The whole model - this is it

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Lisa,

I was sort of under the impression that I'd provided at least some feedback, and at least some encouragement, about Techniques specifically. Maybe the best places to look for this kind of talk, though, are in Indie Design and Actual Play ... maybe my reviews too. I think there's a lot of discussion about exactly this going on, but it's necessarily slower than the typical debate pace in RPG Theory or GNS Discussion.

To stick with Techniques as a concept, though:

Point 2 discussion: Yes, you are right that Techniques cannot be singly tied to a Creative Agenda category. However, in the past, that is typically exactly what people have wanted to do. "Show me Narrativist play!" they say, and are provided with an example of play which necessarily includes Techniques. They glom onto one of them, perhaps the one they're least familiar with: "So that's Narrativism, then, when you do that?" And when the answer is No, they get frustrated.

You strike me as someone who can do a great deal to help prevent or alleviate such responses at the Forge, which is another way of saying, to help people learn to enjoy their role-playing more.

Point 4 discussion: I think that these manipulative behaviors are anything but "well-adjusted," which is to say, I agree with you. It's totally messed up.

Point 7: this one is reeeal tricky. The issue is, you can't talk about Creative Agenda stuff without discussing Techniques, or the whole model, really. The tricky bit is to keep people focused on Creative Agenda as ultimately a subset of Social Contract via the subset of Exploration -- with Techniques being discussed not because they define the Creative Agenda, but because they are being used by the real humans as a means of "doing" a particular Creative Agenda at this time.

Best,
Ron

[The GM]

Ron says:
>>>I was sort of under the impression that I'd provided at least some feedback, and at least some encouragement, about Techniques specifically.<<<

Yep, I said that wrong. Mea Culpa. What I should have said was that I expected there to be a lot of discussion about that topic, as I figured it would be pretty popular.
That's the problem w/ expectations, sometimes they don't get met. ;) I'll check out the other forums.
Also, I did read MJ's piece, just forgot to mention it MJ!

[The GM]

Point 7: this one is reeeal tricky. The issue is, you can't talk about Creative Agenda stuff without discussing Techniques, or the whole model, really.  

But can you talk techniques w/out talking CA? I think so since as I understand, techniques are merely the 'vehicle' in which you choose to drive to get you from gaming point A to gaming point B. The way I see it, techniques can be a totally stand alone topic. I also see techniques broken down into a couple of catagories that may or may not correspond to various part of the whole model. Here's techniques as I view them, YMMV, obviously.

Communication techniques:
This is a wide variety of stuff that includes how real people talk to each other in reference to gaming (or anything else for that matter.) This is me giving my players specific examples of play that they can clearly understand at the level at which they are willing to receive said information. For instance, if I said, "Hey guys, I want to run a Narrativist campaign with a strong emphasis on Director's stance," I would get a number of nods, some good natured ribbing about my 'elitist talk' and they'd play however they thought that 'Narrativist' meant. I've seen this actual example occur. Using GNS vocabulary doesn't work if everyone is not in on it. Using words, phrases and questions in such a way that there's no mistaking what I'm talking about is a big deal. This is social contract stuff from where I sit, but good communication goes a lot deeper than that. It also dips into game play so that players/GMs know what the heck is going on all the time and no one is left out of the loop. Examples are a clear way of communicating, I use them a lot, and I prefer when others do too.

Play techniques:
This is actual physical things that occur when we play. This is the how to, this is where the rubber meets to the road. This is stances, this is methods in which players/GMs -get-things-done-. Play techniques includes everything from 'how' we make characters to 'how' we pass the game ball to one another during play. Play techniques are *not* the rules/ system for play (mostly because as we discussed, the techniques written into most game rules sets up an unhealthy me vs them vibe), but they are the tangible way in which craft our enterprise and achieve our individual gaming goals. These are our 'tools' for gaming moreso than any set of dice or sheets with stats written on them ever could be.

I think that these topics stand alone very well. Communication Techniques do for pretty obvious reasons (hey, who couldn't stand to be a better communicator?) Play techniques do because we can port Technique X into game Y with the same efficiency as porting it into game Z. Now, the creative agenda of game Y and Z may vary greatly, but 'how' we do it remains constant in regards to a specific technique.

