Theory 101: The Impossible Thing Before Breakfast posted

[Andrew Morris]

I've been wrong before, and I will be again, I'm sure. But I don't think that what you describe is the unnamed third style I'm talking about -- it's Trailblazing.

When you show the example of planning sessions between games, that's fine -- that could be one way Trailblazing works. One of the key points of Trailblazing, however, is that the players are simply "uncovering" what the GM has already created, and the GM has the ending planned. That's still a big jump from responding during a session to include what the players are looking for and creating the events and ending on the spot.

This might all be moot, however, since it is based on the idea that the two core elements are player awareness and who controls the story, which is howed it seemed to me. If that's not the case, then a whole different set of  styles need to be identified. I'd like to hear if anyone has any thoughts on that.

[Vaxalon]

It seems to me that if I use the table talk from session 10 to set up the events in session 11, that is both trailblazing AND "reverse illusionism" or whatever you want to call it.

[Mortaneus]

I'd call it Echoing.

[Andrew Morris]

It seems to me that if I use the table talk from session 10 to set up the events in session 11, that is both trailblazing AND "reverse illusionism" or whatever you want to call it.

That's a good point. I hadn't considered whether the styles could merge or combine in different ways. M. J. should be back on at some point today, so I'd like to wait and see what he has to say on this.

I'd call it Echoing.

That seems like a term that conveys the concept.

[Vaxalon]

It's trailblazing on a session level, echoing on an adventure or campaign level.

[M. J. Young]

M.J., did you read my recent post on http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=15830">Models of Adventure Structure?  It seems to me that by your definitions, location crawling, battlegrounding, timetabling, branching, and relationship mapping are all part of "bass playing" -- which is defined solely by the GM not having a predefined story complete with ending in mind.  Would you agree, or is bass playing more specific and not inclusive of some of these?

Thanks, John; I did read that thread last week, but I was unclear in my own mind exactly what those were--that is, I didn't so much take them to be referee styles as scenario designs. I can see now that they're a bit of both (and probably that these are a bit of both as well).

I would agree at least tentatively that the five you mention here are variations on bass playing; but then, Ron has created the term for that style, and I might have to defer to him on it if he thinks there's something different about them.

I might just be tired, but Participationism and Trailblazing (as defined here) seem awfully close to each other. In both, the social contract is designed to let the GM tell his story.

and

The division seems a bit off to me, specifically in terms of Trailblazing. The two variables at work here seem to be "who controls the story" and "whether the players are aware" of this. That gives four play styles, but they don't match up with the four descriptions you have.

I get this a lot about Trailblazing; perhaps I can elucidate.

First, Andrew, these styles are not identified from a system of logical division, but from observation. It's entirely possible that a "logical" category does not exist (in this case your proposed "The players are in control of the story, but they don't know it").

In one sense, Trailblazing might well be that option; it just doesn't play quite that way under close scrutiny. You have to recognize the defining distinction of Trailblazing as compared with Illusionism and Participationism: once play begins, the referee relinquishes all control of the story to the players. In Illusionism, the referee never relinguishes power to the players, but rather causes them to believe that he has; in Participationism the players actually know that they have no power. Trailblazing involves the rather odd social contract commitment on the part of the players, to this effect: if the referee's story is to be told, we must tell it.

I say that Trailblazing might fit, at least somewhat, into the vacant slot in your model. The players really could create an entirely different story, and the game thus is entirely player driven; but because of the social contract, they believe that they must find the referee's story, and thus don't realize that they could ignore it and do something else.

Again, the example of this would be play in a particular type of module once popular for competition play. The referee has purchased the module and the players have agreed to play it. He tells them where they start and they begin the adventure, but thereafter the referee merely provides for them descriptions of what they have discovered and what they accomplish. If they make the right choices, they complete the module successfully; if they do not, they lose the path and wander off into something else. At that point, either the referee improvises a new adventure (which usually is a shift away from Trailblazing play) or he says, "forget it, you're lost, the monsters win that one".

Participationist and Illusionist play would involve the referee in making sure the module was followed and that the players were successful.

I suspect perhaps that just as there are illusionist techniques that are useful outside illusionist play, there are probably also trailblazing techniques that are useful outside trailblazing play (and indeed bass playing techniques that are useful outside bass playing play), which confuses the issue.
Sean wrote:
That list seems mostly to deal with Narrativist GM styles, to me. (That relates to John Kim's comment too IMO.) Furthermore, if I were, say, a reasonably competent Ouija Board GM, with non-Nar facilitating mechanics but a group with a highly idiosyncratic social contract and the ability to engage in a functional below-the-surface dialogue about where we as a group are taking the story, I wouldn't find myself in it.

