B to the W to the G to the N to the S

[Judd]

For whatever reason, I'm thinking about incoherence after an IM chat with Paul:

Play which includes incompatible combinations of Creative Agendas among participants. Incoherent play is considered to contribute to Dysfunctional play, but does not define it. Incoherence may be applied indirectly to game rules.

I'm thinking of a scene where we shifted gears quickly from one Creative Agenda, quickly to another.

Here's one:

"In the scripting for the four previous orc attacks, I had gained some understanding of a strategy.  I finally felt that Fight! was sinking in.  Honestly, I should have gotten together with some buddies and just scripted gladiator style for an afternoon months ago.

They fenced for a little while, circled, parried, let their armor do a little work for them and then, at the same moment they went for the Great Strike, the most brutal hit possible in the Burning Wheel system. When Aaron saw my script and I saw his we high-fived, knowing full well that it might mean death for his beloved character.

Great Strike allows the player to either add to the power of the hit or add to the hits ability to penetrate armor. They both went for the armor penetration.

And they both got it.

Aaron got lucky, he was just maimed, sword stuck through his chest.

He Who Rules was not so lucky, his sword arm was chopped off and the blow continued on through his chest, stuck in his sternum.

Aaron's elf, The Herald of the Dawn, collapsed in his brother's arms and his brother called for a healer. It took him four months to recover from his wounds, one iota short of death."

I think we started off with some narrative tendencies, there, with me threatening his brother, explicitly mentioned in Aaron's character's Beliefs.  But then we started scripting and scripting has rarely ever gone down without hard glances across the table and perhaps even some talking shit.

That said, while I want combats to be challenging, I don't script just to win.  I script according to what I think the NPC at hand would do.  Sounds like we've got some Sim going on there.  I want the orc to fence for a while and then go for the big shot, because orcs are cunning and brutal and want to take your fucking head off and eat it.

So, just to clear up, incoherence isn't when more than one creative agenda rears its head.  Incoherence is when more than one creative agenda rears its head and causes friction at the table that makes the game suck.  In the above game, everyone was watching every die roll, hooting, hollering and engaged.  No suck there that I could sense.  Hence, not incoherent.

It is not up to the fickle gods of GNS to decide if a game is incoherent.  It is up to the people at the damned table.

A game isn't incoherent.  That'd be a silly thing to say.  But someone might argue that a game might put its players in a situation where incoherence is easy to stumble into.

Thoughts appreciated.

[Ben Lehman]

Hey, Judd:

So I'm not sure what you're describing is incoherence or not, from the tidbit. On the one hand, it looks and feels a lot like some of my own successful incohrent play. Yet on the other hand it looks and feels like some of my successful coherent play.

So, just to clear up, incoherence isn't when more than one creative agenda rears its head.  Incoherence is when more than one creative agenda rears its head and causes friction at the table that makes the game suck.  In the above game, everyone was watching every die roll, hooting, hollering and engaged.  No suck there that I could sense.  Hence, not incoherent.

Incoherence isn't necessarily unfun, it's just harder to have fun, because you're switching gears all the damned time. So you can have sucky incoherence and non-sucky incoherence. Generally, speaking the key to non-sucky incoherence is to have everyone on board for each creative agenda that you're hitting in play.

But the other possibility, and the one that seems more likely just knowing what I know about you and having played some games with you, is that you were using the tactics-guts-and-strategy Gamist stuff to supplement your Narrativist over-arching play. So we're hyper-focused on tactics and strategy because, if we don't do it right, people important to us will die. The outcome in terms of the story is the core issue: the tactical stuff supplements that. We're not sitting down to see if I can out-script you, we're sitting down to see how our story is going to go. Because we care about that, we care about the scripting.

yrs--
--Ben

[Judd]

Hey, Judd:

So I'm not sure what you're describing is incoherence or not, from the tidbit. On the one hand, it looks and feels a lot like some of my own successful incohrent play. Yet on the other hand it looks and feels like some of my successful coherent play.

What I was saying is that the above example was not incoherent.  I guess I was under the impression that incoherent play is somehow bad but more than one creative agenda rearing its head is a pretty damned common thing and its only incoherent if it isn't fun.

Sub-dividing into successful incoherence and unsuccessful incoherence gives me a headache.  Incoherent has a negative connotation to it, so I assumed that when a game dipped into incoherence it was because differing creative agendas were causing play to drag and be lame.

