1/3rd baked idea about Situation and Sim

[Silmenume]

Hey contracycle,

IMO the terms "meaningful" and "relationship" trigger all sorts of associations with "thats deep, man". But this can in fact be pretty trivial "meanings" - such as don't eat the yellow snow where the huskies go.

I don't have any disagreements with your assessment.

Hence I think we can see exactly why play halts to handle the classification of an item or element - it is because the fault in the representation implies things for other aspects of the setting, or distorts or changes the meaning of the object in question, and impinges on any other objects with which it has a relationship.  Thats exactly why it has to be solved NOW, before play proceeds any further - the error threatens to turn what has been meaningful into gibberish, and prevents any continuation of meaningful play.

Again, I don't have any issues with what you are saying.  This happens occasionally in the game I play in.  What you are talking about is clarifying elements because they will have an impact on Situation and the meanings created.  From what I understand about Ron's point, and I may be wrong, is that he saying there is play where such clarifying is an end unto itself.  IOW the players engage in this fine tuning without any substantial interest in how such fine tuning impacts Situation and by extension the meanings created.  Again I may be wrong, but I am reading him as saying that such impactless play or impact indifferent play is a type of Sim.  My argument is that the claim lies at direct odds with the model which says Situation must be engaged, that is the players must make an effort to have an impact upon Situation, or its simply not roleplay.  If I am wrong then I have created a straw man argument, but I feel fairly certain that I am reading him correctly.

...play which focuses on the details that I'm talking about is what it's about. That not to do so is bad role-playing. That not to do so is simply and plainly lazy, in imaginative terms. Sloppy thinking, inferior imagination.

If the details are an end unto themselves and are not intended to impact and in fact do not impact Situation then they are just Color.  The problem is that play that focuses on Color to the exclusion of engaging or having an impact on Situation is outside the Model currently since Zilchplay has so far been rejected as a form of functional play.

Hey Mike,

To one perspective, the number of bullets in the gun is, in fact, situation. To another it's color. I think that's key.

The problem with this formulation is that Situation is not/cannot be an object or thing.  Situation is the dynamic, the relationship between Character and Setting (self and not-self).  So, yes, the number of bullets in a gun can have an effect on Situation, but are not Situation themselves.  You are correct in that the number of bullets in the gun can just be Color, but only if they have no bearing on Situation.  However, to look at the phrasing Ron provided, he appears to be talking about play where the players are really indifferent to the effects the number of bullets in the gun have on Situation as they are more interested in fine tuning the number of bullets in the gun as a satisfying end unto itself.  The players are said to be enjoying themselves and I have no reason to mistrust his claim.  However, as I understand the Gloss this is just Color and Color does not a CA make.

Ron,

I don't wish to mischaracterize you or your point of view, so let me know please if I am in error regarding your position.

[Caldis]

My apologies for the quick comment without much support, I'll try and elaborate a bit further here.  Part of this may seem off topic and should likely go into a different thread but I'll try and tie it back to the original topic.  If I'm unsuccessful feel free to split it.

That is, surely it's "creating meaningful interrelationships between meaningful elements"?

It seems to me that if the elements are meaningless, the constructed relationships are empty constructs.  If the relationships constructed out of meaningful elements are nevertheless meaningless, then we have accomplished nothing by our process.

Could somebody explain to me what's going on here?

I'll try Chris, to do so I'll go back to the statement in Jay's article that Artanis found a problem with.   "Sim is "about" the creation of meaningful interrelationships of its constituent parts (Character and Setting – Man vs himself in the former and Man vs mankind and Man vs nature in the latter) then Situation is the only place where that process can happen."
I find that problematic because what is an address of premise if not an "interrelationship between character and setting", what is victory to the gamist if not a meaningful interrelationship between his character and the setting.  I believe replacing Sim with Exploration in the statement makes it true, all roleplaying is about this and as has been pointed out situation is damn important in all three agendas.

So where does this leave Sim?  What's going on in Sim that Game and Narr are missing out on?  I'm going to make an analogy here that may seem demeaning to those invested in Sim but it's not, it's an example derived from watching human behaviour and I hope everyone can see how it relates.

