Classifying By Social Function

[John Kim]

I hope that I don't muddy the waters by making this suggestion, but I've often likened Narrativist play as having the same social functions that getting together with various bands has had, when the specific goal of the meeting is to communally write original songs.That being, everyone in the group is getting together to create something that they agree has artistic value or merit. Hard or simple, derivative or original, what matters is that at the end of the day, you're looking at what you think is a work of art.

OK, so just to check -- this is a goal of "art for art's sake", would you say?  That seems like my Work category.  I think I gave an example before of getting together for quilting or some other art/craft project.  The focus is on the product.  This might be relabelled Craft, to make this explicit.  

I definitely see Chris' point about the split of "Purpose", "Meaning", and "Function".  i.e. In your case, everyone is getting together for the agreed goal of creating a work of art.  In the terminology Chris used, that is Purpose.  In general, I think that my categories of Contest, Celebration, Support, and Craft are somewhere between Purpose and Meaning, rather than Function per se.  For example, a Contest awards social approval on the winner.  However, it is not defined what effect that has on society.  i.e. After the Contest is over, how are people's lives changed?  For the moment, I think it's enough to relate Social Function to other events.  

I can see Sim as potentially (but not exclusively) being concerned with the artistic value of what's being called the Model/Ideal, but that's not something that's necessarily established in play, just confirmed by play. And while it's true that any play could produce a Transcript that, if written down, would be a story in the Lit 101 sense, the difference to note is that when the game is being played, it's the Narrativist who primarily cares about whether or not it's going to turn out that way (whether or not he realizes it, perhaps).  

Ethical/moral issues, in my mind, are secondary to the social functions of getting together to do what's been awkwardly described above.  

I think the distinction you're saying is important -- but it isn't Creative Agenda as defined in the essays.  GNS Narrativism is indeed defined by dynamic address of moral/ethical issues.  However, play is always important for any Creative Agenda.  It is not just confirmation, but rather creation.  Even if, say, all the spoken lines of a performance are written out ahead of time -- it is still pursuit of art to perform them.  Consider two hypothetical RPG groups.  Both get together with the intended purpose of jointly creating a work of art with a distinct moral theme.  However, one group jointly decides on theme in advance, while the other instead decides on other aspects but leaves theme undetermined.  Both of these might have the Craft social function, but the latter is GNS Narrativist while the former is GNS Simulationist.

[Wormwood]

What about Play?

The combined learning and social reinforcement of play pretty solidly describes the social function of RPGs, as far as I've seen.

Well except for someone really doing "art for it's own sake." But when was the last time an artist admitted that all she really wanted to do was accounting, and she hates painting, finds no passion in her work, and is completely fed up with it, but because there aren't enough portraits painted in a certain way, she will paint them anyway, so that art does not lack for them.  

Hope that helps,

  -Mendel S.

[John Kim]

What about Play?

The combined learning and social reinforcement of play pretty solidly describes the social function of RPGs, as far as I've seen.

Could you describe what you intend that to mean a little more?  To me, the word "play" describes a number of different activities.  For example, I could play in a local league soccer game.  However, that is structured as a team contest -- i.e. each player on the team tries to do their best according to the rules, and recognition is given to the winner.  

I guess one interpretation I have of the word "play" is a temporary relaxing of social boundaries.  i.e. You can do a wider range of things than you normally would.  However, there are still boundaries which can be crossed, and at some point play ends and the normal boundaries are again in force.  I think this overlaps with Celebration, though, as such a loosening is also a part of many traditional celebrations (i.e. Mardi Gras).

[contracycle]

addendum: Having re-read your response, Gareth,  I see where we disagree. You pepper your post with an assumption of the uncritical acceptance of anything introduced into the SiS during play, to which I would say an unconditional not true. In fact, the whole edifice of RPG's as a social activity must allow for critical appraisal of anything introduced by any player.

No, not of the uncritical acceptance of anything introduced to SIS at all, I can't see how you conclude that from my argument.

I am saying, the lumpley principle serves to keep disconfirming inputs at bay, because they can just be rejected by the players at the table.  That is, the broader ideology and weltanshaung of the players will; necessarily determine what the consider to be credible, and what they consider to be incredible.

This is unlike a finished, external piece like a movie or play - the author there has an opportunity to present you with details you had never come across before, interactions you have never seen, events you were not aware of.  And the only editorial power you have is to walk out.

Thus is seems to me much more likely that a viewer of a play or movie will encounter something contradictory to their beliefes, but compellingly presented, than is remotely poossible in RPG: because RPG is almost entirely conducted by small groups with near homogenous ideologies.

