Classifying Techniques

[LordSmerf]

I'm working on an article in which I try to lay out some of the major role playing techniques that have been identified here and elsewhere.  My first major task is to classify the things.  I thought this would be easy, and for some of these techniques it is, but I'm having a problem...  Here's what I have:

Authority Distribution Techniques
-Scene framing
-Narration rights
-Director Stance
-Hacking

Front-loading Techniques
-Kickers
-Relationship Maps
-Dogs in the Vinyard town creation
-Character creation

This other category (the problem)
-Bangs

What exactly do Bangs do?  They don't exactly front-load a situation.  Yes, they are generally identified in advance, but they may or may not be used...  They're not really about Authority either...

So, what I'm looking for here is some analysis.  It is possible that the problem I'm having is indicative that I do not fully understand Bangs.  What kind of technique is a Bang?  Is it its own thing?  Is there any reason not to try to classify techniques?

Thomas

[Marco]

I think that the technique discussion is an immensely important one. Here is what I think about Bangs.

I think that bangs represent a sort of 'contractual agreement' with the players not to force an outcome. I believe that there are several such high-level agreements that may or may not co-exist during play.

For example:

'Virtuality Contract' -- The GM will not use dramatic techniques (weird coincidences, perfect timing, symbolism and foreshadowing, etc.) in the conduct of the game (although they will front-load Situation to be interesting). The GM will have some limitations on what 'can be done to keep the game interesting' (for example, time could be skipped but the GM can't simply arrange a surprise breakthrough for the purposes of keeping the game moving).

'Dramatic Contract' -- The GM will emphasis dramatic techniques in the conduct of the game. The GM will do whatever is allowed to keep the game interesting (unless barred by another agreement)

'Objective Reality Contract' -- The GM pledges to keep things behind the scenes "as objective as he or she can." That means is something *is* determined, the GM won't just 'un-determine it' during the game.

'Subjective Reality Contract' -- The GM is allowed to ret-con things behind the scenes however he or she wants (so long as it all makes sense in the end).

etc. (these examples are off the top of my head and could probably be expressed better).

I think a Bang is sort of subset of that. The Bang is situation in which the 'end of the scene' (or 'solution' or whatever) is expressly not planned by the GM.

The converse would be a ... [insert word] where the solution is pre-planned by the GM and failure to guess it will result in either being given the solution or some consequence (or whatever).

-Marco

[TonyLB]

Bangs are interesting because they are a compromise between two easier (but often dysfunctional) extremes.

Extreme #1:  The GM throws conflicts at the PCs, to keep the pacing strong.  These conflicts have no chance to derail the plot, so they offer no player freedom.

Extreme #2:  The GM never forces conflicts upon the PCs, but waits purely for them to invent some, and never forces answers.  The players have freedom, but the technique offers no control over pacing.


Bangs are, as I said, in the middle.  If you are, by nature, a story-imposing GM then you're going to look at them and say "These are about giving the players freedom".  If you are a slack-pace freedom-junkie (like myself) then you're going to look at them and say "These are about pushing the pace of the game".

[LordSmerf]

Interesting points, but I'm not sure that they are really addressing my primary concern.  In this specific discussion I'm looking for ways to classify Bangs, particularly in relation to the Techniques presented in my orignal post.  The idea that a Bang is a subset of Social Contract does not help here.

For example, I could reformulate this:

I think that bangs represent a sort of 'contractual agreement' with the players not to force an outcome.

to be about Kickers by saying: "Kickers represent a sort of contractual agreement with the players to address a specific situation in play."

There is no real distinction.  Further, I'm not really sure that your statement is limited to Bangs at all, it could just as easily apply to Kickers, or the initial situation provided by DitV town generation.

So, while I believe you have made some interesting observations here, and accurate ones at that, I don't think they actually address the question I'm presenting...

EDIT: Crossposted with Tony.

Thomas

[Marco]

Interesting points, but I'm not sure that they are really addressing my primary concern.  In this specific discussion I'm looking for ways to classify Bangs, particularly in relation to the Techniques presented in my orignal post.  The idea that a Bang is a subset of Social Contract does not help here.

Thomas

Understood--I suggest that you maybe consider expanding your two categories since I think there are a number of techniques that might not fit into those two in an ideal fashion.

I think Tony's observation is excellent: Bangs apply during play to the pacing of the game. Maybe you could add a new category like "Pacing Techniques."

