Actor Stance Narrativism: How?

[Green]

Once while I was in the indie netgaming room, someone told me that Kathanaksaya is unique because it offers Actor Stance Narrativist play (not exactly what was said, I'm certain, but this is the gist of it).  Just recently, though, I got into a debate over whether that is even possible, or if Actor Stance Narrativist play is really just Simulationist Exploration of Character or Situation.  Yes, I know that Ron said that it is easy to confuse the two in his essay, but I was wondering: If the two are different, how are they different?  If Actor Stance Narrativist play is possible, how would you go about doing it?

[Christopher Kubasik]

Hi Green,

If I understand your question correctly, here's the answer:

Say we're playing Sorcerer.  You're the GM.  I'm one of three players.  Here's a snippet of transcript from the table:

****

Green: "Your son enters, eyes red from crying.  'You said mommy was going to be okay.' "

Christopher: "Shut up.  Just shut up.  I've got to think."

Green: "You said she was going to live!"

Christopher: Terrance smacks his across the face, sending him to the floor.

Green: Make a Humanity check, you freak.

***

Okay.  In the first quote of mine, I'm in Actor stance.  I'm speaking "in character."  In the second quote, I'm in Director stance, simply taking charge of the situation, assuming Terance is strong enough and close enough to his son to drive him down to the ground.

Stance is just something you switch in and out of.  Easily.  

This isn't an issue of G, N or S.  It's just stance, which exists in all three modes.

Hopes that helps.

Christopher

[Paganini]

Green, my take:

Actor stance narrativism isn't really possible, because they are describing inherently contradictory approaches. Actor stance is when a player makes a decision based on his character exclusively. No meta-game priorities are considered when you're in actor stance.

Narrativism, by definition, deals with a meta-game priority. That means that narrativism and actor stance can't coexist in a given instance of play. That *doesn't* mean that you can't have actor stance in a narrativist game; it just means that you can't be in actor stance at the same time as you make a narrativist decision.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

I agree with Christopher and disagree with Nathan.

Nathan, I'm thinking that you might consider the difference between (a) Actor Stance all the time, every time, enforced by the reward system and socially as well; and (b) hitting Actor Stance during play just like you hit a stance during a fight - for purposes of the moment, which makes perfect sense in terms of the larger goals as well.

Best,
Ron

[Paganini]

Ron,

I can buy that, assuming that decisions can have multiple inputs. That is, an option that performs two functions (or conforms to two modes of play) has more weight than an option that performs only one function / conforms to only one mode of play.

It seems to me, though, that the actual *decision* is undefined in this case. We can't say "it was an actor stance decision," or "it was a narrativist decision," because we can't know. As far as we can tell, the decision was both. The terminology is used to identify potential conflicts; when no conflict exists it disolves.

The telling moment to me is when actor stance and narrativism are in opposition. Decisions based exclusively on character do not always (or even often, IME) support thematic content. Most of the time you have to pick one or the other.

Maybe it's just semantics and we're really saying the same thing, but "choice" to me implies activity on the part of the player. A player makes a narrative decision by choosing to prioritize a given meta-game agenda. A player in actor stance, by definition, is prioritizing *nothing* beyond his character. So yeah, it's nice when actor stance happens to be thematic; you can dodge around that particular choice, because nothing conflicts. But I don't see how you can call a decision made in actor stance "narrativist," just because it happens to be thematic. It's only narrativist if you're choosing thematic over something else.

(Hmm... I feel like I'm starting to ramble. Is this making sense?)

[Christopher Kubasik]

Nathen,

If I'm not mistaken, and I may well be, what you are describing as Actor Stance is, in fact, the mode of Simulationism.

The stances are simply the methods by which a player delivers his choice of the three modes.  (G, N, or S.)  If he's really "into" character, thinking only as the character, really exploring the world through his character wihtout concern for thematic content, but just the experience of being that character in that circumstance -- that's simulationist mode.

Christopher

[Ben Lehman]

It's strange, but my GMing style is very strongly Narrativist and I have generally enforced a pretty strong Actor stance on my players.  This has never seemed to be an issue for me, and I've been running games in this style since before I knew the terms "narrativism," "actor stance," or any systems past Palladium, Star Wars d6, MSH, and D&D.

This is how I do this: I work with the players to generate characters that have some good thematic hooks.  Then, I generate a setting and relationship map which exploits those hooks to raise interesting premises.
During character creation and world set up, we are all using very heavy director stance.  During play the players are strictly Actor stance, with occasional forays into Director for the sake of coolness and moving things along at a good clip.

Does anyone else have a similar play experience?

yrs--
--Ben

[Paganini]

Does anyone else have a similar play experience?

/me thumps own head with the Tome of Cluelessness.

Yeah. Vincent does. We did a thread about that very thing. I just forgot about it. Doh, doh, doh, doh, doh, doh, etc.