Gamism, Narrativism, and Gestalt Shift

[Sean]

A long time ago, I encountered GNS talk on rpg.net, conducted with the usual highly nuanced and accurate phrasing that prevails over there. I naturally got confused about the definition of 'premise', a confusion that got compounded later when I read the original GNS essay, which uses the term in a broader sense. I asked: "Why can't 'What will you do to plunder every last copper piece from this dungeon?' be a premise?"

Ron, for whatever reason, intervened in the discussion. I liked his answers even though I didn't understand them properly yet, and I liked what I had read of the Sorcerer RPG, so I started coming over here to figure things out in more detail.

Going back to that now 2-year-old discussion, I realized that I had a particular example in mind, which partly rescues what I was saying, even if I couldn't have known that or articulated the reasons why at the time.

Back when I was in grade school and junior high, I played an originally Neutral Evil Halfling Thief named Mason Capwell, after the freemasons and a now-defunct upscale department store. My MO with this character was, at some point, to steal all the party treasure, sometimes leaving the other party members high and dry in a difficult situation.

This was Gamist AD&D, but as we got older, something weird happened. My friend, who was playing a ranger, would periodically hunt down my character and demand his share of the treasure back, which he usually got. After this happened a few times, our characters got to be friends.

And then, gradually, even though we were playing dungeons, the texture of my decision making started to change. My character was still fundamentally motivated by money, but because he cared about this ranger and a few of the other characters (a half-elf fighter-mage in particular), suddenly the human equation started  to matter.

And then I'd get these moments where the questions were still about material gain, but the factors I was weighing had to do with loyalty to individuals and to the group. "What will I do to plunder this dungeon of every last copper piece" was no longer a question of resource management and skill alone: it was a question about how far I was willing to hose my friends in order to enrich myself, as a thief.

In one crucial adventure Mason had a clear choice between some incredibly valuable gems and going back to try to break the ranger and some other PCs out of a prison they had found themselves in. I went back. The DM said if I did that he was changing my alignment to True Neutral and slapping me with a level penalty, but I did it anyway. At the time I would have justified this in Sim-sounding terms - "It's what he would do!" - but now I don't think that's right. I think somehow, in a game about money and violence, I had shifted from the gamist/tactical elements to the narrativist/loyalty elements, even though we were largely dealing with the same kind of adventures and situations.

The newer versions of D&D tend to emphasize gaining power. The older versions did this too, but they also emphasized material accumulation, especially through the experience system. "What will you do for money?" is a big-time thematic question for human beings. In the context of the game as written, and what it supports, the question is mostly handled, and expected to be handled, as a tactical one. In this sense the core of old D&D really is gamist-oriented, whatever a particular ruleset facilitated or how well.

But you've also got a group of people sitting around a table playing characters with alignments and, usually, some vague idea of a personality. So you can just be going along, accumulating wealth, and then suddenly an issue of loyalty or friendship or self vs. community arises, and all of the sudden, in your imagination at least, the focus of play changes completely.

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Let me now turn this around a little. Last summer I played a couple sessions of MLwM with Danielle, Paul, and Tom. As I played, I found myself increasingly focusing on "How do I get more love? Is there any way I can game this system to get love faster, because Paul and Danielle are getting way ahead of me, and if I want to be the one to overcome the Master I'd better do something about it quick." Also, during one of our discussions prior to that game, not entirely seriously but to make a serious point, Paul said: "My Life with Master is a Gamist RPG."

It's certainly possible for me to imagine someone 'gaming' the Humanity mechanics in Sorcerer, say, in a similar way. Now, to do this in either case, you have to still be addressing theme with your character, so in that sense both games remain Narrativist. Where D&D punishes you for making alignment-changing thematic decisions, the only way to get ahead in MLwM or Sorcerer is to address thematic questions. Nonetheless, there's a sense in which the thematic stuff, at least at those mid-game moments of play where I was desperately worried about falling behind in Love and losing my opportunity to be the one who resists the Master, I had switched from a Narrativist to a Gamist point of view in my play. Love had become like gold pieces in D&D at that point.

