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Hi All,

Look.  This whole "intent" / "observation" / "analysis" thing has gotten way out of hand, so let me offer this:

I live in Los Angeles.  And that means folks are wierd and believe in wierd things.  Like psychics, for example.  And, weirdly, people often say *I'm* psychic.  But I'm not.  (At least I don't think I am.)

Why do they say this?  Because I pick up on little bits of behavior that seemingly shouldn't tell me as much information about a person as they should and draw accurate conclusions that surprise those around me.

I'll say, "Is she having trouble with her husband?" -- having never met the husband, and no mention of the marriage coming up, but I'll be right.  She is.

I'll say, "Are you all right?  Is someone sick."  And she'll start crying, relieved she can talk about the illness of someone close to her.

I'll be at the beach, reading, and a little boy will come up and put his hand on my shoulder and start talking, and I'll notice his mom alone a few yards over and I'll think -- "Dad's not quite in the picture... He's not completely gone, but he defeinitely not showing up as a dad."  And I'll talk to the mom (really hot, 30, in this great black bikini, so of course I talk to her), and find out she and her husband are seperated, the father was supposed to have the boy that day, mom and dad got into a fight and he blew the whole thing off...  Ignoring his responsibilities and leaving the boy withe a resentful mom.

Now.  I've been paying a lot of attention to little boys lately: how they're doing, are they acting out, are they confident, are they afraid.  And I've been paying attention to their relationships with their fathers.  Just accumulating little mental notes of behavior.  (I'm doing this because I hope to be a father some day, and I'm trying to learn how to do it well.)

And when a little boy randomly and uninvited puts his hand on my shouler, I just start drawing out the information, noticing who's around, noticing how mom is dressed and so on.  And all these things begin to coalesce into conclusions.  And my conclusions are often right on.

Why?  Because I'm psychic?

No.  Because I pay attention.

That's what I tell people.  "No.  I just pay attention."

You can see the same thing in the film "Mystic River."  Laurence Fishburn's character, "Whity" is talking to Kevin Bacon's character about how he can tell Sean Penn's character did time in prison.  "You can see it in the hunch of his shoulders.  Somebody does time never loses that."

Bacon says, "Give him a break.  He just lost his daughter."

"That's the pain he's having in his stomach.  The shoulders is prison."

He's a detective, he's been traing himself to pay attention to tells.  Just like that folks.

Now.  Is it a one to one ration of clues: A random boy comes along to a random man who's sitting calm and comfortable and leans on him for support so it's clear there's trouble in his parent's life?  No.  Of course not.

It's a collection of clues, that I, apparently, sift through with little thought.  You line them all up, you start getting a picture.

Now.  I'm a professional writer.  I've been a professional actor.  I've directed actors and had to get them to portray cues to an audience in behavior to make things as clear as possible as to what's going on.  So putting together all these clues is somethign I'm used to doing.  It's not a big deal to me.  

I suggest Ron has done a lot of the same work in terms of RPGs.  He's paid attnetion to certain behaviors, paid attention to circumstances and health or frustation of play, began drawing conclusions, and now is pretty good at pulling together disperate clues that mean almost nothing by themselves and drawing accurate conclusions.  And, for those who want to learn, he's offering what he knows to others.

Is this a big deal?  No.  Is it a science?  I have no fucking clue. Is it an art -- that's how I would put it, but that's my training.  (Ron's training is heavily in the sciences, so he might take the opposite track.)

But really that's not what matters.

It's paying attention.  That's all.

And finally, in the same way I'm watching how father's behavior interacts with their sons (and how husbands and wives interact -- my life is full of too many couples who are just picking at each other all the time and I don't want to go down that road...) the observations go two ways.

I can observe and collect data.  And I can observe and change my behavior.  I can even, if someone asks, make suggestions about changing behavior to people who want different results in their life.

For example:  A man claims he wants to be a writer.  But he isn't writing.   Now, his intention is one thing, but, if he records in fifteen minute blocks how he's actually using his time each day, he discovers he spending hours of each day surfing internet port.  Now he's got data.  

But he can still go two different ways here.  He can look at the data and say, "Jesus, I gotta be a writer," change his behavior and write instead of surf.  Or, he can look at the data and say, "You know what.  I clearly don't want to be a writer."  And now he surfs porn happily.

Its the same with GNS.  The data observed of mode of play might reveal that the player, despite his desires, isn't taking action to match his desire, and so only need change his action.  Or, he might disocver that what he thought he wanted to do isn't what he wanted to do so he can relax his grip on what actions he thought he was supposed to be doing, and enjoy something he thought he wasn't supposed to want/do/enjoy.