I've said it before, but I think about this stuff way too much. ;) I've been giving some thought to actually writing up a quick techniques guide, mostly for my own reference. If I do that, I may share my in depth thoughts on the topic.

(Edit, typo)

[Matt Snyder]

Lisa, the techniques guide would be great (now just Daedalize it!)

On techniques -- Ron has stated elsewhere many times, and you've clamored here for more discussion of techniques.

How about several techniques threads in which one person starts explaining as specifically as possible the type of game he / she would like to run or play in. Then, people's replies could suggest (again, specifically as possible!) techniques that might work well for the given game. Over time, we could build up some useful threads, I think.

I often see people ask for techniques only to be met, as you've learned, with stony silence.  One reason could very well be that it's hard to discuss techniques in general. Discussion might work well given a specific frame of reference.

("So you have no frame of reference, Donny. You're like a child who wanders in in the middle of a movie and wants to know--"  Heh.)

[Walt Freitag]

I'd very much like to receive confirmation and feedback from some of the people I replied to, like Ben Lehman or Walt, etc. Lisa did so, for instance.

in reference to...

Those within-Agenda categories and descriptors do exist "in" that level, but since Creative Agenda is an arrow, all of them are arrows too. Hence they are necessarily directly traceable to the outer and inner boxes in one of the following ways.

a) emerging from one or more elements of Exploration,
b) penetrating to one or more (usually more) Techniques,
c) both.

Food for thought, as well: hybrid Creative Agendas are obviously subdivisions within the Creative Agenda box, but they are combinations of GNS categories. That ought to clear up a whole of confusion right there.

All that said, let's take a look at the Creative Agenda subcategories. Here's one. I want to distinguish carefully between Points of Contact with System vs. Points of Contact with Color. Both of these obviously "hark" outward toward Exploration, and by definition, that means strengthening and clarifying "what we imagine together."

They are also totally GNS-neutral, or rather, the concept applies regardless of which Creative Agenda you're working with.

However, each approach still takes on a different "glow" depending on which Creative Agenda category. Within Simulationism, for instance, lots of Points of Contact with System corresponds to my "Purist for System" category; and lots of Points of Contact with Color (highly integrated with Setting + Character = Situation) corresponds to my "High Concept" category.

Once you nail down this idea, I hope you can see how this "outer-box structure" sets up desirable Techniques and Ephemera quite quickly. Let's stick with Simulationist play. The High Concept Simulationism bit, for instance, necessitates a hell of a lot of Ephemera around narration-rights and stances, usually Actor Stance, and sometimes more Ephemera which diminish the importance of "looking up rules" as a valid play-action. The Purist-for-System bit, on the other hand, necessitates a hell of a lot of very explicit Techniques for resolution, usually in written form ("rules"), and Ephemera which validate consulting those rules.

Within Gamism, I think my discussions of Gamble & Crunch qualify, and they factor straight in from System and then directly deeper into Techniques. Competition at the Step On Up level is right there in Creative Agenda connected to Social Contract; whereas competition at the Challenge level is coming from Exploration, as Situation, specifically Character + Situation.

I think it's awfully interesting that this "split" within Simulationism pulls System apart from [Character + Setting = Situation], whereas nothing of the sort is conceivably possible in either Gamist or Narrativist play (no matter how hard people try in the latter case).

I think that re-reading my Gamism and Simulationism essay, and relating their points to this new presentation of the model, will reveal tons and tons more such concepts.

Very very cool and useful. Ron, this might be the very first time I've posed you a direct question and the "answer I expected," the "answer I hoped for," and the answer you actually wrote were all the same.

As a programmer, where you see bridges and arrows, I see mappings and relations (aka links in data structures), but it's all the same idea. The important thing is that CA can be examined at a strictly funtional level (what specific techniques are connected to what aspects of Exploration) or as the expression of an idea. Sort of the way a Sine function can be seen as a process that turns one number into another number, or (on the "idea" level) as a description of oscillating motion.

The (a) (b) (c) distinction between emerging-from-exploration and informing-technique is something that I think will become more clear and useful as the nuances are developed over time. I anticipated that CA descriptors can also emerge directly from the Social Contract level, which is why I offered up both "competition at the step on up level" and "competition at the challenge level" as test cases. Yeah, the first emerges directly from Social Contract and the second emerges from Exploration.