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What I'm wondering is how common/universal the possibility of this kind of gestalt shift between addressing certain questions in a gamist vs. a narrativist manner is. Also, can it be harnessed for functional congruent play? My psychological shift didn't seem to 'break' MLwM at all, so I'm tempted to give that second one a 'yes', while acknowledging that D&D 'breaks' all the time when you get gamists and narrativists at the same table. Also, if these observations are germane, does this problematize the G/N distinction, or is it simply some data that helps explain the deep parallels we've all observed between these modes of play? (At what point do parallels cease to be matters of isomorphism and begin to lead us to suspect identity, in other words?)

Inquiring minds want to know!

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

You're gonna hate this, Sean ...

... but I don't see the Narrativism. I'm seeing Gamist play, just about different stuff.

Team/individual loyalty issues are extremely important in some forms of Gamist role-playing, just as they are in some sports. As we've discussed before, Robin Laws is 100% correct in identifying the steal-from-pals Thief and the scold-Assassin Paladin as custom-made elements of D&D play for shifting "what play is about" from mere combat tactics to higher-level strategy about team/individual interactions.

What I'm driving at is that it's still Gamism. In the case of D&D, it's still about surviving in the dungeon and getting gold. However, it's more Explorative, usually, in that one has to round out the characters and situation a lot more, in order to succeed at this form of the agenda.

Best,
Ron

[Sean]

No, I'm open to that, Ron. Not completely convinced yet, but I'm open to all this play being Gamist on my part. I've got more questions in that case though.

The first would be, when does the shift happen? If it's not when I, as a player or as a group, start prioritizing the thematic weight of a decision (do I care more about money or loyalty?), when is it? You can surely have Narrativist play that's about money issues, right? So where's the border then? There's a general theoretical question there, and also a question which relates to my own experience: this kind of play was happening at the same time that in other games we were heading towards a kind of proto-narrativism that I think would be clear and unproblematic, with adventures focusing on things like which person out of two you're in love with are you going to stay with, and that kind of thing. That doesn't necessarily imply any deeper connection, but I'd like an explanation of why I feel like there's some sort of connection, ideally.

The second relates to loyalty and teamwork in the Gamist context (we've got to do this stuff together as a way to win/succeed/step on up as a group) vs. loyalty as a thematic issue. It seems to me that the Laws analysis, while it can certainly be valid in certain cases, is simply pointing out that loyalty issues are or can be relevant to good Gamist play. But I don't think the D&D case above was one where I was 'learning to be a team player' or 'trying to win with the group'. I think it was about trust issues plain and simple.

[Edit: What I mean is, the way it seemed to me was that I was using the imaginary material to struggle with issues of trust and loyalty to friends vs. naked Hobbesian self-interest, and that the point of play for me, in this incoherent play and ruels, increasingly became to use the background material as support for asking and answering these kinds of questions, partly in relation to my friends Steve's and Del's reactions to my character's behavior, etc.]

I don't mind analyzing my play more, but the point of the post was this: what does a gold piece mean? What does love mean? It seems like different answers are possible to both questions, in the gaming context and out of it, and that, as a result, sometimes very similar imaginary material is susceptible to being dealt with in a Gamist or a Narrativist manner. That's the gestalt shift I'm talking about.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Sean,

Well, hol' on here ... and apologies for butchering your post; it does break up into points in my mind, though.

The first would be, when does the shift happen? If it's not when I, as a player or as a group, start prioritizing the thematic weight of a decision (do I care more about money or loyalty?), when is it? ...

The second relates to loyalty and teamwork in the Gamist context (we've got to do this stuff together as a way to win/succeed/step on up as a group) vs. loyalty as a thematic issue.

These sound like exactly the same things to me. The first sounds like the answer to the second. But maybe I need to clarify this next point before that makes sense.

It seems to me that the Laws analysis, while it can certainly be valid in certain cases, is simply pointing out that loyalty issues are or can be relevant to good Gamist play. But I don't think the D&D case above was one where I was 'learning to be a team player' or 'trying to win with the group'. I think it was about trust issues plain and simple.

Uh-oh. I think you're oversimplifying Robin's point, or my version of his point. He's not saying, "And that's how we learn to work as a team!" with an accompaniment of heroic music. He's saying, "And now it's time to strategize playing off team survival and individual gain, as a higher form of strategy."

And that is a trust issue. It will be an ongoing trust issue.

