Stance Theory: The Hegemony of One Character

[greyorm]

That's the clearest definition of Stances I've ever seen, Ron. Thanks! For years I was unable to parse the difference between Author and Director stance, and while I grew an idea, the above confirms my understanding was correct.

Nathan, if you see a problem, then what other Stances do you suggest exist? Give me a couple of examples of play events/decisions that don't fit into the current Stances so I can see where you're coming from; as it stands, I have to say I don't see any problem at all with the Stances as they currently exist.

[LordSmerf]

After spending some more time mulling over these ideas I still have a problem.  In fact it is still the same one I had at the beginning:

"Stances" as they currently stand seem schizophrenic.  That is, they are used to classify things based on two entirely seperate issues.  The first Issue is what is being manipulated (this is where you find out if something is Director Stance), the second is why it is being manipulated in this manner (this is the distinction between Actor and Author).

The result is that, by necessity of terminology, we make a distinction between why you do things in-character, but we implicitly state that all environmental manipulation is qualitatively the same regardless of justification.  So "it gets dark because this conversation has been going on a while and it is probably night time" is not distinct from "it gets dark because night-time scenes are cool!".  Contrast this with the specific distinction between "I attack him because my character would feel insulted and attack" and "I attack him because I like the combat system of this game."

So, it is not that Stances do not work, it is that they create an artificial distinction based on what one manipulates.

Now, it is possible that no one else really considers this to be a big problem in which case I guess I am on my own here.  Assuming that anyone agrees with me I would suggest consideration of a fourth "Environmental" Stance which would be manipulaiton of non-character agents strictly following in-SIS justification (i.e. there is a fire burning, so it must be comfortably warm).

I am not entirely sure that such a distinction is useful primarily because it is not common for the Environmental Stance to be restricted.  That is, players constantly make suggestions and assumptions in Environmental Stance.

Thomas

[John Kim]

I have a question based on the suggested definitions.  Suppose I as a player in a Buffy game spend a Drama Point in-game and declare that the demon that had surprised the PCs  suddenly hugs one of the characters and says "Max, how you doing?"  Now, technically I am controlling a character -- so is this Author stance, just the same as if I had said an action about my own PC?  Or is it Director stance because I am controlling something external to my character?  

If it is the former, I think this may be different from many people's understanding.  i.e. Manipulating NPCs is often viewed as being the same as manipulating environment.  However, if it is the latter, then it depends on the ownership of characters and what exactly does "ownership" mean.

[TonyLB]

It could also depend upon whether the focus was on the demon or on how Max is effected.  But I'm not at all sure that it in fact does.  Neat question!

[Walt Freitag]

John, your question is kind of like asking, "If I'm standing north of Phoenix but south of Juno, am I north or south?" Stance is defined with respect to some player and some character.

So in your example, your declaration is Author Stance with respect to the Demon character, and if you insist on identifying a Stance of that same action with respect to your own PC, it's Director Stance with respect to that character. We don't normally explicitly mention the "with respect to" character because we're usually talking about the Stance of a player's action with respect to the player's (single) PC, or the Stance of a GM's action with respect to an NPC that the GM is focusing on at the moment, and in those contexts it goes without saying who the character in question is.

Of course, whether you have, or how you obtain, the authority and credibility to narrate the demon's or any other character's action is a System issue that's pretty much independent of Stance.

Same reasoning applies if you were playing two PCs. Call them Bob and Ray. You narrate, "Bob attempts to use his axe to smash the lock on Ray's cage." That's actor or author(/pawn) Stance with respect to Bob, and (trivially) director Stance with respect to Ray. North of Phoenix, south of Juno. Does that make sense?

The fact that stance is about the relation between a player's action and the portrayed (fictional) desires and actions of some particular character is also at the heart of the answer to Thomas's question. Once a player's action is judged to have no relationship to a character's desires or actions, there's no more to be said about it as far as Stance (with respect to that character) is concerned.

However, that action can still be looked at in other ways, such as the how-it's-justified variable that Thomas speaks of. If he's suggesting that there's a deep parallel between Actor Stance actions, and Director Stance actions that are justified entirely by in-game-world causality, I'd say that idea has a lot of merit.

- Walt

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Walt's answered your question to my satisfaction, John, although my answer would lean more toward the any player and any character position. I have always looked at it this way and have repeatedly had to deal with the very same question, always couched in the mis-reading that Stance is about "my character." It's not.

