Sim is Bricolage and makes myth - comments?

[lumpley]

Actually I got it from this:

An example from the previous Myth Thread
To demonstrate how social structures can overlap and collide, suppose the mugger was the police officer's friend. Let us also say that the victim was some punk kid who was the son of powerful and corrupt nobleman who was making life very hard for his brother. So here we have this police officer who is a member of that structure know as the police, who's relationship to that structure known as victim is both profession and antagonistic (which also means that police officer has a relationship to that structure known as lord of his brother), and who has a relationship to that structure known as criminal element that is called friend. All those relationships define the police officer's character.

My emphasis.

This of yours:

...they are not taking a stand on the ethics of such a problem, but rather they are creating a system of behavior so that incest doesn't become a future problem.

Makes no sense to me. How is creating a system of behavior so that incest doesn't become a future problem not taking a stand on the ethics of incest? How on earth else would you take a stand on the ethics of incest?

-Vincent

[Mark D. Eddy]

I'm mostly with Jay on this one, but you've got to read that line charitably, Vincent. What Jay seems to be trying to say (and correct me if I'm wrong) descriptive organization is not the same as prescriptive organization. I would have chosen the term "morals" where Jay chose the term "ethics," personally. Ethics, according to my profesor of ethics (gotta love seminary training...), is simply an organization of behavior. Morality is the motive behind the ethic.

How is not the same as why. How social structures overlap and collide is not nearly as problematic a human issue as why social structures overlap and collide.

[Caldis]

Second myth is an attempt to retell actual events in an artistic (if not dramatic) manner using objects that bring pre-existing meanings to the tale told.  It has a story as it's basis.

Actually this is incorrect. Myth is not an attempt to retell actual events aesthetically, myth is a process who purpose is so out and provide solutions to problems.  Look at the example of Bororo myth.  Its not a recounting of anything that happened at all, but is the working out of a problem.  Here is a link to that particular post which also has the added virtue of containing a brief explanation of what myth is and does.  One of the most telling points about myth is that it is typically utterly non-moral or ethical in character.  IOW myths don't ruminate on social morals issues but provide practical solutions to problems.  Also note the complete lack of narrative structure in the provided example.  Also here is a link where Chris lists the various kinds of myth.

Note that Bororo myth is just a transcript, we have no idea of it's purpose or meaning.

I think a problem you will have in using the term myth is that the definition of the word is as muddy as that of story.  Looking at your second link and the different types of myth we continue down to the term myth used in conjunction with three different stories , so does myth mean recreating the grand system of myth or trying to recreate a play experience like one of the stories?  

If you continue reading down that thread you'll also notice that I ask Chris how these myths are created.  Specifically he mentioned the myth of Haniwele (also in that second post you linked to) where the Ceramese meet the dutch.  I questioned whether the Ceramese would create the myth to decide how to act towards the dutch or if it was an after the fact creation.  He replied that the second was correct, they were telling a story that retold the events in an artistic manner that brought meaning to the events.   It wasnt an attempt to decide how to act but a tale that told how they acted.

If it's trying to decide how to act then, as Mike Holmes was arguing in that thread, it's just another form of narrativism.

My conclusion would be that while sim may follow the form of myth, wandering seemingly meaningless storys that do have meaning for the participants, it fails to fulfill the function of myth.

"Wandering seemingly meaningless stories" is inherently incorrect in that myth is not story in either form or function.  As far as fulfilling the function of myth I think too that is in error, what Chris seems to be saying, at least to me, is that Sim must ultimately fails to reach the scope and pervasiveness that myth must attain.

Ulitmately, though, it will be up to Chris to defend his positions.

Story is a broad term and myth requires them in at least the transcript of events form.  Sim fails at myth because the items brought into the game do not necessarily have meaning for the player whereas for the mythmaker everything they use is used to bring a meaning into the myth.  

On a different note. I personally believe the Sim essay as it stands does an excellent job of defining Sim.  One of it's strengths is that is has plenty of textual evidence from published games to support it's points.  I know that kind of evidence isn't something that one can pull out at a moments notice but it's something that will lend strength to your position.  If Myth and Bricolage are to become useful terms in the long run finding the evidence in gaming texts or in actual play will be necessary.  That may be the next step for the debate, find text and bring it here.

[Silmenume]

Hullo Marco,

Doesn't anyone see that happening?  Every time someone sees the situation that I had presented, that everyone who claimed it was Premise had to add something (including the structure of a question) that isn't there?  Sim doesn't add that extra layer to conceptualize or organize the situation into Challenge or Premise.

I think before any one else claims that there is Premise present, they should look long and hard and see how they are adding a layer of perception to the situation to conform it to Premise or Challenge.  All I've given is naked situation. Not one bit more.  All I have listed was the elements of the Situation, it is up to the posters to organize it into a form that suits your CA approach to conflict.