Pardon me?

Sean, Illusionism is definitely not a narrativist style; it's a dysfunctional style in which players are deprived from any input on any creative agendum and are unaware of this. Participationism is also not narrativist for almost the same reason (no player input on creative agendum), and I find it difficult to see Trailblazing as truly narrativist (it's much more facilitating to gamist and simulationist agenda).

But I'm intrigued by your (to me) rather cryptic self-description. How does this differ from Bass Playing, as Ron describes it? (I'm surprised it's not in the provisional glossary; it is referenced in the thread Paul cites when he raises the matter of intuitive continuity.) I'm not saying it isn't different; I'm trying to understand how.

Oh, and I'm not partial to bass playing over trailblazing generally, either as player or referee. Bass playing is just the most different from the others, it seems to me.

Paul, I completely forgot about Intuitive Continuity (and that's from Underworld, so it's really Gareth Michael Skarka's term, yes?). I see that Ron discusses bass playing someone preliminarily earlier in that same thread you cited, and I'm not certain whether he thinks it to be the same or different. I'm inclined to think that two items in the cited post, his Relationship Map and Skarka's Intuitive Continuity, would both fall under Bass Playing, the former a technique and the latter a methodological goal which can be used in this regard. I would also include No Myth there. I'm fuzzy on what Open Play is, so can't comment on that.

On the other hand, the point of asking the question was to find out where I've got gaps, so feel free to challenge this. I'm not committed to these four as a complete list, and said as much in the article.

Thank you, ewilen, for the pointers to Robert Plamondon. I am going to address some sort of errata once the series has run, and will hopefully remember to include all such points. (John Kim kindly pointed me to some early threads on stance as a concept, which I will also be mentioning.)

Also, your distinction between world-based and reactive in the bass playing category is something worth pursuing, I think. (I should ask whether Ewilen is actually your name or if I should call you something else.)

Thanks to Marco and Contracycle for their criticisms. I'll somewhat weakly defend some of my usage in that this was intended as something of an introductory/summary article for people who don't know their way around the theory at all, but I admit it was rather careless of me to toss the word "story" around so freely when it is such a contested term. I assumed it would be understood in the context. As to GM-ful play, as important as this is as an emerging area of exploration, I'm not at all sure it could be covered in a primer at this point. Concerning my phrasing of The Impossible Thing, I wasn't aware that there was a particularly canonical phrasing of it and did not consult the glossary. I was trying to identify the concept and illustrate it for the average reader, and I think that the phrasing I used did so.

Oh, and Marco: any Illusionist referee who can't control the outcome of his game in the face of contrary die rolls should turn in his screens. That's child's play for a decent illusionist. I've done it myself, and I'm terrible at Illusionism.

Concerning whether Trailblazing can be done session by session, I would have to say that in a long campaign it would be done in chunks--but I think the chunks would have to be units of adventure, not units of play time. That is, I can plan "up to the point where they reach Bridgewater, and I'll figure out what happens after that later", and then plan "everything from Bridgewater to Elvenhome". I'm not sure, though, that it would still be Trailblazing if at the end of the night you decided to scrap everything they had not yet done and write something else. You could do it, but if you did it too often it starts to shift from what it is.

Of course, as I wrote in the article, this is a difference between a pure form and some sort of drifted combination--probably in this case dabbling in bass playing to some degree by trying to adjust the trail for the next session to lead where you think the players want to go. Whether that can be identified as its own form might be worth examining, if anyone thinks it can.

I do like the concept of "echoing", and would like to hear more about it.

I think I should probably suggest, in an effort to preserve focus on this thread (which is quite reasonably about whether there are problems in the article and whether there might be other referee styles) that more thorough discussion and development of such styles should probably be farmed out to new threads. I'm sure I'll catch them all next week when I get back.

Thanks again to all for your input on this; I'll be mulling a lot of this over during the next week.

--M. J. Young

[ewilen]

M.J., the name is Elliot Wilen, and you're welcome. Also, although Robert was a great contributor to r.g.frp, my real point wasn't so much to give him sole credit for coming up with the idea as to say that recognition of the tension between GM-control and player-control goes back a long way, as does the related tension over whether a story or story-structure is something that the participants want to impose on and/or get out of play.

Also, your distinction between world-based and reactive in the bass playing category is something worth pursuing, I think.

