Exploration and Creative Agenda

[Ben Lehman]

I have been following with great interest the recent spate of threads about the overall structure of Ron Edward's General Role-Playing Theory.  These are, in general, very useful threads, in that they are quite clear and informative, and have brought a lot of things to light.

I have, in particular, been thinking about the overall relationship between the top three items in the list -- Social Contract, Exploration and Creative Agenda, for those who are just joining us.

If I'm reading things correctly, the theory states that Social Contract contains Exploration which, in turns, contains Creative Agenda.  I think that this last part may be backward.  Namely, that Creative Agenda may contain Exploration, rather than the other way around.

The way I think of it is this:  Picture a group of people, starting a role-playing game.  They are deciding what setting to play in and what system to use.  Setting and system are both part of Exploration.

Perhaps, in our imaginary group of gamers, Bob wants to play Wraith because, he says, it has such great potential for "good role-play," by which he means potential for Character-Premise exploration.  Joe says "Wraith is all boring and talky, let's play Werewolf and kick ass" by which he means that he wants to have a Dream of power and dominance.  Alice says, "The Storyteller system is so broken, let's play D&D 3E instead" by which she means that the storyteller system is ill-suited for tactical play, and she wants the "fairer" challenge in the more Gamist-inclided D&D.

Creative Agenda, here, is driving the nature of Exploration itself (particularly, it is driving it in the three canonical GNS directions).  In particular, if we look at a number of this group's games, we may find a great number of different Explorations all subsumed under the Creative Agendas of the various participants.

In particular, if Creative Agenda does not pre-exist Exploration, there is little explanation for Setting-Premise Narrativism and Setting-Competition Gamism, which are very frequent forms of Creative Agenda.

It is quite possible that I've misunderstood something about the structure of this model, and that pre-existing Creative Agenda totally fits in with it lying "beneath" exploration in the model.  If so, please give me a pointer. :-)

yrs--
--Ben

[Alan]

Hi Ben,

Perhaps there are two conceptual uses for GNS theory that should have different diagrams.

The first use, which is what I think Ron intends, is as a model for how individual player actions arise.  Such actions are slices of time, with no progression.  In this sense, social contract guides exploration which provides the material for creaative agenda.

The second use would be as a model for the evolving process.  In this case, the model needs some feedback loops.  In particular, Creative Agenda spawns Exploration which provides elements that are used again for Creative Agenda, etc.

Some confusion may arise because readers of the theory assume it is one or the other.  I think this may be what the discussion of discrete events was about.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Ben, you're still struggling a little, I think. I did consider the idea that the Creative Agenda box was biggest, but rejected it. You might be trying to fit the model into the head of one person, when it is designed to be applied to a group of people role-playing.

Alan, you might be interested to know that the issue of circularity (Creative Agenda causes Techniques; Technique in combination compose Creative Agenda) has been the subject of lively debate between Julie (jrs) and myself. Our conclusion was that "outward" vectors of cause cannot be definitional; otherwise the model becomes tautological. However, if you specify that Creative Agenda can only be applied to actual play - necessitating Techniques in order to exist, and that feedback on whether the Techniques work is always social ... then you get a spiral, not a circle.

Best,
Ron

[pete_darby]

Well, if you plot it, it tends to look like Brian Aldiss' map of the structure of LeGuin's The Dispossed, where he demonstrates that it's structured as a Ying Yang picture.

Which gets us to the Tao of Ron.

Which, unless you pay me, will become my new name for the model.

But, to get actually constructive, I was running through the model with my player (yes, singular, don't ask) last night, and the "rough & ready translation" of the overview of "who's coming, what are we playing, why are we playing, do we roll, what do we roll?" seemed to go down fairly easily. It's a horrendous oversimplification, but it sometimes helps.

In fact, Tao of Ron will become my name for that, to demonstrate that it's an introduction to a deep subject which it misrepresents on many levels. Like the Tao of Physics.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Pete,

Tao of Ron will become my name for that, to demonstrate that it's an introduction to a deep subject which it misrepresents on many levels. Like the Tao of Physics.

This is a joke, right? Just in case it isn't ...

1. No names for the model, yet. I consider "Tao of Ron" insulting and stupid.

2. "Misrepresents"? 'Scuse me? I don't think I'm misrepresenting anything in the model. I'm willing to be shown where that's happening. However, that's a significant enough claim to be its own thread.