Remember the Budweiser commercial from several years back that features a group of black guys who whenever they met or called each other on the phone would shout out WASSSSUPPP! What happened after those commercials aired? Everyone (or at least tons of guys my age or younger) would shout out WASSSSUPPP whenever they met.  Another example, a group of people at my work regularly play the card game asshole over lunch.  When someone is coming in late they shout out 'redeal' as they are coming up the stairs to the lunch room.  One day someone was engaged in two conversations at once and shouted out 'noodle' instead of redeal everyone had a chuckle and since then have been shouting out 'noodle' instead of redeal.   In both example's people are relating back to the source to get a sense of shared meaning.  I laughed when that guy said WASSSUPPP on tv, we laugh when we say it to each other, we're sharing meaning.

That is what is going on in Sim.  The participants are saying WASSSUPPP and expect a WASSSUPP right back at them, but for them Lord of the Rings or Star Trek or Generic Fantasy is WASSSUPP.  This is related to the "Ideal" that was discussed recently, play in sim is focused on emulating that Ideal to provide a sense of shared meaning among the participants.  Situation in Sim is important in that it must provide opportunity for the players to share meaning and it may occur in the situation but the meanings may also come in system, colour, definitely setting, and character.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

I'm still with Caldis.

Jay, here is something to consider. Mike, Caldis, and I understand what you are saying. However, I at least consider it a bit self-limited on your part. No amount of further illumination, clarification, explanation, etc, by you is going to accomplish anything. This is because we get it - we understand what you mean. We merely disagree, due to our very wide experiences of role-playing and our acknowledgment that we don't want to write off what appears, in plain observational terms, to be a fine example of "Gaming on Purpose."

"That's just Color." It's Color to you. But we're not talking about you in this forum. We're talking about the array of Purposes (Agendas, modes, whatever).

If past experience is to be my guide, I anticipate that you'll try to explain yourself at least a couple of more times, that interest in your posts about this will slack off as we all discover that you are committed to repeating your explanation, and perhaps you'll switch over to private messages or private brooding, eventually. And then later we get some Site Discussion post about how the paradigm is being upheld at the expense of new ideas, or something like that.

Well, enough. Consider that I get it. Caldis gets it. Mike gets it. And that your conclusion would be reasonable if this were "the world according to Jay." But it's not. We do see how you see it. Explaining it again, or showing how what someone else says can be retooled into your worldview, is not productive.

I wonder if this is how William Colby felt when he was trying to talk to James Jesus Angleton.

Best,
Ron

[Caldis]

Ron's point above came across a bit harsh but I think it's pretty close to the mark.  I hope no one reads it as an attempt to stifle debate but rather as an attempt to move the debate forward if possible,  a debate that right now has some problems.  The biggest problems I see are synedoche, "my form of sim is the true form of sim", and an overeliance on theory.

On synedoche I'll just reiterate what Ron said, in my experience of the long running sim game I'm involved with the tells that people were gelling with what happened in game came as much from character and setting as it did from situation.

The overeliance on theory is an even bigger problem I believe.  What is happening is we are getting theory built on theory built on top of even more theory.  We're building an ivory tower of theory without checking to see if the foundations are solid, if that theory matches with what is happening in the real world.    I know I for one would never have understood any of GNS or the big model without the examples taken from different game texts in the essays, the application of it towards games in the review section, and seeing it in action in posts on Actual play and in the Independant game forums.   For anyone having trouble with GNS I really recommend the review section as a second step, seeing what aspects of games Ron relates to G, N or S is a real eye opener, plus as an added bonus you get to learn about some really cool games;)


I think Ron and others put a lot of time and effort into putting the glossary and the essays together.  I think everyone who posts here should respect that effort and if they feel there is something lacking in the definition of an agenda like Simulationism they need to make a similar effort to find proof for their assumption.  Find game texts that show a designers intentions matching what you are talking about, instances of play where we can see it in action, and show us how it relates specifically to play in this agenda and not to roleplaying in general.

[clehrich]

Hang on, I think I just figured out what Jay is saying.  Jay, follow me step by step and correct me if I go astray.

