I'd love to see an expansion of "address."

[John Kim]

It looks to me as though you missed the Narrativism bus, and now you're standing on the corner complaining that you're not getting anywhere, so there must be something wrong with the bus, and accusing those people who are getting somewhere on it that they're in some fashion misguided.  

First of all, I am really pretty shocked at how people are responding to Marco here.  My comments on Marco's questions will go in another thread (since I think this one lacks focus), but Marco's questions have been polite and IMO rather probing into points raised in recent threads.  The condescension in many of the responses is totally unwarranted.  

I don't know what else to say, Marco. You're telling me that you see the observable instances of play, and you can't distinguish among them. I think you're being to hard on yourself, and too limiting. I suspect you see an instance of play, then start wondering about whether Player X intended this or that. Forget about intent! If that's what you're doing, just stop letting your thoughts about intent kill your observations about actual play events.
...
How do you know that it wasn't narrativist play you've experienced? Did you or did you not answer / illuminate / resolve a specific moral uncertainty? If so, then it was narrativist. If not, then it was not narrativist. Easy, peasy.  

Maybe you just haven't seen the tricky cases?  For example, I played a game (a playtest of Shadows in the Fog) with Gordon Landis, who is also a Forge regular -- and afterwards we discussed it http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=7297">here.  Basically, we went back and forth on whether it was Narrativist or Simulationist.  I brought up a bunch of moral uncertainties which came up during the game and player's responses.  Gordon thought that it might be Narrativist, but overall he thought that those moral uncertainties weren't prioritized sufficiently and he thought it was Simulationist.  

Maybe someone can cleanly distinguish between the two, but I don't think it's "easy, peasy".

[Bob McNamee]

Edit: cross-posted with John

On observances of GNS decision making...

Remember that the vast majority of RPG decisions will produce similar observed decision for players of G,N,or S... (attack the evil guy or whatever)... but certain decisions are where the 'rubber meets the road' where the decision made will be different depending on what mode the Player favors...that's where the really useful observable event is, even though most of the previous decisions made by the player were made in their usual GNS mode.

Watching their choices when in critical decision points over time is one way to determine what their GNS preference is.

[Christopher Kubasik]

Hi Marco,

Just so you know, I already planned on answering the questions you posed.

Except for why Matt believes there's no way to distinguish one story being better than another.  He and I disagree.  But I've never discussed the matter with him and make no claim to know his mind on this matter.

I will, however, address the issue of people believing there's no way to judge  one story better than another.

Christopher

[greyorm]

First of all, I am really pretty shocked at how people are responding to Marco here.  My comments on Marco's questions will go in another thread (since I think this one lacks focus), but Marco's questions have been polite and IMO rather probing into points raised in recent threads.  The condescension in many of the responses is totally unwarranted.

John,

Since my post was specifically targeted as an example, I felt it necessary to respond to the accusation.

I'm sorry, but I don't see it. In fact, I specifically loaded my notations with statements such as: "It looks to me as though..." and "...but maybe..." and stated up-front that this was not an attack on or questioning of Marco's intelligence.

The point of my post was not to explore (again) the questions raised, but to bring to light a possible reason why there is no connection with the answers already given, particularly since I see the answers already given in a number of instances as more than adequate and satisfactory.

This is why I find no company with your assertion that "probing points" have been brought to bear, and perhaps that is where you are seeing the condescension? I see many of the points raised by Marco as rehashes of old conversations already answered, but (as Ron states) unsatisfactorily for Marco for some reason.

If "here's where you're wrong, does this help you understand?" is condescending I fail to see how any useful dialogue or debate could ever be engaged in, as it would appear simply the act of attempting to locate and point out the possible source of the problem is impolite.

Regardless, someone has to be wrong; in being wrong, someone's ideas are going to be "put down" in some fashion...no way around it. Has everyone's skin around here become that thin of a sudden that constructive criticism or even behavioral deconstruction for positive purposes is now called condescension?

"Just answer my questions, don't analyze their source," is not remotely workable as a basis for discussion, especially in cases such as this, where just answering the questions has gotten neither side closer to understanding the other.

A religious fundamentalist walks into an evolutionary biology class and starts asking questions: "this doesn't work because" "that doesn't work because" "this doesn't make sense because" and so forth. Yes, you're going to question his motives, especially when he discounts existing, proven theory based on ideas that have no place in the theory.

Why? Because he's starting with completely different premises and trying to fit those into the theory (ex: God made the world in a literal seven days) resulting in what-ifs and whirlpools.

The only way for the fundamentalist to come to an understanding of evolutionary theory is for him to re-examine the base ideas upon which his questions and difficulties stand and how/why those are causing problems with understanding the problem at hand.