I'm not saying that the thief has to stop stealing from his fellows, or the assassin has to listen to the paladin, or whatever. I'm saying that the issue becomes a managed element of the Gamist context of play, just as (at a lower and more basic level of strategy) the players decide how to deploy their characters spatially on the gridmap.

what does a gold piece mean? What does love mean? It seems like different answers are possible to both questions, in the gaming context and out of it, and that, as a result, sometimes very similar imaginary material is susceptible to being dealt with in a Gamist or a Narrativist manner.

Absolutely.

Exploration is agenda-neutral ... except that we can't help but approach it with an agenda.

Looking over this post, it strikes me that my three points make the most sense in reverse order.

Best,
Ron

[Gordon C. Landis]

The first would be, when does the shift happen? If it's not when I, as a player or as a group, start prioritizing the thematic weight of a decision (do I care more about money or loyalty?), when is it? ...

The second relates to loyalty and teamwork in the Gamist context (we've got to do this stuff together as a way to win/succeed/step on up as a group) vs. loyalty as a thematic issue.

These sound like exactly the same things to me. The first sounds like the answer to the second. But maybe I need to clarify this next point before that makes sense.

I had a hard time making sense of this, but after a few readings this is what I came up with: the first is an answer to the second if and when we change it to be "the shift DOES occur when the player/group starts prioritizing the thematic weight of a decision AS A THEMATIC ISSUE."

But it's important to remember (as the rest of Ron's post - and his earlier one - points out) that money/loyalty can be fully present in Gamist play as elements to include in strategy, as well.  Or in Sim play as elements of the "source material" to be explored and reinforced.

Sean, your original description of play doesn't really show any interpersonal interaction about money/loyalty outside of the Gamist context of XP (money) and level loss, so I guess the inclination would be to see it as Gamist use of the issues rather than Nar.  It doesn't look like prioritizing the thematic weight of a decision, it looks like prioritizing the strategic weight.  A judgement like that always runs the danger of missing out on nuances (which is why, I assume, Ron points out that those present in play with some ability to look at that play AS IF they were objective observers are always the best judges), but I can see why Ron made the call he did.

But is it POSSIBLE for Gamist use of such issues to slide on in to Nar use?  I think so.  I don't think it'll "just happen," but it certainly CAN happen.

Gordon

[xenopulse]

Quick question here: Does it matter how it "feels" to the player?

I.e., if the player feels like it's no longer a decision about strategy, he feels like there's an ethical responsibility there among characters who care about one another, and to him personally, the choice feels like a thematic one, is that what matters or is there some exterior, objective standard that overrides that?

[Gordon C. Landis]

Xeno,

If I'm understanding you, that can be a big, hairy question that has traditionally been avoided at the Forge.  As a practical matter, I think it almost never matters - if you "feel" (it usually comes up here as "intend") that something is ethical rather than strategic, that'll show up somewhere in your actions, and we'll talk about those actions.

The case/claim where the feeling is entirely internalized, and the question of whether that means anything or not - that is worth avoiding, IMO.

So I guess my answer to you (Ron or whoever can differ, though I suspect it'd be mostly a differing wording) is that we focus on what a player demonstrates they care about, through interpersonal communication and actions regarding the imagined elements, rather than on what they're feeling - but most of the time, you can just go ahead and assume that those actions are hooked-up to a feeling, so it's rarely a problem.

Gordon

[Sean]

I'm on the same page with Ron here now, I think, but Gordo's and Xeno's replies are relevant too, so I want to give my take on them first.

Gordon Landis, with whom I often agree, wrote:

"Sean, your original description of play doesn't really show any interpersonal interaction about money/loyalty outside of the Gamist context of XP (money) and level loss, so I guess the inclination would be to see it as Gamist use of the issues rather than Nar. It doesn't look like prioritizing the thematic weight of a decision, it looks like prioritizing the strategic weight. A judgement like that always runs the danger of missing out on nuances (which is why, I assume, Ron points out that those present in play with some ability to look at that play AS IF they were objective observers are always the best judges), but I can see why Ron made the call he did."

The problem with your analysis, Gordon, is that level loss is an IG punishment, and a frickin' huge one at high levels in 1e, which is what we were playing at the time. I took the punishment in order to do something I thought was important for some reason. As I think about it now, the interaction was actually partly about my real-world friendships with Del and Steve, and partly about the general question of what loyalty to friends means and what price is worth paying for it: that was what I wanted to address.

