Exploration does not equal Bricolage.

[Jason Lee]

So, Mister Lee, we meet again!

Well howdy!

Hmmm.  We seem to have reached the point of talking in circles and splitting hairs.  I'm not sure if we can get any farther, so we might just have to agree to disagree.  Let's see...

Well, yes and no.  Because the "process (or behavior)" of bricolage does exhibit a distinct behavior from that of an engineering based process to achieve similar goals (a working solution to a problem) it follows, ipso facto, that bricolage uses a different methodology of thinking as well.  However, I must take some blame for not being entirely clear (of perhaps just plain lazy) for not using the full term, "mythic bricolage" or "mythic style bricolage;" which does carry some very important additional connotations.

My hope example was intended to illustrate that you can have the same result, the same bricolage behavior, from an engineering or bricolage mindset.  I am not saying that there is no difference in the intent/mindself/thinking methodology/etc.  I am saying that the concept of bricolage refers to a process, not the thought behind that process.  If bricolage is meant to refer to both unified then the distinction between bricolage and engineering falls apart.  Unifying intent and action into one concept requires intent A to only yield action A and intent B to only yield action B.  Once A can yield B and B can yield A you can no longer say that the intent and action are unified, so the unified definition becomes meaningless.

I'm not sure I should speak on Chris' behalf, but if you look at his Bricolage APPLIED thread he very explicitly marries bricolage with many concepts of the Big Model.  However, I too believe that bricolage does not fit well with the Model – as it stands.  My preliminary thoughts right now are something along the lines of –

[snip]

I am sure they can be, but that wasn't my point.  My point was that the players, as opposed to the GM, are NOT the ones building the concessions/entailments in Sim.  Building concessions is an engineering process.  That is the players would be creating their own fallout.  The methodology of bricolage is such that the players must deal with the fallout as it is exists.  They must make their choices with the costs (as it were) as they are.  This is analogous to the bricoleur scavenging for his parts and having to make do with what he has on hand as opposed to milling and machining a part to meet his specific need; which is an engineering process.  So, yes, concessions could be built from existing material – but the critical point is that the players are not the ones building the concessions.  This is definitional of bricolage.

Sim cannot be misplaced within the model.  There can be no such thing as Sim play that exists outside the context of the Big Model.  Anything that is not well served by the model cannot be Sim.  It is simply definitional of Sim that it is a Creative Agenda within the Big Model.

Hopefully the words structure and concept won't get slippery on me.  I would prefer to say procedure and goal, but maybe this will be more effective...

If you are talking about a play style that is a structure you are talking about Techniques/Ephemera, because that it where structures fall within the model.  It cannot be a Creative Agenda unless it is a concept, thus a structural definition of Sim cannot be Sim because it cannot be a Creative Agenda.  Stuff like meta-game preferences and narration distribution (who gets to make concessions in this case) are all specific procedures.  Specific procedures, simply by definition of the layer, are Techniques/Ephemera.

Sim must be defined using the existing structure of the model.  That's not a bad thing about the model - it's just the nature of models.  For something to be a Creative Agenda it has to be definable without the procedures that might associate it.  (Which is what folks around here mean when they say "Don't conflate Technique with Creative Agenda.")

I think I'm pretty dead on as far as my understanding of the Big Model, but I welcome any corrections provided they aren't of the hair-splitting variety like the distinction between "goal", "priority" and "intent".

Maybe this will make what I'm seeing about bricolage clear, maybe not.  Thoughts?  Do we need to let this die?

(PS:  One of the main reasons why Sim has failed for me, and I don't bring this up normally, is that the model is designed to facilitate communication and Sim only accomplishes the opposite by causing threads to decay into talk about it instead of what the topic was to begin with.  Everything about the model, except Sim, seems like a brilliant success.  Bad apples and all that.  That doesn't apply to this thread, seeing as it is actually about Sim, but I felt like ranting.)

[Jason Lee]

Hey,

I realized I should note that I know there were a lot of other topics addressed in this thread.  I'm not trying to blow them off.  I'm just trying to narrow down to where I see the difference of opinion - the Big Model versus bricolage as it relates to priority versus process.  I think we might be cluttering ourselves up a bit and adding to the confusion. 

Also, it's probably not worth worrying about "mythic style bricolage" versus "bricolage".  I'm just assuming we are talking about "RPG style bricolage", so any use of the word "bricolage" reads pretty much the same to me.  I'm rather "big picture" in perceptions.  For example, I can see the conceptual distiction between Premise (Forge definition) and theme, but I don't think it's an important distinction; theme doesn't happen without Premise, and even more confounding is that Premise is often back-filled after the theme has already been revealed.  If you feel there is a concrete tangible distinction between the three then set me straight, otherwise it's all "RPG style bricolage" to me.

