavists wallow in the shit, and thus stir it up so you can take a closer look, and Gamists throw a cloak over it so you can step daintily across.

[Caldis]

I'm coming to this late having been away for awhile however on reading through the whole thread I have to point out one big problem I see with the definition of conflict put forward by Ralph and Jay.  

I agree entirely that conflict is a huge pointer towards creative agenda; deciding what is a conflict, what factors to consider when deciding on how it's resolved, and the affects of the outcome are all going to vary based on what creative agenda is being followed.  However I dont see how the tight definition of conflict that has been proposed, the antithetical force that Jay speaks of or where Ralph say that something more has to be on the line than simple failure, is true.

Take MJ's example earlier of the character who doesnt know where he is, all his needs are met, he simply has the goal of exploring his surroundings.  He decides to head in a direction to see what he can find out, after awhile he sees smoke coming from over some hills and tries to climb them.   We have a conflict, one without any antithetical forces at work and with nothing more on the line than failure, but in resolving the conflict a creative agenda will make itself known, heck it's probably already been shown by choosing to have the hills a conflict itself but I digress.  When deciding if the character will make it over the hills the dm checks all the relevant factors, weather, character skill, time of day.  All the factors that make the world internally consistent are checked to determine if that character should realistically be able to make it over the hills.

That's all that is required of conflict, that it impedes the characters goals,
If on the other hand the character wants to learn about where he is and he suddenly finds an "encylcopedia thisplacica" sitting next to him then there is no conflict and thus no roleplaying, just diddling as the quote says.

[Valamir]

Take MJ's example earlier of the character who doesnt know where he is, all his needs are met, he simply has the goal of exploring his surroundings. He decides to head in a direction to see what he can find out, after awhile he sees smoke coming from over some hills and tries to climb them. We have a conflict, one without any antithetical forces at work and with nothing more on the line than failure,

I disagree that your example has nothing more on the line than failure.

The character has seen smoke coming over the hills.  The ability or inability of the character to climb those hills in a timely fashion very well may have consequences greater than mere failure.  It very well may involve whether the character makes it to the smoke in time to prevent some fell deed or not.  

If such is the case than yes you have a conflict.

If such is not the case.  If the smoke is just random color and the description the GM offers when the character finally arrives is no different whether the character successfully climbed the hills quickly, or took all day to get across due to failure, then I definitely contend that you have no conflict.

You have situation:  There is smoke in the distance, and there are hills between you and the smoke.

You have adversity: The hills cannot be crossed automatically but must be rolled for.

But you have no conflict because the situation and the adversity were essentially empty.  Nothing changed in the SiS as a result of crossing those hills or not crossing those hills other then the character's relative location.

[Caldis]

I disagree that your example has nothing more on the line than failure.

The character has seen smoke coming over the hills.  The ability or inability of the character to climb those hills in a timely fashion very well may have consequences greater than mere failure.  It very well may involve whether the character makes it to the smoke in time to prevent some fell deed or not.  

Say that it's a sign of an inhabited village, no danger to the village just an opportunity to find out where the character is.  It doesnt matter, just that the hills are an impediment to the characters goal, learning about where he is.  How the character gets across the hills, or deciding if he can get across the hills, definitely shows a creative agenda and that means even if you dont consider it a conflict then it is roleplaying.  It's not just empty exploration of the situation and the setting it's full blown roleplaying with creative agenda.

A simualtionist approach decides whether it's realistically feasible for the character to cross the hills.  A gamist approach leaves clues on how to chop down a tree to enable the crossing of a gorge that would otherwise prevent the character from making it to the village.  A narrativist probably wouldnt have made the hills into a conflict unless it somehow dealt with the premise.

[Valamir]

How the character gets across the hills, or deciding if he can get across the hills, definitely shows a creative agenda and that means even if you dont consider it a conflict then it is roleplaying. It's not just empty exploration of the situation and the setting it's full blown roleplaying with creative agenda.

