Pattern Recognition, Metaphor, and Continuity

[Doctor Xero]

ENRICHING ONE'S LIFE, HONING PATTERN RECOGNITION ABILITIES, MYTH AND FANTASTICAL LITERATURE

We live in an increasingly complex and dangerous world. To survive in it, we need think that somehow, it all means something. Where does that meaning come from?  That's the myth.

In other words : myth as existential recognition, what the late Joseph Campbell once referred to as "the mystery of a presence and the presence of a mystery."

Legends and myth are largely made of truth, and indeed present aspects of it that can only be perceived in this mode; and long ago certain truths and modes of this kind were discovered and must always reappear.

In other words : myth as the inexpressible Truths pointed towards through story and poetry.

Stories have a habit of getting tied in knots, and then unfolding.  First they entangle their protagonists, whose actions sometimes seem dictated by the needs of the story in which they have become engaged; then the light dawns, and the labyrinth becomes a path. . . . the literatures of the Fantastic positively glory in the fact that they present and embody Story-shaped worlds. . . .
For Aristotle, Recognition marks a fundamental shift in the process of a story from increasing ignorance to knowledge. . . . It is at this moment of Recognition that the inherent Story at the heart of most fully fantasy texts is most visible . . . most revelatory.  At this moment in "the structurally complete fantasy tale" (Brian Attebery's phrase) protagonists begin to understand what has been happening to them (he may have been an Ugly Duckling awaiting the moment he becomes king; she may have been re-enacting a Creation Myth in order that the Land be reborn; they may discover what Archetype serves as an underlier figure and defines their fate; etc.).  They understand, in other words, that they are in a Story; that, properly recognized (which is to say properly told), their lives have the coherence and significance of Story ; that, in short, the story has been telling them.

In other words : myth as inflected through literatures of the fantastic.

Many researchers argue that myth and folklore help individuals develop a vital, necessary existential ability -- the ability to recognize underlying patterns.  This pattern recognition ability is the basis of science, scholarship, and appreciation of the Arts.  For example, empirical science is grounded in recognition of patterns of frequency, the scientific method in recognition of patterns of cause-and-effect ; I do not think it is a coincidence that people with little background in myth (of some shade!) often demonstrate a poor grasp of the recognition of underlying causal patterns (although over-awareness is just as bad, wringing superstition from happenstance).

All of the above depends upon a sense of identification with the protagonist, usually a hero.

In other words, the protagonist becomes a metaphor for the audience, and his or her experiences become metaphors through which the audience can better understand their own experiences.

Thus, recognition of the metaphor empowers each audience member.  Use of these recognized metaphors enriches the personal lives of the savvy audience members.  This is one of the bases for the popularity in television of Star Trek and Babylon 5, in film of Star Wars, and in literature of The Lord of the Rings
(cf. Henry Jenkins' seminal work, Textual Poachers for more details).

fans cease to be simply an audience for popular texts ; instead they become active participants in the construction and accumulation of textual meanings.

In roleplaying games which focus on storytelling or myth, the player's character becomes a metaphor for the player, and his or her character's experiences become metaphors through which the player can better understand his or her own experiences.  They become the means for the player's own empowering enrichment.

MYTH, PATTERN RECOGNITION ABILITIES, AND ROLEPLAYING GAMING

According to some people, one of the (many) functions of roleplaying gaming is individualized or micro-tribal mythopoesis, i.e. the creation of personalized mythic imagery for the individual and the creation of shared mythic imagery for the gaming group.

However . . .

One of (several) primary functions of myth and fantastical literature involves the discovery and then recognition of the primal Story pattern(s) which underlies all of that reality.  It is not the manufacture of Story but the recognition of Story and,
with that Recognition, the empowerment within a person's world when Story becomes inflected through a person ; in other words, when the character has an empowering epiphany and, through the metaphor of the character, so does the reader or roleplayer.

That sense of discovery, recognition, and subsequent empowerment is possible only when there is an a prior pre-existing pattern to be found -- in the case of gaming, to be found within the campaign reality.

THE CAMPAIGN REALITY -- WHAT DOES ALL THIS HAVE TO DO WITH GAMING?

All the above leads to one possible conclusion : that the sense of discovery, the pattern recognition, and the personal empowerment which comes from those, all are impossible in those campaigns in which the gaming reality can be changed at any time by a player.

Players can not discover a pattern if that pattern is one which they have just spontaneously cast onto the gaming reality.
First, they can't discover the pattern for the obvious reason that the pattern has no pre-existence to its manufacture -- it has not been there to find.
Second, they can't discover the pattern because, as something which has burst into spontaneous existence, it can not possibly have fashioned and structured any "reality" which pre-existed it.
Furthermore, this means that empowerment within the gaming reality becomes impossible.  Why?  Any person's empowerment which pre-dates a specific spontaneous pattern manufacture is now lessened because his or her empowerment could not have possibly incorporated the at-that-time-not-yet-in-existence pattern unless the player has precognitive powers in real life.  Worse, any empowerment which incorporates this spontaneous new pattern will become outdated the moment someone else imposes yet another new pattern.

In a cooperative campaign, surfing chaos, not discovery and not cooperative storytelling (both of which depend upon pre-existing patterns), becomes the norm for such a campaign.  Perhaps each player focuses on his or her own isolated fiefdom of gaming reality, or perhaps the players enjoy the instability.  Or perhaps they institute a voting council to edit spontaneous alterations to preserve some pattern after all.