-Marco

[LordSmerf]

That's exactly what I'm looking for.  More categories.  I know that there must be more techniques that don't fit in the two categories that I've presented, Bangs was just all I could come up with off the top of my head.

"Pacing Techniques" is an interesting term, but I think that Bangs are about more than pacing.  The problem is: I'm not sure exactly what they are about, so I'm not really able to assign a category to them.

So, can anyone shed any light on what Bangs are and how to categorize them?  I realize that my response of, "I'm not quite sure what I'm looking for, but that's not it" probably isn't very helpful, but at the moment it's all I've got.

Thomas

[TonyLB]

Bangs are a technique to empower the GM to control the pacing of story elements generated by the other players.

[Bankuei]

Hi Thomas,

Techniques are methods used by a group to decide what happens in SIS, so the key features that differentiate them are "Who?" gets to determine what happens, "How?" do they get to do it, and over "What?".

That said, like a Venn Diagram, some techniques will share some features with others, and be completely outside the loop of even others.  In theory, we could list a great deal of features, and what techniques go under each of them, and many of these feature lists would have overlapping techniques...

For example:

Conflict Generation
-Kickers
-Bangs
-Dogs in the Vineyard town creation
-Illusionist preplanned scenarios
-Random encounter tables

Conflict Resolution
-Narration Rights
-Director Stance
-Strict Fortune based Conflict resolution(no fudging)
-Strict Fortune based Task resolution + Authority over conflict resolution(that is, no fudging on task rolls, but GM determines how many Task rolls are necessary to finish the conflict...)
-Fortune based resolution with veto rights(GM may fudge)

etc.

All that said, Bangs may not fit on your lists, but on many other types of lists, they would.  It's rather like categorising vegetables, you could measure them by size, weight, color, climate grown, nutritional value, etc, etc.  Aside from the fact that they are all vegetables(Techniques), many aspects can be measured, and many will not fall into 2 convenient categories.

It may be useful for folks to categorise these lists for use by designers or play, but I think it would require considerable time and effort.

Chris

[LordSmerf]

The fact that at least two people misread me seems to indicate that I communicated poorly.  I am not trying to fit everything in these two categories.  I am very specifically seeking categories to put the things that don't fit in these categories in.  I already feel that Bangs don't fit in either Autority Distribution of Front-laoding, therefore the question is: What category do they fit in?  Explain the category they go in, and possibly some other techniques that go there.  The two categories I presented were for reference in a "This is what I have so far" kind of way.

The purpose of the piece that I'm working on is to seperate some Techniques into categories useful for Actual Play.  "You use these sorts of things to set up the game, you use these other sorts of things when you're deciding what happens in the game, you use these other sorts of things to..."

That said, Chris, I will be considering your points regarding Who, How, and About What...

Thomas

[M. J. Young]

Thomas, perhaps the problem is that Authority Distribution Techniques and Frontloading Techniques are not the same kind of categories.

Somewhere someone created a classification system for animals in which no two of the sixteen or so categories measured the same kinds of things. I can't find it, nor can I at the moment recall it. However, using the vegetables example above, you might be looking at something like

[*]Vegetables that grow underground.[*]Vegetables that contain Carotene.[*]Vegetables that weigh more than one pound each.[*]Vegetables that are not green.[/list:u]
The question I would ask, really, is what do Authority Distribution Techniques and Frontloading Techniques have to do with each other that makes them the same kind of categories? For example, Stance could be classified as

[*]An authority distribution technique;[*]A narration rights control technique;[*]A character development technique;[*]A pacing technique;[*]A plot development technique.[/list:u]
Until you have a considerably better idea what you are categorizing about techniques (better than merely "they do this") you can't really begin to guess what other categories might exist.

I hope this helps.

--M. J. Young

[LordSmerf]

M.J.

Thanks for calling me on this one.  I had sort of been poking around the edges of this, and a couple of days of thought have highlighted exactly what the problem is.

Frontloading is an idea that I only recently stumbled on to, and it's something that I think is very important in the way RPGs are Actually Played.  So that category stays in, I think I chose Authority Distribution as a kind of catch-all category since basically all techniques can be classified as such (well, most of them), but then I ran into this problem with Bangs...  I'm trying to rework my conceptual groupings so that I can highlight the differences between Frontloading and Other Stuff.

Suggestions in this regard are greatly appreciated.  Thank you to everyone who has so far participated in this discussion, it's helped me clarify my thoughts.

Thomas