Re: Sim has not be discussed as process yet it needs to be s

[Wormwood]

Ron,

If I'm reading this right, thematic presence in the transcript is an accurate indicator of nar, although it is very imprecise. And you cannot do much better using just a transcript. If that is the case, and we have some more precise and equally accurate way to identify nar from play, what additional observation is lacking the in transcript which gives that precision?


  - Mendel S.

[The GM]

I think you're corrupting the definitions in the Glossary a little. By addressing Premise during play, a group/person is creating story in a mindful fashion, at the moment, as a "point," in the sense that Lisa (TheGM) calls "playing on purpose."

Hey! I'm imfamous. ;)
Ron nails succinctly what it took me about 563 posts to try to define in my own mind. If you did it after the fact, it ain't on purpose. Those incidents are typically refered to as 'accidents'. Can you have a happy accident? Sure can, but it doesn't mean that you intended to address Premise.


Editted to add: I think the key word here is INTENT. If there is no intent to address Premise, then the resulting outcome can not be PoP, no matter how the script reads after the fact.

[Wormwood]

Lisa,

The problem is you need something besides intent. After all, how can you distinguish unconscious, or unavailable intent from an accident? And this issue is not simply theoretical, many people play differently than they intend. Which do we take as correct the intent they claim, or the intent their actions imply?

There needs to be something else, which we can all point to to say these are indicative of nar versus sim (no need for certainty just a better judgement than that which has confounded things in this case). The transcript is insufficiently precise. Intent is untrustworthy.

Perhaps the solution is a meta-transcript, which incorporates records of techniques and the SIS they generate. Or perhaps we should just accept that distinguishing between sim and nar along this border is infeasible.

  -Mendel S.

[Bankuei]

Hi guys,

The imaginary events in play do not tell us what happened in real life.

The situation is the same if I told you to read a book of fiction, then tell me what the author was going through or thinking about when they were writing the book.  You might be able to pull elements, but you wouldn't be able to say for sure what the author used as inspiration or their thought process.  You could tell me the premise, but then again, all traditional storytelling is done with the goal of expressing a premise, whereas roleplaying has many possible goals on the part of the participants.

The Creative Agenda is held by the players, not by the characters, so we need to look at the actions and decisions of the players as the key to determine what's going on.  And the telling signs are when folks within the group, or the group as a whole chooses to do support an action or decision that supports one CA and not another.  

Therefore, to make that judgement, you either have to have been there and observed play for some period of time, or have a video or audio tape showing the group in play.  The key point for either is noting the approval/disapproval mechanism of the group and the individuals in the group.  

For the most part, people who play don't consciously pick up on the approval/disapproval bits, and they don't ever think about mapping "what's going on in play" to "what's going on with Alice, Bill and Cathy".  This makes gathering accounts from players kinda hard, but not impossible, if you ask the right questions and get honest answers.

As far as audio/video recordings, you probably could pick up enough tells over a period of time to call it, but the key point is being able to read the expressions and reactions of the players.

Chris

[Marco]

Hey guys,

Chris is right--although it's not stated what the 'tells' are for Narrativist play, trying to figure out specifically what unconscious motives are at work is even harder. The mindfulness issue is a separate one than this (although it's important, related, and worth another thread quite soon).

This is about the concept of "Story After"--which was often contrasted with Story Now--which, yes, did seem to hinge on intent or mindfulness or something like that.

But, we've evolved since then: the glossary defines story as a part of transcript--something that definitionally comprises past play.

Any long time poster on The Forge, can tell you that the Narrativists are enjoying the thematic elements of play more than their Sim counterparts--that's what defines them--but it's quite another thing (today) to say that Narrativists some different kind of story that has another definition or that non-Nar play must be self-deceiving (like the supposition that Simulationist might be unconsciously dressing up their transcripts to include themeatic elements).

What we're trying to get at (here) is whether Narrativists create story (thematic elements of transcript) 'during play' whereas Simulationists create 'story after play.'

-Marco

[The GM]

Lisa,

The problem is you need something besides intent.

