Incoherent Play and Bucket Seats

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Steven!

Let's hold off on the Aliens discussion until we're done with Eberron. Those games are separated by a lot of time, too, so it's good to focus for a bit.
I think you're getting a little tied up with "what the player wants" as a motivational thing. You should probably let that take care of itself, as a phenomenon. If I observe Bob to be enjoying a Narrativist CA with the rest of the group, then I simply don't trouble myself with whether Bob wanted it prior to play, or developed it during play, or responded positively to the opportunity provided by someone else's decisions during play. It really doesn't matter. CA is an effect, or an outcome, or more accurately, a motor that must "catch" in order to run. I see no reason at all to discuss putative or intended CA, if it's in any way distinct from one that occurs.

On a related note, due to the medium of forum/text discussion, we should always remember that when someone who wasn't there characterizes someone who was, it's just trying on a shoe. Adam doesn't know Gene and wasn't there. If what he says doesn't really fit, then no biggie, just say so, and we move on if it's not a crucial point. I think Adam's general point that folks really didn't buy into the setting in any way that made a CA possible is not at dispute among us, so the details about this-or-that person aren't so important.

I am still confused about incoherence in some way (at least as it applies to this particular game). Adam's post helped somewhat for murk, but I am still confused about CA. In his note he mentions individual CA, while in Ron's it mentions that a CA couldn't be formed because of the reward cycle and incoherence. Again the big point that I am looking for is how to set-up a game, and facilitate play to create a coherent game.

Well, let's think about that big point ... specifically, that you're basically asking for a whole lot right at once. Right now, though, we're only reflecting on that early, early game, right? The upcoming discussion of the Aliens game will give us all a line, rather than a point, to talk about. It is a big point, so therefore we need to take our time and really consider all these games you've played. I think that you're jumping ahead a little. We have plenty of time.

Here is the problem for me, how do you take the things that people are excited about and weave them into a coherent CA?

The problem is in how you're looking at it, based on your phrasing. You don't do any such thing. You don't take their things and weave them for others' benefit. CA is something that all of you want, in forms that are compatible enough to function as a full-on SIS with an inherent reward cycle in the system. Somehow, you're really hyped on the idea that you, personally, are going to make it happen for them, and the fact of the matter is that no one can take care of anything else, in terms of CA. You can't make them want it and you can't make them want your version of it.

Now, if you're using "you" as a collective thing, basically saying "we," then we can talk about that more easily. But at this point, you are like a guy who wants to learn how to fight and asking "how do I knock him out? How do I win?" And here I am, saying, hit the bag. A lot. Over and over. We'll correct anything that needs it, but we can't pre-correct (until we watch for a while) and we can't just give you an instant answer for "How do I win?"

Hitting the bag is repetitive, tiring, and demanding. Even worse, you can't be a machine, you have to get better via your own concentration and self-assessment as you go as well. It's not really fun. But that's how it goes, and what we're doing here. There is no "win this way" answer.

I'll be back with some more posting about the Eberron game tomorrow, and with any luck, we can finish up there and move on to the next.

Best, Ron

[Steven Stewart]

Hi Ron,

Sounds good from my end.

In the interim between your posts, just want to answer a few of your questions bring up a question regarding the discussion (not the content but the actual process of discussion). I did mean the global "you" and not me personally. So to rephrase what can "we - gamers in general, this group specifically" do to help create a coherent agenda during play? I'm cool with taking the discussion down the current lines, and also understand that there isn't going to be an answer, but rather a process.

How does that motor catch, I think is the heart of the discussion, and I'm with you that it takes a while to understand that and get there, hit the bag so to speak.  But yeah I know there is no silver bullet, just a process and I can get behind it takes time to get there, and that you need lines not points. I can get behind processes, its what I do for a living.

