Terminology Problem: Drift

[Marco]

Hi Ron,

A few things just to be clear:

1. For the record I don't find those guys unsophisticated at all. I think they were spot on. I'll try to be more clear and less perscriptive.

2. I have Kult, Unknown Armies, and TRoS handy--I'll go through them and see what I think about the philosophical content.

NOTE: I agree that almost all games have philosophies. I'm talking about a wedding of philosophical context to actual mechanics in the way you describe with the rant (allbeit usually less explicit than that). You may be right. I'll look at them, reading specifically for that, and see what I think.

-Marco

[Blankshield]

I have a query regarding Drift, which I think bears on the original topic.

How far across CA's does a given play style have to go before it becomes "Drift" as opposed to just modification?

AD&D, for example, has (as I recall*) a lot of rules investment in gamist play with Players-as-a-group competing together to beat the GM's challenge.  As this discussion goes, it seems fairly clear that playing AD&D to model a co-operative commune amongst the various orc varient monsters would be Drifted play.  It also seems fairly clear that (say) modifying how THAC0 works so there are no negative numbers isn't Drift.

What about a play style where the play group is heavily competing with each other and the 'group-vs-challenge' model is either bare window dressing or dropped all together?  Still gamist play, but a very different kind of Gamist, and pretty much incompatable with the first style.  (Drop one of these guys into the first kind of group, and watch the disfunction explode).  Is that Drift?  It's still the same broad catagory of CA, but is a very different kind of play.



James
*I am running off memory, it could be selective.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi James,

We dealt with this question earlier in the thread - see my breakdown of possible different versions of "changing the rules."

The short answer to your immediate question is that Drift concerns both changing the CA of play and altering/re-interpretating textual rules in doing so.

The interesting thing about this is that both of the following are therefore possible:

1) Major re-interpretations, ignoring, modifications of the textual rules, but with no Drift as the basic CA stays the same

2) Minor re-interpretations, etc, maybe even the barest amount, maybe not even considered a "real" change by the group, with indicative of a very significant shift in from one basic CA to another

Best,
Ron

[Callan S.]

In terms of the 'playing D&D but out in a field or something and not in a dungeon' that isn't important, what's important are the agreements that shape play.

For example, perhaps the party starts play on a boat at sea. And then pirates attack. How do they respond? Well, move up four squares so as to get past some rigging to get a clear shot. Five foot step back the next round when a baddie gets close and you want to stick with the ranged weapon.

Err, that could just as easily have been a dungeon manouver. That doesn't represent drift or change. Now, if the pirates stay away in their boat and it becomes just an exchange of arrows, that purposeful contrivance means a lot of rules just get ignored. In fact without any manouvering or anything (and lets assume their isn't any real tricks you can do), it'll be just dice rolls to see if the arrows hit or miss, which is just sim.

A change in setting doesn't change what the game does by itself, it can still be a dungeon fight on the deck of a boat. You don't get out of what D&D is designed for, by just leaving the dungeon.


Now a hi to John,

Is the idea of drift supposed to be binary or scaled? Binary as in, its only drift if the primary CA gets switched. While if the idea is that drift is expressed in amounts, ie small drift, large scale drift, then it can encapsulate what I talked about.

The binary version is clearer, but it leaves a gap for describing smaller stuff. And weve already got a lot of jargon around.

[John Kim]

But if I run a Traveler game and set the crew as security on a space station, am I 'deviating'? If I run a game that's 80% outdoors and has only a small component of ruins delving, what then? Yes, some of the values of standard character types are different--but if I'm fairly clear about what I'm doing up front is that really a deviation?
...
A reasonably good statement can be made about what an example of typical play might be like. That is, IMO, very credible--but claiming that you are really "changing something" when you focus on a specific piece of that standard game (in the Traveler example, suppose the PC's are, as per standard, all ex-military, for example) is, IMO, too close to the "D&D is all hack-and-slash" dialog for my taste.  

Well, what would you call it?  Seriously.  I agree that there should be a distinct term for "modifying explicit rules" as opposed to "differing from implied expectations."  However, I think the implied expectations and support at least exist, and we need to at least be able to refer to differing from them.  

For example, I could run a by-the-rules D&D3 campaign which is purely court romance and intrigue (i.e. no combat or magic).  Again, this is no change to explicit rules, but I would argue that at some point differences in expectations add up to be significant.  At this point, I don't want to argue over how common or major it is -- I would just like to be able to refer to it without having an argument just over terminology.  

John, are we getting off-topic? I do think that the thread achieved its goal of clarifying just what the term Drift is referring to, and how it relates to other forms of re-interpreting or ignoring rules text.
...
So John, it's up to you. Call this one done? Bring it back to the orginal topic of Drift per se and continue? Or continue with this nuance thing (a.k.a. can of worms)?  