What I'm not sure of is how to picture the Sim-player playing. Is he kind of pondering going:
"Hmm, I think the cop values the social connection of friends and a societal sense of justice in way that the victim isn't really all that innocent, and I rate that against how one measures the societal value of duty to his job ..."

Yes, that thinking process does represent (nail on the head!) the Sim process – at one extreme.  The above is a very detached and almost 3rd person method, but is still Sim.

Then, yes, I would call that an analysis of social structures outside of viewing the situation as a human issue.

As I said, I could buy that--I had thought the immersed Sim player was said to "suffer right along with" the character. That's what confused me. Do I have that right?

I did say that an "immersed" Sim player does "suffer right along with" the Character.  I will borrow from your quote and shift it from 3rd person detached analytical to 1st person emotional analytical.

"Hmm, What the fuck is Hal doing mugging a prince on my watch and on my beat?!  After all he has done for me and all that I owe him, why didn't Hal come to me if he needed help?  I hate, I really fucking hate this petty little piece-of-shit prince and his father has been crapping all over my brother and his family for years.  If I remember right he invoked the right of prima nocte on my brother and sister in law.  I could put this prince down and make it look like a mugging gone bad, but I swore an oath to uphold the laws and will of my Steward and lord.  I was nothing but a helpless peasant farmer under the heavy boot of Lord Herumore when a Ranger came by and inspired me to try and join up.  How can I turn my back on the Steward and his Rangers who gave me a chance to prove myself despite my station and free my neck from the weight of the boot of that vile Lord Herumore? My Steward and especially the Rangers gave me hope when there was none.  They taught me to be strong and compassionate at the same time.  The taught me letters and how to add.  I am no oath breaker.  But, what about Hal?  He saved my sister-in-law's life and I love her as if she was blood...  How would a Ranger handle this?  What kind of authority do they have?  I've seen Joe play his Ranger X way and I have seen the DM play various Rangers in these different ways.  What do I think Rangers are about?  I (as a player) really despise Herumore.  But is this how my character would feel?  And I really like Hal, he's really cool and I would have probably died trying to save my sister-in-law if Hal hadn't risked his life first.  Man!  What friend he has been.  But I really love Gondor and all that she stands for, warts and all...  If I kill this worthless princeling what am I saying about my relationship to the Rangers, how I feel about my oath to the Steward, my relationship to my country, the nature of my relationship to my friends (especially Hal!) and my family and myself?  Am I willing to put blood above duty?  Do I put justice (killing the princeling) above the Law (arresting my friend whom I owe so much?)  Am I willing to besmirch the name of the Rangers who have given me so much and render such valuable service to their people and country?  I think the Rangers are really cool.  Man, for only 2 silvers a week, a pittance, they lay everything on the line every night in Ithilien.  What happens if I take in Hal?  What is my life or my sister-in-law's life worth?  I remember the scenario where my brother met his future wife!  I also remember the scenario where they were married – it was really cool!  (I actually got teary eyed but I won't tell anyone that!)  I also remember playing that scenario where Faramir was born and I can't wait until he comes of age and runs the Rangers!  I want to play my Ranger with all the wisdom he would exhibit as a Ranger.  He is what inspired me to want to play a Ranger in the first place... Ah shit.. this is really hard...What do I rate first?  Fidelity to oath, friendship, blood?  Can I play "blood and friendship is thicker than oath and duty" and still act what I think a Ranger should act like?  If I choose to save Hal while appearing to help the princeling would this be a choice that Tolkien would have made?  Would that solution fit in with the rest of the social institutions that are in Middle Earth?"

This is the type of "suffering along with the Character" that an immersed Sim player might go through that I was talking about.  While all this seems like a lot of different topics, it all really boils down to what you had indicated in your more stoic analysis.  Except I as a play have strong emotional attachments and hatreds to all the characters and social institutions involved.  Sometimes I would follow an emotional/gut response while other times I would "pull out" and be more detachedly analytical and make an overt effort to consider how I wish to "order my responsibilities" as well as to "shape my relationship" to the varied and many competing social structures my character is beholden to via my possible actions and choices (which includes the character itself!).

Hey Mark,

I'm mostly with Jay on this one, but you've got to read that line charitably, Vincent. What Jay seems to be trying to say (and correct me if I'm wrong) descriptive organization is not the same as prescriptive organization.

What you are saying sounds tantalizingly close to what I have been struggling with.  You may have helped me crystallize some thoughts that I have been having trouble formalizing.  I want to say that I agree with you, but could you please expand, via example, of what you mean by descriptive organization and prescriptive organization.  If you can, please use the elements that I have used in my earlier examples in this thread so that we have a common reference.  I think you are spot on, but I wish to make sure before I sign off and say "YES!"

I would have chosen the term "morals" where Jay chose the term "ethics," personally. Ethics, according to my profesor of ethics (gotta love seminary training...), is simply an organization of behavior. Morality is the motive behind the ethic.