Now you may think I exaggerate with the term homogenous, but not much really.  This is especially so when the group concerned is already a group of friends with what amounts to a negotiated shared understanding of the world and its workings.  Of all environments, this IMO is the least conducive to an actual challenging of common assumptions, and the most likely to simply reinforce common assumptions via the lumpley principle.

[pete_darby]

Well, I'd say that the critical examination of the norms in play is something which is often unfamiliar to the participants, and that the act of exploring issues interactively can bring a criticality to bear that can change the concensus of the group; within the group, I don't think we can see concensus opinion as a monolithic entity, it's a dynamic equilibrium.

Really, it's like any other environment where substantive issues cann be raised: there can be a participatory, critical environment, where folks can pull their own and others assumptions in new directions, or it can become, as Chris typified sim play, a form of secular ritual to confirm a set of values. This is just the same as a debating society can be the source of new insights for the members and empowerment to express and develop ideas, or it can become a maoist style "conciousness raising" group where the party line is enforced, or a self-congratulatory "aren't we great" excercise". Having been a member of all three at various times, I can confirm the power of the group to either encourage or discourage independent thought, and I think it's foolhardy to say with any certainty that the tendency is for, for example, a nar group to merely re-inforce their accepted norms rather than challenge them.

[contracycle]

Actually, I'm equally cynical about most debating societies, also for their local nature and tendency to reinforce local norms.

As it happens, your reference to "maoist consciousness raising" sort of gives me the point; its probable that you mean this in a very different way to the way I would mean it if I said, not least because consciousness raising and enforcing the party line are very different issues in that political context.  

The very fact that you place "consciousness raising" in inverted commas implies disdain, and to denigrate it as imposing the party line - not in itself un-virtuous, it should be noted - resorts to a particular and to my mind propagandist ideology, that of red-baiting, in essence.

But its rather unlikely that in your circle of aquaintances anyone would raise such an objection; I conclude this from your erroneous (in my eyes) uses of two specific terms.  And thus I think it equally unlikely that this error (in my eyes) would be raised during a similar RPG session; the error would likely be approved, endorsed, and pass unnoticed.

I don't dispute that individuals can have different ideas about various things; but I also think the RPG context is under almost all cirucmstances far too cosy and self-reinforcing to act as a venue for this sort of challenge.

[pete_darby]

Well, as I say, I've been inside (non-rpg) groups that I've typified as all three types: as to whether a game can literally raise conciousness, as opposed to merely enforcing concensus, my experience has been that it can. Yes, it has been rare, and yes, more often RPG's are a tool of reinforcement rather than challenge. That isn't to say that, even in a group of friends that broadly agree on various social and cultural values, they can't challenge those values and change them in play which engages their values critically.

And please, don't make assumptions about how my circle of acquaintances would react to things, especially given that I count you in that circle. The error, as you see it has not passed unnoticed and been approved: it appears my norms are challenged in a social environment!

Furthermore, please don't make assumptions about the breadth or depth of my experience with these matters: the scare quotes were related very much to my personal experience of the abuse of those techniques to enforce a party line. I note you have no problem with typifying another instance as an "aren't we great" excercise, which is just as disdainful to liberal, psychological trends in group consensus building, hippy baiting if you will. Yet since that seems to chime with your view of groups, you leave it unchallenged.

I'm, like you, cynical about the ability of almost any self selected debating group to substantively change the group opinion in an abrupt way (despite having seen it on occassion), but I'm also cynical about any blanket denial of the ability of a group to change it's concensus opinions under the effect of it's members. Any functional group only has a concensus opinion as an aggregate of the individual members: indeed, I'd say that it was a sign of a functional group that the group consensus can and does change.

[Alan]

I've a few observations about what the social function of narrativist play is not:

- it's not therapy or catharsis

- it's not getting together to do some sort of task work.

- it's not setting out to challenge existing value standards.

- it's not art for art's sake (If I understand that phrase correctly.)  The objective is not to create art, not to be hoity-toity we're-hipper-than-thou-creators.

On the contrary, it is primarily social _play_!  And the game chooses a value standard to use as a tennis net.  

In my experience, the joy of narrativist play (ie the ultimate reason to play) comes from two sources:

1) Seeing how many angles one can "attack the net."
2) confirming values: having things turn out in the game the way you think they should in the real world.

Aside from the play aspect, I think narrativist play is ultimately conservative, seeking to confirm the values of the players.  This conservative nature, is why I first suggested "myth" creation as a function.  

If for a moment, you can accept my personal use of myth as a story that demonstrates the values of a culture (and ignore all the other connotations), you may see that the function of narrativist play is to create these stories that demonstrate values meaningfull to the players.  Because "myth" is a loaded word, I suggest Fabulation as a term instead.

