The relationship between character, sheet, and play

[Jason Newquist]

You are absolutely correct... and irrelevant to my point.

The note on the character sheet may never be shared OVERTLY... but since its implications are important; therefore, something can be important to play without being a part of the SIS.

SIS isn't everything.

Hmm.

Ok, followup question: after the game is over, do you possitively assert that your guy really was a demon in the game, or that you were just playing him that way?  Or does it not matter?

-Jason

[Vaxalon]

I can, or not...

If the game is *OVER* then in the post-game discussion I might talk about why my character was acting the way he was.

[Jason Newquist]

Right, so there are things (that could very well go on a character sheet) which influence what players do in the game, but aren't assertions about SIS contents at all.  They can't be, because they're statements in isolation, yeah?

I got confused because your example seemed to suggest that you were claiming that your guy was a demon (which was never brought into play), rather than having implied "Play Him This Way!" brackets around it.

-Jason

[Vaxalon]

Right, so there are things ... which influence what players do in the game, but aren't assertions about SIS contents at all....

Not at all.

The character is a part of the SIS, but there is an aspect of him which is not.  

This applies to many, many things in the SIS.  They are always better understood by their owners than they are by the others in the group, and as such are incompletely part of the SIS.

[contracycle]

I think thats fair enough, if you have the rights to that sort of creation in the SIS.  More common, I think, is the case where the character has a secret that is shared with the GM; in the ciurcumstance it might be thought of in the same light as all the other stuff that is SIS-relevant but ont currently on display.

[Jason Newquist]

I apologize if I'm being obtuse, and I thank you for your patience.   I am finding this, my first extended Forge dialogue, very useful!  

Let me get back to the topic which spun us off to see if I can re-trace my thoughts. Earlier:

I jot down little notes about who the character is, whether the system touches on that aspect or not. I consider those ad-hoc notes to be just as much a part of the character sheet as his Strength score.

Ok, here's the distinction I would draw:  There's your character, and your vision of your character.  Your character is created, and then explored and revealed in play.  Your vision of the character is everything else: all the bits you create about them that are not (yet) explored in play.

Play is negotiation, and when we negotiate something important -- like PC vs. PC conflict stakes in DitV -- what's clashing?  Our visions of the characters, of course.  Play is negotiation, and that means all the ad-hoc notes on our character sheets -- or things we think about them -- might well be rendered moot or untrue or irrelevant in the face of actual play.

It's worth saying: I don't doubt that your vision is privileged among all possible visions, due to your creative ownership of your character.

The STR score is part of your character.  The ad-hoc notes are part of your vision for the character.  They seem very different.

Does this make sense?

-Jason

[James Holloway]

It's worth saying: I don't doubt that your vision is privileged among all possible visions, due to your creative ownership of your character.

The STR score is part of your character.  The ad-hoc notes are part of your vision for the character.  They seem very different.

Does this make sense?

-Jason

It just seems like an instance of differently-privileged inputs. The STR score is part of the character for gosh-darn sure because the rules give that kind of statement ("I have a STR of 12"; "I am a half-mind-flayer") made at character creation a lot of credibility. At a somewhat lower level you have what Vaxalon says about his character relating to the SIS ("I'm possessed by a demon"), then much lower what other people say. I'm not sure that it's an example of two different thing, "character" and "vision of character," but just an example of two different sources for statements about the character.

I suspect that in almost any game if Vaxalon writes down that he's possessed, behaves like he's possessed, and later on says he was possessed, there will have been no doubt in the minds of the other players that he was possessed. There are some games (InSpectres?) where it's possible for players to define other characters who are explicitly not their own, but it's very rare.

[Jason Newquist]

It just seems like an instance of differently-privileged inputs.

Hmm, but it's not just that, I don't think.  We have lots of ideas about the SIS contents that don't ever materialize, or become irrelevant, or are overtaken by events before they get to be Explored, or whatever.  Vision stuff is fluid. It can and must change, and we fully expect it to.  That fluidity is what makes it a different kind of stuff entirely than the stuff that's established in play: actual play doesn't change, and we have a hard time ignoring or going back and changing the stuff that matters.

The example of old, where Vincent and Em play a scene but aren't happy with it, and talk about scrapping it?  But in the end, they keep it and point to it and say, "That's the rumor, not what really happened."  Such is the power of actual play.  They didn't like it, and still wanted to keep it in the game.  We don't like retcons for our actual play.  We're very sensitive about how we say things with respect to IIEE: "I shoot you" vs. "I pull the trigger".  All of this is because going back and rewriting actual play wrankles.  ...And that's not true of things that aren't Explored in actual play.

