Why is the Prioritization the Thing?

[marcus]

My last posting crossed with that of M.J.. What is this Legends of Alyria game, and how does it's play support GNS?

Marcus

[Christopher Kubasik]

Hi Marcus,

Two things.  If I'm not mistaken, Ron's stated it's not a theory.  It's a model. For me (and perhaps only me), that's enough. When I hold up the model against all the games I've ever played, and all the time things have gone well or fallen apart and I automatically "get" what was going on.  I'm not asking for the model to be "proven."  It simply offers me a clarity I've never had before.  I suspect this won't satisfy you, but there it is.  In the arts, not the sciences mind you, but the arts -- acting, drawing, so on -- there are plenty of models for understanding portraying human behavior onstage or drawing the human figure.  Some people respond to some, not others.  However, some of them are contradictory and you actually can't hold two such models in your head at the same time.  You end up pickign the one that's most productive for you.

I feel comfortable (speaking for myself, and no one else here), seeing it like that.  I'm *not* looking for what can be proven.  I'm looking for what works.  And it works for me.

Second, I think there's something tricky going on here in terms of needing to be indoctrinated upon first hearing about it.

Point one: I didn't balk at the model when I first read the GNS essay.  I balked at the idea of showing up to a board full of theory and jargon about RPGs, but after being pointed here by another gamer, who had heard me speak about my dissatisfaction with RPGs, I gave it a shot.

I started reading the GNS essay and thought, "This is it.  This is so right."  So right off the bat, I got it.

I printed out the pages and re-read the essay for an even better grasp of the material.  By coincidence, I was reading it at a game convention.  So I sat there that weekend, alternately reading the material and sitting with strangers playing role playing games.

You know what?  Everything I encounterd that weekend only supported validity of Ron's observations.

But here's the second half of this: I was a disatisfied gamer.  I'd chucked all my game books years earlier.  I knew I had once liked the hobby, came to be frustrated beyond endurance by the lack of pleasure, and walked away.

I truly believe I got the theory fast because I was dissatisfied.  Other people apparently weren't -- not becasue they were happy when they played.  I've never joined a group since college that wasn't constantly sniping and griping about their fellow players.  But they kept playing.  Apparently, somehow, normal play involved being very, very disatisfied with the actual playing.

I now believe that the real "indoctrination" takes place in the way games are played and how people are taught to be play.  I submit that the problem "experienced" gamers have with "getting" the model has less to do with the model than that it bangs smack into almost every assumption they have about RPGs, playing, fun, the role of the GM, what a session is supposed to be like and more.

I submit that because Ron's model was built specifically to root out a blind spot in so many of the troubled players out there that when they see the model it often makes no sense because the problems of current gaming practices Ron talks about is everything they've been taught not to see as they've become "experienced" role players.  (And, please, don't take my word about the troubled players -- just hop over to RPGnet and read all the angry threads where people complain about their screwed up players, GMs, boring sessions, and frantic attempts to re-rig systems so they finally work. It's a large cohort and there's plenty of trouble.)

This is no reflection on your intelligence or anyone's.  And I know, too, this idea is going to smack of more equivications on the part of someone who "gets it," another attempt to dodge the issue.  But it's what I see: it's what I see when I read the rules of RPGs; it's what I see when I go to cons; it's what I see when I read the posts at RPGnet.  There *are* crazy incoherencies in RPGs.  I noted them seven or so years ago in an article for Inphobia Magazine -- just before I chucked all my game books. But I couldn't see a way to solve them.  Out in Chicago, though, Ron stuck it out and worked to do just that.  In fact, he read my articles and thought, "Yeah.  This guy's right."  Then I showed up here and read his article and thought, "Yeah.  This guy's right."

So, here's at least one man who didn't have to argue with Ron each step of the way before I "got" it.  I saw the symptoms of incoherence years ago, but I couldn't do the diagnosis.  Ron (with a lot of other influences and a lot of work) did.  My story isn't everybody's story -- but it is my story.  As a disatisfied player already ready to assume everything people took for granted about "good" roleplaying had to be up for grabs, I came in without any baggage looking for a solution.  Unexpectedly, Ron's model delivered the moment I opened it on my web browser.

Don't know what else to say.

Best,
Christopher

[marcus]

If I too may introspect for a moment, perhaps my problem is that I'm generally pretty happy with my role-playing experience, although, of course, always looking for room to improve.