[Silmenume]

Hey Jason,

Sorry about the slow reply, but I've been doing more ruminatin' than postin' lately.

Hmmm.  We seem to have reached the point of talking in circles and splitting hairs.  I'm not sure if we can get any farther, so we might just have to agree to disagree.  Let's see...

I don't feel that we are going in circles or disagree with each other as much as we are talking past each other.  Let's give this one more go around and if we don't get anywhere, then I'm with you about giving this one a rest!

My hope example was intended to illustrate that you can have the same result, the same bricolage behavior, from an engineering or bricolage mindset.  I am not saying that there is no difference in the intent/mindself/thinking methodology/etc.  I am saying that the concept of bricolage refers to a process, not the thought behind that process.  If bricolage is meant to refer to both unified then the distinction between bricolage and engineering falls apart.  Unifying intent and action into one concept requires intent A to only yield action A and intent B to only yield action B.  Once A can yield B and B can yield A you can no longer say that the intent and action are unified, so the unified definition becomes meaningless.

I went back over your 'Hope' example a number of times to try and make sure I read it properly.  I really do *cringe* as I type this because the following does look suspiciously like splitting hairs, but if you will extend me a moment or two I hope to demonstrate otherwise.  The description you had posted of your thought process is outside the Big Model.  The problem, I now see a little better, is that I am focused on the external act which defines Exploration – the specific act of sharing the imaginings – as opposed to the internal processes.  I can't diagnose your process as Sim or Nar because we don't have enough information about what happened at the table and how you expressed your CA driven imaginings.  What was the Premise issue that was driving your play?  Not to be a knucklehead, but your conclusion of Nar cannot be supported – at least with what has been posted.

Why am I harping on this in a seemingly pointless pedantic manner?  Because, the example which you used to demonstrate the similarity of the engineering process and the bricolage process is faulty - leading to an erroneous conclusion.  (I'm really not trying to be a jerk here!)  I just want to show where we aren't in agreement – and hopefully why.

To try and show how the thought processes of engineering and bricolage are different I'll borrow from Chris -

Bricolage APPLIED (finally!)[/url]... Suppose we step back from the actual machine for a minute and look at it like the engineer.  Yes, that thing there is an iron, but from the perspective of the machine in which it is placed it is really a meaning: it means "local heat, heavy, etc."  We may only be using "local heat," but it's still heavy.  But from this perspective it isn't "iron."  So the structure of "iron" put this way is (Local Heat)&(Heavy).  If we look at a whole big elaborate machine, we'll see a long column of such meanings intersecting.  We'll also see some apparently contradictory meanings: because we wanted the heating thing to be light, we have both Iron (Local Heat)&(Heavy) and Helium Balloon (Really Big)&(Delicate)&(negative-Heavy).  In this machine, Heavy and negative-Heavy cancel out, so we get a light total.  You see?

The thing is, any structure like this is a horrible mess if it takes into account every single potential meaning, because every thing we use has a huge raft of potential meanings, i.e. is structured densely.  This isn't true with engineering, because you design things to have one meaning and little else, but in bricolage you're stuck with the vast entailments of actual things as they really are.

This was from a PM -

A lot myths, says Lévi-Strauss, seem to begin with "What if?" when seen from this perspective. They don't necessarily need to explain anything, though that might be a good place to start. Instead, they say, "Okay, we've got all this stuff hanging around and all these myths and everything spinning in the air. So what if we introduce a new situation and see what happens?" And then they kind of walk through how the machine functions, and notice that some gear over here is out of alignment when that situation comes up, and that means they have to tinker with that gear to get it to work: the Bear can't have sex with the Eagle any more. But now that that's happened, we immediately want to jump into other stories about Eagles and Bears, because we know for sure that a lot of tinkering is going to be necessary, and that's fun.

...

The essential point about myth is that it isn't exactly about anything; it is made of things, and it manipulates things, but it doesn't really discuss things. It puts different things in all kinds of odd and unlikely complicated relations and plays with the whole mess to get more things in. And it borrows, constantly, from every other sphere of life and every other myth, to develop really interesting and sophisticated solutions to what amount to aesthetic problems.

What I was able to conclude about the engineering process and the bricolage process of thinking is something like –

• The bricoleur – "I have all this stuff, can I make it all work together?
• The engineer – "I have a problem, how can I best fix it?