[pete_darby]

Alan, I think you're committing a little synedoche here: why you play Nar has been made why we play Nar. Certainly, challenging my own opinions is one reason I play nar rather than sim.

Also, looking down your list of what Nar play isn't, every single one of those reasons is as social as the one you accept. The creation of art, group therapy, challenging personal assumptions, even "a task of work", are all of social value, as much as the confirmation of values, if not more so. Saying that Nar play is social grants as much insight as saying you play to have fun: well, yeah, but it gets us no further in a substantive discussion of the social functions of Nar play, or why it's fun.

I fully accept that nar play is likely to confirm the concensus values of the group, but the possibility is there to challenge the values as much as to confirm them.

Sim play, by contrast, seems to me to be more in the mode of ritual use of myths, since it holds that certain aspects of play are to be held as the model to be celebrated. The relationship of nar to community myths is that of creation, both of the myths and the establishment of the values they epitomize. To my mind, in a nar group we do not know the group values for sure until they are established by the address of premise*, whereas in sim we do, since it's bound up in the choice of what is to be celebrated in play, and indeed contstrains what is acceptable in play.

In these discussions of the normalizing role of Nar, it's assumed that once the lines are drawn, they will never be redrawn by a group, and that a group will never consensually challenge their own values, except with a specific view to confirm them. And in my experience, that's odd.

*more accurately, play is driven by maintenance of illusion that we don't...

[contracycle]

I certainly did not want to say that Nar definietly cannot act as a venue for challenging personal values.  That is, I fully recognise that it is possible.

My argument rather is that IMO it lends itself to this social function rather less well than wholly external works, which do not invoke the audiences consent until the end.  As a result there seems to me to be more room (in such works) to perform the kind of exercises where you set up up a challenge with an apparent solution and then demonstrate that this solution is actually worse than another, less conventional solution.  The reason for this is the audience has essentially no choice but to stick with the singular and remote author until they make it all the way to the conclusion, at which point they can then pass judgement on the implied argument as a whole.

But in RPG, it is not clear to me that play can ever proceed past a point which contradicts a sizable minority of group members, because they will probably not have been persuaded as yet to give up their existing position.  But if consent is NOT granted, then play probably cannot proceed to a point at which  the non-conventional solution can be demonstrated.

Anyway, the point was much more that I see inherent limits to such a necessarily consensual medium.  Strengths, too, in that the support of colleagues can facilitate exploring things that the group holds to as a subset of broader society, but which broader society does not.  That is, the very self-reinforcing nature of the closed group can act as a shield from what would otherwise be standing criticism within broader society.

[pete_darby]

Okay, I can see I was overstating your case. Yeah, radical change in views is unlikely, but not vanishingly so, in a consensual environment.

And to my mind, any active examination of accepted norms is all to the good, whether they end up confirmed or weakened.

Hmm... what I see as emerging after a chellenging Nar session is a stronger set of norms within the group than at the outset, whether or not the norms are the same as they were before the session, if that makes sense. The beliefs of the members of the group regarding the premise will be more clearly defined, if different from how they were at the outset.

I can contrast that to Sim play which, to my mind, serves to reinforce through acceptance, rather than reinforce through challenge.

[Alan]

Alan, I think you're committing a little synedoche here: why you play Nar has been made why we play Nar. Certainly, challenging my own opinions is one reason I play nar rather than sim.

Also, looking down your list of what Nar play isn't, every single one of those reasons is as social as the one you accept. The creation of art, group therapy, challenging personal assumptions, even "a task of work", are all of social value, as much as the confirmation of values, if not more so. Saying that Nar play is social grants as much insight as saying you play to have fun: well, yeah, but it gets us no further in a substantive discussion of the social functions of Nar play, or why it's fun.

Hi Pete,

You'll note that my post said "In my experience" - and I admit, I edited out another such framing comment in rewriting the message.  I can see narrativist play as also exploring value standards to see what the player's think about them as well as confirmation of their accepted standards.  I still think the function is to affirm whatever conclusion the players come to.

But in your second paragraph you're confusing "social value" with value standards.  Sure, many things are of social value - but not everything focuses dirtectly on value standards - by which I really mean ethics (the word I've been avoiding because it's popular meaning is very fuzzy.)

Finally, we have to admit that _all_ of these "functions of roleplaying" are subcateogries of social activities and things of social value AND play activities.  We can't separate those things out as they are the realm containing the subcategories we're discussing.

I propose the following:

The social function of all play is to provide an arena where skills and ideas can be practiced and enjoyed without threatening harm to the participants or change to the greater society they are part of.

The social function of gamist play is to express competition through play.

The social function of simulationist play is to celebrate an agreed ideal context through play.