In short... None of this is mysterious.  Not to me anyway.  If it frustrates some people that some people pay attention and infer correctly the batches of data we get... I'm truly sorry.  It's not my inention to cause anyone anxiety about the objective nature of reality.  But as far as I'm concerned, all of this is objective -- it's just not something I could probably write a book about because the data sets are constantly wide and specific to the circumstances (this boy's attitude, this mom alone on the beach, this Saturday afternoon, this bikini, his boy's desire to lean on a man's shoulder), that makes it impossible to say, "Look, this one bit of data means *this* and *this* alone."

But conclusions can still drawn if we've been collecting patterns of observed behavior and train ourselves to reconfigure the data into new patters to yield new conclusions.  

By being aware of this we can point each of ourselves (and our RPG group) toward making active choices for our behavior to get more of what we want. -- even if we might not have had a clear idea of what we wanted before we took note of what we were actively doing.

This makes our play sessions more of what we want them to be -- if only because we become more aware of what we're doing, and thus can decide to do more of it, less of it, or something else completely.  For me, that's the GNS part of the Model, and it works find.

Best,
Christopher

What he said.

Best,
Ron

He's right about Ron doing this sort of thing habitually, BTW.  Anecdote:

At Gencon, I'm playing in a Sorcerer demo game, and I say something that's very to-the-point & important for my character.  Ron interrupts play for a second and says, "Did you see that the other two players just involuntarily nodded their heads at what you said?  That's cause it was just right.  You get an extra die.  That's in the rules."

Sorry, not terribly topical, I just thought it was funny that Chris mentioned this sort of thing (observing interpersonal signals) and it happened to be exactly what Ron did when I first met him. :)

Jesus CHRIST!

*Not* very topical?????

That's exactly the topic -- the idea that Ron *pays attention* to two fellow players nodding their heads at a choice you've made.

Yes, man!  Exactly!  

That's the whole Social Reinforcement thing that confounds so many, but, for the life of me, seems kind of like riding a bike to me.  

And here's the key thing...  You've opend up the topic, that's all.  You've added the two players who nod their head.  Yes, Ron's observing them nodding their head -- because you did the "right" thing -- but the key is, these two players, without having to check in with each other, nodded their head in response to your choice.

You were paying attention, because you made a choice that group obviously felt (and yes, I mean in a kind of touchy-feely aesthetic way) was right; your fellow players were paying attention because they nodded with a quiet agreement of "rightness" that something "right" was happening at the table, and Ron was paying attention -- so he could catch the rightness happening and give you a reward.  

This is it exactly.  Because think of what game sessions would be like if everyone was working along the same agenda, leaning in slightly to pay attention, pick up the next cue, offer up the next cool, right thing, so the group felt like they were making something up that also worked "right."

In other words, Ron's jazz improv band anology: the players having to pay attention to one other, knowing when to take focus, give up focus, hit a new tempo, whatever, grooving off each other because they all know when its working and when its not, and they're smiling as their doing it because its working out good.

I played that way in long stretches of Jesse's Gothic Fantasy Sorcerer game.  It was great.  

This is all Ron's offering.

But it requires real attention, real investement in other people, real allowance for real enjoyment and excitement to be revealed in front of other real people.  It means admitting to others and to yourself what turns you on.

And I gotta say, I can't say I've seen a lot of that in the hours of RPG I've logged over my life time.

To go back to the examples at start of thread then, the point is not to look at other people, even your fellow RPGers, as these things you might pass by like so much flotsam, but to assume you are supposed to invest in them, pay attention, and care.  

Without that you're just a would-be artist drawing the same anatomy diagram over and over.  So you can draw a perfect set of bones correctly?  The real trick is to take that knowledge, find a subject that compells you (a man, a woman, a scene) and committing to drawing that, paying attention to *that* with everything you care about it, and sharing it with the world.

Best,
Christopher

OK, maybe it was topical.  Thanks, Christopher. :)

Quote from: Christopher KubasikThis is it exactly.  Because think of what game sessions would be like if everyone was working along the same agenda, leaning in slightly to pay attention, pick up the next cue, offer up the next cool, right thing, so the group felt like they were making something up that also worked "right."

The awareness you first wrote about to simply observe gns, is also the basis of satisfying, collaborative and synergistic play.

The mechanic in Sorcerer ejh wrote about has the double effect of rewarding players for being in the groove with the group, and also giving the gm and the other players a chance to notice this kind of occurence. With awareness and incentive, they are encouraged to perhaps work towards it as a goal in their play.  

The funny thing is that that "head nodding" moment is it's own reward.  The mechanical reward simply calls attention to an extremely satisfying aspect of gaming that may be overlooked in the search for other more obvious rewards.  

Regards,
Emily Care

Back of Sorcerer dust jacket:

You've never seen role-playing like this before.