Is Marco a fundamentalist? No.
Is the same sort of disconnect going on? I think so.

Thus, I'll leave it to Marco to decide for himself whether he finds my post condescending or helpful, even if it appears "judgemental."

[Marco]

John: Thanks. I look forward to seeing your answers.

Matt: The reason I care about the medium is this:

When you describe a game as Narrativist you are not talking about the events in play--you can't be. You must be describing the totality of the experience with the focus on the actual reactions/engagement of the players.

Why? Because if I describe a series of in-game events (as I do in my write-ups here on actual play) no one can say if they're Narrativst or not, right? The last one I did where we, as players, had to make an agonizing decision as to what we were willing to risk in order to live in a rational world was described by Valamir as "being like Myst where we walked around and looked at pretty pictures but didn't interact with much."

So clearly that sort of description wasn't enough to determine, amongst other things, levels of player engagement--player interaction--and in-game decision making.

This happens over and over (see John's Water Uphill game).

The panacea for that, on these fora, is either to say "I'd have to be there to see the players and play" or "I'd have to ask a lot more questions to know what the players and the group were doing socially at the time those in-game events occurred."

But what if there's no *there* there? What if the shared imaginary experience exists only as an IRC log between two people: GM and player. Then how do you make that determination? Maybe you can't. Maybe you need the video feed?

But that's important.

It's important because the very definition of Narrativist play doesn't deal with intent but rather observable behavior as it pertains to social reinforcement amongst the group.

I'm going to say it again, because that's the key point and if I don't, I'm afraid it'll be missed:

The very definition of Narrativist play doesn't deal with intent but rather observable behavior as it pertains to social reinforcement amongst the group.

Because it doesn't deal with intent or internal state of the player, you can't ask him: what'd you prioritize? To stick a Narrativist label on the actual play you have to know who was reinforcing what.

And if you can't then you could have a vast amount of actual play that any reader can see deals almost solely with the address moral questions and such but you can never say it's Narrativiist--because the in-game actions and in-game context and in-game events aren't relevant.

Note that in Ron's most recent example he says the play is simulationist if the group agrees that all Gunnar will ever be is X. Over IRC with no meta-channel, how could you possibly know that?

And that's the *definition.*

I think you're assuming that a Narrativist game is one where the play answers a moral question and that's an easy answer--and it's, as I've discovered, quite wrong. But yes, if that were the case, then it would be "easy peasy."

If none of the above made sense, then look at your own post: you said if the observer judged game-play gamist but I could point to a series of address-of-moral-question decisions then I might be "playing incoherently" in that we aren't all doing the same thing.

That implies that I think I am, and can, point to a series of premise-addressing things--but because the totality of the play, other players, it really would be 'Gamist.' (I specified 1-on-1 in my quote and you missed that--even as you quoted it). Also note that this is essentially (AFAIK) the invention of a term--incoherent has applied to game rules before. Dysfunctional has applied to play--but incoherence hasn't (again, AFAIK).

In an instance of "incoherent play" (where everyone is functionally prioritizing different modes) how do GNS lables (which must apply to the totality of play with reinforcement amongst the particiapnts) work?

-Marco

[Marco]

I know the defintions--but those examples all seem to come from a knowledge of the player's internal monolgoue. Those are not questions I've ever heard a player ask.

They do? What player? Whose internal monologue? Marco, is it so incredible to imagine that a group of people would actually say these premises out loud, even though you may not with your group? My group does this, quite vocally. Heck, we did pretty much exactly that simulationist one when we were much younger. "Guys, don't you think it'd be kick ass to see what it's like to have an evil party? Yeah, cool!" It was exploration of situation. Expressed outloud. Premise and everything.

Just because your experience is that of unspoken Creative Agendas does not prove that these examples are unrealistic or hard to grasp. I think those examples are quite palatable.

To me, the resulting game-play looks the same (expecially true, as I said) if the action resembes something one might find in literature. I don't think you can have it both ways--but I find telling which question someone other than I am asking an exercise in Cold Reading at best and that autistic-assisted-typing thing at worst.

It's not that I don't think people wouldn't say that--it's that, and you can ask Raven and Contra about this, it doesn't matter what they say--it matters what they do. Both in-game and at-the-table. Sure, their comments might be in line with the rest of the  social-enforcement and observed prioritization--but they might not--those comments have almost no weight.

See, if there was a score-card that said "comments like this are key" I'd be down with that--but I'm told repeated that no such score-card will ever exist. All the important signs are ephermial (vaguely described reinforcement). It's all in the eye of the beholder.