In a competitive campaign, the norm becomes constant battling among players for control over the campaign reality as each player fights to keep inserting new patterns which empower himself or herself while ignoring whether those new patterns disempower anyone else. Some popular board games and drinking games follow just such norms.

If the players are interested primarily in individual events for each character in isolation, and if the players have no interest in experiencing myth or storytelling together and no interest in any sense of discovery, there is nothing wrong with the above.  True, the campaign does not work as a source of storytelling, but not everyone wants enrichment or metaphor.  There are even those who have difficulty understanding metaphor, but they have every right to game.  There's nothing inherently wrong with treating a roleplaying game as nothing deeper than a spirited game of Calvinball, so long as a person remembers that Calvinball is not a means of storytelling nor of experiencing myth.

So it seems to me that, in roleplaying gaming, the sense of myth and metaphor and the sense of empowerment is only possible in those campaigns which do not allow player introduction of new patterns which supersede or retroactively rewrite the a priori patterns.

Of course, meaningfulness is not found only in Myth ; it is also found in Philosophy and Art, including non-mythic literature.  Existentialism and its heirs replace the recognition of cosmic meaningfulness with the search for individual meaningfulness, but Existentialism is no less legitimate than Myth as an approach to finding meaning.  Punk as a genre mode is characterized in part by its existential anger over the failure of communal Myth in the urban world.  A campaign with potentially constant spontaneous retroactive continuity would work well at re-creating that punk aesthetic of meaninglessness.  Perhaps such a campaign would be the best way to re-create the television series The Prisoner?

Of course, not all Fantastical tales involve Myth, and Myth and the Fantastical are not the only genre modes which appear in gaming : there are also Superhero, SF and Space Opera, Detective Mystery, etc.  However, those mentioned require patterns which pre-exist player input.  No one can discover the solution to a mystery if he or she can decide upon any solution he or she wants and then spontaneously insert clues to fit that arbitrary solution.  SF authors such as Isaac Asimov have railed against "sci fi" series in which "scientific laws" spontaneously manifest so that heroes can solve their current dilemma and then spontaneously disappear at episode's end, never to factor into any episode again.

APPLYING THIS, part 1 : ROLEPLAYING GAME THEORY

Some players want to focus on storytelling, involvement in the metaphor, and/or a sense of the mythic.

Some players want to focus on simply an evening's diversion, on parallel but isolated authorship, or on testing the player's skills at ad lib with no real identification with the gaming character.

(Most have interests somewhere in between these two extremes.)

What differentiates these two poles is the degree of involvement with the campaign reality.

Players more interested in storytelling and/or myth want a campaign reality stable enough for them to interact with it.  They want their mysteries to have pre-existing solutions and their SF imaginary science to remain consistent ; they want their characters to have a stable "past" from which to develop and mature.  They want continuity.  To use a comic book analogy, they don't want Superman's powers to change every issue.  They want a stable continuity with which to interact.  Theirs is a Framework of Interaction.

Players more interested in an evening's diversion and/or parallel but segregate authorship want a campaign reality which each player can individually alter to suit his or her current interests.  They want the campaign to be like a chalkboard.  In a serious campaign, they want their detective stories to provide opportunities to ad lib exciting action sequences which may have nothing whatsoever to do with any pretense of a plot, and they aren't interested in whether this episode's SF imaginary science has any fidelity to last week's episode and never worry about how it might impact next week's episode because what matters most is the episode they're playing now.  They don't want to feel "boxed in" by continuity -- they want to be independent of continuity!  Theirs is a Framework of Independence.

The axis of these frameworks can be found throughout narrativist, simulationist, and perhaps even gamist roleplaying games.

Baron Munchausen and Soap are both narrativist games with a strong Framework of Independence from continuity as players compete to alter the past and present "realities" of the other players' characters, while InSpectres is a narrativist game with more of a Framework of Interaction with continuity.  Torg with its storyteller cards and James Bond RPG with its fortune points are both simulationist games which incorporate elements of a Framework of Independence from continuity, while Vampire : The Masquerade is a simulationist game with an intense Framework of Interaction with continuity which either mesmerizes or overwhelms.  Illuminati with its advice that rules exist only as a challenge to ignore and get away with it is a gamist game with a particularly competitive Framework of Independence from continuity, while Dungeons and Dragons is a gamist game with a strong Framework of Interaction as players try to exploit the pre-existing possibilities of the setting.

APPLYING THIS, part 2 : ROLEPLAYING GAME DESIGN

Understanding all of the above helps us hone our game design skills.

When designing a roleplaying game intended for players desiring a higher Framework of Interaction, a large amount of the gamebook needs to focus on either the campaign continuity or on helping a game master pre-design a campaign continuity.  This may be represented by a thoroughly detailed setting, or it may be represented by thoroughly detailed patterns which underlie the campaign continuity, such as premise (as in narrativist campaigns) or genre (common in superhero simulationist games).  Care must be taken if later campaign supplements appear that they do not violate the existing campaign reality -- a player with a high Framework of Interaction will be upset if, after playing an elf whose sense of self and campaign decisions have been derived from his knowing he is a tree elemental, a supplement retroactively declares that all elves have always known they are water elementals.  Whether the game master provides the continuity itself or simply the tools for the game master, that continuity must work well with the narrativist, simulationist, or gamist direction of the game, i.e. it must promote premise, gameworld "realism", or gameworld tools for competition, respectively.  However, the game designer has little need to worry about including more than cursory rules about how to deal with player variations away from the game rules, the campaign setting, or the inviolability of the characters of other players.