1. Situation is "the 'central node' linking Character and Setting" (Glossary)

2. Functional roleplay requires CA-meaningful effective activity

3. "One of the key 'tells' of a particular sort of Sim play is to be willing to drop investment in the current imagined situation for a while and really nail down a few details." (Ron, 2d post of this thread)

4. The type of behavior described in #3 here is not invested in Situation

5. If it is not invested in Situation, it is not CA-meaningful activity

6. If it is not CA-meaningful, it cannot be used to define CA

7. If it is not CA-meaningful, it cannot be functional roleplay

8. Therefore one of 1-3 cannot be true

And yet, in the #3 circumstance, "All other play-activity gets suspended. The imagined characters hang in the air, their grimaces frozen, until the details get nailed down. The participants who are invested in this aspect of the game are enjoying themselves" (Ron, same post).

This is because, according again to Ron, "everyone is obsessive about the rules which do support his or her CA (more accurately, that particular spin of his or her CA)."

Now continuing on beyond what Jay's saying:

That means

9. Obsessive focus on rules that support CA-meaningful activity is itself a kind of CA-meaningful activity

10. Suggesting that Situation is not as central as has sometimes been thought, at least for Sim

Leaving us with the following possibilities:

A. Situation and engagement with it is not the defining focus or instance of Sim play, or quite possibly of any play.

B. Functional roleplay does not require CA-meaningful activity.

C. The activity described by Ron as a key "tell" is not a Sim activity.

My sense is that Jay thinks solution A is incorrect:

If the players are "dropping investment" in the current imagined Situation to pursue these details that to me is the equivalent of Nar players "dropping investment" in the current imagined Situation to "fiddle" with a non-relevant Premise question (non-relevant meaning a Premise question that is not related to play in any significant way – IOW one that is "off topic"). I would have to wonder what such players were really up [to]. Premise must be addressed via Situation for play to have transpired. Same with Sim. Fiddling with the pieces of Setting is not the Sim game process of Bricolage. Haggling over mechanics misses the "point" of play as dealing with Situation is the "point" of play. Isn't haggling over mechanics really a Social Contract level issue?

In other words, there is high-level negotiation within Social Contract, which cannot be used to examine or define CA, and there is more focused activity which is engaged with Situation whenever CA-meaningful activity occurs.  By this formulation, extra-Situational nailing-down of precise details is not CA-meaningful activity and hence cannot be called Sim behavior, ever.

It does not look to me as though anyone is proposing possibility B, that functional roleplay can happen without CA-meaningful activity.

Ron and many others have been clear about C, so I won't detail it.

-------
Assuming I have all this more or less correct, Jay is dead right about one thing: this is not a matter of examining actual play, or of talking about the kind of Sim he's used to, or anything like that.  It is a logical problem.  Either there must be a logical failure in the numerical chain, or one of the three solutions I came up with must be true, or there must be another solution to resolve the problem.

My sense is that the strengths lie here:

A. Making the comparison to Narrativism, engagement with Premise is generally understood to be localized in Situation.  If the players break from this to do something else, of whatever kind, then what they are doing during that break is not Narrativism.  It may be useful or fun or interesting, but it isn't Narrativism.  Therefore to say that such activity when performed by Sim players is Simulationism implies that there is something very much askew about how we understand Sim or Situation.

C. The activity described does appear empirically and anecdotally to be very common in gaming groups thought of as Simulationist.  Therefore however elegant the theory may be or become, it must take this factor into account, and no amount of logic should be used to make it go away.

My conclusion, tentatively, is that you're all wrong.  :-)

vs. A: Situation is not the sole locus of important and defining play.  When Narrativists break from addressing Premise to do something else, they are still doing Narrativism.  That does, yes, mean some revision of how we understand CA and its relevance to play and exploration and so on.

The issue is really methodological.  When attempting to diagnose CA, or classify play, we look to Situation as the prime location, because it is that part of play in which CA-meaningful activity most commonly occurs and does so most clearly and overtly.  But the inverse does not hold: if we are not looking at Situation, we can't know that we are not looking at CA-meaningful activity.  Such activity may occur in any part of play whatever, from Social Contract on down, though it may be difficult to observe.