If no one says what their agenda is, how do you tell exploration of situation from Narrativist play when the situation is strongly focused on a player decision on a moral issue?

-Marco

[Marco]

If you can confidently tell me you know you're a simulationist, then you clearly aren't having a hard time judging your group's instances of play. Is your difficulty of evaluating Narrativism such that you haven't ever played Narrativist games? That you aren't confident saying you did? What? If you aren't confident with identifying that, then how can you be confident saying you're a staunch Simulationist?

I've no idea. I think I like play where there's some challenge, where there are interesting worlds/events/situations to explore, and where there are important moral questions I get to answer during play.

But, you know, I get a pretty clear signal here that I must be a Simulationist.

My most enjoyable play has taken place with strongly and (I'm told) coherently designed Sim-game systems. Using Valamir's (and most of the board seems to agree with him) right-tool-for-the-right-job test that seems imply that I'm a simulationist.

The fact that the Narrativist designs seem tightly constraining to me (they don't seem to address other aspects of play I like) speaks to a Sim-priority, yes?

That my descriptions of play I enjoyed (I'm told) are rail-roady sim-games (I've gotten PM's very explicit on this) seems to indicate that I find myself happiest in Illusionist play (which is a form Sim).

It's not that I'm sure of anything--it's that everyone else that seems to be (which is reflective of how I see GNS analysis).

Whoa, I didn't exactly say narrativism was producing "story" and no other modes were. I said narrativism was producing a story that it answered the moral question right now. That answering stuff, as I tried to say above, really isn't complicated or mysterious, either.

Even the most morally thematic novels involve some set up--during that there is no answer of a moral question. But the story that's being created does answer it. This is identical to Exploration of Situation where the situation resembles one that you might find in a story.

The game's I've written up here, as far as I was concerned, built on their plot at every instant of play. I, as a player, wasn't always sure how the scene was going to turn out in terms of consciously addressng a moral question (does the fact that I was okay with that uncertainty make me a Sim player? Your description of the credo Story Now seems to speak to that--but I doubt it).

Maybe it's that you don't think about Sim exploration of situation much: in that mode of play (IME AFAIK) the players will not often be doing things irrelevant to the situation (unless, you know, they're roleplaying their character's non-plot moving reaction to the situation--something I would think Narrativist players would applaud). To an observer (me anyway) it will look like the plot is moving towards a morally themed climax at every moment.

So would Sim Exploration of Situation be Story Now too? Sounds like it to me. Maybe you can be clearer about the differences (I'm sure it has to do with what the group is reinforcing along the way--but, again, in an IRC scenario, how would you--a qualified GNS judge--make that determination as a fellow player getting nothing but the in-game log?)

-----------------------------
As to the mountains and molehills: my point was that what you consider a molehill, I consider a mountain and vice-versa: I was pointing out that it's all a matter of perspective.

If I told you "Matt, don't worry about all that in-game fluff text: any group that really wants to play will figure that stuff out--there are clearly more ways to read it right than wrong" you wouldn't go "oh, I was making a mountain out of a molehill" you'd go "hey, it caused me problems and therefore *I* think it's important."

If I kept repeatedly telling you that you were making something out of nothing, would you, you know, become more receptive to hearing that over time? No. And rightly so.

-Marco

[Marco]

Edit: cross-posted with John

On observances of GNS decision making...

Remember that the vast majority of RPG decisions will produce similar observed decision for players of G,N,or S... (attack the evil guy or whatever)... but certain decisions are where the 'rubber meets the road' where the decision made will be different depending on what mode the Player favors...that's where the really useful observable event is, even though most of the previous decisions made by the player were made in their usual GNS mode.

Watching their choices when in critical decision points over time is one way to determine what their GNS preference is.

So I know a decision is important because I know what GNS mode the player favors?

And I know what GNS mode the player favors because I've been able to determine this by knowing which decisions are important?

That seems circular to me.

Is there a measure of a critical decision? That'd be a definite statement. How do I, as an observer, identify a critical juncture--

and most importantly could I do that with just an IRC log of a game? Or would I need web-cams on the players in order to do so (to, I guess, observe body language, since they aren't capalbe of "reinforcing" each other's social agenda outside of that channel they're communicating with).

-Marco

[Marco]

Marco,

My name's not on the list, so no, I'm not answering any specific questions, per se, but providing an observation that you can take as you will, which I hope will help you. This is a little long, so please stick with me.

--snipage--

As I can tell, following you:

a) you think I'm telling people they aren't getting anywhere. I don't get that. Maybe you can be specific where you see I'm doing that?

b) You think I accused you of something. I'm not sure what. I didn't see how your (text-book?) Narrativist-requirement-in-game example pertained to address of moral question in anyway--but maybe you could elaborate on that?

c) You are essentially saying "you don't get it so ... you don't get it and maybe you should give up?"

