Play outside of either G, N or S modes

[Stuart DJ Purdie]

I've been thinking a bit about the limitations of GNS theory.  Namely, are there any identifiable meta-game priorities that are outside of the model that could lead to functional play?

Clearly, there are some that are solely disfunctional - consider the passive-agressive player intent on disrupting the game, acting as such because he was snubbed for the ball game the rest of the group played yesterday.  I submit that he's not following a priotiy for play that matches anything estabilished.  Not a surprise - it was not intended to model the (near) infinite capacity for dysfunctional play.

As a side note, if you can show that the above player does have a play priority that is within established GNS territory, then my following arguements will fail.


Now, a type of play that can be functional:  Consider a player, Alice, who has brought along her younger brother, Bob, to the game she plays in.  Being a keen advocate of RPG's, she spends her time trying to ensure that Bob has an enjoyable time at the game.  This is accepted by the other players and the GM.  In short, her meta-game priority can be phrased as: "Ensure that Bob has fun".  Now this is not competative, nor otherwise gamist; it has no commitment to aspects of the explored world, so not sim; and it does not work with a theme or premise, and so is not narrativist.

Results of this type of meta-game priotiy might be to generate a character that is tied to Bob's, to assist and reinforce what Bob wants his character to do.  With an established character Alice might bring Bob's character into situations, so that Bob is not left alone, and so on.  In short - all good, socially cohesive stuff.

This type of play can be dysfunctional - the classic example would be "GM's Girlfriend syndrome", for example.

So, the point for discussion is, "Is this a real thing, or an overly streched example?", and, if real, does it correspond to one or more of the GNS modes, or is it truely out side it?

Addendum:  The example given is one where higher social issues have a direct effect on play.  It's not truely meta-game, more out-of-game.  Does that make a difference?  It does give good reasoning why it falls outside of GNS (it's a different thing), but in turn suggests that there is a significant set of such examples.

[jdagna]

I've often considered the question you ask - such as a Social mode for play.  

All of the non-GNS priorities I can think of occur at the Social Contract level.  However, this actually puts them at a completely different level than GNS modes.  I guess you could say the passive-aggressive guy is Gamist (the competition/challenge is how much he can disrupt play without getting caught) but I think that'd be over-stretching the definition of Gamist.

[Christopher Kubasik]

Hi guys,

This is a fair question... But one that misses a basic point of GNS: It doesn't claim to be the end-all model that explains everything.

Ron recently covered this in the GNS mega-thread over at RPG.net.  I've cut a pertinent post so you don't have to wade through the whole thing:

(The emphasis is mine.)

*****

Quote from Ron:

Social Contract is the biggest box.

For people who don't know what I mean by "the boxes," think of it this way (from my recent Gamism essay):


quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

... a Venn diagram:

[Social Contract [Exploration [GNS [rules [techniques [Stances]]]]]]

Every inner "box" is an expression or realization of the box(es) it's nested in. For example, Exploration is a kind of Social Contract, and a given GNS mode is a kind (specifically, an application) of Exploration.

1. Everything occurs embedded in the Social Contract, which includes many things about play and not-play, especially the Balance of Power.

2. Exploration is the primary act of role-playing, composed of five parts with some causal relationships among them.

3. The "modes" of play (because they have to be expressed via communication and play itself, not just "felt") are currently best described as Gamist, Simulationist, or Narrativist play. Play (as opposed merely to hanging out with friends) cannot occur without such an agenda. I'm now using the term "creative agenda" to refer to the three modes as a concept, replacing the small-p "premise" term in the older essay.

4. Techniques of play include many different relationships among rules, people's decisions, announcements, and similar. "System" (or rather textual system) interacts with Techniques all the time, in terms of things like Currency, Resolution (including DFK, IIEE; see Glossary), and Reward systems. Which of these is inner or outer is debatable and probably variable, although I've diagrammed it in keeping with the idea that techniques are applied within a framework of rules. In keeping with the Venn concept, techniques are local expressions of Social Contract, Exploration, and GNS modes, just as rules are.