Proposition: Situation --> CA activity
Inverse: not Situation --> not CA activity (false)
Converse: CA activity <-- Situation (false)
Contrapositive: not CA activity <-- not Situation (true)
Although the Proposition itself is only "very commonly" so the "true" at the end is weak.  I think I've got Inverse and Converse straight; I always confuse them[/list:u]vs. C: Simulationism is relatively poorly examined in terms of Actual Play, here at the Forge, and it is already widely accepted that Sim has a very broad range of variations, few if any of which have been clearly classified.  The "tell" we think of as somehow typically Sim may be so, but I think this is not clearly known.  In addition, I have not seen a lot of really careful examination of Nar and Gam games performed by exterior observers.  I rather wonder whether quite a bit of this "telling" activity might go on in such games, but be forgotten or set aside by such players as "not really part of the game."  That is then a difference of perception, construction, and rhetoric, not one of actual activity.

Even if it is true that such activity goes on consistently more commonly in Sim games, perhaps of a certain type, that does not mean it is correctly described here.  For example, it could be that such activity

is a form of Situational engagement, albeit one not usual in Nar play.  This strikes me as very plausible: just as some Sim players find the common (but not CA-defining) use of meta-play in Nar uncomfortable or problematic, what we may well have here is exactly the same thing seen backwards, i.e. this is a kind of Sim-common meta-play that Nar players find problematic or uncomfortable.  In Ron's case, he may find it so, but is fair-minded enough to say that it seems to work for them; because of his predilections, however, he reads this as not Situationally engaged, because it would not be seen so in Nar games.  That is, if Sim players may see Nar-style meta-play as "cheating," we may have an instance here of Nar players seeing Sim-style meta-play as not invested.

[Marco]

4. The type of behavior described in #3 here is not invested in Situation

There are a lot of things I'm not sure of in this thread, however: I have seen players who were interested in winning a fight suspend play and have a lenghty nailing down of SIS, the exact rulings on how spells they are about to use work, ranges, attitudes and aspects of NPC's ("how are the king's guard dressed") and so on.

This did "hang play"--but it was clearly related to situational examination of tactical operations. I would also say it went down to "minutiae" since the GM wasn't going to, for example, give away the king's gard's stats--but they could, perhaps, be inferred by various clues in the SIS (how well used their swords looked).

It's my observation that any time a player feels he or she is out of step with SIS they're going to want to stop and nail it down. To me this seems very situation-based.

However, as I said, there's a lot going on here I don't really grok yet so I'm not sure if I'm even reading that statement relevantly.

-Marco

[Caldis]

My conclusion, tentatively, is that you're all wrong.  :-)

vs. A: Situation is not the sole locus of important and defining play.  When Narrativists break from addressing Premise to do something else, they are still doing Narrativism.  That does, yes, mean some revision of how we understand CA and its relevance to play and exploration and so on.

Chris I dont see how your conclusion is anything controversial.  I dont think addressing premise has to be a constant activity, much of play can be setting up the situation, providing color and background and adding detail.  I'm sorry I cant remember the term Ron uses, maybe an "instance of play", Ralph used something with a similar meaning called it a "cycle of conflict" through that period players are looking to address premise, they arent doing it constantly throughout play.  I dont see the need for revising anything.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Chris, the logical flaw is in #4. The players are invested in Situation. They simply are finding aspects of the Situation interesting which (for instance) Jay does not find interesting.

Best,
Ron

[clehrich]

Chris, the logical flaw is in #4. The players are invested in Situation. They simply are finding aspects of the Situation interesting which (for instance) Jay does not find interesting.

But Ron, that requires a clearer formulation from you.

One of the key "tells" of a particular sort of Sim play is to be willing to drop investment in the current imagined situation for a while and really nail down a few details.

Jay is, I think, isolating that.  He may be wrong to do so, but you have indeed said simultaneously that the players are invested in the situation and have dropped investment in the situation.

What Marco is proposing, which is relatively similar to my comments vs. Jay's proposal, is that what's described here is not dropping investment.  It is thus a different form of investment, which operates at a meta-level.  Presumably this is a Technique common (though not exclusive) to Sim play in many (though not all) of its forms.

Another way to read it, which apparently you don't like, is to suggest that it is investment, but not in Situation.  You're in agreement with Jay on that one, apparently: his initial point was that investment in Situation is the crux.

