About terminology

[greyorm]

Sorry, man. All terms are non-obvious.

Throwing my hat in here: I agree completely.
A term is shorthand for a complex definition.  Shorthand, by its very nature, is non-obvious to someone unfamiliar with the complexities of the definition, and almost always leads to all sorts of amusing (or frustrating) misunderstandings until understanding of the term's definition is reached.

Case in point, let's not even get into the difference between memory and memory when we're talking computer terms...or how processor speed doesn't necessarily increase the actual speed of your computer (or help you download faster)...or how a monitor isn't actually used for monitoring...etc.

The only real solution to this is replacing the terms with nonsense words or Latin*, but I wonder if that destroys the history of the theory too much -- as it was developed as an outgrowth of the Threefold, and resulted in something else.

*(and then, of course, someone is going to complain about the use of Latin terms, because they don't make sense in Latin or somesuch)

Still, I'm sure there is a valid compromise here: Ron wishes the already extant terminology to remain, others wish new terms to be used.  

Suggestion: add a paragraph to the Essay which explains the situation with the terminology, and cautions the reader to beware of their own assumptions.

Finally, I quote: *whine, bitch, moan, complain, whine, bitch* -- you're all starting to sound like a bunch of gamers.

[MK Snyder]

OK, I'm going to weigh in as a vigorous anti-academist in terms of writing standards.

Academic standards of writing are terrible in terms of efficiently conveying information to a lay public or to individuals outside of the field.

So, before going any further, gentlemen, we need to define the audience.

Is the audience academic professionals in the field of roleplaying game design?

[Alan]

Is the audience academ4ic professionals in the field of roleplaying game design?

Yes.

[greyorm]

Hold up, Alan, I'm not sure I agree.
The stated purpose of the essay is to "...provide vocabulary and perspective that enable people to articulate what they want and like out of the activity, and to understand what to look for both in other people and in game design to achieve their goals. "

Thus it is attempting to speak to all gamers, or rather, all dissatisfied gamers as its target audience.

Unless Ron wants to write, or allow/contract to be written a "GNS for Dummies" essay (obviously with his input as critical, so as the two essays do not diverge in meaning or definition from one another).  That, however, as is the answer to MK's question, Ron's perogative.

[Christoffer Lernö]

Terms being intuitive or non-intuitive aside, what about the overloading on certain words? Even when basic GNS is mastered it's a bit confusing that we have: narrativist, narrative, narratate with no relation to each other but often coming up together. Then there's the word "premise". If we're supposed to use "story because it's not well defined", what about "premise"!?

That said I think the problem only emerges exactly in the GNS part. All the other stuff - currency, drama-karma-fortune, switches & dials, drift and so one - work perfectly for me.

So if we're talking about changing GNS terms there is actually very little I see as necessary to change.

One would be to change "Narrativism" to something else which immediately leads to the definition. Something like "Themism" or something since it's about exploring a theme. Thus avoiding the association with "narrating something"

The other would be to change "Simulationism" to "Explorationism" (or something like that). This was already suggested elsewhere.

Finally we'd separate "Theme" from "premise" and use "premise" for the general non-GNS specific form: "In this game you play vampires" as "premise" and then use "theme" for a premise developed for a particular mode. "Is it right to sustain one's immortality by killing others? When might the justification break down?" would be a "theme".

To sum things up

I think very little really needs to be done to make the GNS more accesible, it's mostly running into trouble where Ron seem to have wanted to keep associations to the older Threefold model.

Naively I'd make the following simple changes which I think would eliminate almost all problem with GNS as far as terms goes:

Narrativism -> Themeism
Simulationism -> Explorationism
General premise -> Premise
Specific premise -> Theme

Maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree here but it seems reasonable to me.  It would be simple to keep using these things in parallel too.

[greyorm]

Going to mull for a few days...however, wouldn't "Explorationism" cause problems with "Exploration" (already a general term in the Essay)?

Simulationism is defined as the prioritizing of Exploration above the concerns of the other two styles; this means the other two styles have Exploration (must have it, in fact), it just isn't the overriding priority.

Then again, it does seem intuitive...but take that from someone with a grasp of the essay.  I can easily see that term alongside "Exploration" leading to all sorts of misunderstandings and denouncements of appropriateness.

[MK Snyder]

"currency" snapped right into place for me, as did "drift".

"Karma" and "Fortune" I have trouble not switching, as they are both terms for personal fate or destiny...so I have a connotation problem there.  

