Directoral Mechanics?

[Ron Edwards]

Hey,

I am wincing throughout this discussion regarding the casual use of "power" vs. "stance."

"Stance" is a very specific thing in my essay. It has to do with relating to a character and to situating "oneself as a person" toward the imagined events of play.

"Power" is a tremendously vague thing, and relates to other equally vague things like "control," "right," "privilege," and so forth. It exists specifically and only toward relationships among the real people around the table (or whatever).

Nathan, you're throwing them around very much as if they were synonyms, and it's gumming things up.

Best,
Ron

[Wart]

Sure you can get all colorful about it, and sure the dice doesn't determine whether I describe the hit as a solid uppercut to the ribs or a deep thrust to the thigh...I decided that. But since that description has absolutely ZERO impact on rules as written play its entirely immaterial to the point.

I'm not talking about hit locations, dramatic death scenes, and other "color" issues not handled by the rules. I'm talking about the integration of this particular combat round into a story. Unless the plot of the adventure is "All of you are kidnapped and dumped in the arena and must fight your way out"--which is a wargame and not an RPG at all--there are narrative issues that the dice don't cover.

Firstly: Why is it impossible to roleplay in the middle of a combat-oriented scenario?

Secondly: Would you not agree that although the dice don't decide how the combat fits into the story, they do decide how successful the combat is?

Fundamentally, in any game with dice resolution mechanics, whenever you get to a point where you need to roll the dice some narrative control is in the hands of fate. Granted, you have the narrative control which lets you decide the consequences of success or failure, but you cannot choose whether success of failure happens - that is down to the dice. As a result, your narrative options are limited by the dice, and so random chance is exerting some control over the narrative.

[Paganini]

Nathan, you're throwing them around very much as if they were synonyms, and it's gumming things up.

Ron, are there any specific places in *recent* posts (meaning since I reread the essay) where I'm doing this? I know I made this mistake when I initially started the thread, but I thought I'd fixed my thinking. :)

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Nathan,

I'm concerned with WhistlinFiend's post, mainly, and with this thread as a whole. His question shows that the confusion about power/stance is out there, and he's dealing with this thread - with that confusion in it - so I'm trying to correct it.

If you're clearer about the issue, that's excellent. Please help me in explaining it to others, which is an ongoing, never-ending task.

Best,
Ron

[Seth L. Blumberg]

Wart, I absolutely agree with everything you've said, and I don't see how any of it relates to the point that I was trying to make.

[Mike Holmes]

For example, Violet grabbed a fire extenguisher off of the wall the other night in our Squeam game. I hadn't previously put one there, or even thought to, but it's the sort of thing that you would find on a university wall. Earlier on a more significant use of player Directoral power introduced an NPC.

Good examples, Nathan.

Whistlin, the first example Nathan gives is of player Directorial power that is tolerated implicitly in many games. The second example is a by far more rare example, and one that was expressly permitted by the game in question.

Often it is said that Directorial power is the power traditionally reserved for the GM in most games. However, that is not even precisely true. For example, in many games players are encouraged to create backgrounds for their characters, and can often create NPCs and other non PC elements therein. This is another classic example of player use of directorial power.

Mike

[Jaif]

Ok, I had to reread the essay again, and I'm still confused.  From the essay:

Stance is defined as how a person arrives at decisions for an imaginary character's imaginary actions.

In Actor stance, a person determines a character's decisions and actions using only knowledge and perceptions that the character would have.

In Author stance, a person determines a character's decisions and actions based on the real person's priorities, then retroactively "motivates" the character to perform them. (Without that second, retroactive step, this is fairly called Pawn stance.)

In Director stance, a person aspects of the environment relative to the character in some fashion, entirely separately from the character's knowledge or ability to influence events. Therefore the player has not only determined the character's actions, but the context, timing, and spatial circumstances of those actions, or even features of the world separate from the characters.