Is this controversial?  I don't know.  But in response to Caldis's point:

I dont think addressing premise has to be a constant activity, much of play can be setting up the situation, providing color and background and adding detail. I'm sorry I cant remember the term Ron uses, maybe an "instance of play", Ralph used something with a similar meaning called it a "cycle of conflict" through that period players are looking to address premise, they arent doing it constantly throughout play.

Oh, unquestionably.  CA-meaningful activity does not need to go on continuously.  But if this isn't CA-meaningful activity, how can it be a "key tell" of Sim?  More to the point, you are saying that by your reading, this type of behavior is not investment in situation.  It puts such investment temporarily on hold, then returns to it at a later point.  

Which Ron has now flatly disagreed with.

I do think there is some genuine disagreement here, don't you?

[ffilz]

Hmm, does this thread "Mechanics, Contribution, and Doug the Dice Guy" have something to contribute to this discussion. I am most definitely one of those GMs who will push pause while I go frantically dig through my source material for some needed detail. If you ask people who have played games with me about my play, you will probably here about this. This is closely tied to my liking detailed settings. So what I'm thinking is happening is that the detailed setting Sim guy considers the source material part of the SIS, and thus, just like we would all expect to pause to clear up a misunderstanding in SIS that was created entirely verbally through play, this kind of Sim guy expects to pause the game to clear up a misunderstanding because the source material that is part of the SIS is misunderstood. I note also that Ron grants that to some Sim folks reading the source material may be play. Aha! So when I read the source material outside of a game session, I am playing, and entering that material into the SIS, but also, if I skip a chapter, I still provisionally enter it into the SIS, so when suddenly that provisional material is needed, I need to go off an read it so that it can properly be entered into the SIS.

I'm also thinking that some of these discussions are so hard because it's hard for us to imagine how something that totally doesn't address our CA could possibly be fun. Now obviously if we are able to step back from the game, and accept people's own feelings about their play, we can accept that they might find something fun which we don't find fun.

Frank

[Silmenume]

Hey Ron,

They simply are finding aspects of the Situation interesting which (for instance) Jay does not find interesting.

Underlining added

Bullshit!  I NEVER NEVER claimed or based my arguments on my personal "interest."  This has to stop right here and now.  I do not, nor have I ever made a "value judgment" about styles of play nor have I ever prescribed how people "should" play.  I have and continue to speak only about the nature of the MODEL.  If I make an argument that something lies "outside the model" that only touches upon one topic - I am discussing the Model.  That means I am not prescribing a style of play nor am I discussing the value of certain styles of play nor am I making judgments about said players. Are we clear on that now?  Can this issue be put to final rest?  How many times do I have to make this disclaimer?  Sheesh!

Hey Chris,

Hang on, I think I just figured out what Jay is saying.  Jay, follow me step by step and correct me if I go astray.

You summary or analysis of my points is spot on.

My conclusion, tentatively, is that you're all wrong. :-)

Poo!  I hate when that happens!

Even if it is true that such activity goes on consistently more commonly in Sim games, perhaps of a certain type, that does not mean it is correctly described here. For example, it could be that such activity is a form of Situational engagement, albeit one not usual in Nar play. This strikes me as very plausible: just as some Sim players find the common (but not CA-defining) use of meta-play in Nar uncomfortable or problematic, what we may well have here is exactly the same thing seen backwards, i.e. this is a kind of Sim-common meta-play that Nar players find problematic or uncomfortable. In Ron's case, he may find it so, but is fair-minded enough to say that it seems to work for them; because of his predilections, however, he reads this as not Situationally engaged, because it would not be seen so in Nar games. That is, if Sim players may see Nar-style meta-play as "cheating," we may have an instance here of Nar players seeing Sim-style meta-play as not invested.

I stand guilty of never considering the possibility that Ron may have misunderstood the process and thus may have misdiagnosed such play as non-invested.  I am not saying that is indeed the case, he knows his experiences better than I, I just took his assessments on face value as accurate without further consideration.

Regarding that kind of play as a kind of Sim meta-play, I fully agree. On the first page of this thread I alluded to this when I said –

This "nailing down or haggling over minutia/details" is an activity in support of Bricolage, but not the Bricolage process itself and hence not definitional of Sim.