So anyway, I wasn't prioritizing the party's survival over anything. I get my fucking treasure and XP either way, and more of it if I let those other guys rot in captivity and keep it all to myself. I was prioritizing my character's friendship with the characters who were caught, which has both a real world (my relationship with this guy here who's playing with me) and a self-explorative (what do I value more? what kind of person am I? What 'ought' 'we' to value more?) component, in terms of what motivates me to make the play decisions I do. So part of that is maybe at the level of social contract, and part of it looks sort of like N to me - but based on Ron's reply I think I have a clean analysis of the phenomenon I'm talking about that doesn't rely on the One True Account of what the hell we were incoherently doing all those many years ago. As I said before, I'm comfortable with the idea that it was G in some sense, or an outgrowth of G. But how all that fits together will have to wait for my next post.

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Xenopulse, your point is highly relevant to the whole thrust of my remarks. I think the line is fuzzy.

I think in a lot of my experience how things 'felt' to me matters a lot, both because we were playing incoherent rulesets, and because our actual play was incoherent, in GNS terms. So it's a big deal to me when I look back on my play through the lens of GNS and say "and here's where Del became an unrepentant Narrativist" or "here's where I started to rationalize thematic choice in terms of 'playing my character'" or "here's where my two groups of friends stopped playing together because of different priorities."

But in terms of the overall play, one person's experience is a contributor, but it's just a contributor, and may or may not affect the overall direction of play depending on a lot of slippery general factors with the group. I think the MLwM example I gave is a good one for that, actually. My slipping into Gamism during that session ultimately didn't matter at all, because the mechanics are solid enough that my temporary love-accumulation fetish didn't derail what the game and the overall direction of play were all about, whatever I was doing individually. Whereas slipping into a Narrativist concerns as an individual player in a D&D game frequently takes things completely off the map, and makes you hate the mechanics with a mad burning hat that know no limit, and breaks up play groups, and all kinds of bad wrong stuff.

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Anyway, Ron, I think ultimately what I've got here is a somewhat interesting but not particularly theory-bending point about drift and how it happens in some cases, and maybe some ideas about G/N congruent play to go with it. Not much more. I'll try to post my thoughts more coherently when my mind's more functional, and then that's about all I've got for this thread.

[Gordon C. Landis]

Sean,

I hope I haven't stepped in and obscured the point Ron was making, because I certainly didn't mean to be saying anything different than what he was.  And I'll give us all a HUGE amount of leeway when trying to interpret gameplay from long ago.  There'll never be a true answer (or even close) to what it really was, but there may be something valuable we can learn by looking at it.

With that out of the way - the way I see it, the fact that level loss is a huge punishment doesn't mean that accepting the punishment requires a Nar agenda.  The Gamist agenda doesn't require you to always be trying to get the "best" win at any particular moment, it just requires that you accept the results when you lose.  Your ability to "win" later is shaped in many complicated ways by your social interactions and in-game status - it would be entirely reasonable and Gamist to think "I'll take the level loss to prove I'm a friend to these characters, and that will open up possibilities for me later on down the line."

All I see as important to establish here is that friendship, loyalty and the price thereof CAN be present in Gamist-prioritized play (as strategic elements in the competition/challenge game), and that your initial description tended to leave me thinkin' in that direction, rather than a Nar statement about "friendship is worth paying a price for" or the like.

Gordon

PS:  I think the point about Incoherent play and how we feel about it in terms of Creative Agenda is fascinating.  I mean, Incoherent is NOT (by definition) G, N or S, but how we feel about it in terms of G, N or S matters a lot.  But how do you talk about CA in play where pursing a CA (any CA) was ultimately a failure?  That's obviously much trickier than talking about CA in play that at least partially pursues and fulfills on one of 'em . . .  but that's all I've got.

[Callan S.]

Ron, well Sean might not have hated that, but I did. I get your point, I think, but I don't think that's a great way to put it.

Heya Sean,

Lets take that 'break them out of prison' moment. Basically it's gamism if its a means to an end, and narrativism if it's the end itself.

For example, and taking it from the others players point of view, if they thought/said:
"Yeah, he's going to rescue us! Thats because he knows it'll further him toward his goal/end of having shit loads of gold!" or some such.
Then they are recieving your act as a means to an end.

While if they thought/said:
"Jeez, who knew he felt that way about us? This is the point where speculation ends and instead we know something about this halfling"
They are recieving your act as the end itself. Getting to say this about your PC, was the end sought by you.