Well, on reflection I'm not sure it's worth pursuing in the context of your article, since world-based gaming was conceived in what would in Forge terms probably be called a Simulationist state of mind. (I'll speak for myself, here, though some of the others in those conversations would probably agree.) My solution to TITBB was to reject the anybody-as-author and the roleplay-as-story ideas, except for very limited portions of play (design/creation of setting, character, and situation). I've probably read enough now that I could put that into Forge terms, including refining what exactly I mean by "story" and "story structure" but I have to run at the moment.

[ewilen]

On re-reflection, I see a couple points of confusion (for me). First is the "bass-playing" term which I took as implying improvisation, as in jazz (though I really have no idea how much improv a jazz bassist does). Ron on the other hand seems to have coined the term as meaning, not improv, but setting the pace and letting the players do the improv (as if they're jazz trumpeters). That's what I get from this thread, in Ron's first post and then the first back-and-forth with John.

The second point of confusion (which I think I share with some others) is the view that your article is related to (or not related to) particular GNS modes. The reason for my confusion is the underlying premise of TITBB (that roleplaying is to be conceived in analogy to "stories"). Many people who prefer Sim (and likely Gam) would reject the premise altogether, and not worry about trying to resolve the contradiction. So even though I can see that your essay really doesn't have to do with GNS (does it?), the way it's framed tends to draw in GNS controversy.

[Jason Lee]

Paul, I completely forgot about Intuitive Continuity (and that's from Underworld, so it's really Gareth Michael Skarka's term, yes?). I see that Ron discusses bass playing someone preliminarily earlier in that same thread you cited, and I'm not certain whether he thinks it to be the same or different. I'm inclined to think that two items in the cited post, his Relationship Map and Skarka's Intuitive Continuity, would both fall under Bass Playing, the former a technique and the latter a methodological goal which can be used in this regard. I would also include No Myth there. I'm fuzzy on what Open Play is, so can't comment on that.

Open Play, Pinball Sim, and world-based are all names for the same style of GMing from various stages in Forge terminology.  If I recall correctly, Pinball Sim was Mike Holmes' term, world-based showed up with John Kim (from rgfa), and Open Play was the result of a later collaborative naming effort I mostly blame those two for.   Anyway, I don't know what kids are calling it these days ;).

Basically, it's like trailblazing without the contract to follow the predefined story, or without said story, but with the predefined npcs/setting.  (Same methods, but the goal is story creation instead of scenario completion.)

[Marco]

Oh, and Marco: any Illusionist referee who can't control the outcome of his game in the face of contrary die rolls should turn in his screens. That's child's play for a decent illusionist. I've done it myself, and I'm terrible at Illusionism.

--M. J. Young

Sure they can--that's not my point. My point is that using the terminology you've settled on any group that abides by the dice as a determinant factor is almost automatically Trailblazing or Playing Bass since no one can claim to be in "complete control" of the story as the dice "determine things."

I'll also note that the canonical statement of TITBB is in the glossary and is described as a patent impossibility on the basis of the interpertation of words 'author' and 'protagonist' as you have done. This, of course, hinges on the assumption of a non-contraversial definition of the word 'story' to make the statement absurd.

In reality I don't think anyone is "in control" of "the story" of an RPG (I don't think such a thing as "the story" really exists to be 'in control of' in the literal sense in a traditional RPG). Rather participants offer or are denied input and the personal assessment of that dynamic creates sensations of authorship or progtagonization in the participants (which gets us away from a black and white absurd impossibility).

-Marco

[greyorm]

Marco, we've been over this before, so I'll make it quick: the statement isn't absurd because it exists in the wild of the text, or something. The idea of the statement is absurd, and because the idea exists in gaming circles as a self-perpetuating meme, it causes problems as various groups interpret the absurd idea differently, each thinking they are interpreting it correctly.

It doesn't matter one whit whether or not a rulebook really, really says it to the letter just like that. The ITBB idea exists as an actual idea amongst gamers, no matter how they variously interpret that singular idea. But it is the existance of that raw idea and the various interpretations it spawns which become the problem, because the idea hides the reality underneath a trite and meaningless series of contenious and highly interpretive phrases.

[Callan S.]

I think I get what you are saying, but who says it has to be that way? Why couldn't it be actual responsiveness?

Oh it could, but I thought

Player-Controlled, Players Unaware: ???

Only refers to just the players being in control. A blend of GM and player control is quite possible. The only problems I think you'd have here is that players don't know they have control, so they wont assert control at times when they should (ie, the players don't talk about what they want, just think it. Thus the GM doesn't know what to do). Also, since the players don't know they have control, the GM may be tempted to take overide the players control at certain points. If the players were aware of their control, they would police the GM on this.