When I used the phrase "in support of Bricolage" I assumed that the players were invested in the process (Bricolage) thus necessitating an investment in Situation.  Thus, if players were nailing down or haggling over minutia/details I would say they were doing so with an eye towards (still invested in) having an Impact on Situation.  IOW such activities during a game were not an end unto themselves but an activity in support of the core defining Sim game process.

Chris, the logical flaw is in #4. The players are invested in Situation. They simply are finding aspects of the Situation interesting which (for instance) Jay does not find interesting.

But Ron, that requires a clearer formulation from you.

One of the key "tells" of a particular sort of Sim play is to be willing to drop investment in the current imagined situation for a while and really nail down a few details.

Jay is, I think, isolating that.  He may be wrong to do so, but you have indeed said simultaneously that the players are invested in the situation and have dropped investment in the situation.

That is exactly what I have been going on about!  This "contradiction" also exists in the Sim essay and this I have been hammering on for weeks!

What Marco is proposing, which is relatively similar to my comments vs. Jay's proposal, is that what's described here is not dropping investment.  It is thus a different form of investment, which operates at a meta-level.  Presumably this is a Technique common (though not exclusive) to Sim play in many (though not all) of its forms.

I addressed this above, but for clarity's sake I agree that such activity can and is frequently is support of CA – if it is done with an eye towards having an impact on Situation.  If it is truly done as a meta-Situation activity, that is without any interest on the Impact it has on the Situation, then it cannot be indicative of any CA.  It is pure Color, by definition.  I wish to make this VERY clear – I am not saying Color is "valueless" to play, rather I am saying Color is "valueless" in the diagnosing or defining a CA.

Another way to read it, which apparently you don't like, is to suggest that it is investment, but not in Situation. You're in agreement with Jay on that one, apparently: his initial point was that investment in Situation is the crux.

Which is still the central tenet of my argument.

But in response to Caldis's point:

I dont think addressing premise has to be a constant activity, much of play can be setting up the situation, providing color and background and adding detail. I'm sorry I cant remember the term Ron uses, maybe an "instance of play", Ralph used something with a similar meaning called it a "cycle of conflict" through that period players are looking to address premise, they arent doing it constantly throughout play.

Oh, unquestionably.  CA-meaningful activity does not need to go on continuously.  But if this isn't CA-meaningful activity, how can it be a "key tell" of Sim? ...

I too fully agree that CA meaningful activity does not need to go on continuously.  I said so in my second post on this thread.  However, such activity that isn't CA-meaningful cannot be a  "key tell" of Sim is again something that I have been hammering at for weeks.  If the "nailing of details" doesn't effect or have an Impact on Situation then they cannot be "tells" - for any CA.  That such activity is not CA-meaningful does not mean that I am saying such play is pointless or valueless, rather I am saying that using such meta-Situational "nailing of detail" Color play for diagnostic or definitional purposes is pointless and valueless.

What I would like is a clarification on whether engaging Situation does or does not define the activity called Roleplay.  If engaging Situation is required for the activity to be called Roleplay - that means Situation must be engaged for a player to be expressing CA, including Sim.  That means a game which focuses on Color as the reason to play, to the exlusion of having an Impact on Situation, is not a form of Sim play since we have already agreed that such play is not even considered roleplay in the first place.

So, what is it?  Is engaging Situation neccessary for roleplay or not - and thus Sim by extension?

[Caldis]

I think all the haggling here is just an arguement over the meaning of investment.  I'll follow my own advice and turn to actual play to clear up what I mean.

Standard proceedure for the sim campaign I'm in is for the Gm to come up with a mission for an individual member or for the group as a whole usually introduced through one a contact for one of the characters.  What will happen next is usually a team meeting, and that meeting will always happen in a bath house.  The reason it happens in a bath house is because one of the characters is a clean freak, he has a gurps quirk.  Every chance he gets we meet in a bathhouse or he's buying a magical bathtub.  These events are taking place within the situation but they are not invested in resolving the situation yet they are definitely tells of investment in Sim, they are clearly what the player is getting from the game and what the group is recognizing from him.