Since every single one of your posts here in this forum, as well as in the HeroQuest forum, is extremely consistent with my approach/model, I'm really confused. And your point about your conversation with the other person seems to validate or positively support the model. That's why I think the above quote must be a joke.

If it is, then I guess that's fine, but please, this is a really bad time for jokes, both for the topic and for me.

Best,
Ron

[Valamir]

2. "Misrepresents"? 'Scuse me? I don't think I'm misrepresenting anything in the model. I'm willing to be shown where that's happening. However, that's a significant enough claim to be its own thread.

I believe he meant that his "horrendous oversimplification" was misrepresenting your model, much the way that the "Tao of Physics" misrepresents Physics.  Which is why he was calling his introductory technique the Tao of Ron.    Or something to that effect.

[Ron Edwards]

Oh! That makes more sense to me.

I get it.

Best,
Ron

[pete_darby]

Yeah: what Ralph said, and apologies all round for my fumble of english composition. The post was re-writen 5 times to try to get across what Ralph just got across.

Flippancy aside: does the summary help anyone? Obviously, it need ring fencing with disclaimers to keep it out of the hands of those who would use it as the be-all and end all of the model, but is it any in clearing up the issue raised at the head of the thread?

[Mike Holmes]

However, if you specify that Creative Agenda can only be applied to actual play - necessitating Techniques in order to exist, and that feedback on whether the Techniques work is always social ... then you get a spiral, not a circle.

To be technical that would be an example of a classic feedback loop. Communication -> effect -> feedback -> Communication etc. Pretty standard.

I think a lot of Role-playing suffers from a lack of good feedback in the loop.

Mike

[Gordon C. Landis]

I exchanged PMs with Ron about this directionality stuff mere days ago . . . I compared it to the linear vs. cyclical models of software development, which some folks may be familiar with.  Both models can be useful in managing a project, but cyclical (in my experience) is much more relevant to the process *as it is happening*.  I submit that if you think of a game as moving many, many times through all of Ron's layers, each time allowing the result to inform what you do the next time through (Mike's feedback loop), you've got a great model of what's actually happening as you roleplay.  From the VERY start.

The first few times through (from when someone first says "I've got x idea for a game for us to play"), some of the middle layers are gonna be kinda fuzzy.  That's OK - just because they're fuzzy doesn't mean they aren't there, it just means they aren't very manageable yet.

But this also supports the idea that we can create Techniques and Ephemera to use at the "thinking about playing a game" stage that will help to clarify the fuzziness about what particular Explored elements and Creative Agenda we're going to be dealing with in this game.  Sorcerer does this in many ways, defining Humanity being just one of 'em.

So that's how I'd capture the mostly-nondirectional nature of these layers - stress that the process of actually roleplaying looks like a continuous series of spikes through all the layers, with each spike having an opportunity to alter details about the layer as it passes through.  Now, we may agree that we don't want some details about a layer altered after some period of time (don't change the Humanity defintion once we've got it understood), but the fact is, alteration always *can* happen, with possibly disastrous results.

And you're never "done" with *all* details about a layer until you're done with play.  The Creative Agenda is continuously built up as play continues.  GNS tells us that we'd best pick a direction for that build-up in one of our early spikes, but it doesn't tell us that means we're finished with Creative Agenda.  In fact, it tells us the opposite.

At least, thinking about it like that is really working for me,

Gordon

[Ben Lehman]

Ben, you're still struggling a little, I think. I did consider the idea that the Creative Agenda box was biggest, but rejected it. You might be trying to fit the model into the head of one person, when it is designed to be applied to a group of people role-playing.

BL>  Yes, definitely still struggling.  However, having formerly trained in physics, I'm sort of used to it (if you're not struggling, you don't get it.)  ;-)  I think that Walt's response in the "The Whole Model" thread and Gordon's response here have really cleared things up in that regard (particularly regarding the flaming non-chronological nature of the heirarchy.)

I would like to say, however, that applying to to a group of players over a long play experience is EXACTLY what I am trying to do, and if you see the above as trying to put it into the head of one player we have a vast failure of communication.

Let me try again.  Over the course of a group's play experience, they will likely play many different games.  But these games will, often, fulfill the same creative agenda.  In fact, I believe, the process of playing many games enchances and expands that creative agenda into a more full-fledged affair, simply because you are allowed to look at it from different contexts.