Now that you have defined the terms, I see that had I known I too would have used "morals" instead of "ethics"!

How is not the same as why. How social structures overlap and collide is not nearly as problematic a human issue as why social structures overlap and collide.

Amen brother!

Note that Bororo myth is just a transcript, we have no idea of it's purpose or meaning.

I'm not sure what you mean that the Bororo myth is just a transcript.  Though you and I may not understand the symbols contained within that is only because Chris didn't include the "translation" of the myth and you and I haven't read Lévi-Strauss' book, however –

And, says Lévi-Strauss, the natives can hear this work, because they live it.

...

What I'd argue, though, is that the Bororo myth does have a lot of meaning – just not narrative meaning, which is to say that it's a myth but it <>isn't a story<>. You can have both together, but they're independent.

...

... is there no difference between a story and a myth? Because I think there most definitely is. If you look at the Bororo myth, that's not much of a story. Same with Hainuwele. The meanings of those myths lie at a different level and are expressed in a different fashion. To lump all that together, call it meaning, and say, "Yes, that's Nar by definition because it has meaning" seems to me pointless; further, it denies the very real difference between myth and story.

Emphasis added.

At this point, I am baffled by your statement of non-meaning.  It's a myth.  If it was a narrative then we would have a better sense of understanding, but because it is myth and that that myth's meaning is only understood within the larger system of meaning that we don't have direct access to only supports the fact that the Bororo myth is a myth and not a narrative.  Thematic stories are generalizable to all humanity that can be understood to all, as it were, while myths are specific to the cultures where they were created.

Hey Caldis,

To your complaint here -

I think a problem you will have in using the term myth is that the definition of the word is as muddy as that of story.

I offer the following -

It may not be much as a story but it is an arguement for how the people should act.  So if at the point the Dutch showed up and offered the trade goods someone stood up and created this story to try and influence the other tribesmen, it would be like narrativism.  They are trying to give the story a moral meaning, teaching others on what is the correct action.

Yes, that makes sense to me, I guess.  My sense is that people don't do this, i.e. get up and create myths to make arguments quite that way, but it's a fine distinction that's probably not worth getting into here.

Emphasis added

Chris, at best gives a grudging agreement, but he then immediately follows with a statement that nullifies that tentative agreement by stating that "people don't do this (give the story a moral meaning)" when creating myths.  However, I will leave it up to Chris to clarify his position.

But both would not be created at the same time is what I was getting at.  They both may tell the same story but they are kept as oral history, retellings of what happened without value judgement.  They were not both brought forward at some tribal meeting as arguements on how to treat the situation.  They are artistic endeavours to retell what happened in an interesting way unlike the greek myths that told stories designed to highlight cultural beliefs like valour and courage and show the dangers of pride and arrogance.  Those are more like narrativism.

Yes, and furthermore they link up one set of circumstances with a whole bunch of other cultural systems so that it all hangs together.  Unlike Greek myths, as you say.

Emphasis added.

Again Chris comes back to the idea that the "meaning of a myth" is found in its relationship with a "whole bunch" of other meaning structures (cultural systems) and that those meanings must "all hang together."  This process is "unlike?" the Greek moral myths which are more classified as narrative/stories (with the attendant moral "points") than "true" myths.

My parallels may be off but the point I was trying to bring up and that I feel is still causing a lot of confusion here is that the stories themselves are not meant as tools to make a meaningful statement.  The elements within them have meaning and together they tell what happened but they aren't intrinsically designed to say whether this was good or bad.  They are artistic documentaries, oral histories.

If those phrases work for you, I'm cool with them.  I'd just call that myth and have done, but whatever.  But it does seem to me that the implication of your argument is that Nar, unlike Sim, really does try to construct stories that make meaningful statements.  In Sim, it's about making the elements have meaning and link up cohesively.  And I don't see that as the same thing.  I guess you might say that I see it as a distinction between meaningful statement (= story = Nar) and system of meaning (= myth = Sim).  It seems to me that a story in the Nar sense has to say something; a myth (or a Sim construct) has to be its own meaning and (part of) a system of meaning; in real myth, the two end up going together because we want to put the meaning we've discovered into practice, but this is largely denied in Sim because of Ethan's terrarium, or the consecration, or what have you: the wall between in-game and out-of-game is conceived as impermeable.

Emphasis added

Again we have a very clear distinction between Nar and myth.  Nar says something, myth is its own meaning and (part of) a system of meaning.

Again, before we go back and forth endlessly on this, I beg you to wait until Chris can come in and defend what he means before we interpret his intentions to death.

Story is a broad term and myth requires them in at least the transcript of events form. Sim fails at myth because the items brought into the game do not necessarily have meaning for the player whereas for the mythmaker everything they use is used to bring a meaning into the myth.

