The Case for 4 Stances

[Jonathan Walton]

I feel like I've jumped off into the deep end of the swimming pool and am trying to get everyone else to come join me :)

Fang, let me first say that I have no real investment in any of the models I've put forward so far.  I'm just trying to find one to explain the weird Actor-Director hybrid Stance that I feel exists.  Everything else is just experimentation with concepts.

Let me tell you how this started:

I was thinking about the GM in Agone (a game I've never read, but I've heard a great deal about).  Supposedly, the GM in that game takes the role of a diety or ruler, and is supposed to make their GM decisions based somewhat on the personality of the ruling figure, not just the normal GM concerns of drame, tone, theme, etc.  Now, I can't give specific examples, because I don't know what the personality of this ruler is like, but there definitely seems to be something different going on there, something that's not strictly Actor or Director Stance.

Then, more recently, I was thinking about the characters in my game, Storypunk.  Basically, they walk into pre-existing stories and alter them to their hearts content, taking Director Stance but within the limitations of their character's personality.  For example, a character who loved action might make a wuxia fairy tale completely with wicked stepmothers of Shaolin, but he wouldn't create a boring love story even if that's what the player really was interested in at the moment.

[[In that case, I'd argue that the motivation is coming from the fictional character.  If you're taking Actor Stance seriously, it's just like being an actor in a play.  There are some personality traits that are "scripted" and going against them breaks character (taking you into Author/Pawn Stance).  There can definitely be moments when the proper IC-desire of the character and the OOC desire of the player can be at odds.]]

So, both of these two situations lead me to believe that there's a brand of Director Stance that's governed by a specific role (just like Actor Stance is).  Maybe calling it a separate Stance was premature.  But I'm trying to figure out how to conceptualize it, since it's going to be a central component of the game I'm currently working on.

Does that clear things up any?

Later.
Jonathan

[Le Joueur]

If you're taking Actor Stance seriously, it's just like being an actor in a play.

...Does that clear things up any?

Absolutely.

The statement quoted is patently incorrect...and the very common mistake due to the word used for the concept.  Actor Stance has absolutely nothing to do with any form of acting (stage, screen, or idiot box).  I've always had a problem with this terminology; it was the reason I broke with the GNS model originally.

Actor Stance doesn't have to do with acting, it has to do with the TiC frame of thinking.  Acting, especially 'method acting,' is about presentation, how others view your performance ('the method' is about finding the emotional triggers inside yourself, with no relation to what the character goes through, to cause your subtle actions to conform to the character's feelings).  Actor Stance is about the boundaries of action and information you let yourself work with, the whole In-Character/Out-of-Character ideas.

Author Stance is about making decisions based on more than this, player priorities begin to affect how the character is played.  (I'm not clear on this, but I believe Author Stance also includes taking control of some of the 'environmental variables' close at hand to the character.)

Director Stance goes 'all the way.'

Now, the problem is how you keep infering that characters have motives and can affect play.  The closest thing to that is a player, who is motivated to act in character, chooses these things.  I can see how you'd conclude that this had value, given that you've thought that Actor Stance had something to do with stage acting; it doesn't.

The problem compounds itself in Storypunk.  The stories that the characters interact with are not the stories that the players interact with at all.  Think about it this way, say you watch a movie about a storyteller telling a group of kids a story; the camera 'enters' this story, but in fact the movie is still a movie about someone telling a story.  The same is true for Storypunk; the stories that the characters are changing are 'inside' the game, they are not the game itself.

That's why I keep coming back to the 'voice' idea.  When you say a character is telling what is happening in the game, what you are saying is the player is telling it in the character's voice.  Short of psychosis, the character is not actually doing it, it is the player emulating the character (by choice) doing the telling.  In many games I've played in, players, speaking in character voice, say things like "I roll a 6" or "I can't help, I'm too low on hit points."  In every occasion, it goes without saying that everyone assumes that the character doesn't know anything about dice rolling or hit points.

I'd like to talk a little about the mistake caused by the terminology here, but really, I gotta get some sleep.  Could someone else clarify my clumsy descriptions of the Stances?

Fang Langford

[Tim C Koppang]

Just a quick comment before I get some sleep.

Jonathan,

I think your comment about the GM's role in Agone could be another thread entirely.  Do stances differ for GMs vs players?  Or, more generally, what sort of specific stances, if any, should be defined for the role of the GM?

Separating the issue into a GM stance and player stance concept might be the direction you are looking for.

[talysman]

If you're taking Actor Stance seriously, it's just like being an actor in a play.

...Does that clear things up any?

Absolutely.