Maybe change "Fortune" to "Chance" to get the connotation of randomness.

[Christoffer Lernö]

"Karma" and "Fortune" I have trouble not switching, as they are both terms for personal fate or destiny...so I have a connotation problem there.

Hmm... karma is actually about what you did before, earlier actions that determine your future, while the fortune thing is more random. I think this might be a misreading of "karma" that's giving you a problem. I don't see an actual conflict here in terms of it's original meaning.

As for "Exploration" I swiped that from someone, I think Jonathan. It makes sense though since the description has Sim as "the effort during play is spent on the Exploration"

Changing the Narrativism is also an effort to bring the term more in line with Ron's definition. We could also change Gamism to Competitism, but I think it's clear as it is.

That said, "Explorationism" and "Themeism" might deserve being changed into more palatable names. However, the names would preferably be easy to associate with the actual description of the modes.

As it stands, neither Narrativism or Simulationism really echo anything about what their description actually contains.

For fun, what about hybrids: Narrathemeism and Simexplorism? :)

[contracycle]

Hmm... karma is actually about what you did before, earlier actions that determine your future, while the fortune thing is more random. I think this might be a misreading of "karma" that's giving you a problem. I don't see an actual conflict here in terms of it's original meaning.

You can also "have your fortune told", suggesting that Fortune can be interpreted much like Destiny.  I too sometimes confuse them.

We could also change Gamism to Competitism, but I think it's clear as it is.

I would be violently opposed to this; I think the conflation og Gamism with competition is bad and misleading enough as it is.  IMO.

[Irmo]

As an academic effort, it is quite reasonable that it uses terminology--Jargon, as has been rightly illuminated--which requires some immersion in the field. I would not expect that all of you, no matter how well educated or intelligent, would be able to read a Law Review article and understand exactly what it meant, because the author quite reasonably would have relied on his expectation that the reader was already versed in the language of the field, probably also at least some of the recent literature on the subject and the relevant case law. Similarly when my wife, ACLS certified critical care nurse, starts telling me about her night, it is not at all uncommon for me to have to ask her what a word means when she uses it that is different from what I, as a layman, would understand.

Just to get started in this discussion, I challenge the validity of this paragraph, for a very simple reason.  We're not talking law and medicine here. We're talking roleplaying. All of us have a pretty good basic grasp of what roleplaying is for us, and what it can be for others. As such, all of use SHOULD be able to grasp the basic terminology. This isn't about two completely different academic fields, or about academia vs. lay people.

It is often said on the forums:

You must understand that the phrase "Narrativist Game" is shorthand for "a game which more easily facilitates narrativist play"

and other statements like this. Similarly, you must understand that the use of the words narrativist and simulationist (since they particularly seem to be under attack) are shorthand for all the baggage of meaning that has appeared in articles and forum posts over the past years. We work to bring newbies up to speed on these precisely because you can't jump into an academic discussion without picking up the undergraduate courses.

I'm sorry, but that statement purports that the audience has no knowledge whatsoever of the issue, when in fact they merely have little knowledge of the precise model being used. What you are talking about isn't not having taken the undergraduate courses, but rather you are declaring that someone who has studied law in England can't grasp the terminology of law in the US.

These words mean what they mean in game theory precisely because to those of us who have been talking about them all this time they have come to have these meanings. It would be different if, like Humpty Dumpty, Ron had just decided to give the words whatever meaning he wanted. Ron did not give these words the meanings they have. He gave certain concepts names which fit them as well as anything anyone could find at that moment (many of which he did not give but received from others already discussing these issues), and then worked with us to discover what the concepts really meant. The fact that having followed some of these concepts into places we never expected them to lead we find the handles don't fit as well as they once did is not sufficient reason to abandon the handles and start from scratch.

At the same time, when the terms are not able to convey their meaning, they do not fulfill the purpose. Of course you can say that they DO convey their meaning, but only to those who have invested sufficient time to study, but that is equivalent to stating that the ancient alchemists wrote in clear text because those initiated to their code could read it just fine.

Besides, even if we were to call these things gemism, nemism, and semism, in five years we would be arguing that the meanings attached to those words no longer fit the concepts to which they were being applied.

Yes. Guess what? It's commonplace in many academic fields that new paradigms are constantly being developed. Theories are constantly being revised when the need arises, terminology is streamlined, and redundancies eliminated.