I don't get to single-handedly decide a damn thing about my character.  The GM doesn't get to single-handedly decide a damn thing about the game world.  Not a damn thing!  Until these visions are brought out in play (and chargen is play, too), they remain vision: napkin notes, or fan fiction.  They're not "game stuff", I don't think, until we're at the table, the thing is in the air, and we buy into it.

Character sheets are a mix of what's true about the characters and what what we want to be true about them.

-Jason

[Vaxalon]

I don't get to single-handedly decide a damn thing about my character.

I disagree with this, vehemently.  At the very least, you single-handedly decide what your character thinks.

[Shreyas Sampat]

I disagree with this, vehemently.  At the very least, you single-handedly decide what your character thinks.

Not really. That's just an aspect of TIT.

What you get to "single-handedly" decide in, say, D&D or some other conservative game, is what internal reactions your character has to SIS stimuli. You don't get to singlehandedly determine those stimuli, and you certainly don't get to singlehandedly determine the general properties of plausible thought processes. The illusion of personal control over a character's mind is seductive, but there's a very strong arrangement of external restrictions on that control.

In some less conservative game, I wouldn't be surprised by a character's internal world being up for collaborative control.

[Jason Newquist]

Shreyas: Agree!

Clarification: what's "TIT"?

Thanks,
Jason

[John Kim]

We don't like retcons for our actual play.  We're very sensitive about how we say things with respect to IIEE: "I shoot you" vs. "I pull the trigger".  All of this is because going back and rewriting actual play wrankles.  ...And that's not true of things that aren't Explored in actual play.

That's cool -- but you understand that it's just your personal tendency of what wrankles you, right?  i.e. Other people might be wrankled by different things.  Nothing in the game really exists, whether it is explored or not.  It's all just personal preference and social contract of what you decide to priviledge.  

I don't get to single-handedly decide a damn thing about my character.  The GM doesn't get to single-handedly decide a damn thing about the game world.  Not a damn thing!  Until these visions are brought out in play (and chargen is play, too), they remain vision: napkin notes, or fan fiction.  They're not "game stuff", I don't think, until we're at the table, the thing is in the air, and we buy into it.

Right, and that sounds fine -- but it's just one social contract.  For example, it clearly doesn't work for most LARPs, where an action usually can't be bought into by everyone because not everyone hears it.  Other contracts often priviledge parts of what you call "vision" -- such as Vaxalon's case where the player can determine what his own PC thinks.  For example, one group might be willing to retcon some previously-agreed event because it turned out to conflict with a player's vision.  

I think the problem is in assuming that some contract is inherent or natural.  i.e. Your (Jason's) assumptions clash with Vaxalon's assumptions, for example.

[John Kim]

(...deleted duplicate post...)

[Vaxalon]

In games with charater ownership (Capes isn't always one of them, for example) you ALWAYS have things that you haven't shared with the group, but which color the play you DO share.  Those elements are important to the game, even though they aren't formally part of it, yet, or even at all.

Go back and reread:

"Something can be important to play without being a part of the SIS."

[Jason Newquist]

In games with charater ownership (Capes isn't always one of them, for example) you ALWAYS have things that you haven't shared with the group, but which color the play you DO share.  Those elements are important to the game, even though they aren't formally part of it, yet, or even at all.

Go back and reread:

"Something can be important to play without being a part of the SIS."

And I agree, and I worry that we're talking in circles because  I'm missing something.

But, in any case, I disagree that such things are part of the "game world" or the "character".  Those things only exist to the extent that they're shared and agreed to (including all the various social contract variations, per John's point).  I claim that anyone making statements about SIS stuff that's unsupported by the SIS -- like you talking about charcter's thoughts, for example -- is simply making statements of vision, not statements which bear truth value in the game.  Whether they *really apply* to your guy or not can only determined in play, by Exploration.

So all these things that we might write down on our character sheets which pertain to stuff that's not yet been Explored (with John's qualifier here, as well: to the extent that valid Exploration is defined by the social contract of the group), it's just vision stuff.  It's not character, it's notes on a napkin for future play, or fan-fiction/discussion of play that's happened in the past.  It's game-inspired, but it's not really game.  

So if your social contract says "Your vision is unassailable!" my point reduces to something very little indeed -- as would the game, it seems, reduce to cops n' robbers.

So if your System (like Capes, Vaxalon, in your example above) says "write down these things about your character that only you know" -- that's Explored stuff!  Very much like James was saying about your demon example.  It's been Explored by system, say, and becomes increasingly important as it's brought into play over and over again.

I'm not talking about Explored stuff, though.  I'm talking about notes on your character sheet that are unexplored.  And my fundamental claim is that they pertain only to your vision of the character, rather than to the character itself, and that there necessarily is a difference between these two things.

-Jason