Cr.Ag., GNS, BV, and Other Acronyms

[Matt Snyder]

M.J.,That's sort of what I said at the outset of B/V: that it has little or nothing to do with GNS (Creative Agenda).  Walt neatly described this as a way of cracking open the "black box" of Exploration (i.e. level #2), and the more I think about it, the more I think that's correct.

To clarify for posterity -- I believe it was Ralph a.k.a. Valamir who came up with the "black box" analogy.

[Walt Freitag]

I can't verify whether it was Ralph or not, but I can confirm that it wasn't me.

- Walt

[clehrich]

My apologies for the mixup -- it was indeed Ralph (Valamir) who brought up the black box analogy.

As to Eric's (zhlubb) points, I just want to keep whatever discussion B/V is currently happening -- which seems to me a good discussion -- relatively tightly woven to the questions of Exploration and Creative Agenda (GNS).  On the issue of hybrids, this seems to me a difficult issue in GNS theory, and something that could be opened up by moving back toward Exploration and asking how we get from one to the other.

On the problem of generating "interest," that's perhaps an unfortunate choice (by me!) of words.  What I mean is that the same sort of situational tension that causes a group to "know" that die-rolling (or whatever) is required is the sort of tension that tends to generate play focus.  At least, it ought to be this way: this is the point of Mike's Rant, I think, that we don't want to stop and go through 87 charts to deal with something we don't care about, but we really don't mind a lot of complexity on the stuff we think is most important to the game.

My suggestion, then, is that by thinking carefully about B/V and their relationships, one can pick out the sorts of things that are likely foci of play, and from that start thinking about mechanical design or resolution.

Chris

[Mike Holmes]

Given the recent discussion, could you recap what you currently see as the definitions of Baseline and Vision?

Mike