Apologies (and specifically to Adam) if my previous aside was coming on too strong that wasn't my intent, I see where you are coming from. And I appreciate you, Ron,  pointing that out to me, cause it helped my understanding of where folks are coming from around here. I was basically trying to say what Ron said: "shoe doesn't fit, but its probably not critical to waste time to figure out the exact shoe that does since the overall point makes sense that the people don't dig the setting in the same ways or not at all".

But I do think I need to be able to point out when the shoe doens't fit.  I think you are saying, sure you can do that. Is that cool, or is that too hampering the discussion?  Really, I'm not trying to speed bump this or try anyone's patience, just trying to get on the same page about this.   

So not much really to add other than to say, I'm with you so far, thanks for clearing up some stuff, and looking forward to hitting the bag a bit more.

Cheers,

Steve

[Adam Dray]

No apology necessary, but it's appreciated anyway! I just like to try to get to specifics quickly, even if they're wrong, rather than talk at some abstract level. If I'm wrong at my guessing, at least you can tell me where I'm wrong and where I'm right and I can correct my misinterpretations but keep the discussion going. When things get too abstract, we could talk past each other for weeks and not realize it.

(Also -- my personal disclaimer -- I understand this stuff about 90% of the time and I use these discussions both to help other people understand them as I see them and also to correct my own misunderstandings via teaching. That is, of course, I'm not always right.) If I start steering you wrong, someone else here will likely step in and gently correct me and get you back on course.


In talking about "individual CA" as you put it, I meant that since people weren't all focusing on the same goals, no coherent CA could form in the group. Since CA is best understood in terms of the entire reward system as seen over one or more complete reward cycles at all levels (including, perhaps most importantly, the social contract level!), and since social rewards ("Tonight's game was awesome, Steven! I loved how my character was forced to decide between...") require group participation and interaction, CA has to be a group thing. Does that make sense now?

[Steven Stewart]

In talking about "individual CA" as you put it, I meant that since people weren't all focusing on the same goals, no coherent CA could form in the group. Since CA is best understood in terms of the entire reward system as seen over one or more complete reward cycles at all levels (including, perhaps most importantly, the social contract level!), and since social rewards ("Tonight's game was awesome, Steven! I loved how my character was forced to decide between...") require group participation and interaction, CA has to be a group thing. Does that make sense now?

Yeah, its starting to make better sense, I see where you are coming from. Thanks.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

All right, I've looked over the thread so far and here are some things I want to conclude - or rather, to check with you, Steven, to see if they work as conclusions. And yes, you (and Dennis!) are the arbiter of shoe-fitting, because you were there and we were not.

Let's think of that platform I keep talking about, constructed of green-painted wood. That's the shared imagined space (SIS). Let's go over that term a little.

Shared = communicated. Just because you and I imagine the same thing doesn't mean it's shared.
Imagined = created, constructed, or (to some) "experienced." It does not mean merely "imaginary."
Space = area, volume, and time, not just portraiture; this part implies that things can happen in the imagined stuff.

No such SIS is possible unless everyone is participating in it, and unless the characters fit into the setting such that situation is immediately and clearly understood by everyone.

In your case, you were all fired up about the setting ... by yourself. No sharing. No imagining except for yours. Therefore, no shared-imagined space. They made up characters who were only fitting into the setting because you trimmed or shoehorned them in your mind, and certainly in the case of that paladin, it shows the narrow limits of your capacity or authority to do that in this group. Even if you did it thoroughly and re-tooled every character to fit perfectly into Eberron, you were only doing it for yourself. No one else bought into that.

This is the very same issue I wrote about in my Shadow of Yesterday thread, in which I outlined setting-hard play in a way which seemed to surprise a lot of people, who as far as I can tell hadn't been very successful at it in their own experience. (Larger point: isn't it odd that members of a hobby which, traditionally, places vast value on the richness and details of setting, seem to display such consistent incompetence at actually using settings in play?) The point is that you (personally) had setting, but the group as a whole did not have situation as a feature of that setting, nor as a feature of their characters. As I wrote in a previous post, it is very likely that this group of guys got together to play D&D in a much more abstract or retrospective sense, and your setting could have been freakin' Dimension Z or ancient Rome for all they cared.

