help w/ vocab

[Nick the Nevermet]

I've been trying recently to understand other issues discussed here other than strictly dealing with the three categories of G, N, & S.

Specifically, I've been trying to hunt down definitions for things like Illusionism, Participationism, Protagonism, etc.  If I'm understanding these terms correctly, they are modes of GMing & playing that are issues dealt with on the social contract level of how interaction procedes.

I have tried to use the search engine, but I drowned quickly.  This doesn't mean I'm going to stop; it just means I'm only going to do the searches when I have a nice block of time free.  I read maybe 5 or 6 threads on illusionism before I gave up for the day.

Could someone give me words to look up?  Key words beyond the ones I have above, specific posters who developed an idea.  Also, I would welcome any corrections to an error in my understanding.  I feel bad asking people to hunt down threads for me, so I'm not doing that.

[Jack Spencer Jr]

Illusionism
A mode of story creation by the GM in which his or her decisions carry more weight than those of the players, in which he or she has authority over rules-outcomes, and in which the players willingly or unwillingly do not recognize these features. See Illusionism: a new look and a new approach and Illusionism and GNS for a more complete definition and associated discussions.

from the glossary in the SIm article :)

Participationism IIRC is Illusionism when the players realize it and willingly go along with it.

Protagonism I'm not as familiar with, but I think it has to do with what makes a player character unique, it's "schtick." The fighter has the best combat bonuses, the magic-user casts spells, the thief picks pockets, locks, disarms traps etc.

[Bankuei]

Hi Jack,

Actually protagonist play is simply allowing the players to have control over their characters without railroading.  Protagonism, in the other sense, is simply not stepping on character concepts. If I play Dark Bat Guy, and when he gets hit in a fight, you have my character shriek like a little girl, you've stepped all on my concept.

Chris

[Nick the Nevermet]

Thanks, Jack.

I think I've found enough threads about illusionism & participationism to feel comfortable when I see others using them.  What I'm becoming more interested in are other terms & debates.  I should have waited a bit longer before I posted this, giving myself some time to digest the threads I read a bit more.

[Paul Czege]

Hi Nick,

I think there's more to protagonism than what Chris has described. In Narrativist play, protagonism is something a player "handles." It is, awkwardly put, the quality a character has when the player is empowered and positioned to manage audience interest in the character...the "audience" being the other players.

Paul

[Marco]

Paul, as the creator of the term (protagonization) would certianly know :)

In common usage here, I've seen protagonized play simply be play where the character's actions and player's choices have significant effect on the action/course of the game/plot/story (choose whichever word you thinks fits bests).

My caveat is this: be careful with taking a narrow view of what something means--the vocab here (IMO and IME) does have meaning--but often the exact meaning is not equally shared or agreed upon by everyone.

Illusionism is in the articles as a valid, functional form of play. A recent poster just spoke out against it and doubted it as a vaild form ...

-Marco

[Mike Holmes]

Illusionism is in the articles as a valid, functional form of play. A recent poster just spoke out against it and doubted it as a vaild form ...

Part of why I didn't like that thread. People were including their personal preferences in a lot of the judgements.

Illusionism probably isn't the easiest of modes to make functional all the time, but it's been good to me, personally.

Which other terms, Nick?

Mike

[Nick the Nevermet]

Which other terms, Nick?

Mike

As I said, I should have waited before posting.  Partially this is my fault, and partially I didn't know what I was getting myself into.  I guess the short answer is "all the terms I'm not aware of, because I can read up on the terms I do."  In other words, I got myself in a bind.

Disclaimer: the following is not well articulated.

I don't post much outside of the TROS forum.  I read a lot, though.  Anyways, I think I get the basics behind GNS.  I think I get the basics behind stance.  Ok, great.

...And then I perceive an unstructures soup of other terms of varying importance.  I'm not saying they are in actuality unstructured, just that I cannot see it yet.  Generally, these have to do with different GMing styles.  I've read up (or tried to) on illusionism, participationism, and Fang's No Myth GMing, and a few comments Mike's made on open play & pinball sim.

From what I can tell, these terms relate to credibility distribution, and who is allowed to be creative/reactive and when.  A strategy I've taken from learning here is find a term I don't get, search for it, and read until I understand how it connects to the larger GNS theory (or not).  The problem here is that I'm less than confident that I know what terms & concepts I should be looking for.

So, while I thought I knew what I was asking when I first posted this thread, I've come to the conclusion that I don't have a clear question.  This is why I don't post outside the TROS forum :)

[Mike Holmes]

Chris,

I can't imagine "flawless" illusionism

Neither can I, but I can imagine, and have played, Illusionist games that were a lot more funcitonal than you describe. A good GM, for instance, does make sure that each character has a solid reason to do what they're doing (as Marco points out). So please don't mischaracterize the style of play. I could as easily say that Narrativist play is always full of internal consistency problems as the players and GM ignore what's sensible in order to get "story" to occur.

Neither accusation has any value.