Caldis, your concern is misplaced.  I'm not relagating your example to "empty exploration" or implying its not roleplaying.  In fact, I addressed this very issue earlier in the thread where I said (edited for really poor grammar that may have made my point unclear):

One thing that I continue to disagree with Ron on is the notion that Roleplaying doesn't start until you add Creative Agenda to Exploration and that Exploration by itself is not roleplaying.

I DON'T believe that Exploration is not roleplaying.  I think that idea is mistaken and the source for alot of projected judgement about "just exploration".

I think raw Exploration is roleplaying...at least by the most fundamental notion of "playing a role". It is essentially agenda-less play and the enjoyment from it is akin to the enjoyment one gets from watching a movie or reading a book with an added layer of interactivity.

So when I say that climbing the hill to find nothing more than directions (when those directions do not really have any impact on events beyond filling in the edges of the story) is not a Conflict, and if its not a Conflict then it doesn't involve a Creative Agenda and is plain old everyday Exploration, I am not saying that it is not Roleplaying.


I also disagree with your summary of approaches.  I don't think your described approaches indicate any kind of CA at all  The gymnastics you had to do to describe them seems to me to demonstrate that there is no Creative Agenda at work.  All of those approaches are just avenues of exploration.  

A gamist or a simulationist could easily have made the decision to not have the hills provide adversity (again, don't mistake adversity for conflict) precisely because it just isn't important...to any agenda.

And it isn't important to any agenda...it doesn't "matter"...because there is no conflict.  There is nothing at stake.

Put something at stake.  Make the situation into a conflict, and the various approaches the different Creative Agendas would have to it become much more visible and understandable.

[M. J. Young]

Obviously, the concept of simulationism is a long way from fully agreed. I'm closest to Mike on the subject, from what I can see, and that means I, too, disagree somewhat with Ron.

Let me suggest the possibility that part of the problem is that Big Model Simulationism has not adequately escaped the influence of its parent, Threefold Simulationism. We verbally agree that the goals of Threefold Simulationism are different, in Big Model terms varied (you can be G, N, or S and still be 3F Sim). Yet when we talk about Simulationism as a Creative Agendum there's still this undercurrent that it is supposed to be immersive--that we have simulationism so that we can feel like we're really there.

Ron has freely admitted in the past that Simulationism is the most difficult agendum for him; I think his experience with it is incomplete, and that perhaps he is committing synechdoche here, failing to see the non-immersive and objective forms of simulationism as just as much part of the agendum as the immersive and subjective forms. That is, history aside (and I don't know whether history is as pure in this regard as he appears at times to suggest), looking at the world from the outside, playing in pawn stance, experimenting from an observer perspective, is just as much part of simulationism as trying to experience what it would be like to be there.

It's fairly obvious and accepted that Narrativism and Dramatism, despite the parental relationship between the two, are completely disconnected. They are not at all about the same thing. I think that the Step On Up aspect of CA Gamism has revealed that this is something different from what 3F Gamists would have thought (although less so). I think CA Simulationism has to escape its Threefold roots. The agendum of exploration squared, or exploration driven by curiosity to reach discovery, doesn't have to use a lot of the techniques people assume are within it. It doesn't have to have rich characters if it's about setting. It doesn't have to have detailed physics if it's reproducing genre (Toon, Feng Shui). It doesn't have to have particularly detailed setting if it's focused on character. It can have very light situation with meager "conflict" as long as it's player-driven.

A lot of the effort I've seen lately to define sim has been focused in ways that are exclusive--they decree that a lot of the role play gaming I've seen and done over the years is not really play, has no creative agendum, doesn't fit within the model. Yet it all does fit within the model, as long as we don't decide that the model is narrower. Every form of simulationism I can identify shares in common the desire by the player to know something he does not know. That includes pawn stance travelogues, heavy character exploration, genre emulation, experimenter play, immersive experience, what if play, and quite a few others. If we can accept that "I don't know this and must do something to find out" is sufficient conflict for situation, then the model works. If we're going to say otherwise--well, how many options are there?