5. Actual play shifts quickly among Stances. Stances, unsurprisingly, are very local applications of rules and techniques, all in the service of Exploration and the larger-scale GNS mode in action.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

End quote from Ron.

*******

So, you're right.  Everything your suggesting about how the *group* is playing as a socially dynamic entity superceded GNS concerns.  How the players are set up, how they're respecting boundries as siblings, lovers, buddies and whatnot comes *before* GNS concerns. But even once that's in place, I'd suggest GNS concerns might come up.  (They might not, which would be good.)

And so... there you are.

Christopher

[John Kim]

In short, her meta-game priority can be phrased as: "Ensure that Bob has fun".  Now this is not competative, nor otherwise gamist; it has no commitment to aspects of the explored world, so not sim; and it does not work with a theme or premise, and so is not narrativist.

Results of this type of meta-game priotiy might be to generate a character that is tied to Bob's, to assist and reinforce what Bob wants his character to do.  With an established character Alice might bring Bob's character into situations, so that Bob is not left alone, and so on.  In short - all good, socially cohesive stuff.  

First of all, I agree with what the previous poster has said that this is a different level.  In this example, the question is: what does Bob find fun in the game?  For example, Bob might just be annoyed and frustrated by Alice's PC always trying to help his PC for no good reason.  On the other hand, she could try to set up scenes where Bob's PC really gets to be the dramatic centerpiece -- but Bob again isn't pleased.  

In principle, this is the point at which GNS theory could be useful.

[M. J. Young]

I want to emphasize John's point here. Alice may be playing with the priority of helping Bob enjoy the game, but why is Bob playing? If he's playing for Gamist reasons, she best helps him enjoy the game by supporting those goals for him, and so on.

--M. J. Young

[Stuart DJ Purdie]

A quick aside, Christopher: That quote is actually taken directly from the Gamism eassy.  For me, the most important point was:

Play (as opposed merely to hanging out with friends) cannot occur without such an agenda.

John, MJ that's a stellar point.  Alice couldn't be functional without some understanding of Bob's expectaions and desire of play, and thus one of the conventional creative agenda's creeps in.

I orginally read that quote from Ron as meaning that each player must have a creative agenda.  Semantically, it means somthing slightly different [0] - I wonder if that difference was intentional.

I think that this example probably gets filled under interesting but unrealistic.  And a conventional creative agenda creeps in anyway.


[0] It does not require all players to have a creative agenda.  I'm thinking I'm overanlysing a sentance to get to this point, however.

[Christopher Kubasik]

Hi DJ,

Yes.  It's from the Gamism Essay.  And Ron quoted it on the RPG.net thread, and I quoted it back here because he was specifically addressing Social Contract as being the bigger that GNS fits into.

Which is a round-about way to get it on this thread, perhaps.  But there it is.  It still, I think, completely covers the questions you had when you started this thread.

Christopher

[Jack Spencer Jr]

I daresay that anyone who sits down to play has a creative agenda. It may not be overtly stated to others or eve to themselves, but it is there. Problem may be that it's not very focused. Not expressable in terms of what they do want vs in terms of what they don't want.

Hey, Bob, wanna play an RPG.

Sure.

Whaddya want out of the game?

I dunno. Not three hour combats.

OK, no combat, then

No. Combat's fine. Just not spending three hours on it is all.

Fine. No more than 2hr 59 mins of combat. What else?

I dunno. Whatever.

[Wormwood]

Stewart,

I have a completely opposite perception of the role of social motivations in terms of creative agendas. It seems quite clear to me that these agendas are not relegated to the Social Contract, any more so than any other mode. In particular, I've observed two distinct modes of social agendas, Socialist and Sexist (yes, I have too much fun with names). The former is what I consider group related goals, the most evident being "no one is going to have fun", or "everyone should have fun". The later is individual related goals, "Bob isn't going to be alienated and bored this game" or "I want to get the cute larper to come home with me." The nature of the play is distinct, and recognizably such, but it seems the real disagreement is the place where these agends occurs.