Hence no Situation (the key/core of the five components of Exploration). Hence no SIS, with the possible exception of fleeting moments of tactics or rolling damage amounts.

What I'm driving at this that your play-account certainly looks incoherent in GNS terms ... but not because of differing views on desired Creative Agendas. That's totally off the radar screen. There is no point to discussing that; that's like talking about whether we're going to have a democracy or a dictatorship when we don't even have a population, or even a planet. Sure, we could talk about such things, but without a population or a planet, it would be so abstract, and conclusions would depend so greatly on real-population issues which at the moment aren't known (they don't exist), that such talk would be absolutely worthless.

So what I'm asking is this: does it make sense to you that your group did not have a CA in this case, specifically because the group as a whole did not have a platform for the CA to be built from, or upon?

Does it also make sense to you that in those circumstances, even talking about CA is of no consequence or interest, when discussing or reflecting upon that game?

Dennis, I'm interested in your views and responses too.

Best, Ron

[Ricky Donato]

This is the very same issue I wrote about in my Shadow of Yesterday thread, in which I outlined setting-hard play in a way which seemed to surprise a lot of people, who as far as I can tell hadn't been very successful at it in their own experience. (Larger point: isn't it odd that members of a hobby which, traditionally, places vast value on the richness and details of setting, seem to display such consistent incompetence at actually using settings in play?)

I don't find it odd at all. In fact, it seems like the two are causally related. As I understand it, the use of a setting means two things:

1) Develop the setting as play proceeds. However, a rich and detailed setting tells the player that there is nothing that needs to be developed: everything has been sufficiently developed, and reading the sourcebook or the GM's campaign prep or whatever tells you everything you need.
2) Use the setting as a springboard for conflicts. However, if the setting already richly details the conflicts that can occur, then you're just parroting the setting designer rather than creating something original, and it is not interesting at all.

In fact, you've already discussed this before. Assuming I read you right, it's exactly the Karaoke pitfall you described in your Narrativism essay. Is that correct?

[David Berg]

a rich and detailed setting tells the player that there is nothing that needs to be developed
. . .
if the setting already richly details the conflicts that can occur, then you're just parroting the setting designer rather than creating something original, and it is not interesting at all.

All about presentation, man.

When I'm not GMing, I stay the hell away from the setting material books, so I can experience all that discovery during play.

When I am GMing, I try to tell the players just enough to know how to play their characters in a gameworld-appropriate fashion and nothing more.  Lecturing them on taxes and city gates is relatively boring.  Making them play through the first time they get to a big city, "There's a wall around it?  There's a queue going in?  There are four armed guys at the entrance?  They want me to pay a farthing?" is much more fun.  (In subsequent trips, we don't need to play through it again if the players don't want to; they already have a mental model for the experience, which is generally sufficient to communicate the setting features.)

Maybe this is why I never run games where the players know the setting as well as or better than I do....

[Steven Stewart]

Hi Ron,

I am still digesting through your response, I don't want to say yes or no just yet until I can puzzle through it a bit more thinking about the whole game.  Espically the bit about there being no situtation.

The point is that you (personally) had setting, but the group as a whole did not have situation as a feature of that setting, nor as a feature of their characters.

I am not disagreeing perse, but I am having trouble understanding how we didn't have a situation as a feature of that setting. Is this saying as well that I (personally) had situtation as a feature of the setting, but the rest of the group didn't really care about that situtation at all, or that situation in terms of its relationship to other setting pieces?

But I am still mulling this over, like we have said before we aren't in a rush, and I would like a chance to mull this over more before continuing to much further.