Which way did they treat it? How did you treat it? Personally I think you were playing nar but they were likely playing gamism...so the group as a whole was still doing gamism.

[Sean]

Hi Gordon -

I really like your last post. I think we're all on the same page in terms of theory in this thread. I think the stuff about higher-level strategizing in Gamist play involving (a) the real-world relationships between the players and (b) an imaginary interaction with thematically charged material is utterly fascinating.

A kind of talk that was here when I was first coming around but doesn't happen much now involves 'supporting' or 'subsidiary' modes. Does anyone with a feel for such talk have a view about whether the kind of play Ron and Gordon have described so well have a view about whether case (b) above is using Nar as a supporting mode for Gam? Or is it just another form of Gamism?

Noon, your questions are spot on too - it's nice to have a thread where we're all communicating. This was all happening about the time that some of us in the play group were moving on to concerns in our play that looked like Narrativism, while others were retrenching as Gamists: the childhood camraderie of everyone playing D&D together coming to an end. If I had to guess about my motives, I'd say that it was the thematic material itself that was interesting me, and that therefore I was trying to play in a more Nar way, but we're talking about almost a quarter century ago, and it's quite possible that I was more Gamist oriented. Also possible that, since we're talking about a 11-13 year old during the relevant period, I was simply unclear about my own motives, and alternated back and forth between a for-its-own-sake interest in the thematic material, an interest in solidifying my rep in the play group, a real-world interest in my friends, getting tired of playing a dickweed character, and a lot of other stuff. But anyway if I had to guess about my own motives, and about the play group as a whole, I'd basically agree with you, but I wouldn't be greatly surprised, if God could grant me vision into my own youthful mind, to find something different, or an incoherence different in kind but equal in magnitude to that of the play-group in question itself.

So anyway, back to Ron's second post.  We agree on the third point, which is directly connected to the important point that transcripts of what happened in the shared imaginary space in play have no necessary connection to the GNS priorities of a play-group or individual participants within it. We also agree that real-world stuff, trust issues between friends, etc. can enter into G. I'm thankful to Ron and Gordon for making clear how deep this goes, because I really hadn't considered how deeply  thematic material can enter into play as part of an ongoing Gamist agenda.

However, all of this seems to me to support my original point about 'gestalt shift', especially in incoherent (i.e. most) forms of play and RPGs that facilitate them. You're just going along solving tactical problems, dealing with your friends, and then one day the general issue of friendship and loyalty and your judgments about it become more interesting to you than the way all that stuff relates to the strategic and tactical goals of play. Or you rescue Lord MacGuffin's daughter from pirates, only to discover you're more interested in exploring romantic issues then the 2000 gold piece reward. You're working with more or less the same exploratory material, but your interest in it completely switches around, and you start prioritizing different things. That happens, and I think it's a major source of Drift, and probably was even moreso in the early days of gaming than it is now.

Going back to my original questions, I think that this discussion tends to support the G/N distinction quite emphatically, rather than undermine it. It's not a 'proof' (what would be?), but the types of interest and the play-phenomena that go with shifting priorities are so clear, and so familiar especially to those of us who have a lot of experience with both, that the very multiplicity and consistency of these 'play breaks' tends to underscore that there are different and incompatible agendas at work in such cases.

[contracycle]

Well, I'm one fo the main advocates of subordinate modes.  My own and entirely subjective perception seems to me very similar to the events you describe.  It may help that I also identify as a gamist.  

I think of it just as you describe, that you are going about doing your normal thing and then, for whatever reason, the situation just hits you on an emotional level most of them have not to date.  And then, for that moment, you are actually prioritising Narr, even if 99% of your gaming decisions are Gamist.

[Mike Holmes]

I'd agree with Gareth, at least to the extent that given that it's hard to determine precisely what's going on, it could be a momentary shift to "narrativism-like" play. I use that phrase, because the overall agenda still seems like Gamism to me. A single "tell" about agenda does not make for a momentary agenda. It makes for a "lapse" in the agenda, if you will.

Again, this is the "atomic model" at work. If you look at the decisions individually, yeah, you can see all sorts of modelike stuff happening. But at that level you really can't say much about it. It's only agendas, for instance, that clash. Not neccessarily individual moments.

