The relationship between character, sheet, and play

[Vaxalon]

Okay, let me take a slightly different tack on this.

Abel and Baker are playing two characters, Phil and Quincy.

Outside of play, Abel and Baker decide that their characters are secretly in cahoots.  They even go so far as to play a little interaction between their characters away from everyone else.

Then they join the rest of the group.  Their conspiracy will certainly color their play, but the conspiracy itself is not something shared with the group.

[Jason Newquist]

Okay, let me take a slightly different tack on this.

Abel and Baker are playing two characters, Phil and Quincy.

Outside of play, Abel and Baker decide that their characters are secretly in cahoots.  They even go so far as to play a little interaction between their characters away from everyone else.

Then they join the rest of the group.  Their conspiracy will certainly color their play, but the conspiracy itself is not something shared with the group.

Thanks for the other example.  Here's what I think I can say about it...

* A&B have collaborated in their approach to the game, and have brought their visions partially into accord.

* A&B's interaction stuff on their own is, if it's a game, a different game than the one played with the other people, and serves as provisional input which the new group may accept or reject, to the extent that game acts rely on it, or are colored by the "backstory".

* P&Q's conspiracy isn't part of the SIS right away, despite A&B's shared vision.  Although (like James was saying) it might be Explored and thus accepted into the SIS.  You've said this explicity all along, I think.

* The conspiracy might be written by A&B on P&Q's character sheets, but it's not part of their characters.  Because it's not true about them yet!  The  bit of chracter sheet which reads, "P&Q are in cahoots!" -- that's descriptive of the player's vision of the character, and might turn out to be completely untrue in actual play!

Consider:

- Abel might drop out of the game before it happens.  There can't be a conspiracy!
- Baker might want have Quincy fuck with Phil, and double-cross him.  His "agreement" is a ruse!
- Cindy, along with her character Renee, might influence them both to such a degree that A&B decide to let the conspiracy thing drop because it's not really important anymore.

If any of these things, or something similar happens, what's really going on?  Are the *characters* suddenly different?  No.  Look at the history of gameplay.  Same character.  All that's been Explored remains valid and the same as it ever was.

The only thing that's different is the player's vision.  Character (such as it has been Explored to date): same.  Vision: different!

The sum-total of the characters is what happens during actual play.  Everything else is vision.  Vision's important - even crucial!  But vision is a set of player thoughts, not character properties.

-Jason

[lumpley]

The way that Abel and Baker play their characters will set everyone else up to accept Abel and Baker's vision.

If they set everyone else up effectively, it looks exactly as though they had the power to make things true about their characters independently all along. They didn't, of course; Fred, you're getting suckered by "looks exactly as though."

You can see it plain as day if they fail to set everyone else up. Everyone else is like, "cahoots? But that doesn't make any sense."

-Vincent

[Shreyas Sampat]

To clarify for Jason: TIT = The Impossble Thing.

[John Kim]

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.

My point was really that there is no such thing as "truth value".  The game is all fiction -- what you decide to treat as real is arbitrary.  Different people may choose to treat different things as "true" in how they approach the game -- but that's a function of personal preference and group contract.  

Thanks for the other example.  Here's what I think I can say about it...

* A&B have collaborated in their approach to the game, and have brought their visions partially into accord.

* A&B's interaction stuff on their own is, if it's a game, a different game than the one played with the other people, and serves as provisional input which the new group may accept or reject, to the extent that game acts rely on it, or are colored by the "backstory".

I'm not sure what the significance is of calling it a "different game".  i.e. What does that mean?  For example, by this view, a typical LARP doesn't have a main "game" at all.  I guess you would say that it's a bunch of different games which people play overlapping and simultaneously.  Does that seem right?  

It seems to me that this is just saying that you don't like LARP or more broadly any private communication (i.e. like A&B's interaction) in an RPG.  

The way that Abel and Baker play their characters will set everyone else up to accept Abel and Baker's vision.

If they set everyone else up effectively, it looks exactly as though they had the power to make things true about their characters independently all along. They didn't, of course; Fred, you're getting suckered by "looks exactly as though."

You can see it plain as day if they fail to set everyone else up. Everyone else is like, "cahoots? But that doesn't make any sense."