But I don't understand the paragraph starting "I think it's awfully interesting that..." What split in Simulationism are you referring to? (The preceding paragraph describes Gamism.) If it's the split between High Concept and Purist for System discussed in the paragraph before that, well, I still don't understand the point.

I did in fact re-read both essays when posing my original question.

Now, some comments about causality and the SECTE hieararchy. In general, we can say that going from left to right "down" the hierarchy answers the question "by what means?" or "how?" Going from right to left "up" the hierarchy answers the question "to what purpose?" (or "why?", but I think "why?" is too loaded, as I'll try to explain). These relationships exist for any instance of actual play. But there's no implied causal sequence or "starting point," is there? Not at Creative Agenda (sure, I could organize play of a Gamist game because I want some Step On Up competition, but I could also Step On Up and get all competitive because I find myself playing in a Gamist game.) Not at Social Contract. (We might start role playing because we happen to find ourselves sitting around a table with lots of dice on it and we're looking for something to do, but that's not the most likely scenario.) Not at Ephemera. (Though I'm sure some players are initially attracted to role playing by specific observed Ephemera, and some might carry strong feelings about them through long-term play). Not anywhere. With enough information we might trace out "which came first" for a particular player in a particular game, but there's no assumed causal sequence and no need for one.

Also, I find that the SECTE presentation makes me want to reexamine the idea of what a "GNS conflict" really is. I'd explain it this way: G, N, and S (or players predisposed to play with those Agendas) aren't like cartoon foxes and hounds, genetically programmed to attack each other on sight. They're pretty much oblivious to each other. (That is, players are oblivious to others' differing Creative Agendas.) The conflict occurs at all the other levels of the hiearchy, when players with different CAs dislike or disagree with aspects of the Social Contract, Explored imagined space, Techniques, or Ephemera that are informed by different CAs.

The process of using GNS to diagnose and improve dysfunctional play, much discussed and often much criticized here, could be better delineated under the new presentation of the model. What we've generally discussed (or at least, the impression I've gotten from the discussion) is:

1. Observe play.
2. Perceive Creative Agenda of each participant.
3. If Creative Agendas differ, diagnose Creative Agenda conflict between players as cause of dysfunction.
4. To resolve dysfunction, convince participants to adjust Creative Agendas, or replace participants with people sharing the chosen Creative Agenda.

When perhaps it should be more like:

1. Observe play.
2. Identify conflicts between participants over Social Contract, Exploration, Technique, or Ephemera issues.
3. If conflicts (especially, past history of failed attempts to resolve the conflicts by modifying Social Contract, Techniques, etc.) exhibit patterns suggesting differing Creative Agendas, diagnose Creative Agenda conflict between play styles as the nature of the dysfunction.
4. To resolve dysfunction, change Social Contract, Exploration, Techqniques, and Ephemera to support a consistent Creative Agenda. Replace participants who don't find the changes or the resulting play appealing with others who do.

Not a huge difference, but perhaps a hugely important one. It lets the model be applied without "correct" identification of everyone's Creative Agenda being the sole focus of analysis, getting us out of the finicky "what GNS mode are you?" game.

- Walt

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Walt,

But I don't understand the paragraph starting "I think it's awfully interesting that..." What split in Simulationism are you referring to? (The preceding paragraph describes Gamism.) If it's the split between High Concept and Purist for System discussed in the paragraph before that, well, I still don't understand the point.

It's not the same split. It's a whole different split and probably worth a thread, later (much later). I flashed on it while typing, which is probably a bad time to include something in a post.

Now, some comments about causality and the SECTE hieararchy. In general, we can say that going from left to right "down" the hierarchy answers the question "by what means?" or "how?" Going from right to left "up" the hierarchy answers the question "to what purpose?" (or "why?", but I think "why?" is too loaded, as I'll try to explain).

Agreed. I phrase that second "up the line" issue a bit differently, in that I think it's an investigation of "how we did it" or "how we experienced it," in a retroactive or detective sort of sense, and must always remain inferential. This brings up the aggrieved question of "But how do we know?" which faces the same baffling stone-wall that it receives in any inferential endeavor.

But there's no implied causal sequence or "starting point," is there? ... Not anywhere. With enough information we might trace out "which came first" for a particular player in a particular game, but there's no assumed causal sequence and no need for one.