I didn't start this thread (and I do think my questions are on topic for it).

Ask yourself: Why did Ron limit the list of respondees? Why does John (who's nobody's dummy) find the questions interesting and you don't?

And why did Jack Spencer start the thread? Why have a Narrativist essay at all? Even Ron has suggested I wait for it. I found the Gamist one enlightening and ground breaking.

But you run an IRC Narrativist game (IIRC) so there's something I'd like to ask you about it: if I looked at your trasnscript how would I judge that it was Narrativist? What points would show me that vs., say, Exploration of situation? Could you provide examples? They'd be in black and white then.

And, I presume, as unambiguous as you feel the issue is.

-Marco

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

I did not limit the list of respondees. Anyone who feels qualified is welcome to participate. I named some people who would be good candidates, off the top of my head, only because they had to rearrange their outlooks in some fashion along the course of our interaction.

This thread is becoming a beast pit, largely because you've planted yourself in it and set yourself up to go bat-bat-bat against all comers. Frankly, that is a lousy goal.

People should contribute, and you can take or leave whatever you want from their contributions. This isn't an attempt to "take you down" or an arena for you to defend yourself in.

Do you or do you not want to learn something? That's the point. Either what's provided works for that purpose, or it won't. But I'm past feeling any need to convince anybody about (e.g.) Narrativism, and feel no obligation to explain any aspect of my thinking about role-playing unless the person wants to know.

Do you want to know? Then enjoy the vast range of responses, and, as I say, pick and choose what works for you. If you don't, then there's no reason to read any of it.

That is the only behavior I'm going to tolerate on this thread. Everyone who's posted, if you were grading into beast-pit mode, stop posting. Your contribution is on record; be done. Everyone else, post if you'd like, or don't; no pressure.

Best,
Ron

[Ian Charvill]

and most importantly could I do that with just an IRC log of a game? Or would I need web-cams on the players in order to do so (to, I guess, observe body language, since they aren't capalbe of "reinforcing" each other's social agenda outside of that channel they're communicating with).

I may have overemphasised the need for video footage - though that certainly would help for a complete picture.

With just the IRC log you could take cues from, amongst other things:

The amount of time players spent on various scenes.
Overt textual cues - I'm guessing there's nothing to prevent players on IRC typing "Cool!" or similar.
Players (including the GM's) selection of scenes.
The tendency of players to kibbutz on other people's scenes.

In all of the cases you would be looking for patterns.

While it's true that GNS can only be assessed by social reinforcement and engagement, all roleplaying is social all of the time.  The line "I smash the ork scuzzball with my axe" contains both game information and social information about the level of player engagement with the act.

HTH

[Marco]

Hello,

This thread is becoming a beast pit, largely because you've planted yourself in it and set yourself up to go bat-bat-bat against all comers. Frankly, that is a lousy goal.

Best,
Ron

Ron,

If you thought I was out of line with a response to an answer, let me know where. I, for the most part, have been very happy with some of the content of the answers here--some of them have brought up points I'm thinking on. Some of them have confirmed that my points were relevant to begin with.

My choice of phrase of "limited the respondees" was a poor one, taken from Raven's statement that he wouldn't respond based on not being on the list. I saw his post saying "these answers are obvious and mostly pointless"--I know from PM that other people don't agree that it's all as clear as he says.

I don't see this thread as especially beastly.

-Marco

[Marco]

and most importantly could I do that with just an IRC log of a game? Or would I need web-cams on the players in order to do so (to, I guess, observe body language, since they aren't capalbe of "reinforcing" each other's social agenda outside of that channel they're communicating with).

I may have overemphasised the need for video footage - though that certainly would help for a complete picture.

With just the IRC log you could take cues from, amongst other things:

The amount of time players spent on various scenes.
Overt textual cues - I'm guessing there's nothing to prevent players on IRC typing "Cool!" or similar.
Players (including the GM's) selection of scenes.
The tendency of players to kibbutz on other people's scenes.

In all of the cases you would be looking for patterns.

While it's true that GNS can only be assessed by social reinforcement and engagement, all roleplaying is social all of the time.  The line "I smash the ork scuzzball with my axe" contains both game information and social information about the level of player engagement with the act.

HTH

Ian,

I very much like reading your posts. I think your statements are clear. Let me get back to something you touched on:

You had an analogy with two bands--I can see you listen to both--but I need a large sample size and lots of data to tell which you like more, right? That's a good analogy--and it makes a good point. A large enough data-sample will show a preference over time.