[Sean]

I'm with Ron and Caldis, and I find this thread a little unfortunate as a whole. Though I do want to thank Chris Lehrich for going through and breaking the whole thing down carefully - I wanted to do that earlier but I was too lazy, and I think it does make everything clear.

Loosely, I think the way I'd prefer to talk about it is that both the heavily immersed in actor-stance player and the exploration of setting that can go on 'around' that it comes out of being 'invested' in the situation in the broad sense. They're both forms of investment, and can serve any CA as techniques (Narrativist examples might be interesting for another thread).

The second one though obviously is not the 'direct' form of 'investment' that comes around when a player deeply immersed and in actor stance finds an 'identification' between his own 'desires' and the desires of his in-game avatar. But both this and the other can come out of a broad 'investment' in situation.

This all seems really obvious to me, so when I read threads like this it's hard for me to shake the suspicion that people are picking on Ron's words, the 'graduate student game' of scoring points on verbal contradictions. (This ceases to be a graduate student game when the contradictions touch deeper aspects of the theory: the difference is obvious to those who understand the theory, and not obvious to graduate students.) Let me immediately follow that up by saying I DON'T THINK THAT'S HAPPENING IN THIS PARTICULAR THREAD - Jay and everyone else on both sides here strike me as basically earnest and sincere. I have seen this happen in other threads on the Forge, though, and it's a common danger in theoretical discussions that get past first base.

That said, I don't really think much has happened in this thread - once you get past the pun on 'investment' here, and parallel it with Jay's insistence earlier on giving 'engagement with Situation' his particular immersionist twist, there's not much left but the verbal dispute.

[Marco]

Loosely, I think the way I'd prefer to talk about it is that both the heavily immersed in actor-stance player and the exploration of setting that can go on 'around' that it comes out of being 'invested' in the situation in the broad sense. They're both forms of investment, and can serve any CA as techniques (Narrativist examples might be interesting for another thread).

The second one though obviously is not the 'direct' form of 'investment' that comes around when a player deeply immersed and in actor stance finds an 'identification' between his own 'desires' and the desires of his in-game avatar. But both this and the other can come out of a broad 'investment' in situation.

If I understand this correctly then we have two kinds of involvement:

Type-A [Sim]: The player is interested/intellectuall engaged/experiencing an appreciation of craftsmanship in the co-creation or experience of the game (i.e. how well it adheres to genre).

Type-B [Nar]: The player is feeling an emotional relationship to the imaginary events of the situation as though, in some way, they were real. This is the same sort of connection that leads people to cry at sad movies (i.e. they do not believe the movie is real but are engaged with it on an emotional (sad) level). I've called this "empathic emotions." At any rate, the player is affected by the human-experience elements in the game.

So if we have (B) then it's said to be Nar. If we have (A) and only (A) then it's Sim.

Would you say that's correct?

-Marco

[Sean]

I'm not sure, Marco.

It seems to me that taking actor stance is a technique. So it can serve any CA. Likewise, nailing down aspects of situation, setting, color, whatever (which I think is clearly part of play) is an activity, which a variety of techiniques can address, and can be important within any CA.

So then. There are uses of actor stance and heavy immersion actor stance and the various techniques for nailing stuff down about the SiS that facilitate Sim play, and those that facilitate Nar play. So even drawing the brush very broadly, there are four possibilities here, not just two (marry each family of techniques to each CA). I think that there's an overall disconnect in the discussion which is brought on by a particular, in this case somewhat unhelpful emphasis on a certain way of being invested in Situation (the one that corresponds to actor stance and immersion) and a false belief that the director stance or even real world dialogue modes of nailing down elements of Exploration is not play. (Indeed, isn't there a game called Universalis that's as much about this part of play as about anything else)? Which is why I'm a little down on the thread as a whole, though as long as clarity is reached at the end it has some value.

So anyway your type A and type B read to me as fairly good descriptions of two different ways you could use actor stance/immersive technique to meet a Sim or Nar CA respectively. But there's a second distinction in this thread, between play that addresses Situation through 'being in character', actor stance, and these other sorts of techniques, and play that addresses Situation by considering just how photon torpedoes work, that is relatively unconnected to this one, and which I was also trying to address.