The statement quoted is patently incorrect...and the very common mistake due to the word used for the concept.  Actor Stance has absolutely nothing to do with any form of acting (stage, screen, or idiot box).  I've always had a problem with this terminology; it was the reason I broke with the GNS model originally.

in Jonathan's defense, you may have unintentionally snipped more from that quote than you meant to.

I understood Jonathan to say that Actor stance is like an actor in a play in one specific way: the motivations of the player are determined by the motivations of the character. he wasn't talking about speaking "in-character" or "out-of-character", but rather about the source of a player's decisions. in other words, he's not talking about acting, but taking action as a character.

I have to confess that I'm not much interested in the Stances, except for Director Stance. Actor Stance, Author Stance, and Pawn Stance are sort of natural Stances you would expect to develop from play, but Director Stance is more exciting and shows a greater potential for changing the way games can be played.

[Le Joueur]

If you're taking Actor Stance seriously, it's just like being an actor in a play.

The statement quoted is patently incorrect...and the very common mistake due to the word used for the concept.  Actor Stance has absolutely nothing to do with any form of acting (stage, screen, or idiot box).  I've always had a problem with this terminology; it was the reason I broke with the GNS model originally.

In Jonathan's defense, you may have unintentionally snipped more from that quote than you meant to.

I understood Jonathan to say that Actor stance is like an actor in a play in one specific way: the motivations of the player are determined by the motivations of the character.

That's not true.  The character has no motivations because it doesn't exist!  The player may be motivated to act in accords with what they think a character might desire, but the character still has no motivations of its own.

The same is true about actors in a play; they know their characters don't exist.  For them 'Actor Stance' is even less about the character's motivations than role-playing gaming's Actor Stance.  Their priority is that the audience interprets their 'act' as though the character is having the motivations the actor believes are in keeping with the overall performance.  Again, they do not believe that the character exists, what they do is work on the audience's interpretation of the play (this leads to a lot of unrealistic behavior in order to convey apparent motivational intent).  The actions of the player are determined by how best to convey the supposed motivations of the character.

The character still does not exist.

The character has no motivations.

The player's motivation to emulate the character should not be mistaken for actual motivations of the character.  Not is theatre and not in gaming.

Fang Langford

[Jonathan Walton]

The player's motivation to emulate the character should not be mistaken for actual motivations of the character.  Not is theatre and not in gaming.

Okay, basically, I completely disagree with you about how I conceptualize acting, roleplaying, and even the concept of character.  That's cool.  It's just going to make it hard for us to get much out of this conversation.

For me, one of the most important parts of acting is understanding "character motivation" (something that you say doesn't exist).  It's even become a cliche for an actor to ask the director "what's my motivation?" for precisely this reason.  If I, personally, have no reason to do x, y, & z, but, taking on the role of Hamlet, I'm suppose to find a way to depict someone doing x, y, & z, I make to find a way to make my own motivation gel with that of the character I'm playing.

Roleplaying, being unscripted, tends to do this backwards.  Character desires are altered to fit player desires, using a mixture of Actor and Author stance to keep up the illusion of consistant character behavior.  However, there still is "character motivation."  If, throughout the game, I've played Hamlet the Troll as being a brash, crude individual, I can't suddenly make him act polite just because I want to.  To do that, I have to break Actor Stance and go to Author/Pawn (at least as I understand the stances).  I can't do otherwise specifically because the character has no motivation to act polite and it's inconsistant with the established character.

Additionally, I see a "character" as an entity completely seperate from a player or actor.  Thousands of people have played Hamlet, after all.  The role has specific requirements that every actor has to fulfill when playing the role.  These are "character motivations," things required by the character role that aren't completely open to the whim of the actor.  Obviously, different interpretations of Hamlet exist, but the actor has to present a consistant portrait, otherwise it's a "bad" performance.

This is what I mean when I talk about "character motivation."  If we're on completely different pages on this, that's fine.

Later.
Jonathan

[Tim C Koppang]

Obviously a character is fictional and therefore can never have real motivations, or emotions, or anything else resembling human existence.  However, when a person reads Hamlet for example, that person naturally forms an interpretation of Hamlet's character—and by that I mean an interpretation of what Hamlet's motivations etc are.  From that interpretation of character a reader can draw conclusions about the play as a whole.  As Fang has stated twice now though, we must remember that Hamlet is a creation of Shakespeare's mind; he does not really exist.  I don't think anyone here is having a problem grasping that concept.

And yet we must all remember that our interpretations of Hamlet will differ from anyone else who reads the exact same play.  What does that mean?  It means that Hamlet's "motivations" (notice the quotation marks) are malleable, or maybe more appropriately, ethereal.  They are based on text or actions, yet are forever up to debate.  But now I'm talking more about written work then roleplaying—which differs entirely because it is unscripted.