I'll give you an example: There are small compartments in the cells in our body called "Peroxisomes". Nevermind what they look like or what they do, it is completely irrelevant. Suffice it to say that maybe a dozen groups, maybe more, studied them and tried to find out what they are composed of. Whenever they found a building block, they named it. Since it's a nice way to set yourself a monument, each and everyone of them came up with a clever naming system. Some named them after their institution, with a numbering system. Some named them after their function. And some simply named them after the compartment they were found in with a numbering system. The consequence was that there were three or more names for the same thing, and no one had an idea what the other guy was talking about and how building block A was related to building block B, except after studying the last dozen publications in the field. That went on and on until one professor, reviewing another guy's publication, said "Screw it, we're wasting our time here trying to find out what the other guy is talking about when in fact we could profit from his knowledge. We have to sit down and develop a terminology that is easy to comprehend and that all agree to use."

Academic discourse LIVES from exchanging information and concepts. And when the concept in and of itself is unclear, no meaningful discourse can happen.

[JMendes]

Hullo, :)

Wow. I can't believe this thread is still alive.

Just to add a fresh point of view, I am not particularly in love with Ron's selected terminology, but in all fairness, I must say that I did understand the definitions, after reading the essay a couple of times. Plus, I did refer back to the threefold, after being pointed towards it, and the differences were clear enough.

I should also point out that the many arguments supporting changes in terminology may well be very valid, but they fail to address the main argument against changing, namely, that it sets a precedent, and a bloody dangerous one, in my humble opinion.

Cheers,

J.

[Irmo]

I should also point out that the many arguments supporting changes in terminology may well be very valid, but they fail to address the main argument against changing, namely, that it sets a precedent, and a bloody dangerous one, in my humble opinion.

Cheers,

J.

Why so?

[JMendes]

Hey, :)

changing [...] sets a precedent, and a bloody dangerous one, in my humble opinion

Why so?

Well, what's gonna happen when some guy has a quibble with some other term that everyone understands, but manages to suggest an alternative that actually is a lot better? Do we change it?

What if it's just sort of better?

What about two years from now, when the evolved meaning of some term is so contrary to the original meaning as to bear no relation to the term itself? Are we going to change it? I can tell you from experience, it's going to confuse everybody and their mother.

I can hear someone saying, wait a minute, we have to be reasonable, only change when it is necessary. Sure. But then it becomes an arbitrary line between what is and isn't necessary, that someone has to set.  And then, there will be arguments about where the line has been set.

So, and again this is all just my humble opinion, a policy of 'no changes unless the theory itself changes' just makes more sense.

Cheers,

J.

[Irmo]

Well, what's gonna happen when some guy has a quibble with some other term that everyone understands, but manages to suggest an alternative that actually is a lot better? Do we change it?

The issue is precisely that not everyone understands it.

What about two years from now, when the evolved meaning of some term is so contrary to the original meaning as to bear no relation to the term itself? Are we going to change it? I can tell you from experience, it's going to confuse everybody and their mother.

I can hear someone saying, wait a minute, we have to be reasonable, only change when it is necessary. Sure. But then it becomes an arbitrary line between what is and isn't necessary, that someone has to set.  And then, there will be arguments about where the line has been set.

So, and again this is all just my humble opinion, a policy of 'no changes unless the theory itself changes' just makes more sense.

No, it doesn't make sense.  The hypothesis is the main thing. Terms are tools. They have one, and only one task: To describe the model. If they don't do that satisfactorily, not only does it make sense to change them, they HAVE to be changed. Aside from that, the terms currently seem to be the major problem preventing the model from becoming what you already state it to be: A theory. An academic theory however is accepted and understood on a far wider level.

There is nothing dangerous in adapting your tools to fit the task. Quite the contrary: It's dangerous to attempt a task with inadequate tools. Right now, they are keeping us from having a lot of progressive discussion that leads onward because many don't understand where we're starting from.

[Irmo]

Sorry, man. All terms are non-obvious.

Throwing my hat in here: I agree completely.
A term is shorthand for a complex definition.  Shorthand, by its very nature, is non-obvious to someone unfamiliar with the complexities of the definition, and almost always leads to all sorts of amusing (or frustrating) misunderstandings until understanding of the term's definition is reached.

If the scenario you describe is correct for the situation at hand, then the problem isn't with the terms, it's with the definition they stand for. In which case it is the definitions which have to be clarified.