... often dismissed as nigh-unforgivable advertisement hyperbole.

However, put the emphasis on "seen," rather than "this," in the very biblical sense of "to see."

Yes, that was indeed what I had in mind when I decided to use that text, and I did anticipate the most common mis-reading. It's worth it for the instances of payoff, when they arrive.

Best,
Ron

Quote from: Christopher KubasikIn short... None of this is mysterious.  Not to me anyway.  If it frustrates some people that some people pay attention and infer correctly the batches of data we get... I'm truly sorry.  It's not my inention to cause anyone anxiety about the objective nature of reality.  But as far as I'm concerned, all of this is objective -- it's just not something I could probably write a book about because the data sets are constantly wide and specific to the circumstances  

Um...  Is there something to discuss here?  There are two ways I can interpret this post:

1) It is good to observe and be aware of play styles

2) Those who don't find that their observations neatly divide into the G and N and S of the GNS model are simply unobservant

Well, I certainly agree with (1).  I have gotten a lot out of my own observations, communication, and theory (such as rgfa models like the Threefold and stances, or more recent stuff like my genre articles and narrative paradigms paper).  It shows through in my games which I think have gotten deeper and more interesting over time.  As for (2), you're right -- in my observations things don't seem to neatly divide into G and N and S.  Is it that I'm not observant enough to see the cues that you're seeing -- or are you just not observant enough to see the grey areas and ambiguities that my more sophisticated eyes have picked out?  

I think the only way to resolve this is to discuss and analyze further to actually see how you are making your distinctions.  That's what this forum (GNS Model Discussion) is supposed to be about, right?

"...or are you just not observant enough to see the grey areas and ambiguities that my more sophisticated eyes have picked out?"

John,

You didn't actually mean to type that, did you?

But moving on.

There are models and there are models.  I can show you fifteen ways that artists use to determine the proportios of the bodies they are drawing.  Each of them contradicts the other, but each one of them gets the job done.

As far as I'm concerned, if Ron's model doesn't help you that's fine.  if you have another way of looking at role playing games, that's fine.  

The post above was in reference to people who seem flumoxed by the idea that one can gather what might seem like obscure data, tied to specific circumstances, and, gathering it all up using past observations, draw actual, acurate conclusions.  When people demanded this practice be deemed a failure because it's not an exact "science" -- I felt compelled to point out this kind of thing goes on all the time in life.  It was my intent that the post would get people to get off the "Ron's Model Can't Tell Me This Instant of Play Is GNS Except in the Imagination of the Observer so its a Failure at Objective Reality" bandwagon.  The post demonstrates, from specific examples from my life, that we make this kind of inferences, correctly, all the time.

And yes, when it comes to RPGs, I use the filter of GNS.  I have found it to cover all aspects of RPG agendas at the table.  

If it doesn't work for you, again, fine.

But I swear to God, I can't imagine an artist who uses the sternum as the unit of measurement running after an artist who uses the head all the time going --  "The Head's innacurate for measuring the body!  The head's inacurate!"

I mean, John.  What do you want?  What are you so angry about?

Best,
Christopher

Quote from: Christopher Kubasik*snip*

This makes our play sessions more of what we want them to be -- if only because we become more aware of what we're doing, and thus can decide to do more of it, less of it, or something else completely.  For me, that's the GNS part of the Model, and it works find.

Best,
Christopher

Working actively against this is the desire for suspension of disbelief. Forgetting that it's just a game, forgetting the real world, absorbing data which is really just made up. Probably, anyway.

Generally when your asleep and dreaming, but realise it's a dream, you wake up. It's sort of likewise in RP. Observation provides a good safety net for the quality of the game, but to immerse means turning observation of the real world off, to varying degrees.

Just a counter point, that comes up in my mind.

You know, I've got to add one more thing.

I noticed at the end of your post this interesting phrasing:

"That's what this forum (GNS Model Discussion) is supposed to be about, right?"

There seems to be an inference that I jumped tracks by bringing up all those real life issues that aren't about gaming, and left gaming (and GNS) behind.

I want to make this clear:  Ron's model is not just about GNS.  It actually got more to do with how people live their lives than I think most people assume.  That's why Ron will think it significant that Pyron's relatively young and playing with his brother in the group.

You, on the other hand, seem to want to approach all of this with as much seperation between "the game" and "human beings" as possible.  You seem determined to peg hole whether GNS "works" with using only ingame text.  In your actual play posts about your games we get detailed descriptions of amusing monologues, but I have no idea who you play with, where you play, how long you play, how you gathered your group or anything.

You might say, "Those things don't matter."  I susepct you will.  (I could be wrong.)

Which simply shows, (if this is your view) that Ron's model really isn't a consideration for you.  It really is just a lense that will be useless to you.