First, Social Contracts can determine social and personal goals, but they there is not necessity that they will determine either. Socialist or Sexist play does not imply a violation or implicit following of an accepted Social Contract. These approaches may be tacitly accepted, ignored, promoted, or even strongly discouraged, just like any other mode.

Second, social modes are not reduceable to personal modes. This is a vital distinction. There is a significant difference to someone intending to help someone have fun as a Gamist, than someone playing gamist. One major example is that of a player who wants to prevent other players from having fun, she will continually undermine the challenge of the game, by doing random things and "not trying" to cause the social prestige of victory to diminish drastically. It's like playing chess with someone who is trying to lose, no fun at all. But it is also clear that she isn't deriving any enjoyment from social prestige either.

Third, social modes subsume the perspective of the adherant. In the Alice / Bob example, it is clear that Alice will be primarilly focused on the condition of Bob's play, and not on any particular mode, even if Bob is clearly in possession of one. Rather that mode would be seen only through the perspective of Bob's play, analogous to considering gamist elements as a means to narrativist goals. This does not mean that the narrativist who does so is not playing narrativism.

The basic problem I see with lumping the idea of social modes elsewhere than the creative agenda is that the Social Contract is directly the interacted goals of the players, as related to each other by any number of methods. Social modes are interactive agendas in play. But at no point do these agendas become more under the scope of the Social Contract than any other agenda. Agendas, even interactive ones, are not necessarilly related to the group in any way. After all, all modes are on the basic level interactive, the distinction is that social modes originate from the interaction, while personal modes do not.

I hope that helps,

   -Mendel S.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Stuart, I think the key issue is that GNS modes are creative agendas for what you're doing with Exploration. If Alice is present in the room and never performs any Explorative interaction - just reinforces Bob about social stuff, kind of like a cheerleader - then GNS isn't going to apply to her. It's hard to imagine such a situation that concerns just one person, but I have played in many games in which a person was present whose only job was to provide cookies or otherwise be a host, but not to play.

All GNS play is subordinate to (or, perhaps, derivative of) Exploration; all Exploration is subordinate to or derivative of real-people social interactions. Adding social interactions to the picture, which is basically what you're suggesting, is a no-brainer: more social stuff going on. It neither refutes nor changes the conceptual relationship called GNS.

If someone were to come up with a fourth (or however many more) identifiable creative agendas - pertaining specifically to what one wants and does with the five elements of play - then I'd say, "Cool!" and we'd have a GNSX model. No one's come up with anything yet; over and over, people do just what you did and shift "up" into the social interactions, which is fine - but not eligible for changing the GNS framework at its level.

Best,
Ron

[Wormwood]

Ron,

I don't see how Alice is necessarilly not involved in Exploration. There seems an impicit assumption that Alice is "playing the game" to benefit Bob. This implies, unless something very odd is going on, that she is involved in Exploration.

What is it about her agenda that makes it non-Explorative? Is it not possible for us to observe the game over the course of several sessions and see that she consistently makes choices in attempts to bolster her brother's enjoyment of play? What distinguishes this from other modes, besides it being an interactive goal?

I apologize if I'm being dense here, but I feel that these are points which should not easily be dismissed.

  -Mendel S.

[Alan]

I can't help thinking that someone is confusing "motive for playing" with "creative agenda."

Alice's desire to support Bob may influence her decisions, but if she is actually participating in the Exploration those decisions are still made in the context of GNS.  So she might cheer Bob's ability to Step On up or make it easier for him to win Challenges, or she might work to create Story Now, for him or just help reinforce his exploration of Dream.  I suggest her own GNS preferences will determine which.

[jdagna]

Alice's desire to support Bob may influence her decisions, but if she is actually participating in the Exploration those decisions are still made in the context of GNS.  So she might cheer Bob's ability to Step On up or make it easier for him to win Challenges, or she might work to create Story Now, for him or just help reinforce his exploration of Dream.  I suggest her own GNS preferences will determine which.