[*]Some genuine role playing is not exploration under the model because it has no creative agendum, and therefore the model doesn't cover some kinds of role playing. (Jay's position, I think. Would it be better to say that the model doesn't cover everything, or to say that there's a mistake within the model concerning the importance of conflict?)[*]Genuine role playing does not require a creative agendum, as pure exploration can be role playing without an agendum. (Ralph's position, I think. If play has no agendum, why do people do it? CA seems to be the motivation behind play, so play without CA would be play for no reason at all.)[*]Conflict is whatever is in the way of the player goals, and doesn't have to be anything particularly noticeable. (This is my position, and I think I count Mike and Contra and Caldis on that side, but it's not a vote.)[/list:u]Are there other possibilities?

--M. J. Young

[Ron Edwards]

'Scuse me - I should like to point out that my position on these issues of Simulationist play is not fixed, and indeed is predicated on needing to work it out more fully.

My original goals were to establish that the identifiable and procedural features/diversity of Gamist and Narrativist play were highly similar, if divergent. I've done that - it used to be a horrendously controversial point and now, I think, it is pretty much settled.

Now that that is done, and we are now longer (or at least not many of us are) thrashing about in paroxysms over "story" or confounding various forms of anti-Gamism into the picture, now we can start talking about Simulationist stuff.

Will we discover a necessary layer within or supportive of Creative Agenda? Does Exploration need to be more nuanced? Or is there some kind of "thing" existing at the exact same level of Creative Agenda, only orthogonal to it?

None of these ideas disagree with what I'm saying. What I'm saying (or have been saying) is done with. That's important. We are all in the soup in regard to all of the current issues, and we've moved forward. This is no longer about trying to understand what I'm saying about Creative Agendas, or according with it vs. defying it. It's about what we can now do in the light of our agreements so far, and that light may expose the need for change to the ideas in my essays.

So let's not have any more talk about what "I must mean" or any of that. What I mean in the essays is on record, and if that needs clarifying I'll do it. But I'll be the first one to say that it's only groundwork for further questions and discussions.

Best,
Ron

[Silmenume]

Hey Mike,

Unless you feel otherwise I feel it would continue to be profitable (to me at least) to discuss the role of conflict in Sim.  I have not yet come to a firm understanding on this and your questions and counterpoints are helping me wrestle with the topic.  Who knows, you may end up showing me that I talk too much!

Social reinforcement comes in many, many forms, and I'm surprised that you'd suggest that the only place that rewards are given out is for conflict.

I'm not sure that I did suggest that, but if I did that was then sloppy writing on my part.  I fully agree that rewards can be given out in many placed and come in many forms.  My point was that one needs to watch which rewards (social, in-game which is a subset of social) were given as a result of conflict handling in order for the monitoring of those rewards to be useful for CA diagnosis.

Regarding your example I agree that it could be evidentiary of Gamist play.  I also agree with you that CA exists whether or not one can diagnose it.  I also agree that many decisions are not necessarily major and that they (non major decisions) can all be made in support of a Creative Agenda.  The problem is that such actions are not CA specific as far as diagnosis is concerned until a "cycle of conflict" has been completed and meaning has been created/generated.  Does that mean such actions were not in the employ of a CA?  No.  It just means we can't or rather it would be extremely difficult to use such decisions as diagnostic.

Challenges to the SIS create meaning due to and given the social structures in place e.g., Exploration as a social activity uses social structures to lend meaning to the player discourse.  Each CA provides its own structures that it uses to lend meaning to the player challenges to the SIS – Challenge, Premise, Internal Causality/Fictional Social Structures.  Situational Conflict is the one commonality between all the meaning creation actions that reflect CA priorities.  IOW situational conflict is the one place where we can find unambiguous "tells".  This does not mean we will always find unambiguous "tells" in situational conflict, but I believe it is the only place where we can find them.  Every CA can have challenges to the SIS, but it is only in situational conflict that we have a common referent.  Situational conflict, because it inherently challenges the SIS, will be measured against the social framework that is in operation to give the act meaning.