[Glendower]

I had a somewhat similar problem in my Eberron game, discussed here.  I think the linked thread might be helpful, as I did a lot of shoehorning myself, using pre-published adventures and dropping the characters into them.  I had all these players that had characters with strong backgrounds and motivations in the world, and I ignored them.

To root in Actual Play, I now play Burning Wheel with the same group.  Everybody in the group made a character with the same focus on the situation I had in play (a huge glacier swiftly covering their lands).  Everyone wants to stop it, everyone has their own reasons for doing so.  There's talk about what to do next, and how it melds into the motivations of the characters.  It's amazing what a little discussion can do for a game!

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

I thought I'd address David's and Ricky's questions in the interim. David, I'll start with you, and brace yourself, because I'm going to be a little blunt. As in, "blunt instrument."

When I'm not GMing, I stay the hell away from the setting material books, so I can experience all that discovery during play.

When I am GMing, I try to tell the players just enough to know how to play their characters in a gameworld-appropriate fashion and nothing more. Lecturing them on taxes and city gates is relatively boring. Making them play through the first time they get to a big city, "There's a wall around it? There's a queue going in? There are four armed guys at the entrance? They want me to pay a farthing?" is much more fun. (In subsequent trips, we don't need to play through it again if the players don't want to; they already have a mental model for the experience, which is generally sufficient to communicate the setting features.)

Maybe this is why I never run games where the players know the setting as well as or better than I do....

My quick response: so, how's that working out for you?

Which is rhetorical; please don't answer it. I am saying that, I think this approach is one of the primary causes for some of the dissatisfactions and hopes you've expressed, both in previous threads and in our conversations. It seems to me that it hasn't been working out for you. All those statements are written as assertions - whereas I'm saying, it's probably time to recognize them as entrained habits which should be reflected upon and quite likely abandoned, if you're to achieve some of the goals you've mentioned to me regarding both play and design.

Do you really think that the kind of engagement, which we agreed in our conversation was your meaning of "immersion," can be reliably achieved through these statements of yours? Based on your actual experiences? A lot of people answer yes, but they always leaven their answer with "if you have the right GM," or "if you have the right players," both of which are code for "No, but I don't want to admit it." The right answer is "No, it cannot." This isn't one of those things which can be left up to individual tastes and preferences; this is an empirical conclusion based on observation and critical reflection. What you describe is best understood at hurling handfuls of unidentifiable muck in a general direction, in the hopes that once in a while it may stick and that once in a further while the result may have some kind of shape.

Add to that the notion that a CA only appears and persists in the presence of a solid SIS, in which that level of engagement is reliably available (if not necessarily constant) for play. Therefore, if you're interested in these concepts and issues in application, then I suggest considering that these very techniques you've described are chains, or even limb-transfixing spikes, that sabotage that very goal.

Does that mean (as you imply in your brief counter-argument) that every player needs to have at least a Master's degree in the details of a given setting? No, it does not. It does, however, raise the question about how setting (specifically) is prepped and utilized towards the ends of a strong SIS and a reliable CA. There are several answers, all of them good, all of them different. However, I think going further into this shouldn't be permitted to jack this thread, though. We'll pick it up another time, although you can find most of my recent thoughts on the matter in [The Shadow of Yesterday] Drugs, hugs, knives, and Zu.

Ricky, you're next. Braced?

I was contrasting the fascination with setting inherent to role-playing culture with my observation that many role-players have a terrible time utilizing setting as a reliable, fruitful element of play itself. You wrote,

don't find it odd at all. In fact, it seems like the two are causally related. As I understand it, the use of a setting means two things:

1) Develop the setting as play proceeds. However, a rich and detailed setting tells the player that there is nothing that needs to be developed: everything has been sufficiently developed, and reading the sourcebook or the GM's campaign prep or whatever tells you everything you need.

2) Use the setting as a springboard for conflicts. However, if the setting already richly details the conflicts that can occur, then you're just parroting the setting designer rather than creating something original, and it is not interesting at all.