Also I've started to think some gentle wrestling for control between participants is actually the highlight of roleplay. Not violent wrestling, but certainly enough wrestle to get people out of their comfort zones just a little bit.

[ewilen]

It doesn't matter one whit whether or not a rulebook really, really says it to the letter just like that.

I think it does when the whole argument is framed by claims regarding rules texts. Just look at Narrativism: Story Now

I'm not discussing System or mechanics design at all, just the "how to role-play" texts. Some of the following games have, in my view, very focused Creative Agenda content in contrast to these sections; other games, not listed or discussed, are comparatively muddled in procedural terms but have crystal-clear "how-to" sections. So this is entirely about the "how-to" text, nothing else.

M.J.'s article similarly references "rules" and "text". Since the problem precedes rules texts, there must be a better way to introduce the issue, just as it is unnecessary and incorrect to say that Ron was the first to point out the problem. (He was quite possibly the first to document the widespread manifestation of the problem in game texts, but that is peripheral to the actual problem, no?)

[Jason Lee]

M.J.'s article similarly references "rules" and "text". Since the problem precedes rules texts, there must be a better way to introduce the issue, just as it is unnecessary and incorrect to say that Ron was the first to point out the problem. (He was quite possibly the first to document the widespread manifestation of the problem in game texts, but that is peripheral to the actual problem, no?)

I'm fairly certain power struggles predate language.  And in play the issue isn't clear-cut in a way that a how-to section could layout with perfect accuracy.  Different players (due to personality), situations (due to detail) and gaming sessions (due to player mood) necessitate different balances of power between player and GM.

But... that's not really the point of the impossible thing concept.  It's really just a language trick (by separating the inseparable concepts of story and character) designed to get you to see that clear rules for credibility are important.  You can't really separate the concept from rules texts, because that's what it's about.  Though, I'm sure power struggles themselves can be talked about plenty.  That's how I see it anyway.

[ewilen]

Now I'm not sure what we're disagreeing about. My point (illustrated in my first post and in John's followup) is that the specific problem of the impossible thing concept was quite well understood in gaming circles in the 80's. On the other hand, the pervasiveness of the problem before 1988 (the date of Ron's first example in Narrativism: Story Now) is far from clear. In fact, glancing quickly through Runequest II, the original Traveller, Bushido, Dragonquest, In The Labyrinth, and Universe, I was only able to find TITBB-ish text in Universe and the second edition of DQ (both from 1982)--and in those cases, I believe the interpretation is more-or-less prejudged along "Bass playing" lines by text that immediately follows. Of course, many of these and other early texts have little or no GMing advice at all, which is probably how TITBB really originated--as one of the ad hoc, GM-by-GM and group-by-group answers to the question, "How can we make roleplaying interesting once we leave the dungeon?"

So perhaps this is another point of confusion for me, and something that M.J. might fix when he revises his article. Is he talking about GMing styles (and/or social contracts) or is he critiquing bad rules text? Looking again at the article, I think he's doing a little of both, and unfortunately along the way he's making a few hasty generalizations that simply create controversy rather than advancing either point.

There is an idea floating around the role playing game world that went unchallenged for a very long time.

I think it was challenged practically from the time that the idea appeared.

Rule books for many games have described an approach to play that we almost take for granted.

What do you mean "we", dude?

Yet if we were to stop and consider what it was we believed, we would almost certainly realize that it was internally contradictory, impossible on its face.

That's unlikely since, as M.J. goes on to describe, no one actually believes TITBB. Rather, different people have different beliefs about story-structure and distribution of credibility, but they sometimes express those beliefs in a common, literally-nonsensical fashion.

Most readers will agree that in a standard role playing game, the referee, or game master, has complete control over the story, and that the character players have complete control over their characters, who are the main characters in the story.

"Most"? And even if that is true, see the last comment--they might all use the same phrase but that doesn't mean they believe the paradox.

As far as anyone knows, Ron Edwards was the first person to point out the problem in this idea.

(Already commented on ad nauseam).

Probably this conflict, which has been dubbed The Impossible Thing Before Breakfast, does not appear to be a problem to you. Most gamers respond to the assertion that these texts are in direct conflict by claiming that they are not, because you must understand them in context. Every gaming group that is functional has found a means of resolving the conflict, and most gamers will happily tell you what the text really means.

This is a valuable point, but is TITBB a vague, nonsensical statement, or a nonsensical belief, or a conflict between sensible beliefs? The answer to that question tells us whether the subject of the article is rules and/or GMing techniques, or an unnecessary strawman which is going to confuse and alienate your audience.