Agreed. I don't see any need for a fixed or predictably fixed starting point. My "GNS and other matters of role-playing theory" fell into this trap by trying to explain both the process and components of play at the same time, starting with Exploration.

Also, I find that the SECTE presentation makes me want to reexamine the idea of what a "GNS conflict" really is. I'd explain it this way: G, N, and S (or players predisposed to play with those Agendas) aren't like cartoon foxes and hounds, genetically programmed to attack each other on sight. They're pretty much oblivious to each other. (That is, players are oblivious to others' differing Creative Agendas.) The conflict occurs at all the other levels of the hiearchy, when players with different CAs dislike or disagree with aspects of the Social Contract, Explored imagined space, Techniques, or Ephemera that are informed by different CAs.

Groan ... must we say "SECTE"? I mean, I know it's a joke, and so do you, but really, establishing a jargon-name at this particular moment seems like a really bad idea to me.

Anyway. I agree with you about the "GNS conflict" thing entirely. People tended to get hung up on the mistaken idea that player A and player B would never play well together, whereas my point is that their concerns were locally in conflict, at a given place and time, playing with the particular other people involved, in this particular. way.

1. Observe play.
2. Perceive Creative Agenda of each participant.
3. If Creative Agendas differ, diagnose Creative Agenda conflict between players as cause of dysfunction.
4. To resolve dysfunction, convince participants to adjust Creative Agendas, or replace participants with people sharing the chosen Creative Agenda.

When perhaps it should be more like:

1. Observe play.
2. Identify conflicts between participants over Social Contract, Exploration, Technique, or Ephemera issues.
3. If conflicts (especially, past history of failed attempts to resolve the conflicts by modifying Social Contract, Techniques, etc.) exhibit patterns suggesting differing Creative Agendas, diagnose Creative Agenda conflict between play styles as the nature of the dysfunction.
4. To resolve dysfunction, change Social Contract, Exploration, Techqniques, and Ephemera to support a consistent Creative Agenda. Replace participants who don't find the changes or the resulting play appealing with others who do.

I tend to agree, and think that this second list is where my often-quoted but often-problematic "best suited to discussions of dysfunctional play" comes from. I think the issue you raise remains open, actually. Definitely new thread territory.

Best,
Ron

[contracycle]

I like it lots, I buy it.  The structure seems conceptually useful to me.  I hope and expect the identification of techniques will prove fruitful, perhaps that is where my interest in portrayal is really located.

So, what do we do to discuss techniques, get a grip on it.  Just blunderbus some ideas as to what constitutes a technique and what it might do?  Try to identify techniques in sequence of the publish corpus?

Techniques are beginning to seem to me like an awfully big box.  It would seem to me the abstract techniques box can contain techniques that are themselves ordered heirarchically or sequentially with one another.  Do techniques also have "purpose"?  I can understand that ultimately the point must be derived from the hole diagram, but if a game has multiple techniques, one should be able to say what they are intended to do, what effect they are intended to have, and what their interaction is supposed to evoke.

Can

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Gareth (contracycle),

Whoops, looks like you got cut off there.

It strikes me, anyway, that I discuss Techniques in detail all the time. Check out Martian eyes strike again and its associated parent thread, for linking the Techniques interpreting Effect (IIEE) via Fortune-in-the-middle; [My Life with Master] Black ooze oozes forth and its associated parent thread, for dealing with narration-trading (Horror Revealed) relative to scene framing; Haven: City of Violence for dealing with player-usage of setting (application of Director Stance) and GM-usage of player-character (Illusionism), although this one concerns a lot of Ephemera mainly; [Tunnels & Trolls] Gamism ain't for the faint of heart, and associated threads, for dealing with one resolution system embedded within another one, and how that relates to number of characters per player as well as to player-character death; and No-death and Trollbabe for a discussion of very similar issues but with a very different set of Techniques.

Scene framing, IIEE, narration trading, resolution of any kind (combinations of DFK) ... all of these and more are Techniques. They're bigger than Ephemera because they're generalized across many specific little bits of play - "When I say my character swings his sword, then I roll these dice." That's a Technique.

And oh yes, you can betcha that the Techniques box is highly internally organized. That is a whole topic right there which I outlined long ago, and have not yet put into essay form. I've been waiting for people to get the big model first, and finally found the words for that to happen.