When designing a roleplaying game intended for players who prefer a higher Framework of Independence, a large portion of the gamebook needs to focus on how to handle on an ongoing basis player alterations of the continuity, perhaps even alterations of the rules and of the characters of other players.  The game designer must decide ahead of time the degree to which he or she wishes to encourage player cooperation and player competition when it comes to the malleable game world reality.  Can any player change anything at any time -- if not, what are the limitations and how are they enforced?  Does the player need to expend some sort of tokens to input a change?  Can another player counter that change or enter into a bidding war over who gets to change what?  Is the player restricted to additions, or can he or she retroactively alter past events in the gameworld continuity, perhaps even retroactively change past character decisions and their repercussions?  Are the changes restricted to setting, or can they include even game rules and the actions of the characters of other players?  These are a few of the questions the game designer needs to address.  However, for a narrativist or gamist game, the game designer has little need for anything more than a perfunctory description of setting regardless of these answers.  For a simulationist game in which setting matters, the game designer must devise a continuity in which malleability is part of the setting -- these are often the games in which genre matters more than time and locational setting.

Obviously, just as most roleplaying games allow for different agenda, most roleplaying games allow for degrees of both Frameworks rather than being entirely focused on a Framework of Interaction or a Framework of Independence.

By recognizing the axis of these two Frameworks, certain difficulties which have plagued misunderstandings of both narrativist and simulationist gaming can be neatly avoided.

Your thoughts?

[Bankuei]

Hi Doc,

All the above leads to one possible conclusion : that the sense of discovery, the pattern recognition, and the personal empowerment which comes from those, all are impossible in those campaigns in which the gaming reality can be changed at any time by a player.

I'd like to present an alternative idea to this statement- the sense of pattern that comes from thematic myth can only exist if the group as a whole is participating in it, whether that means one person being the primary author of the mythology as in illusionism and the rest of the group assenting to that, or the whole group applying input to produce the myth.

I wrote entirely about that here:

http://www.chimera.info/daedalus/articles/fall2003/power_of_myth.html

Chris

[M. J. Young]

Welcome back, Doc. It's good to see you.

I see a lot of merit in your ideas, but think there is a fundamental flaw in your reasoning.

The flaw would seem to be that you create two opposed categories but assume that these are fully inclusive, when there is a large middle ground that you overlook.

On the one side, you suggest games in which truth is fixed--someone knows the details of the setting, the answer to the mystery, whatever the facts are, they are facts within the world known to one person before the others learn them. This, you say, makes possible discovery.

Against this, you set a concept in which all things are mutable. Perhaps you don't mean it quite so seriously, but the way you present it, it sounds as if my character could be a gunfighter standing in a saloon finishing a whiskey, then set down the glass, pass through the swinging doors onto the bridge of the spaceship where he's the navigator, who never was that fellow in the saloon. Nothing can be discovered, because nothing that is true right now will necessarily be true in a minute from now. Someone might change it.

An awful lot of role playing follows a model identified here as "no myth" play. This doesn't fit either of the concepts you've suggested. In no myth play, nothing is fixed or real until it is introduced within the shared imagined space--and thereafter, it is immutable. Thus it isn't about changing the past--it's about writing bits of the past that have never been stated before. The world isn't really mutable; it's incomplete, and someone is going to fill in the gaps.

If you've actually got the ability to pregenerate entire universes in which there is nowhere the characters can look that you do not already know what they see, you're a better world creator than I. When I put my players in castles, I know a lot of general things about those castles--things like there are usually tapestries on the walls and these are decorative, frequently with scenes that have significance. I don't, however, know which walls do and do not have those tapestries, or what scenes are on which ones. I make that up if it comes up in play. That means the world is not really complete before play--it's only framed sufficiently that I can create the rest consistently with what already exists.

You further assert that players cannot "discover" the world if they themselves are "creating" it. As an author, I think this is entirely incorrect. When I create a world, I begin with a few starting points, and then I build on them. Gradually the world unfolds. There is a genuine meaning to the idea that I am discovering this world as I write. I realize that those few foundation stones are the beginning of a pattern, and my efforts to create the world are a continued discovery of that pattern, an unfolding of something that is in my mind unrecognized.

There is no reason why that same process of creative discovery cannot be corporate. As the foundation is laid, each player perceives aspects of the world that come alive for him. He contributes those to the shared imagined space, and the other players in turn say, "Yes, I see how that fits the pattern so far; and indeed, if that's the way it is, then this must also be so within that world." The pattern grows and expands. The players discover the world as they create it.

A great deal of my Multiverser play has a lot of this in it. I have a framework of facts about the world, but of necessity it is little more than a sketch. As the player makes choices, I respond to those choices by filling in details. Sometimes the dice guide the way those things are realized. Sometimes the player suggests part of a reality that fits the pattern and becomes part of the world.

I am thus persuaded that creation and discovery are not mutually exclusive in this context. I believe authors do it individually, and that gamers can and often do do this together.

--M. J. Young

[Emily Care]

Hello,

Your discussion of pattern recognition and myth is excellent but, like M.J., I must disagree with your conclusions.

Players can not discover a pattern if that pattern is one which they have just spontaneously cast onto the gaming reality.

Compare this to the act of divination--in the use of runes or tarot cards, the mind "discovers" a pattern made out of a randomly cast set of symbols.  The recognition of a pattern is on some level always the creation of a pattern.  The concept itself actually refers to the human perception of patterns, which may or may not be founded in reality.  It is our way of ordering our experience in the world. Players of role playing games can have the experience of discovering patterns, again and again, while they are in fact reading those patterns in to the kaleidoscope of fictional facts and events that are created in play.  