Since when? Which is rhetorical; I am using it as an expression of dismissal. The issue, as I discussed in the thread I referenced above, has to do with strong, usable setting, which as a variable is entirely separate from richness (meaning lots of stuff) and detail (meaning stuff about the stuff), as well as separate from the issue of developed-prior-to-play or developed-during-play. As long as a setting is strong and usable, it might be plenty rich and detailed too, and even well-developed prior to play. I used Glorantha as the poster child example and still do.

Here's the part you nailed perfectly: your phrase "springboard for conflicts" is right on the mark. A setting's role is to contribute to situation, which by definition means the fictional characters of interest are in unstable, dynamic circumstances. You could give me a one-page setting or a twenty-four-book setting - and in either case, if it lacked that feature, then it's suck-ass bullshit, and if it has that feature, it rocks.

Now, it seems to me that you are mixing in two problematic features and confounding them with the kind of setting I'm talking about. The first thing you're mixing in is to equate setting with plot, which is to say, exactly what conflicts will be faced by the characters and exactly or roughly, how they'll turn out. Yeah - I agree - if setting presentation includes those features, they're ass. But a setting may be a rich and detailed source of conflict-springboards which neither presuppose who the characters are in them, nor how those conflicts will be resolved, not even roughly.

The other thing you're mixing in is to equate pre-play developed setting with pre-loaded conflicts in a kind of highly-prescribed way, much like a published "ready to play" scenario. The only thing I can provide is a counter-example ... let's see, a few years ago, I prepped extensively for our upcomign Hero Wars game, which much to our surprise lasted far beyond our assumed 4-5 session run into the dozens of sessions and one of the longest (in terms of actual imaginary events), most significant games I've ever participated in. You know what that prep was?

It was all about a particular spot in Glorantha (the uplands of Heortland, for those who care), and a particular time after an occupying army had established a fairly stable cultural presence there. I prepped tons of stuff about it, in a small locale (it involved a theater troupe and a fairly isolated barbarian community, plus some incest-based backstory), including a variety of NPCs and a whole bunch of details to consider. But I did not presume who the player-characters would be. They could be Lunars, Heortlings, some of each, and any number of complicated subsets of each. How would they deal with the situation I was prepping? Didn't matter - who those characters would be, what "side" they'd be associated with, and what any one of them chose to do wasn't up to me at all.

So I'd prepped a small bit of the setting, loaded for bear in fact, but not yet the Big Model Situation, because real situation only occurs when the fictional characters of interest are actually in it. And it even gets more unpredictable from there, because the situation's conflicts (for those characters) were absolutely constrained only to arise through play itself. You used the word yourself: "springboard" for conflict, which is to say, we do not know what the conflicts are yet. And we won't until after the real-world participants have been actively affecting the SIS for a bit.

In conclusion, remove three things from your understanding of setting: when it's most developed (prior to play or during it), pre-established character-specific conflict (a form of railroading, potentially), and pre-established plot (outcomes; that's the karaoke right there). What's left? Setting. Places, times, locales, people, stuff in the past ... where whatever is to happen is set. Without all those connotations you've mixed in. Is it strong and usable? That's the only question. Just because role-playing tradition and text has confounded that other stuff into it doesn't mean we have to.

Hey Frank Tarcikowski, this next part is for you, perhaps as ammunition if you're interested. It is apparently widely believed and repeated that "Ron [or the Forge] hates setting." Nope - what I hate is stupidity, waste, and irrelevance in setting presentation. Those three things I've outlined for Ricky have very often been present in setting-texts for role-playing, and they have consistently contributed to stupidity, waste, and irrelevance in people's attempts actually to play and to enjoy play. I do, in fact, hate that. Given that history and the overwhelming presence of such texts in the hobby, it seems hardly surprising that the bulk of RPG design aimed at reliably fun play would start by avoiding the whole problem and taking utterly different approaches to setting.