I've seen this in action.  It's one of the reasons why so many people suggest that husband and wife teams shouldn't play together or shouldn't teach each other how to play.  

In my case, the husband seemed to be pushing either a Gamist or Sim mode, but she clearly wanted a soap opera (basically Nar).  He kept stepping in and saying "Yes, that would be interesting, but would your character really do that?" or "Well, I'm going to fight the monster, even if you aren't."  His play kept pushing her character into the spotlight and she kept doing the "wrong" thing.

I think it was pretty clear that his motive to help her stayed firmly in the Social Contract level, while GNS goals regarding play stayed firmly in their own level.

I've also seen examples where a person tries to introduce their SO to gaming and the SO never gets down to the level of Exploration (or GNS) - they just fail to get what a game is about and are just there because everyone keeps telling them what to do.  Again, this remains in the Social Contract.

If we want to establish defined Social Contract modes, I think it would be possible to do and probably instructive in terms of game design.  The Social Contract in a beer and pretzels game is generally different from a more complex game (even among the same group of people).  But, for all the looking I've done, I just can't see any social factors that demand a  new mode at the same level of GNS.

[M. J. Young]

I daresay that anyone who sits down to play has a creative agenda.

I think there's a caveat to this. RPGs are a rather unusual sort of game in this regard, and because of that I think you do get the people who "sit down to play" who have no creative agenda. The two (very similar) types that leap out of this thread are the girlfriend

She's with me; she has no idea what this is about but wants to find out. Let's create a character for her. No, she has no idea what she wants to be.

and the sibling

Mom said Joey had to come with me or I couldn't come, so he's going to play, too. I think he should be a fighter, because it's easy, so let's create a fighter for him and get started.

but I'm sure there are others.

Such people have no more "creative agenda" when they sit down to play than they have when they buy a new board game. If they're sophisticated gamers (but not role players) they might ask, "What's the object of the game?"--and the joke is, most of us can't answer that question. If we tell them the object of the game, that becomes their creative agenda; but if we don't, they sort of wander around trying to figure out what this game is "about" until it either clicks (and they get a CE) or they decide the whole thing is stupid and boring.

I think you have to find a creative agenda to enjoy the game, and to play it effectively in any sense of that word; but I don't think everyone who comes to the game has such an agenda initially. They must either be told what it is or figure it out for themselves through play.

Of course, over the decades I've acquired a lot of board and card and bookcase games because they "looked cool" without any clue what they'd be about, so I'm used to the idea of sitting down to learn a new game without knowing the point of play at the outset.

I also think one of the reasons incoherent games do well is because established players don't try to figure out what the object of the game is, but bring their own objects to the game and force the game to support them. This is completely contrary to how most people approach most games (we play Bridge, but after you've finished play, you score it by counting high cards like Pinochle), but is quite standard among role players. Focused games crash in such groups, precisely because they can't easily be forced into a different mode of play, because the group doesn't want to play a game with a different object of play, but a game with the same object of play and new ways of approaching it.

I've digressed.

Ron is right; social interaction level stuff is all outside the GNS level of involvement. Alice may have made a social level decision to make the game more fun for Bob, but in play she must make GNS level decisions which accomplish that, whether that means she's adopting his play preferences or trying to show him how much fun it would be for him to adopt hers.

--M. J. Young

[Wormwood]

At this point I've seen two answers to my questions:

1) There are cases where social goals are not incorporated in creative agendas.

2) The circular argument that (a) social modes aren't creative agends since they don't involve exploration, (b) social modes do not involve exploration because they aren't creative agendas.

Admittedly neither of these is convincing, I'm sure that the people who are convinced that social creative agendas do not occur have a point, but I'm not sure they've made it clearly at this time.

Also note, that as far as I can tell the key distinction between motive for play and creative agenda is the later can be observed. I have observed exactly the creative agendas I'm talking about. Perhaps I am mistaken, this is why I want to know why so many people are convinced that such an observation could not occur.

I hope that helps,

  -Mendel S.