From Ron's Post:

"Stance" is a very specific thing in my essay. It has to do with relating to a character and to situating "oneself as a person" toward the imagined events of play.

"Power" is a tremendously vague thing, and relates to other equally vague things like "control," "right," "privilege," and so forth. It exists specifically and only toward relationships among the real people around the table (or whatever).

I am confused about the ultimate distinction of stance/power.  Take, for example, the case of director stance in the essay.  Now a person in directory stance is not only thinking outside their character, but acting on environment features outside their charcter.  That requires power.

On the flip side, there's no way a person could employ director-level power without viewing the situations from outside their character.

I submit there is a one-to-one relationship here, for all practical purposes.  You can't take a directoral stance without exercising power, and you can't exercise directoral power without taking a directoral stance.

-Jeff

[Paganini]

Hi Nathan,
If you're clearer about the issue, that's excellent. Please help me in explaining it to others, which is an ongoing, never-ending task.

No problem, Ron. From your post I thought you meant that I was causing confusion recently, and I didn't want to do that.

Here's the way I understand narrative power vs. Stances.

Narrative power is the "right to say what happens" and is represented in some form or other in every single role-playing game. Often it simply boils down to "players state character actions, GM narrates results."

Stances determine (or are determined by, depending on your point of view) limitations / freedoms  that players abide by when "saying what happens." Actor stance means that the player limits himself to only the knowledge that the character posesses. (E.g., Even though the player knows that the chest is trapped, the character doesn't, so the player has the character open the chest anyway.) Author stance is similar to Actor stance in that the player is limited to making decisions about his character, but in Author stance the player makes decisions based his own goals for the game, incorporating factors that the character might not know. Players in Director Stance have control over not just their characters, but over the character's situation as well.

[Jared A. Sorensen]

Jeff,

I think throwing around a term like "power" is totally confusing the issue

Stance implies that the player has the power to assume that stance.

Frex: if someone did a Confessional in InSpectres and the GM says, "What the hell are you doing? You can't just SAY it happens and it does!" then that's someone attempting a shift into Director Stance and getting the big smack-down from the GM.

- J

[Mike Holmes]

BTW, to aid Ron, I should define what I mean by Directorial Power. Essentially, that's the right given by the game, or social contract to employ such a stance. All stances require that the players be empowered to use them before they can, otherwise such use is seen as abuse or cheating.

For example, using author power in some games is not empowered beyond a certain point. Essentially, it cannot become visible. For example, I can decide to have my character go to a Tavern where I think there might be some action going on and retroactively say that the reason was that my character was thirsty. In the hypothetical game this is empowered, and the player can make such a decision. However, if I the player know that there is a fight going down at the Tavern, but my character does not, then no matter how much I claim that my character is thirsty, it will be seen that my player motive for going there is the real motive, and thus I have overstepped my allotted power.

In another hypothetical game, such a decision would be completely empowered. These splits of power between players and GM are an important part of the definition of how play occurs. Problematically, however, the power split is not always specified, and thus it occurs by unspoken social contract. The problem arises when someone who did not understand the contract oversteps the power allotted as seen by the other participants. This is related to the general GNS incompatibility problem and may be the most pervasive form of it.

Moral: always define your power splits well when designing, and before play.

Mike

Edited to add this in response to Jared's post:

Stances are only one form of power given in a game.

For example, the GM usually has arbiter power, to edit other's play, or censor it. In the case of Jared's example, the GM is employing some self derived Social Contract  arbiter power to overrule the written rules which distinctly give the player the ability to make Director Stance decisions ucing the confessional mechanic. Note how this sort of drift ocurrs where since it is assumed in one game that a GM has such powers, that it is also asumed in another game wherin it is not the case.