That's the thing everyone always looses sight of. One decision does not a mode (by Ron's definition) make. The real question in terms of shift is whether or not Sean's play really did take on an overall agenda of narrativism, or was it still gamism with, possibly, occasionally nar-like moments?

Mike

[Sean]

Good, Mike.

I think the 'gestalt shift' I'm talking about is something that happens in individul mnids. But if you get enough people going that way in the same group (again, especially with incoherent play), then you can get a genuine overall shift, over time.

I'm inclined to say that the AD&D group including my beloved old hobbit thief remained incoherent to the end, whatever I or others may have been exploring in our own heads.

On the other hand, it also happens that several people in a group will undergo a similar shift all at once. Which is what happened with some of the same players in that game playing in smaller groups at the same time, which is how we got into a kind of proto-N sort of by accident: not because of anything the rules were doing, but because we all discovered there were other things to be interested in with the exploratory material. So I think there is a kind of 'group gestalt shift' that can happen, when enough people get on the same wavelength all at once. What also can happen is that half the group can go one way and half the other, leading either to bad incoherence or group breakup unless everyone gets pretty clear what's going on.

[Gordon C. Landis]

Hi Sean (and all),

Great - as far as I can see, we are all on the same page here, and uncovering some interesting stuff!

As I understand the current state of the theory, we "see" G, N or S within a given instance of play, and instance of play is now defined as a complete cycle of the games' reward system.  The question about supporting modes, it seems to me, now has to ask "are we talking about supporting within an instance of play, or across multiple instances?"  Within an instance, it's tricky - there isn't "really" more than one of G, N or S happening there; by definition, the totality of that instance is one of 'em (or none, if incoherent).  

For quite a while, I've thought about g, n and s (occurences of actions and behavior that you can sort of map onto the CA defintions, but aren't CA's because the prioritization issue either is irrelevant as the action occurs or is inconclusive in the context at hand) as always occuring in all play - all of 'em, all the time.  That said, it might still be true that a coherent subordination of (say) little-s in support of your big-N is preferable to just letting the little g's, n's and s's fall as they may.  But I have doubts that you can entirely accomplish that - little gns is so close to "acting like a human" in my mind, I'm not sure what it means to be more s than g untill we get to the point that it's prioritized and it becomes S and G instead.  So I'm torn, there - open to the possibility that we could find something productive, but suspicious that we're better off just talking about "explorative preferences" that happen to have SOME overlap with CA's, but "please let's not get stuck on that CA overlap - it's less important that the explorative preference issue."

Across multiple instances of play, though - that's unquestionably interesting to me.  The example in my mind is some Mekton (the R. Tal game) play I was part of some 4-6 years back.  At the time I remember thinking it was the highly Gamist mech-fight aspect that caused all the problems, but what I'm thinking now is that it is entirely possible for those Gamist mech-fight instances to have supported a set of either S or N instances.  The play was (I think now) ultimately incoherrent and unsatisfying because of S/N controversy with a relativly controlling GM, NOT because of the attempted Gamist hybridization.

I also want to say a little about the gestalt-shift, and how something can suddenly "hit you" unexpectedly.  I believe that the key question is: what do you DO when that happens?  Getting hit with the fact that something has thematic implications - even to the point where your next decision is affected by that - isn't Nar unless you (where "you" usually means the group as a whole) really pick it up and run with it from there.  If play becomes about that impact, it's Nar.

I think that for many players, in all modes, those "hit you" moments are highly valued.  But just as thematic material can possibly be fully included in a Gamist agenda, so it is with all modes- the question isn't so much about the feel of the impact (thematic, challenge/competion reward, reinforcement of explorative source) as it is what that impact is used for.  Maybe in my terms, the feel of the impact is a little-gns phenomena, while the what you do with it is CA.

And agan using my terminolgy, maybe the biggest problems in GNS discussion spring from people who like "highly s G play", "highly n S play", "highly s N play" and etc.  Which is maybe why I want to avoid the "highly small-letter" issue entirely, and instead talk about (e.g.) "N play that includes the following explorative preferences, that sorta-map-to S-but-let's-not-go-there."

Wow.  Thanks all - this post helped me clarify a few things for myself, so I appreciate the thread!  And I've got a label - explorative preference - for the "important things that aren't GNS" that I've been thinking about for a while.

Gordon