I 'm not being snarky here, but how so? From Websters: Intent:Something that is intended; an aim or purpose.
If I intend to go to the store, but instead go to a friend's on a whim, then I did not fulfill my stated intent. I did not 'go with purpose'. My intent was either weak, poorly thought out, or even non existant. One might even say that I didn't intend on going to the store at all, I just kinda thought I should. At the end of the day, no matter how you cut it, if I did not go with purpose, I did not address the task at hand.
I think you're right when you say that this is not a theoretical problem in gaming and game design. Many people do in fact play differently than (and here's the caveat) they think they intend to. Why is this? Because the stated intent is either weak, poorly thought out or misunderstood. People, it seems, will always take the comfortable path. So when you say, 'Hey guys, we're gonna address Premise in this game session,' and then no one does, it's worth going back to the SC and CA stage of the game to figure out why the intent failed. It's likely players took the easy, familiar road.

Intent is indeed *very* trustworthy *IF* it is clearly stated, understood, and acted upon by all participants. A Nar game can not, repeat, can not turn into a Sim game if everyone is following the stated intent of playing that specific type of game. This, in a nutshell, is Playing on Purpose.
Good post by the way. :)

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

I smell unnecessary contention, arising partly because the words intent and motive have undergone a fairly bloody history here, long ago.

Lisa, perhaps the best way to look at it is demonstrated intent. That's why I like to say "agenda," because an agenda can never be "unexpressed." It can be hidden, subtle, or covert, but not there's no such thing as an agenda without consequences - real interactions and events show us agenda, period.

If people can agree that we are talking about expressed phenomena, and merely acknowledge that some sort of internal processes (intent, motive, etc) are involved without debating what they are, then I think we'll discover a lot more agreement in the last few threads than superficially appears to be the case.

Best,
Ron

[The GM]

Very good, then. Please mentally edit in the word agenda in place of the word intent in my last post.

Thanks. :)

Editted to add (to prevent unneccesary confusion) Agenda is indeed *very* trustworthy *IF* it is clearly stated, understood, and acted upon by all participants. A Nar game can not, repeat, can not turn into a Sim game if everyone is following the stated agenda of playing that specific type of game. This, in a nutshell, is Playing on Purpose.

[Wormwood]

Marco,

I think the issue with transcript as story has been answered. In essence, nar implies a story transcript, but a story transcript does not imply nar.

Which means transcript cannot tell us CA, but perhaps only give us support for a CA conclusion (inductively).


Lisa,

If we confine ourselves to observable intent, then I suggest we consider a meta-transcript which contains all observations of the game (at least with minimal interference of play - ideally no questions and answers, as asking about a theme can easily change borderline play to another CA). In what I've been working on I call that meta-transcript the content of play. I've also found that while you can rarely observe most play content, only a small and identifiable subset of it must be extracted to distinguish play behaviors, such as CA. (Although this subset varies significantly based on what you are trying to determine.)

I agree the entirely honest and open play group is a case where the identification of agenda is entirely trivial. But we also want to be able to identify less overt signs and patterns, otherwise the distinction becomes useless except for groups that have already made it.


I hope that helps, and thank you for the clarification,

  -Mendel S.

[Marco]

Marco,

I think the issue with transcript as story has been answered. In essence, nar implies a story transcript, but a story transcript does not imply nar.

Which means transcript cannot tell us CA, but perhaps only give us support for a CA conclusion (inductively).

Yes that's true, but my question wasn't about determing CA. It was about the Ron's and Gareth's use of the phrasing 'creating story retroactively.'

Judging by the glossary, I can say:
1. "Narrativist story exists only after play since story is found in the transcript which exists only after play"  --or--
2. "Sim play and Nar play both create story (thematic elements of transcript) during play since they both simply add elements to the transcript."

In his last response to me, Ron (as far as I could tell, I asked a yet-unanswerd question) drew a distinction between Sim play that uses story-making techniques and Sim-play that doesn't.

I don't understand the relevance of that, so I'm considering the question still open.

-Marco

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

I've lost all sense of relevance for this thread or any post in it, so I'm pretty much stepping out.

I don't see any unanswered questions, because I don't really see any questions. Maybe I'll come back in about a week or so to re-read it, and maybe then it'll be like, "Oh, I get it," and then I'll try to contribute. Until then, it's all a big shrug.

Best,
Ron

[Jaik]

Marco,

I think the issue with transcript as story has been answered. In essence, nar implies a story transcript, but a story transcript does not imply nar.

Which means transcript cannot tell us CA, but perhaps only give us support for a CA conclusion (inductively).