Situational conflict drags the players kicking and screaming to challenge the SIS.  Social structures will be produced (new meaning) and reproduced (SIS support/reinforcement).  New meanings will be created, thus the player must make a choice as to what he is trying to "say" – i.e., is he addressing Challenge, Premise or the fictional social structures?  Is Situational conflict the only way that a player may express his CA via challenging the SIS?  No.  The player may find lots of places to challenge the SIS without resort to Situational conflict.  However, Situational conflict as a form of challenge to the SIS has qualities that allow it to serve a specific purpose.

Perhaps some rephrasing on my part might be illuminating.

Roleplay is a ritualized discourse - it is a meaning creation process.

All statements to do something (this includes thoughts expressed aloud) within the SIS by players are challenges to the SIS.  This process creates some sort of new meaning, how ever slight.  Situational conflict is a type of challenge to the SIS.  What makes a Situational conflict challenge to the SIS different from a "regular" challenge to the SIS?  Because the player is choosing to engage the Situation, thus turning it into a conflict, he is ritually assuming the risk/price of failure – risk.   IOW he is not just running the potential of not having a routine statement fail to enter into the SIS, he is ritually declaring that he is making a statement and is willing to assume the potential public loss of social esteem for the failure as the price to give his statement weight.  Facing a Situational conflict becomes important because the player makes it important.

Situational conflict operates on two levels.  First is that it automatically creates a challenge to the SIS thus it is a meaning creation act.  Second it creates a loss/negative result possibility for the player creating a personal risk that means what he is about to do is important to the player.  Roughly speaking –

[*]The Gamist could be saying, "I am taking risks - and that says something about me."
[*]The Narrativist could be saying, "I am taking risks because doing so allows me to make statements regarding the premise."
[*]The Simulationist could be saying, "Because I am in a state of risk under these social meaning structures, everything I do is a statement about those structures."[/list:u]While both Gamism and Narrativism may be more akin to prose in that they are trying to make a statement, Simulationism is more like poetry in the way it is more about enjoying the process of creating meaning.  IOW we aren't necessarily trying to make statements as much as we are enjoying the meanings themselves.

This is why nonconflict play is not Sim.  Sim too, as a Creative Agenda, is about meaning creation/saying things.  Nonconflict tourism doesn't "say" anything.  I would go as far as to say that one nature/quality of a Creative Agenda is that the player wants or is trying use these meanings to "say things".

Mike, you asked how other players could view such nonconflict play as "incorrect" and thus be mutually exclusive?  Because everything one does in the SIS changes the meaning creating social structures, a player who does not engage in situational conflict will water down or dilute those very same meaning structures that the Sim players actively trying to create and maintain.  The players at that point are at cross purposes with respect to one another regarding their agendas the table.

Plain vanilla Exploration means that the players just enjoys playing, they don't have anything they want to "say".  Either they don't have a particular need for conflict and are ok not having to "say" anything, or they don't have a particular approach to conflict resulting in a nonsensical "meaning salad" – thus effectively "saying" nothing.  This is not to be construed in any way to mean that such play is without value, rather it is just saying that such play in not harnessing Exploration to any end other than its own pure enjoyment.

Hey Ron,

Your point about agreeing but not necessarily being in the right is understood and taken to heart.

Hey contracycle,

Though I did not address your post directly, I hope I did address the points you raised in a useful fashion.

[M. J. Young]

Interesting thoughts.

Some time back, I proposed that the three agenda could be distinguished thus:

[*]A narrativist wants to say something;[*]A gamist wants to do something;[*]A simulationist wants to learn something.[/list:u]Obviously, that's a simplification; but I think that it's a sufficient statement to challenge the idea that creative agendum is what you want to "say". I don't see gamists as so much "saying" as "doing", in that sense. Put from the other end, if you decree that all three agenda are about what players are trying to "say", you reduce "say" so that it is synonymous with "explore", and I don't think it's as useful a word for the process as "exploration" is.

But let me suggest that I think this cycle of conflict is a very useful notion, and from one perspective it may explain the difficulty in diagnosing or at least distinguishing some forms of simulationism from other agenda.

To do this, I'm going to introduce the concept of "obstacle" as something less than "conflict", so that we're not struggling over a terminological confusion. For purposes of this thread, let obstacle mean "that which impedes exploration". Thus when we climb the hill to find out why there's smoke coming from the other side, the hill is the obstacle. There might not be conflict, in the sense Ralph and Jay mean, but there is still something that must be overcome to continue exploration.