When I suggest to my fellow player that he play his character in a particular way, then I am hopping into the cockpit with him as co-Author, in Author Stance. It has nothing to do with the character being "his."

Thomas, your fourth Stance is still Director Stance, because "comfortably warm" refers to an effect or potential effect on at least one character.

I really don't see any problem with your having identified the two variables at work in defining Stances. So there're two variables, which just makes me shrug, as I identified them explicitly long ago (this is not the first time I've laid out the a-b-c-etc sequence, not by a long shot). They are two variables with a distinctive and relevant-to-play three-way effect; we call those effects Stances.

Best,
Ron

[John Kim]

Walt's answered your question to my satisfaction, John, although my answer would lean more toward the any player and any character position. I have always looked at it this way and have repeatedly had to deal with the very same question, always couched in the mis-reading that Stance is about "my character." It's not.  

Could you explain a little better what the "any player and any character" (APAC?) position is?  

When I suggest to my fellow player that he play his character in a particular way, then I am hopping into the cockpit with him as co-Author, in Author Stance. It has nothing to do with the character being "his."  

So is this your APAC position?  According to Walt's explanation, this would be Director stance with respect to your own PC (or with respect to any other character), but Author stance with respect to your fellow player's PC.  Are you disagreeing and saying this is objectively Author stance?

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Um, it's Author Stance for anyone. I don't see where the Director is coming in.

Concrete example:

Bob plays Bartholemew. Sam plays Sebastian.

Bartholemew is fighting six-armed rat-things. Bob announces yet again that Bartholemew will swing his (um) katana at a rat-thing. Sam groans, then says, "He casts his spell of Mighty Doom!"

"Yeah!" says Bob, who for whatever reason happened to have overlooked the spell of Mighty Doom.

I don't see any freakin' Director Stance there. Not a bit. All Author Stance, hell, maybe even Actor if you wanna acknowledge that Bartholemew has the spell "in his head."

What I'm driving at is that any participant may enter any Stance relative to any character in play, limited only by the procedural standards for that particular group. Such a limitation would be imposed upon the concept of Stance, not intrinsic to it. Such limitations are common, but they are a separate issue.

People really make this more complicated than it is.

Best,
Ron

[M. J. Young]

Ron, I think the confusion John is seeing lies here: When Sam takes the step of helping Bob run Bartholomew, he's playing Author or Actor stance relative to Bartholomew; but if we take Walt's explanation correctly, at that moment he is playing director stance relative to Sebastian, because he is influencing aspects of the environment which are beyond Sebastian's control. In that sense, it would be much the same as if he were empowered to state that the orcs attacking them drop their weapons and flee in fear--from Sebastian's perspective, this is director stance, although it's author stance from the perspective of the orcs.

That's where the notion that there's director stance involved when Sam helps Bob run Bartholomew--it lies in Sam's relationship with Sebastian, for whom he is now affecting the environment's relationship to Sebastian rather than Sebastian's relationship to the environment.

Thus the problem appears to be that there is a confusion regarding the stance involved when any player declares actions of a character which is not his own. Whether that character is controlled by another character player or by the referee doesn't seem an acceptable distinction for this. Obviously, it's director stance when the player is directly altering inanimate features of the environment; but what is it when he alters animate features, such as saying that the horse grazes as it waits for him, or the dog comes when he calls, or he suddenly hears a bird call? These seem to be borderline cases, as does the question of identifying stance when a player is making declarations for another player's character.

I'm happy to accept that the example you gave is author stance relative to Bartholomew; at what point do we distinguish manipulation of characters as author stance from manipulation of environment as director stance, and in the Sam and Bartholomew example, why isn't it correct to say that Sam at that moment stands in director stance to Sebastian as he controls Bartholomew? I think that would be less than helpful as a distinction, but it seems to be the one with which Walt and John are wrestling at the moment.

--M. J. Young

[Ron Edwards]

Gah! Sam's statement has nothing to do with Sebastian. He is not paying any attention to Sebastian. He has no Stance relative to Sebastian at the moment.

I can't believe anyone has any trouble with this. You guys are going to be talking about whether a player has a stance toward a donkey on the other side of the game-world next.

Best,
Ron

[John Kim]

Gah! Sam's statement has nothing to do with Sebastian. He is not paying any attention to Sebastian. He has no Stance relative to Sebastian at the moment.

I can't believe anyone has any trouble with this. You guys are going to be talking about whether a player has a stance toward a donkey on the other side of the game-world next.