Furthermore, this means that empowerment within the gaming reality becomes impossible. Why? Any person's empowerment which pre-dates a specific spontaneous pattern manufacture is now lessened because his or her empowerment could not have possibly incorporated the at-that-time-not-yet-in-existence pattern unless the player has precognitive powers in real life. Worse, any empowerment which incorporates this spontaneous new pattern will become outdated the moment someone else imposes yet another new pattern.

In fact what tends to happen is that players invest in eachothers descriptions of reality and build upon them.  We craft our new patterns to fit the old.  The way our minds work supports this: we try to avoid the cognitive dissonance that arises when things don't make sense with one another.  However, if a group cannot communicate well enough to come to common agreement of patterns, or has other (usually social) reasons to not work together, then this tendency may break down.

In a cooperative campaign, surfing chaos, not discovery and not cooperative storytelling (both of which depend upon pre-existing patterns), becomes the norm for such a campaign. Perhaps each player focuses on his or her own isolated fiefdom of gaming reality, or perhaps the players enjoy the instability. Or perhaps they institute a voting council to edit spontaneous alterations to preserve some pattern after all.

How does cooperative storytelling depend up on pre-existing patterns? Why is it that everyone would not, as a matter of course, build off of what one another has created? Both surfing chaos and shared storytelling are possible outcomes, yes. But it is how the game is structured and the actual dynamics among the players that determines which will come true.

Games like Munchausen and Soap do structure play such that players may attempt to change past interactions of events, but they are in a small minority. Even in Soap contested sentences are not intended to change past interpretations although they may ("I'm not really Grant, I'm his evil twin Thaddeus!"), but are about the reality currently being established being contested as it is brought into play.  

I think that you are dead on in noting that role play is about the establishment and recognition of mythic patterns, but perhaps a different application might make sense.

yrs,
Emily

[ADGBoss]

Doc

Let me preface what I am about to say with the fact that I am not one of the more scholarly types and generally consider myself a mere spear carrier, awaiting the latest theory to incorporate into design to try another crack at the fortress of Game design.

I had to read the post backwards before I finally got the true gist of it and saw where you were going with it, at least where I think you were going with it. The last sentence sums up the direction pretty well and was one of those "aha" moments.   Frankly my first reaction is "What does this have to do with Narrativism and Simulationism again?"  

It seems that you are trying to solve an issue that does not exist.  Yes some people have a hard time nailing down GNS in general and the difference between N & S in particular.  There is the illusion that GNS is a bit of a moving target and hard to pin down.  When in reality the different ideas are simply evolving, which I would say is a natural state of such affairs.

I really am not sure what your ideas, as well thought out as they are, are trying to solve.  People still debate Time & Space but most people have a good grasp of what they are at the basic level needed for our current level of civilization.  I think the same can be said of Nar and Sim.  Most people have a basic grasp of the concepts but it does not stop debate and evolution.

Now if you had billed this as an alternative to Nar & Sim, then I think it takes on a life of its own (obviously) and has more merit. I am not sure I could agree with  your assessments, based on my own sort of ad-hoc way of thinking, but it doesn't mean I or someone else could never be persuaded. It just does not seem to have much connection to Nar, Sim, and understanding them that I can see.

As far as patterns, I defer to Emily's post as she explains very well what I am sure I would hash up and I generally agree with it.  My own perception of what you are saying would, in my mind, preclude any form of Play because patterns added before hand or right now are still products of imagination and environment.

Players can not discover a pattern if that pattern is one which they have just spontaneously cast onto the gaming reality.

Why would someone NEED to discover a pattern that he or she just cast into gaming reality? Creativity is as much a product of environment as it is of imagination and the Player who is adding a Pattern into play would by necessity have had to Perceive/Discover it already.  The way I am reading it, almost suggests that you are saying is that Tolkien perceived that Pattern (or truth or whatever) that was Middle Earth and then wrote it all down.  

Well that sounds very much the same as saying he made it up in his own mind from his own imagination and experiences.  

Change it a bit, he perceived it from his own mind and his own imagination and experiences.

Then Pattern recognition and spontaneous imagination (which I would argue is not really spontaneous) are really the same things.  So if an Author can put patterns down to paper without the universe unravelling, I would say a Player can do the same thing whether what lies over the horizon is pre-ordained pattern or one which is added into the game reality when necessary.

So for me it does not solve any perceived Nar & Sim issues and doesn't seem to make any impact on theory at all.

Excellent post though it was very enjoyable to read.


Sean

[Doctor Xero]

I'd like to present an alternative idea to this statement- the sense of pattern that comes from thematic myth can only exist if the group as a whole is participating in it, whether that means one person being the primary author of the mythology as in illusionism and the rest of the group assenting to that, or the whole group applying input to produce the myth.

I wrote entirely about that here:

http://www.chimera.info/daedalus/articles/fall2003/power_of_myth.html

Chris

You're right, Chris, and I will have to incorporate that into my next draft of this concept.  I wish I had read your article before I had written this -- you have some excellent thoughts!

The flaw would seem to be that you create two opposed categories but assume that these are fully inclusive, when there is a large middle ground that you overlook.
---snip!--
Perhaps you don't mean it quite so seriously, but the way you present it, it sounds as if my character could be a gunfighter standing in a saloon finishing a whiskey, then set down the glass, pass through the swinging doors onto the bridge of the spaceship where he's the navigator, who never was that fellow in the saloon.