So as you can see, the engineer and the bricoleur have very different thought processes.
In G/N we create very specific types of problems which have subsequently been codified into the Big Model as Challenge and Premise respectively.  This conceptualization of the types of problems makes it relatively easy to describe what these Creative Agendas are about and what the players are "doing."  They are either attending to the problems created/faced in the Challenge or the problems created/faced in the Premise.  Very cool and fairly easy and reasonably straight forward.  However, Sim like the bricoleur does not necessarily set out to attend to a (particular type of) problem, but rather tries to make something (Chris uses the analogy of a machine) that functions at whatever it does effectively from whatever parts are at hand.  In Sim this machine is very similar to myth.  Whereas G/N are structured around dealing with types of (and the generation of the specific) problems that are interesting to the players and can be identified by that action, Sim on the other hand "isn't exactly about anything; it is made of things, and it manipulates things, but it doesn't really discuss things... And it borrows, constantly, from every other sphere of life and every other myth (in the case of Sim role-play the source material fills this role), to develop really interesting and sophisticated solutions to what amount to aesthetic problems."  How do we formalize "aesthetic problems?"  At any rate that particular issue is outside of the purview of this thread.

Sim cannot be misplaced within the model.  There can be no such thing as Sim play that exists outside the context of the Big Model... It is simply definitional of Sim that it is a Creative Agenda within the Big Model.

I agree with you completely.  I did not mean to imply that Sim was misplaced within the Model.  I meant that the model, as it is currently constructed, does not and cannot effectively describe Sim play.  It does not resolve deep enough into the "play process" to really touch and describe Sim.  The model is concept/engineering oriented; Sim is aesthetic/bricolage oriented.  I should note that I am NOT saying that G/N play does not have its own aesthetic value, but rather the driving force in Sim is neither concept driven nor concept centered.  The very part which you clipped out of your quote of me does not dispute the place of Sim in the Model, but rather finally accounts for and establishes a means to discuss Sim within the Model.

Anything that is not well served by the model cannot be Sim.  ...   Sim must be defined using the existing structure of the model.  That's not a bad thing about the model - it's just the nature of models.

This is a tautology which assumes that Model is whole and complete.  I hope that the above addressed that notion.

It cannot be a Creative Agenda unless it is a concept, thus a structural definition of Sim cannot be Sim because it cannot be a Creative Agenda.

That is not strictly true.  There is nothing foundational or within the Model itself that mandates that a CA must be conceptual in nature.  In fact Ron uses the term aesthetic when describing CA.  It is interesting that you do bring this up; it is that very idea that I am laying the foundation for fighting against when I initiated this thread.  There is yet one more layer to the Model, which once included, allows for a slightly amended understanding of Creative Agenda which then fully accounts for Sim and its process.

For something to be a Creative Agenda it has to be definable without the procedures that might associate it.  (Which is what folks around here mean when they say "Don't conflate Technique with Creative Agenda.")

I agree but I think there is some miscommunication going on here.  The Nar CA can be defined as the process of Addressing Premise.  The Gam CA can be defined as the process of Addressing Challenge.  We haven't assigned any procedure to that process other than to say there are procedures/techniques.  Right now, if push came to shove, I would provisionally throw out that the Sim CA can be defined as the process of bricolage – the making of things, in this case since these things are words we are making myth, from that which already exists, guided by the aesthetics inherent to the source material (book/movie -> words) and those brought and socially reinforced by the players.

Bricolage is not a Technique – it is that process which is shaped by the Techniques.

PS:  One of the main reasons why Sim has failed for me, and I don't bring this up normally, is that the model is designed to facilitate communication and Sim only accomplishes the opposite by causing threads to decay into talk about it instead of what the topic was to begin with.  Everything about the model, except Sim, seems like a brilliant success.

I empathize with your ranting!  Regarding the Model, I think you are correct – I too think that the Model is a brilliant success; excepting Sim.

I hope that I have provided at least some clarification without falling back on hairsplitting the distinction between "goal", "priority" and "intent!"  If you feel that you did not get anything out of this post or that I did not clarify anything effectively, then let us shake hands and amicably agree to disagree as you had wisely proposed.

[Jason Lee]

No problem Jay, I haven't been around either on account of exams.  Don't worry, you aren't being a knucklehead or a jerk or anything.  I think we are still talking passed each other.  I am a bit frustrated, so I hope I'm not being rude.  There is one thing I'd like to see if we can talk about - the hope example.  The rest I'm just going to respond in brief to, just because they deserve responses, and we should probably let them go.

*****

Regarding the Big Model...  The words concept and structure did indeed get slippery on me.  That's okay though.  We can call Creative Agendas aesthetics.  Hell, we can call them tuna fish for all I care, because it really doesn't matter.  My point was that for something to be a Creative Agenda it has to be the same kind of thing as the other Creative Agendas.  If it isn't the same kind of thing as Gam or Nar, then it cannot, simply by definition of the Creative Agenda layer, be Sim.

I think here we'll need to agree to disagree.  I think the model is complete.  Which we'll see when Ron makes the Big Model Ask Ron forum.  Even if it wasn't complete, G, N, and S no longer have any impact on the structure of the model - they are just little divisons inside the actual concept - Creative Agenda.

