The Basis for Criticism

[Roger]

Given that CA plays a unique role in "nailing the Big Model together," it certainly is constructed of participants' desires, motives, intentions, and all those similar words. But for purposes of recognizing and discussing it, I do not turn to telepathy or to gut-responses or "know it when I see it" thinking. (These have all been accusations leveled at me in the past.) I look to the interactions and social reinforcements among the real people as they conduct System.

This sounds reasonable enough.  In light of this, I wonder if defining CA in terms of social interactions, rather than internal motivations, might be useful.  I realize that this has been done to some extent.  


To turn to something else you've said here which strikes me as interesting:

7. No CA or even SIS to speak of (this is sadly more common than I would like, leading me to distinguish "gaming" from "role-playing" - in my view, many gamers are not role-playing no matter how many dice they roll or characters they make up or how many hours they sit around together)

Considering that this thread started up over a sense of "Ron doesn't approve of what I do", I find it interesting to see a statement which is openly judgemental.

I'm not trying to say that Ron isn't allowed to have an opinion on such things.  But it does seem to stand in stark contrast to:

So I'm asking that people look over some of the Sim points again, especially those in the essay, and put a big gold star on every single paragraph, with the star meaning AND HE LOOKED UPON IT AND FOUND IT GOOD.

I'm the first to admit that I'm not terribly familiar with the ground that The Forge has already staked out -- has this "No CA at all" topic been explored?

Again, my sense of Ron's condemnation of the "not really roleplaying" crowd might be skewed.  My hunch is that the sadness to which he refers isn't directly related to the issue of roleplaying (or not) itself.  After all, we all spend many hours doing things which are clearly not roleplaying, and there's little sense in bemoaning that.  But a sense of delusion about what roleplaying is -- that's worth some sadness.  That nagging sense of "there's got to be more to this game than just rolling dice and moving miniatures."



Cheers,
Roger

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

Thanks for laying it out like that, Marco - very clear, very helpful.

The way I see it, strong empathic emotions are potentially present in any sort of role-playing, in terms of player identifying with the fictional situation faced by the fictional characters. I have never tried to state that empathic emotion is present in Narrativist play and absent in Simulationist play.

The crucial role of Premise in defining Narrativist play, as I see it, is this: the fictional character/situation invokes a generalizable human dilemma (moral, ethical, problematic, whatever one wants to call it). It's not just that I empathize with, for example, a character's dire fear of death in the face of attack. It's that the choice between parenthood and personal risk speaks to me as a person in terms of my own life-experiences and choices (and those of my acquaintances, etc), even if I never have to deal with the slavering jaws of zombies/aliens/whatever.

Narrativist play prioritizes, if you will, one's personal desire to speak back when something trips a trigger like this.

Simulationist play, on the other hand, may include a very similar or even identical situation in play - but the priority is different. It is to celebrate the Stuff (model, topic, whatever we arrive at in this thread) given certain features of that Stuff as a baseline. It doesn't matter in terms of aesthetic priorities how (in ethics/problematic terms) each of us copes with the situation, only that we enjoy the situation and actively contribute to its sensations and imagery.

(Note that I am not saying anything about active/passive, author/non-author, broad authority vs. narrow authority over elements of play, etc; all of those are dials which spin nicely in each category. Pick Narrativist play with extremely "normal"/Vanilla features as well as some kind of hard-core Director-ish Sim, and the distinction still seems clear to me. The whole claim that Vanilla Narr = Sim was always meaningless to me.)

To my knowledge, and much to my frustration, any number of folks who've tried to address these (now I realize, very good) concerns of yours, Marco, have done so by veering off into Techniques and also confounded emotion per se with generalizable issue.

I fully grant that diagnosis, if that's the right word, is harder when the Sim Situation includes stuff that to other people would be rich Premise-meat, or vice versa. But I don't think it's a deal-breaker or relies on telepathy; I think it just requires more observation and more attention to the nuances of System especially over the long run.

Best,
Ron

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Roger,

I wonder if defining CA in terms of social interactions, rather than internal motivations, might be useful. I realize that this has been done to some extent.