That characterization is not true.  What is stated is that the "meaning structures" cannot or are not taken out of the game (or the ritual space), however the myths that are created can be very "meaningful" to the players – they just can't be instituted in the real world (the profane/non ritual space).  That is an EXTREMELY major point.

It is ONLY in this last step that Sim ultimately fails in the mythic process – the lack of transference to our daily lives.  Myth created in Sim play (ritual/sacred) has meaning to those who created it but cannot be applied to or put into operation in our daily (non-ritual/profane) lives.

The reason Sim is said to fail myth is not in lack of ability to create meaningful structures, but in the lack of application of the created myths to guide us in our lives.  IOW what's the point of finding/creating a "truth" if we don't apply it to our daily lives?  See – myth is not only thing but process as well.

...I personally believe the Sim essay as it stands does an excellent job of defining Sim.

That's cool.  I too think the Sim essay is an interesting read as it describes its history, however I think it fails utterly in that it doesn't describe a coherent verb of play.  This is not meant to slight Ron in any way – I merely state what I feel is a fact about the essay.  Gamism is the process of "addressing Challenge."  The Gamist essay describes what the players are doing.  The same holds true for the Narrativism essay.  The Sim essay does not provide a coherent description of what the players are doing.  It is there, but it is exactly there, where there the Sim essay fall down.  IMO.  I offer Bricolage as a coherent answer to the question of what the players are doing in Sim play, and that is the very topic which I have offered up for debate.

One of it's strengths is that is has plenty of textual evidence from published games to support it's points.

You are correct in asserting that the Sim essay does have plenty of textual evidence from the published game to support its points, but I argue that those published games are incoherent with the Sim CA or more specifically with the Sim game action of Bricolage as proposed.

If Myth and Bricolage are to become useful terms in the long run finding the evidence in gaming texts or in actual play will be necessary. That may be the next step for the debate, find text and bring it here.

In this matter I agree with you completely.  I just want to make clear that I am not just arguing for the terms of myth and Bricolage for myth, rather I am arguing for the models of myth and Bricolage for myth.  I readily admit that I am not an expert on myth or Bricolage, so I would encourage you to also direct questions at Chris about the meanings of those terms.  I can only do so much as a lay person in this field, Chris is the trained expert.

[Marco]

This is the type of "suffering along with the Character" that an immersed Sim player might go through that I was talking about.  While all this seems like a lot of different topics, it all really boils down to what you had indicated in your more stoic analysis.  Except I as a play have strong emotional attachments and hatreds to all the characters and social institutions involved.  Sometimes I would follow an emotional/gut response while other times I would "pull out" and be more detachedly analytical and make an overt effort to consider how I wish to "order my responsibilities" as well as to "shape my relationship" to the varied and many competing social structures my character is beholden to via my possible actions and choices (which includes the character itself!).

Well, I think hate and anger on the player's part indicate presence of premise (in the player's opinion) in the situation. If you take out all the references to the emotion and the exclamation points and leave in all the conjecture then I agree: that's Sim simply because it can't be Nar.

Making a decision onto how to "order" responsibilities (when one is feeling hatreds and anger as his character would based on the imaginary reality of the game) would be a textbook case of answering the premise question in Author Stance (i.e. Narrativism).

I think that Nar distinguishes itself from Sim in this case because:
1. The Nar player is making decisions because he (from an immersed standpoint) hates the prince.
2. The Sim player is making decisions because he realizes his character hates the prince, but he, himself, doesn't.*

-Marco
* I'm thinking there's probably a complex case here where the player feels an emotion but doesn't have the character act on it since he thinks the character wouldn't feel it (not the case here). I see the reverse (having the character do things the player finds revolting) all the time refered to as Nar play, so I'm inclined to think this still counts--but it could be argued.

[Caldis]

At this point, I am baffled by your statement of non-meaning.  It's a myth.  If it was a narrative then we would have a better sense of understanding, but because it is myth and that that myth's meaning is only understood within the larger system of meaning that we don't have direct access to only supports the fact that the Bororo myth is a myth and not a narrative.  Thematic stories are generalizable to all humanity that can be understood to all, as it were, while myths are specific to the cultures where they were created.

I think we're almost on the same wavelength here just going in different directions.  I'm saying that the Bororo myth has no meaning to us because we dont understand the meanings of the components that make up the myth.  To the Bororo it tells a meaningful story because they can pick out the meaning whereas if they were to be told a thematic story that we are familiar with and understand it would leave them shaking their heads.  Same job different medium of expression.

Story is a broad term and myth requires them in at least the transcript of events form. Sim fails at myth because the items brought into the game do not necessarily have meaning for the player whereas for the mythmaker everything they use is used to bring a meaning into the myth.

That characterization is not true.  What is stated is that the "meaning structures" cannot or are not taken out of the game (or the ritual space), however the myths that are created can be very "meaningful" to the players – they just can't be instituted in the real world (the profane/non ritual space).  That is an EXTREMELY major point.