Ron's working with acutual human beings, how they're using their time, and how to use their time to get more of what they want.  The playing of the game doesn't happen independet of the people, and GNS is not something that exists in some free floating ether of "gaming."  

This is one of Ron's aggressive points: that gamers tend to hide their hobby, tend to dissaciate from their actual desires and taste when gaming, and generally hide their true interests in the cause of "at least playing a game."  In short, the hobby of gaming, which Ron loves, currently produces people who are socially disfunctional.  And Ron, in his essays, has clearly set up a model that begins with social functionality first, which then leads through several steps into GNS and then past GNS into techniques... and then the ephemera.

I bring this up not because I expect any kind of "Wow," response from you, by the way... It's a note for people looking on.  I think your desire to strip any concerns of gaming theory about from human beings -- the specific human beings, playing at a specific time and place, is telling.  I think its significant, and I thought it should be noted.

Christopher

Quote from: Ron EdwardsWhat he said.

Best,
Ron

So good, I felt it needed repeating. :)

Hey John, you actually make a good point about the differences in observation.  One thing I wanted to note though, is that it makes a big difference in exactly what you're observing.

You've posted a couple examples of your games here (as has Marco) and almost universally they are described from the point of view of the character.  What the characters were involved with and what they did.  When you touch upon the players at all (at least to my recollection) its again in terms of what the players were doing/thinking about regarding "in game" stuff.

Now I can't say for sure, but I suspect that since this is how you wrote the examples that you wanted to use for illustrative purposes in various threads that this is where the focus of your observations lie.

Much of the observations about GNS, however, lie above this.  What the characters did is (to make a sweeping generalization that there are no doubt exceptions to) is pretty irrelevant.  How the players reacted to what the characters (and other players) did, however, speaks volumes.  Not reacted in terms of "your character did that, so my character will do this" but reacted in terms of: laughed, scowled, clapped their hands with glee, rolled their eyes, shouted "way to go" etc.

You and Marco have both submitted examples of play in which you wanted commentary on what GNS says about them, but in nearly all cases there is little to no description of these human factors.  

When a player spends 15 minutes looking up combat modifiers in the book, this tells us little (one can comment on this alone, but its speculative and subject to a high degree of error).

When a player spends 15 minutes looking up combat modifiers in the book, and the other players are calling out "don't forget this", and "ohhh, good idea, I wouldn't have thought of trying to get that one worked in" this tells us much much more.  When one of the other players rolls their eyes, sighs and shouts "fer chrissake can we just roll the damn dice already"...that tells us still more.

Its the reactions of the people playing that really helps zero in on the Creative Agenda at work.  

I submit, honestly submit for your consideration cuz I clearly don't know the answer, that while you are likely every bit as observant in terms of a "raw attribute score" as anyone else here, that its likely directed at different things.  And that quite possibly, the kinds of things that Ron and Christopher are talking about are things that they have been more observant about than most of the rest of us.

Quote from: ValamirI submit, honestly submit for your consideration cuz I clearly don't know the answer, that while you are likely every bit as observant in terms of a "raw attribute score" as anyone else here, that its likely directed at different things.  And that quite possibly, the kinds of things that Ron and Christopher are talking about are things that they have been more observant about than most of the rest of us.

I totally agree. One has to watch the players, not their characters.

Quote from: Andrew Martin

Quote from: ValamirI submit, honestly submit for your consideration cuz I clearly don't know the answer, that while you are likely every bit as observant in terms of a "raw attribute score" as anyone else here, that its likely directed at different things.  And that quite possibly, the kinds of things that Ron and Christopher are talking about are things that they have been more observant about than most of the rest of us.

I totally agree. One has to watch the players, not their characters.

Which is not to say (I hope) that what the characters do is irrelevant - after all, what the characters do IS something that the players are doing.

But there is a difference between looking at what the characters do (and etc. - the whole fictional environment) as something that the players are doing, and looking at the fictional environment as an entity in itself.  I mean, it *is* an entity in itself, but looking there isn't where I see Christopher's post pointing.

Which is probably just a wordy way of saying what both Ralph and Andrew meant.

I guess I'll just add - having played a session with John as GM, I'm entirely certain that he does look at what the players do.  What I can't (or at least don't) know is whether that's where he's looking to form GNS opinions or not.

I applaud (sent a PM already) Christopher's post for pointing out that delving into the details is not always the best way to see things, and for doing such a marvelous job (for me) in generally illuminating where you can look.  Still, I sympathize with John - you've gotta try *something* if you're just not seeing what folks are talking about.

In short - whatever helps is good.  I think many recent threads, while frustrating, have helped somewhat.  I read Christopher's post as a reminder that other things can help too.

Gordon