Nick, there are a lot of terms that bounce around in regards to the whole apportionment of Credibility issue. The "New" Illusionism thread does a good job at sorting some of them out. But there's still a bit of unclarity to the whole thing that seems very hard to get past (no matter how hard I and other's try to nail it down). I wish people would stick with some of those definitions for clarity sake, but I'm afraid that it's unlikely. You're not going to get much farther than what you've read so far, I'm afraid, as far as that batch of terms goes.

Further there are a lot of terms that are used by individuals and not neccessarily accepted by a lot of people.

Here's a list of Forge Jargon off the top of my head that has any consensus to it.

[*]GNS and it's constituent parts.
[*]Exploration
[*]Creative Agenda
[*]Premise (note that the meaning on this one has changed complexly over time).
[*]Coherence/Incoherence
[*]Hybrid
[*]Congruence
[*]Drift
[*]Transition
[*]Dysfunction
[*]Stance  - Actor, Author, Director, sometimes Pawn as a subset of Author, and theoretically Audience
[*]IIEE - Intent, Initiation, Execution, and Effect
[*]Transparency - actually this is about three different terms, and probably still needs to be hashed out.
[*]Balance - this one is really problematic, and again refers to lots of different things, potentially. Compare Screen Time.
[*]Railroading - there's a good thread on the common use of the term and the useful definition that we use.
[*]Munchkin - see the Gamist essay, and Ron's additional terms for dysfunctional Gamism
[*]Sim GMing styles - Illusionism (Frontloaded and Endloaded), Participationism (Trailblazing and the other version are bandied about some), the terms such as Force that I use to differentiate them.
[*]Challenge, Competition, Crunch, Gamble - more Gamist terms some of which are controversial occasionally
[*]Effectiveness, Metagame, and Resource - parts of character definition
[*]Currency  
[*]Drama, Fortune, and Karma - resolution system categories
[*]Credibility, Power - The Lumpley Principle
[*]Metagame
[*]Social Contract - in it's RPG context (though that's not really different from SC elsewhere)
[*]The Ball - relates to current control of events
[*]Mystiques
[*]Genre Expectations
[*]Fang's playstyle terms - see his articles[/list:u]

Just the ones that occur to me. OK, which need illucidation?

Mike

[W. Don]

Clearly, whatever style of play occurs should be talked about up-front with all the social contract stuff.  That was the single biggest smack upside my head out of everything I've read at the Forge:  "Oh yeah... we should probably TALK about how roleplaying is gonna go."

Hiya, Nick. I completely agree: it's a good thing to work out social contract issues and the parcelling out of credibility (to use M J Young's angle in his recent Applied Theory article) before a game gets underway.

Just to add: one thing about Social Contract as I've seen the term used here on the Forge is that it's not simply a pre-game articulation of what's supposed to happen. I've seen it used to indicate everything on the entire social sphere (including body language, etc.) that helps to define and reinforce a shared definition of what's expected to happen during play, who takes on which roles, and how those roles are played out. So, Social Contract extends beyond the initial discussion and agreement among players. It includes all the communication that may occur in a group, whether explicit or implicit, that relates to what everyone is expected to be doing.

- W.

(PS: If I've got the term wrong, someone should hit me on the head and correct me. Thanks.)

[Nick the Nevermet]

I wish people would stick with some of those definitions for clarity sake, but I'm afraid that it's unlikely. You're not going to get much farther than what you've read so far, I'm afraid, as far as that batch of terms goes.

Fair enough.  Thanks

Further there are a lot of terms that are used by individuals and not neccessarily accepted by a lot of people.

Here's a list of Forge Jargon off the top of my head that has any consensus to it.

IIEE, Transparency, The Ball, and Mystiques are the only ones that didn't ring bells.  I'll hunt them down myself, unless there is a warning or an easy someone can give.

[Mike Holmes]

Alexander, yes, and no. The first example is Participationism, though not an honest attempt (it's parodying what it sees as a dysfunctional style of play). The second is definitely not Illusionism or anything like it at all from the description. The players seem to be able to severely affect the plot.

Marco, you're not reading very closely. My whole post was to say that Participationism may not exist in actual play because I only theorized of it from a misperception of the descriptions you'd originally given to me. Hear what I'm saying? It's not Participationist, I just thought it was originally. I'm admitting to my mistake from long ago to point out that Participationism may not exist in play.

As for iron rails, I merely mean to say that it's a series of events that has to occur. Just like you said above. This coul be considered Narrativist Bangs of an extreme sort. I don't know. I'm not making any judegments. Jeeze yer techy.

Mike

[Mike Holmes]

Responses to the above post were split off to:

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=7225

Please refer further responses to that thread.

Transparency has been used to mean a lot of things. One of the most common is to indicate mechanics that don't interfere with imagining the in-game events. Another has to do with ease of being able to predict results of Fortune Resolution systems.

The Ball refers to who is currently creating events in-game. Basically it gets passed about the table, and the means of it's passing are often left undiscussed.

Mystiques (see the Scattershot forum) are things about a character that are to be left unknown. They're like undefined Genre Expectations in a way.

These are all very general and for a more detailed an accurate version each should be searched up separately.

Mike