In a roleplaying game the players have a set of guidelines as to how they believe their character will generally act.  These guidelines are usually laid down before play starts, in the form of character creation.  We can consider these guidelines to sometimes be in the form of motivations.  Whether or not the motivations are of the character or of the player is a tricky subject.  You could say that if one player made a character and then handed off that same character to someone else—even if player A had time to prep player B verbally—then that second player would still operate the character in ways contrary to the way the first player would have.  This is correct and consistent to my Hamlet example.  What it means is that even a set of guidelines are subject to interpretation (as are player A's prep work).  So again, that character's "motivations" are ethereal—they don't really exist except in the mind of the player/author/actor/director/reader/audience member/whatever.

That said, I think we are all getting away from the original topic of discussion for this thread, and I'd suggest starting up a new thread if people want to talk about character motivations further—not that I really have any authority to enforce this suggestion.  It is merely that: a suggestion.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

Tim's right, and if I'm not mistaken, this thread has met its goals. If the original thread author wants to continue, we will; otherwise, it's closed.

Best,
Ron

[Jonathan Walton]

Well, I still don't think I've found a satisfactory answer to the IC-Director Stance issue, but it may be that we're not going to get one right now (and it may be my own viewpoint is keeping me from accepting some of the answers that have been offered).

I'll start a new thread on Character vs. Player Motivation.

Later.
Jonathan

[Le Joueur]

Well, I still don't think I've found a satisfactory answer to the IC-Director Stance issue, but it may be that we're not going to get one right now (and it may be my own viewpoint is keeping me from accepting some of the answers that have been offered).

Perhaps there is no answer.  I'd be happy to continue here (in the absence of the words "character motivation"), if you can explain it in simple terms even a bone-head like me can understand.

What is "In-Character Director Stance?"  What that says to me is "making Out-of-Character decisions while In-Character."  That sounds impossible.  Every example posed thus far has simply sounded like performing normal Director Stance in the character's 'voice,' nothing more.

What is it?  When have I done it?  How is it a character has any access or control over meta-game resources that they are, by definition, unaware of?  (Two not-quite-exceptions; Storypunk - except that's effectively the same as making up a role-playing gamer character and playing their game in your game - and [what was it called?] I Regret to Inform You, the Gamemaster is Dead - where you play players and their characters, seeking a murder.)

Basically, I challenge the very idea that you can do anything with meta-game resources while In-Character.

Fang Langford

p. s. Yes, we'll have to disagree about character motivations, but someone has already explained that far better than I was.

[Jonathan Walton]

Every example posed thus far has simply sounded like performing normal Director Stance in the character's 'voice,' nothing more.

That may be it, actually.  What I'm seeing as another stance might be, in your perspective, just another aspect of Director.

However, since the two examples you mentioned are both my games, it may be that I'm trying to head down a different path here, even though I'm not sure where I'm going.  It's not that you're a bonehead, obviously, it's that I'm not quite sure what I'm getting at either, but I'm still trying to illuminate it as best I can.

Basically, I challenge the very idea that you can do anything with meta-game resources while In-Character.

Okay, imagine this: you're playing a Universalis mod where the players take on the roles of the Greek Gods.  I'm Mercury, you're Zeus, etc.  Now, your task is to create a setting and an accompanying story while trying to fulfill your role as a god.  Say, Mercury, the god of healing and messengers, doesn't want any messangers to get hurt.  However, Zeus, wanting to smite everything he sees, tries to thunderbolt a messenger.  So we have metagame IC-conflict over what should be allowed to happen in the story.

Does that example work, or do I need to come up with another?  This is similar to the story-within-a-story of Storypunk, where game play takes place on two seperate levels.

Later.
Jonathan

[lumpley]

I have an example.  May or may not shed light.

My character's walking down a hallway.  Murray, a fellow PC, is sequestered in his library.  I don't have any metagame reason to call for a scene between my character and Murray.  My eyes are closed, and I'm working hard to imagine my character's experiences as fully as possible.

Me: "So I'm walking down the hallway, looking at the tapestries, like I stop and examine a detail in one, a dog, before I walk on and -- huh! I bump into Murray."
Murray's Player: "You do?  I must've finished what I was working on."

I've used director stance to bring Murray to the hallway, based only on my imagination of my character's experience.  Same as when you say "I examine the doorknob" and your GM says "cool, what does the doorknob look like?" and you describe it.

-Vincent

[Le Joueur]

Hey Jonathan,

Good to know we can continue the discussion civilly.

However, since the two examples you mentioned are both my games, it may be that I'm trying to head down a different path here, even though I'm not sure where I'm going.  It's not that you're a bonehead, obviously, it's that I'm not quite sure what I'm getting at either, but I'm still trying to illuminate it as best I can.