Well, but anything in the game can be changed later.  i.e. Abel and Baker could have said it in front of everyone, and it's still true that half an hour later someone could say "Wait a minute!  That didn't make any sense!" and bring it up for debate again.  Which just brings us back to social contract.  What is regarded as "true" is an arbitrary choice which people agree to.  

I would say you (Vincent) are getting suckered by the delusion of "truth".  There is no such thing as truth in an RPG -- it is all fiction.  

Taking the above example, suppose that indeed Abel and Baker reveal what happened between P & Q -- and indeed the others complain about it.  But now suppose that A & B assert themselves -- they insist that what they say happened, happened.  Where is the truth?  If A & B stick to their position, then either the others capitulate or the group breaks apart without resolving it.  In a sense, as long as we assume consensus is reached, then everyone in the game has absolute power to assert truth simply by sticking to their position.  

The important question here is what the social contract is -- i.e. how does the group react to Abel and Baker?  The group may decide to priviledge A & B's interaction -- in which case if someone complains, they are told that it's not her business.  That's no different than putting down someone's request to retroactively change something that was announced earlier.  Alternately, the group may decide not to priviledge A&B's interaction -- in which case anyone's complaints are fair game.  For example, a LARP generally priviledges such individual interactions.

[lumpley]

I would say you (Vincent) are getting suckered by the delusion of "truth".  

Nope! True = accepted by everyone.

There's no other functional definition of "true" in RPGs, that I've heard of. All other measures of "truth" break down in the face of any participant's non-acceptance.

In a sense, as long as we assume consensus is reached, then everyone in the game has absolute power to assert truth simply by sticking to their position.

Right, but it's the consensus that makes it so, not the sticking to.

-Vincent

[Alephnul]

I think I agree with John. If everyone has to agree to something for it to be true, and one player steps out to the bathroom, and play appears to continue, does that mean that nothing happened until the player returns? If the player is never appraised of exactly what happened, but merely infers the missed portion from what happens afterwards, does this mean those things were never true (since it is possible that the missed events will someday be described to the absent player, and the absent player will say "Absolutely no way did that happen! That character would never have done that, and if they had, my character would have known about it instantly and stopped them!")?

There is local truth as well as global truth. How the global truth gets turned into local truth, and how the local truth gets turned into global truth is obviously a social contract issue, but that doesn't mean the local truth isn't truth. The local truth may be provisional, but so may be what appears to be global truth.

To the extent that there is a truth in a roleplaying game, my local truth actually exists. It is what I think happened in the game. Global truths don't exist in the same sense. No one thinks the global truth. To say that global truths exist is only to say something about the relationship of our individual truths. If we all agree that something happened in the game, then we can say that that thing is part of the global truth. However, for us to agree that something happened, we have to each individually think it happened.

If I think one thing is true, and you think another thing is true, there are three things that can happen: we can agree that either of those things happened and continue play with a somewhat disjointed reality; we can work to resolve our differences and reconcile our different truths; or we can decide that our truths can not be reconciled or coexist, and we can break the game. In each of these cases, we each start with a local truth, and we each end with a local truth, but in only one case do our local truths merge into an agreed truth. Even in that case, our shared truth need not be a global truth, since another player may not agree to our reconciled truth.

Obviously, it is important to try to keep the personal versions of events close to each other (or at least reconcilable, "Your character is demon-possessed? Wow, I hadn't guessed it, but I guess it makes sense"), but those personal versions of the truth are what actually exist inside each of our heads.

[John Kim]

I would say you (Vincent) are getting suckered by the delusion of "truth".  

Nope! True = accepted by everyone.

There's no other functional definition of "true" in RPGs, that I've heard of. All other measures of "truth" break down in the face of any participant's non-acceptance.

Why do we need truth?  It's a blatant mislabel, for one, since we are talking about things which are untrue.  We already use "consensus" and "shared" (or SIS) often enough.  So it seems confusing to me.  (Though Alephnul's distinction of "local truth" and "global truth" work to some degree.)  

This gets back to Jason's question: how can things be important in a game if they aren't agreed on by consensus?  There are many LARPs where there is essentially never consensus -- i.e. no "truth" by your definition.  Everything is just groups of players going and talking with each other in pairs and small groups, so there is never an event where all the players will buy into something.  