I am fine with being wrong.  And I'm also fine with us deciding it just doesn't matter and talking about the AP example more and the actual changing of gears.

[Eero Tuovinen]

Tell us more. To me that all seems like pretty straight-forward system process appreciation that might provide a pay-off in any creative agenda. Looking at the moment of the high-five, I've had similar in all creative agendas when the system kicked the game towards sudden, drastic turns or conclusions. Of course players are going to be excited when resolution approaches, whatever the creative agenda. Why do you think that this signified a shift in CA?

Likewise, the GM doing NPC tactics based on "how this character would act" is usually not a sign of any particular CA, but rather a quite common technical constraint on what the GM's role in the game is, in the first place. I don't think I've ever played in a gamist game where the presumption would have been that the GM would metagame to kill off the player characters, even if the players were supposed to. A part of the enjoyment of gamism, for instance, often is that players are beating giants and trolls, not just the GM.

Other than that, looking at the original session description, I can't off-hand recognize an obvious CA. So it might still be incoherent or switching in the fly (if you consider that possible) or whatever. If I had to choose, I'd pick simulationism, but that's so strenuous with this data that your bet is probably much better than mine. Or Ben's bet, actually; it all depends on how the players reacted to those challenges to their BITs, I guess.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Judd,

I'll be a little blunter than some of the others who've replied. That bit of play doesn't tell us anything about agendas, much less whether you all changed from one to the other. You're committing the classic fallacy of looking at instants instead of instances.

From my essay GNS and other matters of role-playing theory,

For a given instance of play, the three modes are exclusive in application. When someone tells me that their role-playing is "all three," what I see from them is this: features of (say) two of the goals appear in concert with, or in service to, the main one, but two or more fully-prioritized goals are not present at the same time. So in the course of Narrativist or Simulationist play, moments or aspects of competition that contribute to the main goal are not Gamism. In the course of Gamist or Simulationist play, moments of thematic commentary that contribute to the main goal are not Narrativism. In the course of Narrativist or Gamist play, moments of attention to plausibility that contribute to the main goal are not Simulationism. The primary and not to be compromised goal is what it is for a given instance of play.

(The final sentence in that paragraph, about how "instance" is left ambiguous, is now out of date. I'd now re-state it as instances varying greatly. They do not, however, vary down to the moment-to-moment scale that you're describing.) All I see is a bit of little g or n, at most, and probably not even that. Also, I hope it's clear that "little g" is in no way actually an Agenda - in the Big Model terms that came much later than that essay, they're fun Ephemera.

Best, Ron

[Judd]

I think I just have no idea how to talk about this stuff.

Honestly, that is fine with me.

Thanks for the feedback, folks.

[Ron Edwards]

That's silly, Judd. Do you want to understand better? Is there a way to talk about that experience of play, or maybe another one, that does make your point?

"Oh gee, I got dissed, I'll shut up now." That's unworthy of you. I'm here. Let's make sense of this. I see all sorts of ways to do it, but it starts with you being interested. Let me know.

Best, Ron

[Judd]

That's silly, Judd. Do you want to understand better? Is there a way to talk about that experience of play, or maybe another one, that does make your point?

"Oh gee, I got dissed, I'll shut up now." That's unworthy of you. I'm here. Let's make sense of this. I see all sorts of ways to do it, but it starts with you being interested. Let me know.

Best, Ron

I don't feel dissed.  I got excited because I thought had a moment where I understood some of this stuff and now I reckon I don't.

And honestly, I'm not throwing a tantrum or leaving in a huff.  I'm just not sure it is an effort I want to make right now.

I'm going to re-read a few essays in the coming month and come back to it.

I do appreciate...no sure how to explain it.

I appreciate this:

I'm here. Let's make sense of this.

That means a whole lot.  Thanks.

But another time.

[Paul T]

Hey...

Surely someone, by now, has written up some guidelines for "how to identify an instance of play". An explanation that everyone is onboard with. Or even a discussion that illuminates the issue, or some good APexamples... If that does exist, could we make a link to it here?


Paul

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Paul,

I think I found the perfect thread for you: The Sim Nar Blur. Let me know if it works for you, and return here if you have any questions or comments about that.

Best, Ron