The social function of narrativist play is to affirm (or form) a relationship to a value (aka ethical) standard through play.  That expression may push limits, subvert, or confirm a particular standard.

The social function of therapy is outside the realm of play.  As is that of work.  Both of these endevour to make changes that are not isolated from the greater society.

[pete_darby]

Alan, I really, honestly, don't know why you're ringfencing play from social and personal change. You're statement:

The social function of all play is to provide an arena where skills and ideas can be practiced and enjoyed without threatening harm to the participants or change to the greater society they are part of.

is weakened to my eye by the inclusion of the part I've italicised. The removal of the threat of harm is surely implicit in enjoyment, and the change to greater society may or may not occur, but is irrelevant to the definition of play by social function. Change to society may result from play, or may be expressly denied by the players, but to exclude it by definition seems odd to me.


As a result of that I see your last paragraph as circular reasoning: since play cannot include change to a greater society, it cannot also be therapy or work, as they imply change to a greater society. Take away the necessary irrelevance of a greater society to play, and therapy and work can also be potential functions of play.

Aside from that, the central functional definitions seem spot on to me: the one for nar especially seems to be an encapsulation of what I've struggled and failed to say in my exchanges with Gareth.

[contracycle]

I'm inclined to support that ring-fencing.

What I mean by this is play behaviour is quite often behaviour that IN ANY OTHER CONTEXT would be threatening or socially unacceptable.

Under most circumstances, threatening a person with a plastic gun is play; but if you commit a real robbery by threatening a person with a plastic gun, that person may still have been in real fear of their life - not knowing it was plastic.  Thus you might be done for armed robbery even if technically speaking you were never armed.

The reason for this is that, of course, the social context of a real robbery is very different to the social context of pay.  Play DOES allow the freedom to explore behaviours that would not be feasible under any other circumstance.  Hence I greatly the favour of play as essentially an autodidactic process, and endorse Exploration as the underpinning motive of play in general.

Now its also the case IMO that a lot of play is aimed at equipping the players with skills and insight which they will subsequently use in and apply to the real world and its broader social context.  This it seems to me is the difference between Petes position and Alan's.  Play ITSELF has a social function that is IMO basically exploratory, educative, but it achieves that functionality by being a specially bounded space in which you have the freedom to do things that you would not be free to do otherwise.

Lastly, if you look at extreme sports, or even the safe entertainments like roller coasters, I think the actual or apparent threat of harm is NOT mutually exclusive with enjoyment.

[pete_darby]

Well, I still think in all cases the actual safety of all willing participants is still implicit in the enjoyment part of play, but I'm willing to grant that the appearance of danger is also a component of some play.

The important distinction in the above sentence, to distingiush it from, from Gareth's example, armed robbery, is that one party is not a willing participant. I don't think you can be an unwilling participant in play (you can be the unwilling object of another's play... as a father I know that only too well).

But I'm still not convinced by the ringfencing of wider social implications as specifically outside of play: if it's necessary for the enjoyment of the participants to ringfence their play from wider social implications, surely, again, that's implicit in the word enjoyment? And the fact remains that I don't feel that it's a given that the ringfencing is necessary for play.

I also want to make something else clear, before it's raised: I'm in total agreement with Chris Lerich's ritual theory that the play, especially in RPG's, takes place in a ritualised environment which is delineated as being "not the normal way we do things" (ritual space). This is in no way the same as saying that what happens in the ritual space does not or should not actively relate to mundane life outside the ritual space, but that the relationship is not the normal relationship of the participants to their non-ritual space. It can well be the case that ritual space is entered to deal with problems outside that space which ritual space is "better" at dealing with. Equally, it may be that ritual space is entered precisley to avoid difficult issues outside that space, or it may be that the relationship of ritual to mundane space is a gulf of irrelevance (actually, I personally think the latter is next to impossible to achieve, but may be a desirable fiction on the part of the participants).

Thinking of Gareth's comment that explorative functionality is primarily facilitated by being given a freedom to act without normal constraints: well, that's possibly a little overstated. I'm thinking about the games Violence and, especially, Power Kill, where the players are judged in real world terms for actions in the SiS. A comon reaction to these games are that they are not played, as they would be a violation of the very barrier that exists around the ritual space, but there's another factor. The events of the SiS are virtual, they have no consequences beyond the psychological effects on the players. Surely some of the freedom from consequence comes not just from the "ritual barrier" between play and not-play, but from the fact that nothing in the game is physically happening? And that the safety comes, at least partly, from that, quite apart form the "we're playing" signals that everyone's giving off? So when a player feels aggreived at being judged as if he'd really killed sentient beings, I feel that emotion is justified, as they have killed nothing but mental contructs.

I'd submit that RPG's are treated as a liberating, consequence free environment, because in physical terms they are.