Best,
Ron

[jeffd]

Admittedly I'm no expert on any of this stuff (just look at when I joined and my post count, heh).  But I'll happily throw in my 0.02 - really just a few thoughts and observations.

First, Creative Agenda rocks.  It really crystallizes what "the theory that was never offically known as GNS" was all about - namely, what do we want to get out of our roleplaying.

I'm not really up on exactly how Venn Diagrams work, but it does seem to me that on a practical level the relationship between the things on either side of the arrow are different.  Social Contract and Exploration are sort of meta-roleplaying concepts (I know I'm phrasing this clumsily at best).  They (along with Creative Agenda) seem to be descriptors for our roleplaying whereas Techniques and Epherma are things that occur as we roleplay.  

It almost seems as if Epherma are born out of the previous four categories.  Sort of like this:

Social Contract (let's play a game)
Exploration (this game)
Creative Agenda (here's what our game will be about.  Note that I don't mean in a traditional "plot" sense)
Techniques (here's how we'll play our game; the toolbox)
Epherma (here's the final result, the actual game play which seems would largely consist of applied techniques).  

Am I at least on the right track in understanding, or am I completely off my rocker?

JD

[Ron Edwards]

Yeah JD! Got it solid. I'm glad you came by to take a look.

Best thing to remember about the Venn/boxes thing is this:

Exploration is a type or application of Social Contract.
Creative Agenda is an application of Exploration.
Techniques (in combinations) are applications of (and back through) Creative Agenda; traceable all the way back to System in Exploration.
Ephemera are the "anatomies" or pieces/bits of Techniques; combinations of Ephemera are applications of Technique.

Let's please please go to Actual Play and discuss Fading Suns! I was really looking forward to some feedback on my post ...

Best,
Ron

[contracycle]

I started getting carried away with the innards of the techniques box and then decided ity would likely be a thread of its own.

So yes, I agree we have discussed techniques before, but I'm not sure that they made all that much sense to me without this framework.  Yes, I could see what they were doing, but I had a hard time identifying "what constituted a technique as opposed mechanism" and thus experienced some difficulty learning anything but the specific observation; it was hard to generalise.  But, with this sort of elimination of system as a bulky entity of its own, we can start to examine systematic devices in the light of what effect we want them to evoke.  This seems an important breakthrough to me.

What I was thinking of at the end of my last post was this: I think I can now make the case that we CAN have two different resolution methods in a game, so long as those systems interact in some technique-serving manner of a particular purpose.  The concept of technique supplanting mechanical method as the subject of investigation/creation is a bit of an eye opener, IMO.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Gareth,

I think I can now make the case that we CAN have two different resolution methods in a game, so long as those systems interact in some technique-serving manner of a particular purpose. The concept of technique supplanting mechanical method as the subject of investigation/creation is a bit of an eye opener, IMO.

Yup! I have always supported the idea that multiple resolution methods are perfectly all right - the trouble usually comes in when they represent differing Creative Agendas.

My unpublished game Fantasy for Real (now so thoroughly strip-mined by myself and others as to be obsolete) used a Karma + Resource system much like Nobilis' for combat/etc resolution and a Fortune + Drama system for magic.

Best,
Ron

[M. J. Young]

To M.J.! Dag, list a whole bunch of things, why don't you.

Well, I could have just said, "I don't understand this part"--but then you might not see why I don't understand, and I probably haven't contributed anything to clarifying the model

- I agree with you that phrasing 1 is right

It is absolutely necessary to recognize the presence of Creative Agenda as the bridge between Social Contract and Techniques if you hope to understand role playing games in a theoretical way.

- I think phrasing 6 is right, but "a[/b] Creative Agenda" is a very flexible thing, and I can see both Walt and Mike Holmes getting squirrelly about this issue.

It is absolutely necessary that all the players in a game share a Creative Agenda in order for agreement at the Social Contract level to be reached regarding what Techniques will produce the desired outcome in play. If this is what is meant, it's probably a very important point, and should be stated considerably more clearly. In fact, having just stated it that way myself, I see how important it is--we can't agree (at the social level) regarding how to do it (at the techniques level) until we know exactly what it is we are doing (at the Creative Agenda level).