Actually, I had hoped I had made it clear that I had merely pegged out two ends of a spectrum, just as a person putting a puzzle together often puts together all the perimeter pieces first.  I am one of those deductive scholars who thinks that some things are understood best if we first look at the extreme ends and then work centerwards to where most real life experiences take place.

If you've actually got the ability to pregenerate entire universes in which there is nowhere the characters can look that you do not already know what they see, you're a better world creator than I.

Hmmm . . . I had hoped I had covered that in the section where I wrote about fidelity to patterns enabling a game master to do something approximating just that.

For ease of explanation, permit me a cliche' example : imagine a game in which all the players want to perfectly imitate a Classic Western but only the game master already knows the tropes, conventions, and cliche's of that genre.  The patterns are already there for the game master, so she or he instantly knows whether the men in black cowboy hats are evil even if he had not pregenerated them specifically -- because the patterns which establish the "reality" of those black-hatted cowboys has been pregenerated.  On the other hand, if there has been no pregeneration even of patterns, well, the color of them thar hats don't make a darn bit o' difference, pardner!

That means the world is not really complete before play--it's only framed sufficiently that I can create the rest consistently with what already exists.

M.J., would it be helpful if I went into more detail about pregeneration of patterns?  I fear from your response I may not have been specific enough in my explanation.  (I kept cutting this post down and cutting it down -- what you have is about a third the length of my original.)

You further assert that players cannot "discover" the world if they themselves are "creating" it. As an author, I think this is entirely incorrect.

As an author myself, I recognize that a written novel and a roleplaying game are not the same thing.

I can best explain this with a real life example from my early gaming career.  I was with a group of players who were investigating a mystery.  They would huddle together, discussing and dissecting the clues.  Then, one of them found out that the game master was making up clues on the spot, to help them out a little but mostly to help keep them entertained -- this is what he admitted to them when they cornered him about it.  Yes, he had managed to keep them entertained, but as soon as they found out that there was no pre-existing solution to the mystery, that when they came up with the most reasonable solution, an NPC would have congratulated them on solving the mystery, all the joy drained out of the game for them.  They felt cheated.  They said there was no sense of success or challenge to a mystery if there was no real mystery to solve.  They never allowed him to run a mystery again while I was with them.

This isn't an issue of illusionism.  This is an issue of honesty.  If I can use tokens to have 2 + 2 = 5, then any enjoyment in the mathematics of the effort disappears.  What matters now is not how clever I am, but merely how many tokens I have managed to acquire.

That said (well, written), I don't disagree with you about the matter of the shared imagined space and its accompanying idea of the social contract.  I think a group that wants a puzzle which they can solve or fail to solve will seek more of a Framework of Interaction with a set continuity.  I think a group that wants a fastpaced-and-many-explosions action pic may well prefer a Framework of Independence in which they can insert energetic chase scenes whenever they want without worrying about plot or such.

Frankly my first reaction is "What does this have to do with Narrativism and Simulationism again?"

While narrativism and simulationism are part of it, really my thoughts deal with gaming in general.  That's why I gave examples of both frameworks in all three of the G/N/S agendae.

My own perception of what you are saying would, in my mind, preclude any form of Play because patterns added before hand or right now are still products of imagination and environment.

Take a look at my earlier example of the disenheartened mystery sleuths who lost all joy in the game when they found out that the solution did not pre-exist.  I have told this story at numerous gaming conventions across the country, and large numbers of people have told me they had similar experiences and felt similarly cheated.

The way I am reading it, almost suggests that you are saying is that Tolkien perceived that Pattern (or truth or whatever) that was Middle Earth and then wrote it all down.

Not at all.  To use your analogy, I would be stating that each new reader of The Lord of the Rings discovers the pre-existing pattern of what The Professor had written down -- if he had never written anything down, all they would find would be blank pages.

Imagine for a moment if The Professor had written only the Fellowship and Towers books and invited readers for their pleasure to write the final book in groups, round robin style.  (Tolkien the game master!)  Imagine further that they have his works as a thousand page MS doc.

(This is not so strange as it sounds.  There are groups of people who take pleasure in changing the endings to famous works, competing to see who can imitiate the actual author's style best.  Many game masters enjoy making such changes : I remember one game master who ran a Star Wars game in which Luke had succumbed to the Dark Side and joined with The Emperor and Vader.)

Individuals who want to discover the patterns in Lord of the Rings, the mythic themes and the characterizations, would read what he has and then delightedly write the final book trying to keep it aligned with what had gone before.  This is the Framework of Interaction group.

Individuals who want to take his work in a different pattern would keep going back through the MS doc of Lord of the Rings as they wrote, changing a bit here and a bit there, all acceptable according to their social contract.  One person might decide during her turn in the round robin that Aragorn should be half-orc, so she goes back into the MS doc of Strider's introduction in Fellowship and rewrites that part to make Strider a half-orc from the get-go.  Later on, another person in the round robin decides that Sam should have stayed at the Shire, so he goes back into the MS doc and erases Sam from every scene outside the Shire in both the Fellowship and the Towers book.  This is the Framework of Independence group, with the extreme examples given only for the sake of clarity.

Well, if everyone is happy in both groups, either approach works.  However, the approaches are still quite different, and a person from one group would be fairly frustrated working with the other group.

Does this help?  What do I need to work on or clarify further?