A good example from tabletop is Matt Turnbull's http://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/columns/fillinthegap28oct04.html">Singular Space.  That's a scenario which makes a very powerful point by having one player picture a quite different imaginary space than the rest of the players.  Throughout the adventure, most actions will mean that 5 or 7 of the players are picturing one thing -- and the other player is picturing something quite different.

I guess I could live with calling consensus "truth" and then just saying that there can be important things in an RPG which aren't true.  But it seems problematic to me.

[lumpley]

Whatever. Wrt in-game stuff when I say "truth" you can substitute "consensus" with no loss to my meaning. If for purposes of this thread we go forward without "truth," but with "consensus" only, I'll conform to that too.

-Vincent

[Vaxalon]

I have never argued that you can get consensus by any other means than presenting the material to the group.  That's pretty hard to argue, neh?

What I *am* saying is that there can be IMPORTANT information on the character sheet that is not consented to.  The SIS isn't the whole story.

[Alephnul]

Jason wrote

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.

....

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.

I think what is leading us to talk in circles is that there is an axis of belief about the nature of the experience of gaming that is not being addressed very well. This is the axis that relates to the question of what is truth.

I think this very much relates to the question of conceived versus perceived game that John has written about elsewhere. Jason, I think you strongly prioritize the perceived experience. If it hasn't happened in shared play and been acknowledge and consented to by the group, then it isn't real. Vaxalon (and I) seem to prioritize the conceived game. Our experience of the game is what takes place inside our own heads (informed and developed by what takes place in the SIS). Our own experience of our character is central to what we are doing when we game, and that experience can include things that haven't been revealed yet, or that will never be revealed. The SIS informs that character, and the character (including unrevealed features) influence the SIS, but it makes no sense (within this interpretation of gaming) to say that the characters in our heads are not the real characters. The version of my characeter in your head may be different than the version in my head, but that means that we have two different experiences of the game, not that one of our versions isn't real. Either of our versions may be altered or obliterated by the things that happen in the SIS, if we accept and incorporate those things into our private imaginary space, but this is true even if our versions of the character are largely in agreement (part of the SIS).

It is not simply that the notes on the character sheet are part of the game if the game specifically grants notes on a character sheet authority. It is not simply that notes on the character sheet are part of the game no matter what.

The notes on the character sheet, even if they are not given authority by the social contract or the system, are part of the experience of the game if one emphasizes the conceived game, and are not part of the experience of the perceived game.

The choice of what experience of the game to emphasize is not one that needs to be agreed upon by the group. My notes and my internal understanding of my character (or of the world) are an important part of my experience of the game if that is what I focus on. Your internal imagining of your character may be a mere support to your experience of the shared expression of the game if that is how you interprete it.

[James Holloway]

This gets back to Jason's question: how can things be important in a game if they aren't agreed on by consensus?  There are many LARPs where there is essentially never consensus -- i.e. no "truth" by your definition.  Everything is just groups of players going and talking with each other in pairs and small groups, so there is never an event where all the players will buy into something.  

A lot of thought about gaming on the Forge doesn't apply quite as well to LARPs, because of their very spread-out nature, the fact that player A may never meet or communicate with player X at all.

However, I think that in most cases it's not so much that all the players have to agree on everything, but that every player winds up agreeing to the elements of the SIS that touch his or her involvement with the game. As long as the subset of players affected by the introduction agrees to it, I think that works in place of "everyone agrees to it."

[Vaxalon]

Hence my example of the sub-group collaboration.

[Shreyas Sampat]

What I *am* saying is that there can be IMPORTANT information on the character sheet that is not consented to.  The SIS isn't the whole story.

This doesn't make any sense, Fred.

Just because something isn't explicitly consented to doesn't mean that you don't have consent to do specific things with your character that others don't know about (if I understand the Social Contract you are assuming correctly, it's common to have "secret character histories" and so on). The SIS and the set of things that are consented to are not congruent, and it's terribly muddying the conversation to treat them like they are.

[Vaxalon]

Okay, then let me go back to the original statement.

There can be information on the character sheet that is important to play, but is not part of the SIS.  The SIS is not the sum total of the game.