Not just "to some extent," Roger - the whole Model is predicated on social interactions and rewards. CA (even before its current name) has always been defined as successful signal-feedback among people.

As for the #7 category, I hope you aren't seeing my #7 as any kind of Simulationist play. My "gold star" quote is about Sim play, not about "no play" or "gee isn't it nice we're gamers and not being picked on here in our basement" huddling.

What I'm saying is that the Big Model will not apply to any and all people who call themselves gamers and who consider themselves regularly to be role-playing. In some cases, the folks in question are not engaging in anything faintly resembling what, in the model, is historically called "role-playing." Arguably, they are not even engaging in what most would call socializing. This topic should probably be taken to another thread.

Best,
Ron

[Marco]

To my knowledge, and much to my frustration, any number of folks who've tried to address these (now I realize, very good) concerns of yours, Marco, have done so by veering off into Techniques and also confounded emotion per se with generalizable issue.

I fully grant that diagnosis, if that's the right word, is harder when the Sim Situation includes stuff that to other people would be rich Premise-meat, or vice versa. But I don't think it's a deal-breaker or relies on telepathy; I think it just requires more observation and more attention to the nuances of System especially over the long run.

Best,
Ron

Yeah--there's a veritable mine field of terminological issues here which make it hard to discuss without veering into problems. I mean, I think I see what you're saying--but it's not entirely clear.

Edited to add: Ron's points are insightful and on target. I'm just sayin' I'm struggling with applying them without making (making up) some of my own generalizations.

So let's look at actual play.

In the After The War game I posted on in actual play I felt emotions based on the situation. By "empathic" I am specifically refering to the player's feeling relevant to the situation and not necessiarily the character's feelings relevant to the situation (i.e. I could play an evil character whom I dispise and feel sad when the character 'feels' triumphant--I'd consider that an empathic emotion since I'm feeling sad relevant to the imaginary tragedy the character has wrought as though it's a real one.)

In that game, the lit-major in me identifies the issues as something surrounding the primacy of mercy vs. vengance or the need for order vs. justice or ... something like that. There was certainly a generalizable issue there.

But I, having played in the game, can't easily distinguish between associating my feelings with that vs. my feelings of revulsion for the NPC's, my desire to protect the weak, my horror at the eventual fate people--even possibly deserving people--would suffer.

If:
a) I was in Author Stance then it'd be clear cut.
b) If I was drawn to the game system because it used a system that focused on the generalizeable issue it'd be clear cut.
c) If the game was set up under social contract to ensure that the generalizable issue would be brought to bear first and foremost at every turn and wouldn't be "accidentially" discarded due to in-game actions it'd be clear cut.
d) If I'd requested/demanded that the game include such a generalizeable issue and that it be prevalent during the game it'd be clear cut.
e) If, during the begining, when it was not clear what the issue would be, if I had been 'biding my time' or 'puttin up with it' knowing that the issue had better become clear real damn soon then it'd be (kinda) clear cut.

But none of that was the case. We did what we did. There was premise there was resolution. There was social reinforcement for the play in general. There was no rejection of input that I saw (but that's a major point of interest for me).

So I'm tryin' to get a handle on where things move from the specific instance to the general. Sure: the game was kinda built around a general issue--but it was just as equally built around a situation ... and, for that matter, a challenge.

Come to think of it, when our characters were laying waste with military overkill firepower there was a power-trippy element of "who could get more kills." I mean, not major--but I'd say it was there (I gunned down one of the judges and was like Ha! I got mine! ... but that'd have been meaningless if we hadn't hated them already ...)

The actual play example I have there seems to me to be highly entertwined (maybe impossibly so) on a focus level.

But if I look for premise and resolution: yes. It was there.

If I look for confirmation of Input: yes. All input was confirmed (I think. Still needs a close look).

If I look for Gamist Cred as any kind of primary motivator: not really so much.

I'm not sure how to make a distinction.

But I suspect that if you look at Chris's game it's pretty easy: Emotional investment was a liability--and the games did contian premise style stuff (just ones that didn't engage him emotionally).

-Marco