[Jaif]

For example, the GM usually has arbiter power, to edit other's play, or censor it. In the case of Jared's example, the GM is employing some self derived Social Contract arbiter power to overrule the written rules which distinctly give the player the ability to make Director Stance decisions ucing the confessional mechanic. Note how this sort of drift ocurrs where since it is assumed in one game that a GM has such powers, that it is also asumed in another game wherin it is not the case.

Thanks, this helps clarify things for me.  I think what you're saying is just because you're outside the character and affecting things outside the character, you're not automatically omniscient and omnipotent.  When you take the director stance, you still only have access to the knowledge and power granted to you.  Hopefully this was set out clearly at the start of the game.

-Jeff

[Wart]

Wart, I absolutely agree with everything you've said, and I don't see how any of it relates to the point that I was trying to make.

I'm sorry, you seemed to be suggesting that games were split into games where random chance (ie, the dice) had no narrative power, and those where they had ultimate power.

Just shining light on the middle ground. ;)

[Mike Holmes]

I think what you're saying is just because you're outside the character and affecting things outside the character, you're not automatically omniscient and omnipotent.  When you take the director stance, you still only have access to the knowledge and power granted to you.  Hopefully this was set out clearly at the start of the game.

Yeah, I think that's it. One important fact that's been reiterated here, is that all too often the power granted is not stated in a game text. There is this assumption in RPGs that everyone just knows what the power split should be. And there is a more traditional split that most are used to. But even around that point there is room to maneuver, and disagreements can often get ugly. Like the example I gave. The question of OOC knowledge use is one that is often left unstated.

On occasion, you see a very clear statement of the breakdown where the game will state that making decisions using OOC knowledge is cheating or bad play. And delineations on actual Director Stance mechanics are usually well delineated. For example Story Points in some system that are spent to affect specific lists of things. So this is not to say that games have forgotten this stuff altogether, but there are still occasions where certain forms of play are left up in the air.

When this happens people should just be sure to delineate before play what the rules on these things will be (OOC is fair or not-fair, frex).

Mike

[Seth L. Blumberg]

No, Wart, that was not at all what I was trying to say.

Every RPG is a narrative. It is a story (in the non-literary, non-N-mode sense) told collaboratively by a group. The rules of the game, as well as some parts of the social contract, exist to constrain the possible stories which can be told. Regardless of whether the rules mandate that certain portions of the narrative shall be determined exclusively by the result of randomizers such as dice, it is still a narrative, it is still being told by and for human beings, and there must still be elements of the narrative that are determined by the creativity of the group.

Thus, in every instance of play, no matter what modes of decision-making are being employed by the participants, at least one actual human being is exercising narrative authority.

[Paganini]

It looks like this thread is mostly wrapped up, but another way of explaining this occured to me while I was driving home from my lesson this afternoon. In the interests of sharing, here it is. :)

During play, someone *always* has narrative power. Narrative power is simply the right to say what happens. It's a binary condition: you either have it, or you don't. Ron's Stances are a way of describing different parameters for *applying that right. When you have the right to narrate, the Stances tell you what you can do with it. Many games explicitly state or limit the way narrative power is to be used. By doing so, such games are implicitly suggesting the use of one of Ron's stances.

For example, online you'll run into many discussions over IC/OOC play. Such discussions are especially common among D&D players. Usually those discussion are actually about Actor stance. In a traditional D&D game, it's often considered cheating to setp outside of Actor stance. There's nothing particularly wrong with the other stances, but in those particular games players are supposed to limit themselves to Actor stance. In those same games the GM usually relies heavily on Director stance.

Another example, in the Synthesis playtest I was applying too much Directoral power as the result of a misunderstanding and Mike had to mention it to me. In that instance I had narrative power, but there were certain things that I (didn't realize I) wasn't supposed to do. There's nothing inherently wrong with the use of Director stance, but in this particular instance it was a Bad Thing because it was outside the proscribed framework for the game. Mike had to retrofit some of his material to make it match my scene, which is something he shouldn't have had to do; something he wouldn't have had to do if I'd limited myself to Author stance.