Doctor Xero

[Doctor Xero]

Hmmm, it occurs to me that I have been working off the assumption that players will be predominantly proactive players rather than reactive players (cf. John Kim http://www.darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/theory/plot/proactivity.html ).  I haven't had much experience with players who weren't predominantly proactive, so I had forgotten about the predominantly reactive type.

For a proactive player, a shared imagined space based in a Framework of Interaction with continuity feels and plays discernibly differently from a shared imagined space based in a Framework of Independence from continuity.

However, I'm not so certain that a reactive player would notice or really even care about the difference between whether a house the player's character encountered was pre-generated or spontaneously generated in the shared imagined space.

Does this differentiation between proactive and reactive players seem relevant?  If so, what new thoughts or questions does this evoke?

Doctor Xero

[M. J. Young]

I find problems with the approach that begins with stating the extremes and assuming a continuity between them.

One is that the extremes seldom if ever exist in reality, and so become straw men almost inherently. It makes discussion of the spectrum more challenging, because you have to recognize that the endpoints don't really exist, or at least are not represented.

Another is that individual biases always impact the perception and definition of the endpoints. One endpoint almost always appears more reasonable than the other, both in the way it's defined by the person proposing the spectrum and by the perceptions of those responding to it. In this case, the structured end of the spectrum has been placed somewhere shy of the extreme, while the flexible end seems to have been made into something inconceivable by the most flexible of gamers.

In any event, with a hypothetical spectrum the possibility that something can be described that is outside the proposed end points invalidates those as endpoints of the spectrum. That has to be recognized and handled.

Regarding mysteries and puzzles, you have a special case problem there. I certainly agree that a mystery in which there are specific clues pointing to a unique solution is an entirely different kind of play from a story in which players are going to create the solution from their character investigations and discoveries. I'm in the camp that believes the film Clue invalidated itself as a mystery genre piece by offering three different endings without changing any of the details leading to them. That recognizes "mystery" as a literary puzzle in which there must be one unique solution (I believe Dorothy Sayers maintained that as definitive). That's entirely different from a mysterious atmospheric piece such as a thriller in which who does it matters from a character perspective but not so much from an audience perspective. In writing the materials for the forthcoming Vorgo scenario in The Third Book of Worlds, I've created six possible solutions to the crime--but in each case the facts and events must play out slightly differently, such that only one of those solutions is possible when everything is known. The other type of "mystery" campaign, in which the referee invents the clues and the outcome based on player input, is certainly a valid way to play, but that it runs counter to expectations. Those who object to such games do so not because these cannot be a fun way to play, but rather because they were expecting something different.

The mystery and a number of other puzzle-type approaches to games find their appeal in the fact that there is one unknown unique solution. It's a gamist appeal, in the main--the players are challenged to prove that they can solve the puzzle. If in the midst of this you tell them that there is no puzzle, they realize that they've been wasting their time and energies attempting to get an answer to a question that doesn't exist. It would be entirely different if the referee made it clear up front that the players were not facing a challenge to solve but rather writing a story. It's a completely different sort of play.

--M. J. Young

[Alan]

Doc,

I too disagree that some rpg fact has to have been created by someone _before_ it is discovered by the players.  My objection comes from the point of view of the creator: the very act of creation is a discovery.  

Contrary to common myths about the creative act, ideas, whether in science, humanities, or art, do not emerge full grown from the swollen head of a god.  A new idea is the collision of several old ideas, either in one human mind, or in a conversation.  In a sense, we all carry around a huge archeology of ideas intrelated in ways we have not yet discovered.  The "aha!" is the discovery of relationship between the ideas in collision.  That discovery is the same discovery that players experience in role-play, whether the original idea is created by the GM then presented later, or whether the idea is conceived by group process.

In fact, I would go further - as others have mentioned- spontaneous group discovery (by creation) is more consistently meaningful for the participants than GM presented discovery.  This is for the very fact that the players have contributed the root source ideas, and shared the revelation moment together.  Just think about what players talk about in post game conversations: is the detailed setting, or the new interactions that were invented in the group process.  I think you'll find the latter dominates.

[clehrich]

Like M.J. and Emily, I cannot agree with your conclusions, in particular those regarding construction and independence.

One of (several) primary functions of myth and fantastical literature involves the discovery and then recognition of the primal Story pattern(s) which underlies all of that reality.  It is not the manufacture of Story but the recognition of Story and, with that Recognition, the empowerment within a person's world when Story becomes inflected through a person ; in other words, when the character has an empowering epiphany and, through the metaphor of the character, so does the reader or roleplayer.

That sense of discovery, recognition, and subsequent empowerment is possible only when there is an a prior pre-existing pattern to be found -- in the case of gaming, to be found within the campaign reality.

Yes, but as you are leaning on Campbell and through him Eliade and Jung, these patterns pre-exist in the mind -- as you say, "primal Story pattern."  These patterns must be there in any case; the dependence or independence of the player is irrelevant.

All the above leads to one possible conclusion : that the sense of discovery, the pattern recognition, and the personal empowerment which comes from those, all are impossible in those campaigns in which the gaming reality can be changed at any time by a player.

This depends on what you mean by "the gaming reality."  If you mean that such things cannot happen in a game in which anything can change at any time, that's probably true.  But the norm is quite different, even in the most open-ended play.  I (and more recently Jay/Silmenume) have done some analysis of this in terms of bricolage, in which invention and construction occurs constantly and quite freely, but in a manner normal to myth and, I suggest, to gaming.  The player is free to construct whatever he likes, but he must construct it out of what is already present in the game-world (and, if you buy such things, out of primal archetypes).  That the player may be very independent and able to do this freely changes nothing about the process.