But that does not mean that strong, usable setting is itself "bad" (nonsense - how could it be?). It means only that if someone wants to present an RPG with a rich and detailed setting, and if they want the game to be any damn good, they better make sure that that setting is strong and usable as well. To date, the games that have tried this include Conspiracy of Shadows, The Shadow of Yesterday, and Nine Worlds; to a lesser extent, The Riddle of Steel and (in a cunning way) Burning Wheel; I also think Legends of Alyria and the upcoming Robots and Rapiers offer good examples. My own Sorcerer & Sword offers a means to generate such a setting throughout the course of play, and I think my Azk'Arn setting in Sex & Sorcery validates that approach.

Best, Ron
edited to add the bit about the karaoke

[Frank T]

Hi Ron,

You'll find me agreeing wholeheartedly, quicker than you can say "Setting Challenge".

Frank

[Steven Stewart]

I am going to focus on Ron's questions, particularly how they relate to the Eberron game at hand. My apologies for waiting so long to post, I needed to sit and think about Ron's original post for a while. Also, I think Dennis is away out of the country, we can hold off until he gets back if you want, but I am also comfortable with continuing.

Ricky, Jon, David, I am going to skip your questions for now, or at least assume that Ron has addressed them. I spent most of the weekend thinking about Ron's original post and have not digested the follow up ones. Although the "throw paint on the wall and hope you get a Jackson Pollock" analogy is probably pretty applicable not to just this game but many others I have been in.

So lets go back to the last post regarding the Eberron Game (which I quote a bit since there are so many between)

Shared = communicated. Just because you and I imagine the same thing doesn't mean it's shared.
Imagined = created, constructed, or (to some) "experienced." It does not mean merely "imaginary."
Space = area, volume, and time, not just portraiture; this part implies that
things can happen in the imagined stuff.

No such SIS is possible unless everyone is participating in it, and unless the characters fit into the setting such that situation is immediately and clearly understood by everyone.

In your case, you were all fired up about the setting ... by yourself [Steven]. No sharing. No imagining  except for yours. Therefore, no shared-imagined space. They made up characters who were only fitting into the setting because you trimmed or shoehorned them in your mind...

Snip

So what I'm asking is this: does it make sense to you [Steven] that your group did not have a CA in this case, specifically because the group as a whole did not have a platform for the CA to be built from, or upon?

Yes, I think it is starting to make sense that we didn't have a strong SIS to build upon. I don't think it is quite as cut-and-dry as I had setting and the others didn't, Since it is a bit more shade of gray I want to check my understanding as to why I think it applies*. If you read the following points and say "yes" or "close enough" then I think I understand and we can conclude this game session as being incoherent due to a lack of SIS.

We have four players in this game, Steve, Dennis, Gene, Pete. I would like to look at some specific examples from play which make me think that we did not have the [bold] shared [/bold] imagined space, with the shared part being the big part.

example 1
Steve (using Eberron themes for situation) | Everyone else just got Eberron as Color
                                                    --------------------> Not everything got through, not shared

There was no sharing of Eberron as setting, rather just as color. So while we played out the adventure like you said we could put that particular situation in any setting. So there was some group shared engagement specific situation (e.g. what folks were doing)
(1) find out there is no ghost rather there is someone who is controlling the attacks
(2) there is someone digging at ancient tombs for something
(3) the train is being built late and the attacks are on the train to keep the train makers from completing the station meanwhile another group is using the delay to explore the tombs
(4) someone doesn't want the train station to be built for some reason

But the other half of those plot elements the ones that I was using on the left half of the line (the why part of all of the above):
(1)the Dragonmarked Houses of Eberron
(2) the History of the setting with the Hobgoblin Empire, the Draconic Prophecy, etc.
(3) why those attacks were going on, the power struggle of the two dragonmarked houses – the one who ran the trains clashing over trade routes and money for the one that ran the wagons and other animals
(4) the shifting of power with the dragon marked houses to the local gentry, etc.
(5) the shifty banker types who were searching for ancient tombs to get goodies for their own particular reasons and their understanding of the Draconic Prophecy