Yes that's true, but my question wasn't about determing CA. It was about the Ron's and Gareth's use of the phrasing 'creating story retroactively.'

[SNIP]

-Marco

Here's my take on this retroactive story: the difference between myself and Donald Trump (at least my view/version of Donald Trump).

I went to college because I just sort of always assumed I would.  I had a sucky job, then found a better (but not great) one and took it.  I got married a little over a year ago, got a much better job that happened to come available at my company, and recently purchased a home.

I've pretty much wandered through life without much drive.  I've gotten really lucky.  I would stumble across a better job.  For my recent promotion, I was more active in my search, mostly because I now have a family to think of, not just myself and a few bills.

I see Donald Trump as having lived a life filled with purpose and drive.  He set himself high goals with long-range plans and set out to achieve them.  he was always looking ahead and thinking of the big picture.

Trump plays narr, I play sim.  He's looking ahead to shape his life, exerting all the control he can.  I coasted through, just doing what I felt like, and I ended up in the mid-early stages of the American Dream.  I didn't really plan for it and certainly didn't work feverishly, but if you squint a little bit, my life forms a pretty coherent story.  Donald Trump wrote his.

Note that my recent ambition and drive did not magically transform anything. just as a mostly-Sim player who decides to add some Theme to the game suddenly transforms into a Narr player.  Isn't it a basic tenet of the Big Theory that almost no-one is a purely single-CA player?  In fact, CA isn't acted out through entire campaigns or even sessions, but small, discreet decisions.

Helpful?  Muddying?  Neat but kinda dumb?

[Marco]

I think it's a good analogy about how Nar players being said to "play on purpose" (although it's quite possible to play Nar without 'intending to' as Ron points out--if you are consistently addressing Premise even if you aren't thinking in terms of an author, you're playing Nar, at least according to many long-time posters).

However: story is still created the same way in any CA: events happen in play and are added to the transcript. When the transcript is examined (containing only past play) it may be seen to have elements of theme.

Thus, all story is retroactive.

I think the confusion happens because many posters see a fundamental difference in play that might create story from play that will more often create story: but as Wormwood pointed out, the transcript is the same either way.

Also: despite the distinction I think Ron was drawing, since Sim creates theme as reliably as Nar (if the right techniques are used) the amount of story-transcripts from Sim compared to Nar isn't really relevant (I think that if people think Sim is far more common than Nar, then the total number of Sim-stories is probably much higher than Nar stories and not the reverse).

Basically, I think 'retroactive story' is old terminology and is out of date with the glossary.

-Marco

[Silmenume]

My understanding of "retroactive story" means altering/editing the fabula of a game so that in the retelling it NOW conforms to story where one did not exist as a direct result of the actions of the players – the syuzhet.

Thus Narrativism reliably creates fabula that contains Story without need of post game editing to get it in there.  Sim on the other hand frequently requires lots of editing of the fabula to get Story.

What "on purpose" or "mindful," in the case of Nar, means is that the players are specifically making the kinds decisions that reliably results in their fabula containing Theme.  This is accomplished by players addressing a Premise until conclusion.

Just to be clear, I am using the gloss version of Story – transcript with a Theme.

[Wormwood]

The problem seems to be a confounding of terms, which supports Marco's claim that we should abandon the idea of a retroactive story.


Marco seems to be saying that:

Sim can reasonably produce a Transcript which is a story.


Jay seems to be saying that:

A (non-story) Transcript may be modified into a story.

Nar typically produces a Transcript which is a story.


None of these contradict each other. What causes a contradiction is the use of an assumption that "A Transcript which is a story required Nar." But Ron has already pointed out a Transcript doesn't give us that kind of precision. What causes the causes confounding is that anything a Transcript is able to say about a game is "retroactive", so if a transcript is a story it is a retroactive story (with respect to the play it records). However if a transcript is modified into something else, this can be construed as a post play re-write of the play, i.e. also a "retroactive" story. These are clearly different phenomena, but without some further clarity there is no way to disambiguate the term retroactive story, making it largely irrelevant to the discussion.

Also, the utility of talking about modified transcripts seems only relevent if you have fallen into the fallacy that since Nar implies a story transcript, a story transcript implies Nar. The positive does not (in general) imply the converse.

I hope that helps,

   -Mendel S.