It is ONLY in this last step that Sim ultimately fails in the mythic process – the lack of transference to our daily lives.  Myth created in Sim play (ritual/sacred) has meaning to those who created it but cannot be applied to or put into operation in our daily (non-ritual/profane) lives.

The reason Sim is said to fail myth is not in lack of ability to create meaningful structures, but in the lack of application of the created myths to guide us in our lives.  IOW what's the point of finding/creating a "truth" if we don't apply it to our daily lives?  See – myth is not only thing but process as well.

I think it goes beyond that.  In myth the elements brought in have observable behaviors that give meaning to them before they become part of the myth.  The mythmaker chooses them for those meanings and uses them to make a meaningful tale.  The mythmaker has a whole lexicon of things that have meaning to not only himself but his entire culture, the same does not hold true for the sim gamer.  I'm sure in the begininng the mythmaker faced the same problem however the mythmaker finding meanings is seperate from myth itself.  The myth uses the meanings to tell the tale, it is not the search for them.


I do see a relation between Sim and myth, but I also see connections between it and all of roleplaying.  My biggest concern is the one you didnt really address in the last post.  The term myth means many different things to different people, it is as convoluted as the word story.  If you try and connect the word myth to sim someone who is playing in a game based on norse myth then he believes he is playing sim even if he's actually engaged in narrativism.

[contracycle]

Doesn't anyone see that happening?  Every time someone sees the situation that I had presented, that everyone who claimed it was Premise had to add something (including the structure of a question) that isn't there?  Sim doesn't add that extra layer to conceptualize or organize the situation into Challenge or Premise.

Excellent observation.

[contracycle]

Story is a broad term and myth requires them in at least the transcript of events form.  Sim fails at myth because the items brought into the game do not necessarily have meaning for the player whereas for the mythmaker everything they use is used to bring a meaning into the myth.  

Agreed, but then again at the moment approaches to Sim are hamstrung by a story-supportive perspective, IMO.  The mode of play in which players are confronted by things, rather than left to explore things, is legimised by normative claims of "we are creating story".  I think that Sim design may be revitalised by this approach and that this may open new avenues to explore.  I agree with your observation completely, but point out I have alrerady proposed some bricoleur-type approaches to sim - like having specific locations instead of a general one, of havoing objects in the game space represented as props in real space.  Lets asnwer the question "how do we make the objects used by the bricoleur meaningful".  I suggest that this is essentially a scene-framing question.

[contracycle]

I do see a relation between Sim and myth, but I also see connections between it and all of roleplaying.  My biggest concern is the one you didnt really address in the last post.  The term myth means many different things to different people, it is as convoluted as the word story.  If you try and connect the word myth to sim someone who is playing in a game based on norse myth then he believes he is playing sim even if he's actually engaged in narrativism.

Granted again.  In the proposition that sim = myth we are not really explicating anything at this point becuase, as you rightly say, myth is neartly as dubious a term as story.  But like Sil I think we are grasping at the model, not the labels attached to the model.  But that said, IMO confusion over story is so prevalent and embedded that anything that relieves this is a step in the right direction.

[clehrich]

Hi.  Just back from New Orleans, and look what's happened.  Just a few remarks as I go through this....

Yah. Mostly "me too." As I commented to Chris Lehrich in one of the threads that spawned this, I feel like I really need to go back to the literature and study up a bit before having a lot that's really rigorous to say.

While I don't think it's entirely necessary to read a huge amount of this material, I would very strongly recommend a couple of bits of reading if we're going to carry this much forward:

[*]Claude Lévi-Strauss, Myth and Meaning.
A quick and very useful overview, not at all technical or difficult to read.
[*]Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Savage Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966).
Read chapters 1 and 2, very slowly and carefully.  Chapter 1 includes the bricolage analogy in its original presentation.  Chapter 2 includes a couple of wonderful examples, explicated rapidly.[/list:u]Neither book is expensive or hard to come by.

However, I think it's dangerously reductionist to say that Sim is bricolage. More that bricolage is the primary thing that's going on in Sim play (but it happens in all CAs!). Don't forget highly Illusionist Sim play, for example, where the GM is really the only bricoleur at the table. The typically lopsided distribution of credibility in Sim play means that not all participants are equally engaged in myth-making - some are recipients (critical ones, to be sure) of the myth-product.

I agree with Mark here.  It seems to me that the form of meaning-construction and -manipulation that Lévi-Strauss analogizes to bricolage is at the heart of RPG Exploration, something I think is not terribly well understood as yet.  What is striking about Sim in particular is that it takes Exploration as its primary process, in service to itself and thus to what Ron calls the Dream.  This is unlike Nar or Gam, which employ the same procedures to achieve other ends, and thus necessarily prioritize types and methods of bricolage in that service.  But this is not the same as saying, with the various Horseshoe theories, that Sim is a kind of baseline from which other forms proceed; rather, Sim is in some sense about its own processes and is thus reflexive, which is not especially the case with Nar or Gam.