I eagerly await comment from Walt and Mike on that. As I say, I think this point really is the summation of why GNS matters at all: if the players don't actually agree on what they're trying to do, they ultimately can't possibly agree regarding how to do it. Creative agenda is very much "what we're trying to do when we play", and has to be in sync.

The other point is significant, but only in a rather minor way. Theorists such as the Turku school always seem to become prescriptive and definitive, declaring "this is what role playing games are, marked by these techniques" and so creating very narrow notions of what constitutes role playing games based on their experience. The only way to get outside the box of defining role playing games on the basis of how they've always been done is to reach to why we do them and how they fit into social interaction overall. (No offense intended to the Turku school--they've produced some fascinating and challenging stuff, but to me they seem trapped in a rather narrow box at times.) So if you want to make headway in roleplaying game theory you really do have to reach beyond what's been done and understand creative agenda as the link between getting together and actually playing the game. Still, it's quite possible for people to design good games without this understanding--as valuable as it is to game design, it's not necessary to understand in a coherent and comprehensive way until you start dealing with the theory behind game design and play.

So I think the focus should be on the necessity of a group to share a creative agenda in order to be able to identify and apply the techniques that will enable them to achieve it.

In other words, agreed.

--M. J. Young

P.S.--If you would like a more thorough and detailed critique, it's what I do (I've done law papers for publication). I'd rather tackle something closer to publication-ready, as I'm the sort who will quibble over phrasing for clarity. Let me know (PM or e-mail is fine).

[Walt Freitag]

- I think phrasing 6 is right, but "a[/b] Creative Agenda" is a very flexible thing, and I can see both Walt and Mike Holmes getting squirrelly about this issue.

It is absolutely necessary that all the players in a game share a Creative Agenda in order for agreement at the Social Contract level to be reached regarding what Techniques will produce the desired outcome in play. If this is what is meant, it's probably a very important point, and should be stated considerably more clearly. In fact, having just stated it that way myself, I see how important it is--we can't agree (at the social level) regarding how to do it (at the techniques level) until we know exactly what it is we are doing (at the Creative Agenda level).

I eagerly await comment from Walt and Mike on that. As I say, I think this point really is the summation of why GNS matters at all: if the players don't actually agree on what they're trying to do, they ultimately can't possibly agree regarding how to do it. Creative agenda is very much "what we're trying to do when we play", and has to be in sync.

I'm a bit concerned about the use of "chronologically loaded" words like the word "until" in the quote above or the word "before" in statements like "before we can accomplish X, we have to have agreement on Y." In many if not most successful games I've seen, players agreed "how to do it" first and let "what we're trying to do" flow out of that. (And isn't that the joyful Sorcerer scenario in many of Ron's war stories? Players are urged to try the techniques, then they "get it" -- that is, they come to understand what kind of play can be accomplished with those techniques.) That's why I thought it was important to verify with Ron that the model's series of linkages is not meant to imply any specific chronology or direction of causality.

That's not, however, what I believe Ron was expecting me to get squirrely about. I think that's a reference to my discussions of the possibilities of functional play in which individual players have different (in GNS terms) individual creative agendas. Things like a GM who exercises traditional GM powers (e.g. no-myth technique) to advance a personal Narrativist CA while playing with Simulationist players, or Gamist and Narrativist players playing off against each other's behavior patterns in a superhero milieu.

Do I then see "multiple" Creative Agendas rather than "a" creative agenda in such cases? Not really. I see "a" complex shared Creative Agenda that has an internal structure that includes multiple individual Creative Agendas. I think the same can be said for play in which Techniques shift to support different Creative Agendas at different times. In that case there's "a" complex long-term Creative Agenda whose internal structure includes multiple temporary Creative Agendas.

- Walt

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

Walt, you wrote:

I thought it was important to verify with Ron that the model's series of linkages is not meant to imply any specific chronology or direction of causality.

Verified! The process of play needs those variables M.J. is describing, but how they are realized (in the classic, not cognitive sense of the word) is definitely a case-by-case matter. And among those cases, vive la difference.

Also, your anticipation about the squirrelliness is accurate - and your response puts us both right in the same place, as far as I can tell. I think this sets up future discussions of possible Congruence with a much, much better foundation, although possibly with less to discuss in the first place. That's definitely for another thread.

Best,
Ron