All of these parts (the setting parts) were not shared, in fact it was even crossing over the line in the diagram above, which means to use your earlier analogy the motor wasn't catching. Some part of it did cross the line, such as Dennis embracing his house and background and such, but that wasn't enough to sustain the SIS, since those were character specific points and didn't quite overlap into parts of the setting that I was drawing from in a meaningful way, so they just became color for Dennis' character since I was sharing them to impact the situation. 

Since the particular setting and character elements didn't become shared, it didn't really matter if we ended that game and picked up a brand new one. The most that got shared was just color. So as long as everyone was happy with whatever other color we threw out (such as later deciding to use Conan) then it didn't really matter that we stopped the Eberron Game.

(If I was going to draw the diagram as a picture, I would use circles rather than a line, but I think the little texty graphic gets the point across)

example 2

Gene [changeling character/dragonmarked house] | Everyone Else
                                                               ---------------------> Just came across as color

This is an example going the other way. Gene really got into the changeling character, and a very specific dragonmarked house. But those things he got into didn't really impact the adventure or the immediate situation in any way, they weren't part of the of the later list of five plot points pulled from the setting. Nor did it really engage or "catch" anyone else around the table to the point that impacted the "imagined space" in any way. So while Gene got into a specific aspect of the setting it didn't cross that line again to get into the imagined space that everyone else was doing. So to us, what Gene was doing with his character was just color.

Example 3 – contrasting  example from a different game
While we haven't discussed it that much, in my other group that is playing Polaris, all of the players are really engaged in the setting and what is going on in everyone's scenes. To the point that if you took that game and changed any of the players, or any of the characters, or any part of the setting, or the game that has happened so far that it wouldn't be the same game at all. Even though we have only had one scene where all three protagonists are involved, we are all deeply engaged in the setting and situations. We are definitely sharing in this game.

Whereas in the Eberron game, like you said, you could probably change any of the players, locations, characters, etc. and it would feel like the same game except for some color changes.

wrap up
OK, if those examples strengthen what your (Ron's) conclusion's above, and are illustrative of why we didn't have shared imagined space, then I think the shoe fits for the game. But before moving on, I have some more thoughts to finalize my understanding of  this specific game, SIS, coherency, but I want to check my current understanding before finalizing those thoughts.


Cheers,

Steve

-----------------------------
* I think I need to be able to get very concrete with the discussion and the examples, it's the only way that it is going to work for me to understand. If we just say Steve is engaged in the setting, and the others aren't, then I might get lost in a future game and just say, well lets get them engaged, lets throw more setting stuff into the adventure (which this one was already chockerblock full of it) to try and fix it. But rather if I can talk about the specifics of the adventure and where the players (all the dudes around the table) did engage, and where they didn't, and then conclude that the setting wasn't catching for everyone, then I think I can understand the concepts in a concrete applicable way, and not just a theoretical. Appreciate the patience for the examples. 

[Ron Edwards]

All of that fits fine with the suggestions and conclusions I presented, Steven. We're on the same page.

Also, your footnote is a perfect and wonderful explanation for why I now insist all discussion of theory at the Forge be rooted right here in Actual Play, or a similarly practical context like Playtesting.

Best, Ron

[Steven Stewart]

Great! Now I can add one final check of my understanding (which was in the first draft of the previous post but was taken out to make sure that my first thoughts were inline - hence the reason why I can post so quickly after since you basically said yes).

Now if I understand the exploration part of the big model, here is one of the biggest reasons why we didn't have SIS, is that I did have some of the particular thematic elements of Eberron in the adventure, and that those elements were very important to me and to my sastisfaction of the game. And because  I was part of the group, and they weren't picked up by the group, the motor didn't catch.