I think this is what's intended by Chris' notion of Sim as being a rather "abashed" sort of myth-making - it tends to reify the symbols it uses so much that the "playful" and creative aspects of bricolage are difficult to sustain.

Yes, that's a big part of what I had in mind.  The other is that I think Sim is, de facto (in actual historical practice) and not de jure (in principle), constrained not to use symbols and structures from outside the accepted game-world.  On both sides, this tends to make Sim internally inconsistent and even incoherent, and I think encourages Sim groups to tend toward drift.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Those points seem to me to be cogent, necessary, and fruitful, Chris.

I do wonder whether"myth" is going to be an overall helpful term for many folks, partly because I think you're exerting an ownership over its meaning which may not get communicated or accepted. For instance, Chris Chinn (Bankuei) uses it very differently in his essay in Daedalus #1 as a near-synonym for Premise (as used here).

But as long as everyone is willing to see how that plays out over time, that's cool by me. No need to attack or defend a term, when it will necessarily defend itself via use and non-use in the long run.

Best,
Ron

[clehrich]

I think you are in the position I was in back in 1999 or so. No matter how well (or badly, in my case) one articulates the process of creating stories in a mindful fashion, the argument will never convince anyone not to use the term "story creation" to describe their role-playing. The term simply has too much status associated with it, as Gareth has pointed out. Also, a focus on stories as product rather than process is nearly impossible to parse out through dialogue, especially if the person is ferociously defending his or her perceived status as an author of stories.

I agree at base, as you know, but I'd go a bit farther.  You also don't give yourself, or the Forge, enough credit on this.  

As you know, it was very fashionable not long ago to claim that RPGs are basically a form of improv theater.  You, with help from around here, mounted something of an assault on the non-commensurability of the two forms.  While I think that may have gone a little far at times, it is now not particularly common to draw the analogy, at least here on the Forge.

Now the question is really whether "story" is in any way useful as a term for RPGs.  I think it probably is, but the problem is that it has far too much value attached, in the sense that far too many players feel that they are somehow doing something wrong if they're not creating stories.  So they assert that what they have created is story, in order to validate their games.  

What needs to be shattered is the notion that story is necessary or valuable.  It isn't.  It's just story.  So what?  Any slob can tell a story, and they do so all the time.  Have you ever been approached by someone who wants change, who's got a whole sob story about why you should give him money?  Congratulations -- you can do what he can do!

Just let it loose, folks.  Story isn't a good thing.  A good story is a good thing, though not a necessary one, but story is not intrinsically good.

This is the #1 thing impeding progress on understanding Nar and Sim and their differences.  People are convinced that if Jay (for example) says that Sim doesn't tell stories, that means he's saying that Sim is bad.  Alternatively, if Jay describes an example of Sim play that in some way generates something resembling a story, some folks will jump in and say "but that's Nar!"  No, it isn't.  

CA is a matter of process, not product.  What's tricky is that the process generally has an end in mind -- which may or may not be successfully generated.  So Nar is an aesthetic agenda that guides play in order to attempt to generate a particular kind of story and effect.  If it fails, it can still be Nar.  If a different process, say Sim or Gam, happens to generate that kind of story, that does not make it Nar.  It's simply a matter of how you go about it, not what you get out of it.

To state it directly:

Story is value-neutral.  The idea that story is inherently desirable is at base part of Narrativism as an aesthetic agenda.  To understand Sim coherently, the idea that story is intrinsically valuable must be discarded from the start.[/list:u]

Perhaps at this point, it is best merely to enjoy the conclusion you've arrived at, recognize that it's certainly compatible with the existing theory, and then later, see if the term "bricolage" and similar become slowly incorporated into the jargon as (and if) they prove themselves necessary and useful.

Like Jay, I am not convinced that bricolage and reflexive meaning-construction and myth and so forth are entirely compatible with existing theory on Sim.  Nor have I seen a convincing argument to that effect.  What Jay is suggesting is that Sim is defined in terms of product -- the Dream -- where the other CAs are defined in terms of process.  He's proposing bricolage as the Sim process.  I think he's on to something, but I think put that baldly it's simplistic and reductionist, as Mark pointed out.  But currently the definitions do have a structural inconsistency, which is why they lend themselves to Horseshoes: Sim is the weird one that doesn't fit.

[clehrich]

I find the term [bricolage] unfortunate because I've never come across it and I had to look it up in a dictionary.

The word is French, and not uncommon in that language.  It is not translated, because there is no adequate translation into English.  As you are not a native speaker, you might look it up in a French dictionary from your own native tongue and see what happens.