This is the difference, to bring in a metaphor of fiction writing, between dissecting "The Left Hand of Darkness" for creative agenda and dissecting Le Guin's writing as a whole for creative agenda.  These could both be considered creative agenda, but they are VERY different things, and I'm looking at the second type.

To my mind, this "creative agenda" subsumes a large number of seperate explorations, each of which only expresses a subset of the larger creative agenda.  I agree that each of these seperate explorations definitely has it's own, unique, creative agenda, but if experience of play carries over from game to game, those smaller creative agendas must link up, past the boundaries of their specific Explorations, to a greater agenda.

Do we agree that this sort of creative agenda can, and often does, exist in long-term play groups?  Can we agree that this is "below" Social Contract level but "above" Exploration?  If not, why not?

yrs--
--Ben

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Ben,

Do we agree that this sort of creative agenda can, and often does, exist in long-term play groups?

Yup! I and many others do the same.

Can we agree that this is "below" Social Contract level but "above" Exploration? If not, why not?

Umm ... it seems to me simply the same as an author not wanting to write the same book over and over, or a band not wanting to re-write and re-play the same song. I don't really see why new boxes or rearranged boxes are necessary.

If you can see every instance of play (which in this case, we'll call the entire time playing a particular game, anywhere from one to twenty to umpty-ump sessions) as a given "entry" to the model, and that every entry is going to be different, especially if you use different rules-sets as guides to Techniques ...

... then sure. Each "time" is certainly going to have a creative and social relationship to every time you've done so far. Sounds like part of Social Contract to me: not just "let's play this game," but, "let's play lots of different games."

Best,
Ron

[Ben Lehman]

Do we agree that this sort of creative agenda can, and often does, exist in long-term play groups?

Yup! I and many others do the same.

BL>  Yay!

Can we agree that this is "below" Social Contract level but "above" Exploration? If not, why not?

Umm ... it seems to me simply the same as an author not wanting to write the same book over and over, or a band not wanting to re-write and re-play the same song. I don't really see why new boxes or rearranged boxes are necessary.

If you can see every instance of play (which in this case, we'll call the entire time playing a particular game, anywhere from one to twenty to umpty-ump sessions) as a given "entry" to the model, and that every entry is going to be different, especially if you use different rules-sets as guides to Techniques ...

... then sure. Each "time" is certainly going to have a creative and social relationship to every time you've done so far. Sounds like part of Social Contract to me: not just "let's play this game," but, "let's play lots of different games."

BL>  I see it as a part of social contract, sure, but so is everything else in the whole darn model.  This is not just "let's play lots of different games" but "let's play lots of different games and, in the course of them, address such and such premises from different perspectives."  Or, "Let's play lots of different tactical games and competitively explore our gaming skills."  Or what have you.

Of course, now that I'm thinking about it...  The more I think about the model, the less the heirarchical nature of it seems necessary at all.

Simply put, one can use Techniques for for establishing Exploration (I'm working on some right now) and Creative Agenda.  You can have a creative agenda informed by exploration, or exploration informed by creative agenda.  Heck, in strange circumstances (meetup boards) you have Ephemera pre-existing and informing the creation of Social Contract.

In my own head, I am becoming gradually more content with "Here are five things which are absolutely necessary for an RPG to occur.  The interact and mutually inform in complicated ways which vary wildly from situation to situation and group to group, but they are always all present, and can be examined individually."

yrs--
--Ben

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Ben,

I think the hierarchy's pretty important, myself, but I'm willing to split the difference with you on this one, mainly for harmony's sake. I'll say "It's OK to think that there are 'just five things,' [weirdo]" and you'll say, "It's OK to think that some sort of hierarchy's involved,' [pedant]" and all will be well.

At least until a fair piece of time has gone by.

Best,
Ron

[Ben Lehman]

I think the hierarchy's pretty important, myself, but I'm willing to split the difference with you on this one, mainly for harmony's sake. I'll say "It's OK to think that there are 'just five things,' [weirdo]" and you'll say, "It's OK to think that some sort of hierarchy's involved,' [pedant]" and all will be well.

BL>  Fair enough.  Thread stops here, I guess, at least for me.

yrs--
--Ben