Well, I'd say let's keep on at the can of worms, which is IMO part of the original topic.  We seem to have agreed on "modifying" or "modification" to refer to changing explicit rules.  But there still seems to be disagreement on differing from advice and/or implied expectations.

[Blankshield]

Hrm.  Sorry Ron, I wasn't clear enough in what I was asking.  In hindisight I see I should have ditched the example, and cut to the point.

I get what is meant by Drift as you say.  What I am trying to drive at is:

How far must the CA move for it to be Drift?  Assuming sufficient change in rules is occuring, is it drift to go from Gamist "Us against the Situation" to Gamist "Player vs Player", two strongly Gamist agendaes that are also fairly strongly incompatable.

Is it only "Drift" per the definition if it goes across a catagory, or is it still drift if it crosses to a different specific CA that still generally identifies in the same catagory of agendae?

And put that way, I suppose the corollory would be: Assuming sufficient change in CA, how much rules change is enough?  Are these both dials with variable settings that only hit capital-D Drift once both are past a certain point?

James

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

James, here goes:

How far must the CA move for it to be Drift? Assuming sufficient change in rules is occuring, is it drift to go from Gamist "Us against the Situation" to Gamist "Player vs Player", two strongly Gamist agendaes that are also fairly strongly incompatable.

CA must move from one category to another for it to be Drift. Your within-Gamist change is indeed a change, but it is not Drift. John started this thread in order to suss out any necessary new terms we need to talk about this stuff without confusion.

Is it only "Drift" per the definition if it goes across a catagory, or is it still drift if it crosses to a different specific CA that still generally identifies in the same catagory of agendae?

It is only Drift if it goes across categories.

And put that way, I suppose the corollory would be: Assuming sufficient change in CA, how much rules change is enough? Are these both dials with variable settings that only hit capital-D Drift once both are past a certain point?

This is the tricky part - I suggest that enormous Drift is possible even with very tiny changes to how the rules are applied.

In other words, it does not matter how much rules-change is involved, as long as there is some at all, and as long as the CA has changed. That would be Drift.

Best,
Ron

[Marco]

Well, what would you call it?  Seriously.  I agree that there should be a distinct term for "modifying explicit rules" as opposed to "differing from implied expectations."  However, I think the implied expectations and support at least exist, and we need to at least be able to refer to differing from them.  

For example, I could run a by-the-rules D&D3 campaign which is purely court romance and intrigue (i.e. no combat or magic).  Again, this is no change to explicit rules, but I would argue that at some point differences in expectations add up to be significant.  At this point, I don't want to argue over how common or major it is -- I would just like to be able to refer to it without having an argument just over terminology.  

I agree that such a concept is useful. After thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that:

1. A  *CATEGORY A* unusual game (place-holder) is one where setting and/or situation is constructed so that portions of the printed mechanics are not used (or are very rarely used). Ideally, this is used to denote situations where it is done intentionally as opposed to play where because of a variety of factors something just never happens to come up.

2. A CATEGORY B unusual game (hey, at least I can be sure my terminology won't stick this way) is one constructed where portions of the printed setting are not used (for example: you live in the western lands--there are no orcs here). This is pretty much the same as Cat A in terms of "system" but is important for games where setting is very loose (D&D).

3. A CATEGORY C unusual game is where the content of the game doesn't meet the players expectations of the game in a philosophical sense. I think this is the grayest and the most conentious since it's where "D&D is all about hack-and-slash" comes into play.

Some problem cases

1. My Vampire game minimialized but did not remove hunting (in fact, it was important through out play but few hunts occured during the game). Does that qualify as A,B, or C--who can say? Maybe it doesn't qualify as any.

2. My example of Traveler with the characters playing space-station security might be a CAT-C game in someone's opinion (no planet hopping) but in my opinion, it's well within the philosophy of the game.

As I examine games for philosophy-rules links as Ron suggested, I hope to become clearer on what I think of that.

Edited to add: On thinking about it, I realized that a lot of my AD&D play was something like this. I didn't like poison (save or die) or level drain (you become the parties sidekick) so I just didn't include (many) monsters that used them. This would be strong CAT-B play.

A blurrier question: I had a rust monster held in a wooden pen for disposal of metalic waste. I never had figured out that the rust monster was supposed to be there to take treasure away from the party (was it? philosophically? I don't know for sure). But the fact that I included the monster in a way that a society might actually use it--as opposed to the (presumed) reason for it being there would open debates as to whether I was a Cat-B deviation since I never had them show up "in the wild" or a Cat-C deviation since I didn't use them as they "were meant to be used" or none of the above.

-Marco