The term has become quite common and well-known throughout the humanities and social sciences as a result of Lévi-Strauss's book La pensée sauvage (The Savage Mind), written some 40 years back.

I personally like the idea - Ron's, I think - of calling it *celebrationism*.

I dislike this term a great deal, I'm afraid.  This isn't a swipe at you, or Ron, but I think the term misses a good deal.

First, it is only applicable when there is a set block of source material, which is not necessarily the case in Sim.

Second, it suggests that the process in Sim desires primarily to enjoy (celebrate) that source material.  Even assuming there is such source material, the Sim group may well wish to play with and distort it for other creative reasons.  In many cases, this distortion may be sufficient that fans of the source material see the game as destructive or hostile to the material -- which says nothing about whether it's Sim.

Third, it says nothing whatever about process, nor about intent except inaccurately or in a limited fashion as noted above.  Jay's contention is that Sim is not generally defined in terms of process, unlike the other CAs, and that this is causing problems.  Shifting to a new term that continues to avoid process does nothing but deflect and defer the issue.

[clehrich]

Just a few notes on Lee's long post:

The different Creative Agendas, are all, at base, attempts to answer the question What is fun about gaming?  More precisely, the question that CAs answer is What is fun, in and of itself?.  For an immersive Narrativist, his use of immersion is just a technique he uses to address Premise.  So while his use of immersion is fun, it is not fun in and of itself; hence Narrativism's defining features do not include immersion.  To the extent that our player finds immersion fun in and of itself, she is playing in the mode of a Creative Agenda other than Narrativism.

I think Jay is suggesting, and I would tend to agree, that Simulationism is a bit peculiar in this regard, as it is precisely the process that is the point.  The process is not merely a means to achieve some other end; it is the end in itself.

Now, this is usually what people here seem to be talking about when they talk about CA.  But, then again, they often seem to be talking about techniques or processes.  I suspect that's just the occasional carelessness -- but I'm not really certain I've got this down yet.

Here I think you're a little off-base.  Ron is very insistent that CA is not about product.  For example, if we have a transcript (in his sense) of a game, which is to say we have a post facto product description, we know nothing whatever about CA.  CA is about how we get there, that is, it's about process.  Jay's argument is that Sim is unusual in that it really isn't defined in terms of process, where Nar and Gam are.  This is causing problems, because it makes Sim seem fundamentally different from the other CAs.

But this tendency to seek out CA after the fact, in product and not in process, is very common and somewhat unfortunate.

In your example:

They don't want myth.  They don't care about myth.  What they want is feelings of empowerment; myth is simply a useful tool to give them this.  So they are not Simulationist as defined here.

Here I think Jay is being a tad sloppy.  "They don't want myth" only in the sense that they don't really know what that means or what it's about.  They may want empowerment, and they may achieve this through mythic processes a la bricolage.  But that does not mean that they desire myth, at least not consciously.

Furthermore, no CA needs to be deliberate or conscious.  It can be, but it needn't be.  Sim in particular often resists such mindfulness.  Thus it is certainly possible that the group "don't care about myth", yet nevertheless play hard-core Sim.

If we define the Simulation CA as simply "the process of bricolage", then I think we lose the difference between someone who thinks that bricolage is fun in and of itself, and the immersives that I have described above – and I think that's an important distinction, especially as regards game design.  The objective, presumably, is to design games that are fun.  The best way to do this is to have a good idea of what is fun, for the game's target audience.  .... A better definition would be to define the Simulationist agenda as 'finding fun in the process of Bricolage itself rather than in any results that it brings.'

Simulationism cannot be defined as "the process of bricolage" full stop.  No question there.  What can be defined that way is bricolage, and that's a tautology.

But immersion is a Technique, a tool by which to achieve a gaming goal.  And it is not at odds with the kind of constrained bricolage that I, like Jay, think is at the core of Sim.  I agree with you fully that taking this sort of bricolage as the primary end unto itself is critical to what we're talking about as Sim, but I do not see why this cannot be achieved immersively.  Bricolage is by no means a necessarily conscious or self-aware process, though it may be so.

[clehrich]

Hmm.  This gets complicated.

At this point, I am baffled by your statement of non-meaning.  It's a myth.  If it was a narrative then we would have a better sense of understanding, but because it is myth and that that myth's meaning is only understood within the larger system of meaning that we don't have direct access to only supports the fact that the Bororo myth is a myth and not a narrative.  Thematic stories are generalizable to all humanity that can be understood to all, as it were, while myths are specific to the cultures where they were created.

I think we're almost on the same wavelength here just going in different directions.  I'm saying that the Bororo myth has no meaning to us because we dont understand the meanings of the components that make up the myth.  To the Bororo it tells a meaningful story because they can pick out the meaning whereas if they were to be told a thematic story that we are familiar with and understand it would leave them shaking their heads.  Same job different medium of expression.