What we see in exploration is the continuous effort to overcome obstacles so as to learn about the shared imaginary space (and of course learning about it and expanding it are much the same process--even if we're working from a book, what is revealed in play is established as part of the shared understanding). An agendum is an intended outcome; it's what we want to have happen. This exploration contributes to the agendum, but it's not normally the agendum directly.

The gamist is overcoming those obstacles and learning about the elements of exploration so that he will be able to use them effectively when he takes action. He might explore what happens if you put oil in a clay jar, seal it but for a cloth wick through a wax-sealed hole, light the wick, and run; he then expects to use whatever the outcome is in meeting the challenges which lie ahead. (Note that it doesn't matter whether this creates an explosion or a firebomb or a lamp; what matters is that he learns what it will do so that he can use it later when he needs it.)

The narrativist is overcoming those obstacles and learning about the elements of exploration so that he will be able to use them effectively when he engages the premise. He might explore the relationship between the governor and the governor's lady in the expectation that understanding that relationship will let him use them later, knowing something of how they will respond to his actions.

Thus we see that in narrativism and gamism, all of this overcoming obstacles ultimately proves to be support in the conflict which later reveals the specific agendum being pursued.

I'm not saying that simulationism will never come to conflict. However, I think that we run into the diagnosis problem when all that has been done so far is overcome obstacles. We have narrativists exploring the elements for the purpose of addressing premise at some point when conflict arises, and gamists exploring the elements for the purpose of grasping the gold ring when conflict arises. We have simulationists exploring the elements for the purpose of understanding the elements themselves. If no conflict ever arises that interests them, they continue to explore the elements. They might come to a conflict and reveal through it their simulationist agendum; but they might never come to a conflict at all.

That's where the diagnostic problem arises. Eventually the continual failure to come to conflict forces us to conclude that this player is not interested in premise or step-on-up, and so is playing simulationist. It leads to the error that simulationism is the "default mode", what you're doing if you're not doing something else, because of the diagnostic process: we didn't see you come to conflict, but you're enjoying play over the long term, so we think you're playing simulationist.

Did that make sense? I'm a bit fuzzy tonight, and pressed for time (I'll probably post this and come back later to do the rest of the forum threads), but I wanted to get this to paper while it was in my mind.

--M. J. Young

[Mike Holmes]

This is not to be construed in any way to mean that such play is without value, rather it is just saying that such play in not harnessing Exploration to any end other than its own pure enjoyment.

I still don't see why this is anything other than simulationism. I understand the mechanisms that tend to cause disagreements, but I don't see how this form conflicts with other simulationism. If you're saying that it doesn't conflict with other simulationism because there's no Creative Agenda (and hence no source of conflict between two agenda), I'd point out that this form of play will be seen by players seeking narrativism and gamism as problematic.

Thus it's in that "not gamism, or narrativism" category, but it doesn't conflict with simulationsism. Making it simulationism.

Or, if you say that it does conflict, I'd want to know how? Play of both simulationism and tourism* would look identical in terms of that which define them. In both cases, the player would make decisions based on "what the character would do", meaning simply not displaying one of the other metagame agenda (making it "what the player wants" to the extent that it conflicts).

So, absent of something to differentiate this from simulationism, it's simulationism. Or, looking at it from Ralph's perspective, since it would be "metagame" for a player to shrink before conflict in a way that's not sensible for the character, conflict always happens, and this is a mythical mode of play. Just what happens between the conflicts which are part and parcel of the overall agenda (as opposed to definitive in my view).

In Sim, all is treated equally - that is, without the appearance of a metagame agenda. Given this lack of appearance (or appearing only as trying to prevent the appearance of player goals), how can one discriminate between the two?

Again, if you go with the atomic model, this is all covered. That model talks about some decisions being "just exploration." Making for a fourth sort of play, moment to moment. But when looking at overall agenda, I'm not seeing a fourth agenda.

Mike