Players can not discover a pattern if that pattern is one which they have just spontaneously cast onto the gaming reality.
First, they can't discover the pattern for the obvious reason that the pattern has no pre-existence to its manufacture -- it has not been there to find.
Second, they can't discover the pattern because, as something which has burst into spontaneous existence, it can not possibly have fashioned and structured any "reality" which pre-existed it.
Furthermore, this means that empowerment within the gaming reality becomes impossible.  Why?  Any person's empowerment which pre-dates a specific spontaneous pattern manufacture is now lessened because his or her empowerment could not have possibly incorporated the at-that-time-not-yet-in-existence pattern unless the player has precognitive powers in real life.  Worse, any empowerment which incorporates this spontaneous new pattern will become outdated the moment someone else imposes yet another new pattern.

In a cooperative campaign, surfing chaos, not discovery and not cooperative storytelling (both of which depend upon pre-existing patterns), becomes the norm for such a campaign.  Perhaps each player focuses on his or her own isolated fiefdom of gaming reality, or perhaps the players enjoy the instability.  Or perhaps they institute a voting council to edit spontaneous alterations to preserve some pattern after all.

Let's use an example here.  Suppose we play a game set in Tolkien's Middle-Earth during the Third Age.  Now I, as a player, can construct and invent anything I like, so long as I build it out of the structures handed to me by Tolkien's mythic construction.  For example, we don't know all that much about most of the Istarii (the wizards), but we know some basics.  So if I formulate a whole bunch of material, quite freely and without GM input, about Radagast's interactions with the Entwives, I only have to be sure that I do not violate what is already given.  Further, at a deeper level, the construction must be patterned in a fashion that fits the way Tolkien works.  But I can do this all completely openly and freely.  Far from constructing instability, I have helped to extend the sense of strength and cohesion of the world -- so that's what happened to the Entwives!

So it seems to me that, in roleplaying gaming, the sense of myth and metaphor and the sense of empowerment is only possible in those campaigns which do not allow player introduction of new patterns which supersede or retroactively rewrite the a priori patterns.

If you mean "supersede or retroactively rewrite" strongly, then yes, this is true, but it's also not the same as player freedom to construct patterns.  Not all patterns and information are pre-constructed, even in Tolkien.

And, of course, one can always construct anew out of the debris of other shattered materials.  Once myth has been constructed, it is part of the pattern system, and can be reformulated.  If it's a fixed object, it's become a work of literature, and is no longer myth.

Thus without considerable freedom to create, through the mythic process of bricolage, you don't have myth in the first place.

So my conclusion is that if you want myth and mythic meaning, strong limitation from the GM is the least desirable quality.

[Doctor Xero]

I find problems with the approach that begins with stating the extremes and assuming a continuity between them.

It is a quite common technique in science and scholarship.  Ideal gasses don't really exist, for example, but look at all that has been accomplished.  Perhaps you simply mislike deductive reasoning?

It's a completely different sort of play.

PRECISELY, M.J.!  My problem has  been with those who claim that the two are ultimately the same or that one sort of play is superior to the other.  I am striving to construct a theoretical tool by which that differentiation can be better taken into account.

I have seen this gap between players repeatedly over the years, in hundreds of players at gaming conventions or in the local scene.  I don't think we serve ourselves or anyone else by pretending they do not exist.

The "aha!" is the discovery of relationship between the ideas in collision.  That discovery is the same discovery that players experience in role-play, whether the original idea is created by the GM then presented later, or whether the idea is conceived by group process.

One of the problems certain type of scholars and scientists deal with is hearing people outside their fields telling them, "You just made that up!  You put that idea onto those facts!"  For example, in the current controversy over evolutionary mechanisms, a group of scientists will point to fossil records and more current evidence, point out other findings from chemistry and geology and physics, and state that this evidence indicates evolutionary changes.  A group of religious folk without any scientific training will then dispute all the evidence by simply stating, "You made that up!"  I recall reading one religious non-scientist who insisted that scientistis made it up when they stated a dinosaur skeleton indicated the evidence of dinosaurs -- the dinosaur skeleton was obviously a biblical dragon!

Alan, when an archaeologist goes on a dig, she will see a world of difference between finding a shard of ancient pottery and using some of the clay in the dig to craft her own pottery and then name it ancient.  She is not looking to create something spontaneously -- she is looking to find something.  The same goes for many gamers in such situations.

In fact, I would go further - as others have mentioned- spontaneous group discovery (by creation) is more consistently meaningful for the participants than GM presented discovery.

I have found the reverse in my years at gaming conventions and in local gaming.  Are you arguing that we should ignore those who prefer Frameworks of Interaction with the continuity, or that we should tell them that their preferred style is consistently less meaningful?  I am not comfortable with telling a large group that their playing style is meaningless or is less meaningful.

I also disagree with you -- I would put forth that the two approaches involve different kinds of meaningfulness.

Your comments remind me of one of my reasons for playing with these ideas.  Instead of having one group of gamers tell another group of gamers that their preference is less meaningful, I would prefer that one group of gamers recognize the other group is operating from a different framework of fidelity to continuity.

For the record, I have participated as player and game master both in games in which players wanted pre-set solutions to solve and in games in which players wanted space within the shared imagined space for inserting their own ideas, and a number of games in which there is a place for each.  However, something goes wrong if someone ignores continuity in a space framed for interaction with continuity, just as something goes wrong if someone clings to continuity in a space framed for independence from continuity.