Ron, calm down for a minute.  Go back and re-read Walt's response.  He was pretty clear, I thought, that according to him both Author and Director stance are relative to a particular character.  So an action could be Author stance with respect to one character, but Director stance with respect to another.  

Same reasoning applies if you were playing two PCs. Call them Bob and Ray. You narrate, "Bob attempts to use his axe to smash the lock on Ray's cage." That's actor or author(/pawn) Stance with respect to Bob, and (trivially) director Stance with respect to Ray. North of Phoenix, south of Juno. Does that make sense?  

Now, my understanding is that you disagree with Walt's example here.  i.e. According to you, this action is objectively one of Actor / Author / Pawn stance.  It is not Director-stance.  

It might also help if you answered my example question (i.e. narrating the demon hugging Max) and/or some of M.J.'s (i.e. the dog coming when you call), rather than coming up with new ones.

[TonyLB]

From the GNS essay:

In Director stance, a person determines aspects of the environment relative to the character in some fashion, entirely separately from the character's knowledge or ability to influence events.

Are other characters considered part of "the environment"?  Or is it just stuff like the temperature, lamp-posts, falling anvils and such?

Because if it's the latter then, yeah, I could totally see Ron's frustration with these examples.  And I could also see more specific examples that I think would get at the same questions without convincing Ron that he's been horribly misunderstood.

But it's quite possible that I'm the one who has horribly misunderstood, so I ask before pontificating.

[Blankshield]

John,

I think what Ron is saying is that stance is only ever relevant to the character actively being refered to at the time.  

So for your Buffy example, you are in author stance with respect to the demon and in absolutely no other stance relative to any other character because the statement is not about any other character, it is about the demon and what it is doing.

Walt's example: you are in author stance with respect to Bob and in absolutely no other stance relative to any other character because the statement is not about any other character, it is about Bob and what Bob is doing.  

It might be easier to parse if you think that stance is only ever relevent to the "point of view" character.  It's not a matter of objective/subjective - those terms are (as I understand them) a red herring.  Stance is always subjective.  It only ever applies right here, right now, for this character.  It never applies objectively.

To take your Buffy example further:

Suppose I as a player in a Buffy game spend a Drama Point in-game and declare that the demon that had surprised the PCs suddenly hugs one of the characters and says "Max, how you doing?"

Author stance, POV character, the demon.
Next you declare:  Max pounds the demon on the back and says "Fred, I haven't seen you since the Bar Mitzvah for that tenticled thing in 1243!"
Author stance, POV character, Max.  

Hope that helps.

Ron, one quick query: There's no particular reason someone can't be in 'author' stance for multiple characters, is there?  As in "We all jump in the boat!"

James[/i]

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

John, my comments were directed to M.J., not to Walt. Walt's comments were accurate insofar as a person's statement is relevant to more than one character, when and if that happens. James has answered the issue fully and clearly, so I'll just defer to his post.

James, yes, the number of characters involved is another dial, not any particular constraint on the concept.

Best,
Ron

[John Kim]

Same reasoning applies if you were playing two PCs. Call them Bob and Ray. You narrate, "Bob attempts to use his axe to smash the lock on Ray's cage." That's actor or author(/pawn) Stance with respect to Bob, and (trivially) director Stance with respect to Ray. North of Phoenix, south of Juno. Does that make sense?

Walt's example: you are in author stance with respect to Bob and in absolutely no other stance relative to any other character because the statement is not about any other character, it is about Bob and what Bob is doing.

OK, so let's try to resolve at least this one example.  Compare the two quotes about with each other.  Here you, Blankshield, are disagreeing with Walt, right?  Walt says that his example is Director Stance with respect to Ray.  You say that it is in no other stance relative to any other character.  So, in your opinion, Walt was wrong -- yes?  

It might be easier to parse if you think that stance is only ever relevent to the "point of view" character.  It's not a matter of objective/subjective - those terms are (as I understand them) a red herring.  Stance is always subjective.  It only ever applies right here, right now, for this character.  It never applies objectively.  

I suspect you're making this harder than you have to.  Question: is it possible for an animate creature to act without becoming the point-of-view character?  If so, could you give some examples?  i.e. A creature does something, but it is Director Stance.  If not, then we can skip the POV distinction and just say that only actions by inanimate things can be Director Stance; and conversely that all actions by inanimate things are Director Stance.