As ever, this gets back to what we mean by "story."  Consider the clause I've underlined here.  If we take "story" very generally indeed, what you've said is, "To the Bororo, it carries and constructs meaning."  I'd agree with that.  If we take "story" to mean anything even remotely specific -- if, for example, we take it as meaning something that most non-sung music doesn't have -- then you're saying, "To the Bororo, it tells a story that also happens to have meaning."  This I disagree with strongly.  Some myths do indeed tell stories, and some don't.  From my point of view, the important issue is that story and myth are not the same thing, and thus the two can be simultaneously present or not without this in any way affecting which we're looking at.

For example, the Hainuwele myth is not much as a story, but when we understand its context it does tell something of a story.  Smith's point about that myth was that it has an historical context, which is by no means necessary.  Conversely, the Bororo myth of Baitogogo is, as a story, ill-constructed, rambling, and not coherent.  When we understand a lot of its contextual meanings, the images and structures embedded, it is about central issues for the Bororo, but it's still not a story.

Story is a broad term and myth requires them in at least the transcript of events form. Sim fails at myth because the items brought into the game do not necessarily have meaning for the player whereas for the mythmaker everything they use is used to bring a meaning into the myth.

Story is indeed a very broad term.  Given current Forge usage, I'd tend to reserve it to those narratives that we can describe in terms of Premise.  By this definition, certainly, myth does not require story at all; I can only see myth requiring story if we take story to mean any sort of narrative.

As to the more important issue of meaning for the player, I think one of the effects of Sim, because of its deep similarity to myth, is precisely to make those elements meaningful through usage.

The elements of myth are, at base, the elements of the natural world.  These have no meaning intrinsically; the meaning is imputed to them through human creative interpretation -- which is a part of what bricolage is about.  Once such meanings have been imputed, they can be further manipulated by connection to other mythic elements, and so on and so forth forever.  My contention, at least, is that Sim is intensely involved in this sort of meaning-construction because part of the goal is to have the Dream be a complete and meaningful world.

.... What is stated is that the "meaning structures" cannot or are not taken out of the game (or the ritual space), however the myths that are created can be very "meaningful" to the players – they just can't be instituted in the real world (the profane/non ritual space).  That is an EXTREMELY major point. .... The reason Sim is said to fail myth is not in lack of ability to create meaningful structures, but in the lack of application of the created myths to guide us in our lives.  IOW what's the point of finding/creating a "truth" if we don't apply it to our daily lives?  See – myth is not only thing but process as well.

I'd emphasize that this is a matter of practice and not principle.  There is no particular reason that Sim cannot apply its meaning-structures outside the game-world, nor that it cannot draw from outside the game-world to generate meanings -- indeed, the latter is necessarily at work in any event.  What is peculiar is this desire to have an absolute division, which I've stated elsewhere is a form of ritualization.  This puts one structure -- mythic construction -- at odds with another -- ritualization.  To my mind, this is why hard-core Sim is a fringe interest: it's almost impossible to do consistently.  I also think this is an extremely important part of why Sim gaming tends to generate subculture behavior and identification.

.... In myth the elements brought in have observable behaviors that give meaning to them before they become part of the myth.  The mythmaker chooses them for those meanings and uses them to make a meaningful tale.  The mythmaker has a whole lexicon of things that have meaning to not only himself but his entire culture, the same does not hold true for the sim gamer.  I'm sure in the begininng the mythmaker faced the same problem however the mythmaker finding meanings is seperate from myth itself.  The myth uses the meanings to tell the tale, it is not the search for them.

I'd mostly agree with this, up until the last sentence.  Myth is very much about the search for meaning, just as it is also the manipulation of existent meanings.  Where this breaks down in Sim gaming is that there is commonly a desire not to alter the meanings of elements and thus to search for new congruencies; this I think is a historical effect of the decline of myth in Western culture over a couple thousand years.

I do see a relation between Sim and myth, but I also see connections between it and all of roleplaying.  My biggest concern is the one you didnt really address in the last post.  The term myth means many different things to different people, it is as convoluted as the word story.  If you try and connect the word myth to sim someone who is playing in a game based on norse myth then he believes he is playing sim even if he's actually engaged in narrativism.

Yes, this is a serious problem.  I think the difficulty is probably insoluble, because our tendency these days is to to think of Norse and Greek myths as a kind of baseline of what myth is, when in fact those are very peculiar and historically-bounded forms.  

I do see value in being precise about this, however.  If we cannot be precise about either "myth" or "story", then there's little hope of being precise about gaming as a narrative form.

Jay's wish to use "bricolage" as the basic processual element in Sim strikes me as a good start, since that term's meaning is indeed extremely close to the mythic process at work in Sim.  I think "story" should then be reserved to narratives founded upon Premise in the Egri-Edwards formulation.  "Myth" probably carries too much identity-politics to be of much long-term value here.