Let's use an example here.  Suppose we play a game set in Tolkien's Middle-Earth during the Third Age.  Now I, as a player, can construct and invent anything I like, so long as I build it out of the structures handed to me by Tolkien's mythic construction.  For example, we don't know all that much about most of the Istarii (the wizards), but we know some basics.  So if I formulate a whole bunch of material, quite freely and without GM input, about Radagast's interactions with the Entwives, I only have to be sure that I do not violate what is already given.  Further, at a deeper level, the construction must be patterned in a fashion that fits the way Tolkien works.  But I can do this all completely openly and freely.  Far from constructing instability, I have helped to extend the sense of strength and cohesion of the world -- so that's what happened to the Entwives!

Actually, this example perfectly supports my contention!  What you have done involves a Framework of Interaction with continuity -- in this case, the continuity of Tolkien's mythic construction.  The fact that you would bother to make the effort not to violate what is already given involves a fidelity to continuity.  If you had decided to be independent from continuity, you would not have cared whether you violated what is already given.

I have witnessed many, many, many games over the decades in which players attempt to do just that at various levels of sophistication, from the player who always plays a ninja even in Victorian Age campaigns to the new player who chooses to insert the Bene Gesserit in a Star Wars campaign, a theoretically possible insertion, but never really considers the ways in which a galaxywide religious conspiracy forces the other players to alter their character conceptions and never thinks to consult with anyone else.  (This was almost the norm in Old Skool campaigns in the 1970s and 1980s, when continuity was not something which mattered to players as much as it does now).

On the other hand, imagine that you are in a Tolkien game, and you want to play a character who discovers a great secret about the origins of the Istari.  Your game master has read The Silmarillion but you have not, so while he knows the "official" Tolkien answer, you do not.  Through your character, you search and interview.   How much less rewarding does it become if your game master just turns to you and says, "Oh, hell, whatever secret you want, that's true.  Whatever."  If you as a player had wanted to insert a change, that would be great, but you wanted the excitement of the hunt, the exploration, the discovery!  Now that sense of discovery has been stolen from you.

Doctor Xero

[Doctor Xero]

M.J., Alan, Clerich, thank you for your thoughts.

However, I would like to read some thoughts about the ideas themselves rather than whether or not this is a subject worth having ideas about.

I've played in games in which people who want to solve mysteries and tease out from the game master realistic hidden dimensions of NPCs are playing next to people who want the game master to alter the reality of the campaign to fit whatever solution they want the mystery to have, and such players do not combine together well.  I am striving to introduce terminology, in this case the Framework of Interaction with continuity and the Framework of Independence from continuity, both to help us explain this conflict with the shared imagined space and to help us as game designers to take these differences into account.

I'm also curious about whether my theory is significantly altered by reactive players rather than proactive players.

Clerich, I hope you understand why my thoughts do not dispute bricolage but rather deal with a different axis of the creative/mythic process.  In case you've forgotten, such ideas are part of my Ph.D. program, but it always helps to be reminded of them -- thanks!  That I am already aware of  the communal aspects of discovery is, I hope, obvious from my signature at the bottom of my posts.

Doctor Xero

[Doctor Xero]

I found an article about narrativist gaming http://www.geocities.com/devil_bunnys/mindset.html which might work well as a further example of my theory.

Writing the back-story is where the Narrativist GM focuses his time and effort.  He creates all the major non-player characters in much the same way the players create their characters.  He makes sure they fit the Premise and that they have passions of their own.  Then, he develops a back-story explaining all the events that have come before the game actually begins.

The above would be an example of a game master preparing a campaign for players who prefer to operate primarily from within a framework of interaction with continuity.  (The same thing could occur with a group who gather to determine the back-story collectively before the first  scenario ever takes place.)  The game master provides a solid, pre-existing back-story (which embodies a solid, pre-existing premise) with which the players through their characters can interact.  Notice the emphasis upon back-story.  This means that players can safely create characters which incorporate parts of said back-story within their character's individualized back-stories.

Compare this with Donjon, in which such a back-story is irrelevant if not non-existent.  Donjon is an example of a game which operates predominantly from a framework of independence from continuity -- until rolls are made, no one knows whether a certain magic sword even exists!  Thus, players can not safely create characters which incorporate into their own individualized back-stories part of this collective back-story since there is no back-story set!  Of course, characters with back-stories is not the point of Donjon, a game which is made for players who are interested in experiencing a different framework from one grounded in a back-story.

Is the player more interested in being grounded within the world from the get-go (whether created primarily by a game master or as part of a group discussion prior to beginning the game)?  This player is interested in playing via a framework of interaction with the continuity.

Is the player more interested in continuing impromptu creation on the spot (whether a high degree of improvisation as in Donjon or a more modified degree as in Torg with its storycards)?  This player is interested in playing via a framework of independence from the continuity.

Doctor Xero

[clehrich]

I admit I'm confused, as I did think I was addressing your points rather than saying the question is not worth discussing.

Let me ask for clarification by way of a reference.

In this thread on mysteries, a couple posts down, I proposed a semiotics-based method for running mysteries.  In this, the GM knows only the basics, and nothing else: he knows who dunnit, and basically how, and has an initial scene-of-the-crime or the like established.  Everything else is generated quite freely through the inventiveness of the players.

So with that thread in mind, would you classify such mystery-solving as independent of interacting with continuity?  I genuinely do not know what your answer will be, and I think it will help clarify -- for me at least -- what's at stake in your proposal.

[Christopher Kubasik]

[deleted]