*****

You don't need to convince me there are different thought processes involved in engineering and bricolage.  I've been agreeing with that all along. 

*****

As for the hope example...  Well, it's Nar because I gave a crap about my character's motivations.  That's all you need for a Nar priority.  That's it.  Really.  It just snowballs from there.  It's painfully simple.  All this business about Premise, addressment, moral, ethical, whateverness is just literary criticism junk that gets piled into the definition.  It's all correct junk because of the nature of stories, but it's just analysis stuff that isn't needed for play.  However, whether or not it was Nar doesn't matter.  The Big Model itself doesn't matter for the example. 

The question is:  Was it engineering or bricolage?

Here's what I'm trying to get at (hopefully better explained).  We have two terms (bricolage and engineering) and we've been talking about two layers.  We have intent (thought process) and action (expression process).  Now, to still have two terms one of three things must be true:

1)  Our two terms refer only to action.
2)  Our two terms refer only to intent.
3)  Our two terms refer to both intent and action combined, but the relationships are exclusive.  Meaning, bricolage intent can only yeild bricolage action, and engineering intent can only yield engineering action.

If, as my hope example is intended to illustrate, engineering intent can yield bricolage action, then we must either add a third term or choose from #1 or #2.  I've been choosing #1.

[Silmenume]

Hey Jason,

Alas...I think we are going to have to agree to disagree.

Under the rubric of "Making Things" we can have both Industrial Factories and Cottage Craftsmanship.  Yes both processes "make things," but their products and their processes are completely different.  Thus even if both were "making drinking glasses" there is a profound difference between something produced by Corning and another produced by a glass blower.  Or better yet lets use the rubric of "makes glass things."  A Corning factory turns out drinking glasses while a glass blower might produce glass figurines.  Their means, and products are very different though they both might be motivated by analogous desires.  Just because they both make glass things does not mean they are doing the "same thing" any more than the engineering thought process and the bricolage thought process are producing the same things even though both seek to produce "knowing" (glass things – as it were).  One cannot use industrial processes to produce hand made things.  One cannot use "engineering" thinking to produce "bricolage" effects.  Certainly, I have very recently argued that bricolage can by yoked (subservient) to engineering processes, but that does not mean that the engineering process can produce bricolage effects.  That they are not "doing the same thing" is central as the Big Model is based upon process and not upon product nor upon intent.

To put it in already published game terms the picking and choosing and referencing of Spiritual Attributes is an Engineering process.  The creation of Kickers is an Engineering process.  The use of tokens in Universalis is an Engineering process.  Any meta-game currency employment is an Engineering process.  However, once this is done another process takes place, under the constraints provided by the Engineering process and that is bricolage.  This is the "playing out" of those Engineering inventions.  Bricolage is an iterative circular thought process while Engineering is linear process in that it seeks a  specific goal.  So I will have to agree to disagree with you as I choose #3.

Well, it's Nar because I gave a crap about my character's motivations.  That's all you need for a Nar priority.

Actually that is not correct, and if I recall correctly, that idea had been discussed and was debunked about a year ago – give or take.  Worrying about Character motivation is not definitional of Nar nor is it limited to Nar; Addressing the Premise question is.  So, in this matter too, I'm afraid I am going to have to agree to disagree.

My point was that for something to be a Creative Agenda it has to be the same kind of thing as the other Creative Agendas.  If it isn't the same kind of thing as Gam or Nar, then it cannot, simply by definition of the Creative Agenda layer, be Sim.

I agree.  As Creative Agendas are defined by and as the prioritization of processes, then the Sim CA is the same kind of thing as Gam/Nar – for it too prioritizes a process.  Sim is the process called Bricolage as opposed to Gam which is the process of Addressing Challenge and Nar which is the process of Addressing Premise.

I should also note and apologize regarding –

You don't need to convince me there are different thought processes involved in engineering and bricolage.  I've been agreeing with that all along.

I wasn't trying to convince you that they were different processes rather I was trying to demonstrate just how different they were.  My bad if I came off otherwise.

All in all I think though we have more clearly elucidated our positions, and I think we do understand each other's positions, I think we are no closer to agreeing.  Fair enough!  Thank you for your time and input, it has been valuable to me!

[Jason Lee]

Fair enough.  Let's call it quits and good day.

Though, could you provide a link or hints to the thread(s) that discuss what you mention in the quote below? I would like to see how Premise was divorced from character motivation in actual play (disproved the Nar ripple effect):

Actually that is not correct, and if I recall correctly, that idea had been discussed and was debunked about a year ago – give or take.  Worrying about Character motivation is not definitional of Nar nor is it limited to Nar; Addressing the Premise question is.  So, in this matter too, I'm afraid I am going to have to agree to disagree.