Basically, I challenge the very idea that you can do anything with meta-game resources while In-Character.

Okay, imagine this: you're playing a Universalis mod where the players take on the roles of the Greek Gods.  I'm Mercury, you're Zeus, etc.  Now, your task is to create a setting and an accompanying story while trying to fulfill your role as a god.  Say, Mercury, the god of healing and messengers, doesn't want any messengers to get hurt.  However, Zeus, wanting to smite everything he sees, tries to thunderbolt a messenger.  So we have meta-game IC-conflict over what should be allowed to happen in the story.

Does that example work, or do I need to come up with another?  This is similar to the story-within-a-story of Storypunk, where game play takes place on two separate levels.

An interesting example except, in Universalis, you don't play In-Character (except by the "PC Gimmick" - I think it's called - as I understand it).  So you aren't creating either setting or accompanying story as a god.  These are parallel interests, creating story/setting and 'being' a god.  It is a meta-game conflict, but it is not all In-Character; the In-Character interest (smiting things) competes with an Out-of-Character interest (that Mercury's player desire to keep messengers from harm).  Certainly you feel conflicted, on the one hand you want to smite (TiC), on the other you want to play along - nobody gets hurt (obeying Proprietorship¹).  That does not make both In-Character concerns, they are 'In Player' concerns.

That still doesn't seem to exemplify a fully In-Character situation, perhaps another try?  Have you considered that Stances are something that you dance around between from second to second?  Is your idea that you stay in one Stance for long periods of time and here you try to account for those 'split decisions' of two competing Stances in your head somehow within one?

It's not that I think the inexplicit concept you have isn't real or well formed, we just need a way to better communicate it.

Fang Langford

¹ I'm sorry, but I can't seem to stop using Scattershot terminology.  Let me know if it isn't appreciated in this forum and I'll take it elsewhere.

p. s. Edited in: Vincent's examples are of the classic 'character voice' presentation of Director Stance material.  (And that's "I don't have any in-game reason to call for a scene..." I believe.)

[Jonathan Walton]

An interesting example except, in Universalis, you don't play In-Character.  So you aren't creating either setting or accompanying story as a god.

I know.  That's why I said it was a Universalis mod.  This is a non-standard example, using the game's rules because we're all familiar with them.  Let me actually write out the example so I can better demonstrate what I'm getting at:

PLAYER 1 (Mercury): Okay, a messenger is running along the road from Athens to Sparta.  He is very tired and about to collapse.  I give him the energy he needs to carry on and deliver his important message.

(Player 1 spends coins to create the mortal, the messege, the scene, etc.; then spends 1 more to provide the extra energy boost).

PLAYER 2 (Zeus):  What?  Are you just going to go around helping every mere mortal you find?  That's ungodlike.  As King of the Gods, I will punish you by thunderbolting that mortal into smithereens.

(Player 2 prepares to spend the coins that will remove the mortal from play)

PLAYER 1 (Mercury): Stop!  As the guardian of messengers, I will resist this outrage.  The man will not die simply because you object to my actions!

PLAYER 2 (Zeus): You dare!  Ha!  Stop me if you can!

(Both players get into a bidding war to see if the messenger lives or dies)

This conflict parallels the players' desires to create a interesting game by imagining disagreements between the gods, but it all happens outside of the actual story being told (that of the messenger).  If you want, you could imagine the Mercury-Zeus story as the "outer game" that holds the "inner game" of what goes on in the mortal world.  However, most of the time, the focus will be on the inner story, though the gods will still be manipulating that according to their own desires.

Have you considered that Stances are something that you dance around between from second to second?

Yeah, I have.  At the top of this thread, I think, I posit the idea that what I'm describing might just be the players hopping back and forth between Actor and Director Stance, i.e. when the players play Zeus & Mercury, they're taking Actor Stance for the gods, but when they affect the mortal world, they're taking Director Stance.  But since the gods' personalities are directly related to how Director Stance is being used, this answer doesn't completely satisfy me.

Later.
Jonathan

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Jonathan,

I think your "gods" example is flawed, relative to your intended point.

If I'm playing Mercury, I'm playing Mercury. The (in-game) character's (in-game) powers includes affecting the (in-game) world drastically. I don't care what Mercury does; whenever I say he does something, I'm in Actor or Author stance. It's only Director stance if I, as Mercury's player, specify something occurring that is not Mercury's doing.

Stance is not defined relative to the game-world. It's defined relative to the character.

I also think you're still struggling mightily with the in-character vs. out-of-character issue. There's a section of my essay, at the end of the Stance section, that specifically addresses this topic.

Best,
Ron