That's the whole idea of "I'd have to be there at the table," I think.

But here's where I run into trouble with that.

As I said, what I see as Exploration of Situation--when the situation resembles a story*--also looks to me identical to address of premise. The "story" has themes. The players take action. Something happens. Usually what an observer might call the climax addresses the moral choice and resolves situation at the same time.

In your analogy you deal with one band or the other. In the actual gaming situation, I'm saying I'm always dealing with both. And I don't see any way to tell the difference unless I'm the person making the decisions and then it's crystal clear to me--but useless in terms of the theory.

Does that make my point of question clearer--I need to distinguish "which band you're" listening to before I can start telling "which one you like more."

Now looking at the IRC-log example (and, I'm glad, discarding the video cameras):

When someone types "Cool,", how do I know what Creative Agenda they are reinforcing? I want to stay away from hypotheticals--so I'll just say this: measuring the game type by the number of "cools" (or say number of seconds spent in a scene, or whatever) and then using that to score the game would require:

a) firstly categorizing the in-channel-actions into one of the three modes ("I weep for the princess"== Sim Exploration of character). Then giving it a player-engagment "point" for the "Cool's" received. This, it is said, isn't possible.

b) You would need to know what the more ambiguous measures meant by way of being encouraging or discouraging.

If I see the players spending a lot of time going through a haunted house are they being gamist-cautious, sim-setting-explorationist, or nar-bored but don't want to lose their characters to a trap.

For the first two longer times are bonus. For third, longer times could mean the player is kicking around hoping something interesting will happen or at least waiting for the scene to move on (unless you want to say "for narratiivist play, they'll *move* the scene themsleves" in which case it's a strong vote for empowerment as a key issue--which two posters agreed it wasn't especially).

But that's backwards. When the player says "Cool" after an ork goes down and the attacker posts he might be praising the winning of the fight, the flowerly description used, or the fact that he finds the fight really interesting in context of when and where it occurred in the game.

As I see it, it could be any one of those three or more (and Cool is different from a player kibitzing in another player's scene which could indicate bordeom and a wish to move the game along or interest and a this-is-so-cool-I-need-to-get-into-it) mentality.

-Marco
* When I say "the situation resembles a story" I mean that the start conditions and resultant play produces a string of events that if written up would reasonably make a book about something. And I even mean "a fairly decent book about something."

Decent is certainly a matter of perspective--since literature's value is judged against cannon and critics (which do not exist to judge RPG stories--so I agree with Matt that it's hard to judge one story better than another as created in an RPG). But an argument about that would go elsewhere.

[Matt Snyder]

Marco, I'd take Ron's advice to say my bit and let you sort it out. Except, I already decided to do that. If you have further questions about my positions, rather than further defenses of yours, let me know here or by Private Message. I stand by what I said; I see no need to carry on the beast pit exchange. Enjoy!

[Valamir]

But, you know, I get a pretty clear signal here that I must be a Simulationist.

My most enjoyable play has taken place with strongly and (I'm told) coherently designed Sim-game systems. Using Valamir's (and most of the board seems to agree with him) right-tool-for-the-right-job test that seems imply that I'm a simulationist.

Actually Marco, I think you are making this alot more difficult than it needs to be.

Quite frankly, I think you spend alot of your play making Narrativist decisions and if you'd acknowledge that most of your objections would go away.

Instead, you are convinced that you are a tried and true, pure blooded Simulationist so every time you see someone say "narrativism is X" you say "wait, I do that all the time, but I'm a Simulationist...so that CAN'T be all there is to Narrativism".  And then you spend alot of time and effort trying to figure something out, that pretty much you've already figured out.

There's a line in Ron's Sim essay that says "Shit, I'm playing Narrativist".  It goes on to say:

Many people mistake low time-scale techniques like Director stance, shared narration, etc, for Narrativism, although they are not defining elements for any GNS mode. Misunderstanding this key issue has led to many people falsely identifying themselves as playing Simulationist with a strong Character emphasis, when they were instead playing quite straightforward Narrativist without funky techniques.

It has long been put forth here that Narrativism has been around as long as gaming has.  Ron points at alot of old gaming texts and sees evidence of Narrativist play.  Some of those texts are pretty darn "old school" and don't remotely resemble the "funky" stuff like one finds in MLwM et.al.  So what does it matter what games you've playing to do so.

The idea that you've been playing games designed to deliver Sim and using them for narrativist play is hardly new, unique, or Earth Shattering.

You're a card carrying member of the Vanilla Nar brigade, Marco.  I really don't know why you spend so much time fighting that.