As a group we can choose to emphasize certain elements of the SIS and de-emphasize others. So, in speculation, if I had just been intending to use Eberron as color, and others were also equally supportive of just using Eberron as color, and it was OK to everyone involved to de-emphasize setting themes then it would have made for a more coherent game? I guess what I am asking is, you don't have to have strong emphasis on setting to have coherent SIS right? If hadn't had so much stake into the thematic elements of Eberron we could have very well said, we like this color lets keep going onto next mission? It was the twofold fact that this important aspect to me didn't become realized in play, and it sort of took the wind out of my sails to the point where I had a lot of let-down for the creative investment into the adventure without the pay-out causing the motor not to catch.

Or in other words (again some speculation here since it hasn't been played, take that into account), if we had all been willing to do "solve the mission" play going into it, and just used Eberron for color, there might have been a more coherent if weaker SIS. Now that SIS would have been shared at all levels equally, and whether it was good SIS is a matter of asethics, but if everyone had the same expectations going into it, and were cool with that, then it might have sustained play longer.  I wanted to discuss this, cause I think there are some players in the group, where the "setting" isn't really important, it only serves as color, they could care less if it was dimension z or rome or whatever. And I don't neccessarly think that is un-fun, its only un-fun to me if I was expecting heavy emphasis on setting.

It would seem to me, that the most important point to getting a coherent SIS is to get the shared part right first.

So is this still consitent with the concepts of SIS, or did I go down a wrong path with this train of thought? If the answer is yes, it is consistent, then I think we can wrap this up and talk about where to go next in the dicussion. If the the answer is "hell no" that is wrong as wrong can be, then I think I need to understand where I went wrong and spend a wee bit more time on that.

Cheers for now,

Steve

[Steven Stewart]

Here's the part you nailed perfectly: your phrase "springboard for conflicts" is right on the mark. A setting's role is to contribute to situation, which by definition means the fictional characters of interest are in unstable, dynamic circumstances. You could give me a one-page setting or a twenty-four-book setting - and in either case, if it lacked that feature, then it's suck-ass bullshit, and if it has that feature, it rocks.

I have caught up a bit with the inbetween threads, and gone off and read some of the other referenced threads. I am not sure how much others know about the Eberron setting, and it may not be important here at this point now, but might be for David and Ricky and others reading. I wouldn't advise anyone characterizing the setting until they have had a chance to look it over. Now I understand based on the history of other products you might not want to even take the time as a consumer to do that. But at least give me the credit that I did, and so can discuss it a bit.

Now I don't think its bee knees or anything and it may not be as great as the ones that Ron's referenced (I can't comment on those, cause I have only skimmed one of them), but I do think it does contain some unstable and dynamic circumstances that can be ripe for play if you know where to look for them and tease them out. When I designed the adventure, I said, oh look here is a house that has X, and here is one that is looking for Y, and look over here is a little border war just ready to boil over, some sort of Luddite group. And here is a group that does Z and another that has W. It suggested the plot elements from Ghost and the Darkness, rather than the other way around. There were issues about techonology being brought to the frontier, the changes that makes to power struggles, the side agendas that different power groups have in the name of "progress". The feeling that someone goes through when they see their way of life changing and their own authority figures that they look up to saying, accept it and move on, and you really don't want to, you want to fight it. 

As someone who has been following the TSR franchise for a long time, I can tell you that it definetly isn't Greyhawk nor espically isn't Forgotten Realms in terms of overconstraint. And when I planned the adventure, I did it in what I have now learned is a DITV way, that is here is what is going on, here is what everyone wants, and here is what happens if the players don't do anything. To the point there was a timeline from day 1 to 12 of here is what happens assuming no outside forces. So I don't think it was the setting that was the problem, rather it was that the setting wasn't realized in actual play in a meaningful shared way.

Sorry for detracting, just wanted to get that in before the posts got away too far.

Cheers,

Steve