The only major problem I can think of was one player who for a couple of years regularly cheated by constantly beefing up his characters in a couple of games when nobody was looking to make them more effective, and then resisted strongly suggestions that the characters should be disempowered. After I contrived to kill off one of the characters, the player dropped out for about a year, but has since returned and is one of the mainstays of the playing group. I'm not sure if one could class this as a GNS problem or not. Was this a case of an overly Gamist player clashing with a Simulationist group? I'm not sure, as apart from the cheating the player plays much the same now as before, and I don't think the group as a whole has changed much.

I think the main development, GNS-wise, in my group's play of late is the greater use and appreciation of Narrative elements in play. I feel that this is a useful avenue for exploration, notwithstanding the fact that from long years of experience I feel that Gamist and/or Simulationist goals will always be of great importance to the players. As I understand GNS theory, however, an increase in Narrative elements in such a group can only make play worse, as play will then become "incoherent" unless the Narrative is completely prioritised over Game and Sim (thus making play fall within the definition of Narrativist). So my personal intuition is that I should aim for a better balance of outlooks in play, yet GNS seems to be saying exactly the opposite- concentrate on a single mode and to the extent that other modes are allowed to exist they should be subordinated to the main mode at all times. I want to move forward, but GNS seems to be saying I should either move backward (to purer Sim play of yesteryear, if Sim is truly my priority mode of play) or completely abandon my pretty successful gaming style for a completely new style (abandon Simulationism for Narrativism). This is one reason I find the GNS model hard to accept on a practical level.

Marcus

[pete_darby]

My advice, Marcus, is to treat the model like you would treat, say, freudian or feminist or brechtian or marxist lit crit: trying to "disprove" it is futile, as is asking it to act like a scientific, empirical predictor of behaviour.

Where people have asked you to try to apply to the model to future play, it's like asking you to analyze a book using, say, freudian critical tools. It's illuminating, not predicting, any more than "Well, if you read Lord of the Rings from a marxist perspective, you can see the rise of the dark races as a metaphor for the class war. From a romantic viewpoint, it's about a fight to preserve the idyll gainst industrialisation." What it won't do is tell you what happens next.

And just like a school of criticism, you can equally well say that it doesn't illuminate for you, or that while that interpretation may be defensible, it doesn't make it "right," especially where it's applied to your play, or, as many have said, "Oh yeah, I get it, I just don't want it."

But don't be surprised when you come on to a forum saying "It's a failure, because, as I understand, it works like this, which is screwy," you get responses along the lines of "well, you've got it wrong then, because it's always worked for me," or even just "well, you've got it wrong, it works like this."

And, as you've pointed out, absolute agreement on the model is in short supply, as it is in litcrit, film crit and theatre crit schools. What can I say? That's the creative arts for you.

{edit: cross posted with your response, give me a minute...)

[pete_darby]

As I understand the model (and I've demonstrated my slippery grasp of it more than once), inchorence is when the group is trying to satisfy two or more mutually exclusive agenda in the same instance of play, especially where the clash of agendas is not acknowledged.

In the musical metaphor, it's like a band  trying to play a lullaby and the can-can simultaneously. That's not to say the same group couldn't do both at different times, just not at the same time... or at least, not in any sense we'd call succesfully.

In these cases, either someone changes priorities for that instance to align with the other, or it desends into an argument of "you're not playing it right."

But I suppose trying to analyze good play, in any model, is like analyzing good comedy, or music, or (our favourite metaphor) sex. As long as it's good, who cares why it works? In fact, over analysis can sap the joy out of anything. It's when it goes wrong, or you get the feeling you could be doing it better, that you hit the books. Or videos...

[Calithena]

What exactly is a 'theory', if not a 'model' that's held up under testing and been on this basis deemed 'true,' or 'approximately true', or 'true within its domain', or whatever?

The question of the thread is: why is the prioritization the thing? The answer, as I understand it, and I'm aware that there are those here who understand it better, is: because

a) gamers have different goals in different situations
b) the three modes of behavior which pursue those goals are broadly describably as gamist, simulationist, and narrativist.
c) many dissatisfied gamers are gamers who are playing in groups where the group's dominant mode is different from the one they want to play in, or gamers who are trying to pursue gamist or narrativist goals by way of sim-prioritized 'realism', etc.
d) therefore, in order to break out of this dissatisfaction, you have to either (1) find a group that wants to play for the same part in the same way that you do or (2) find a group with which you have enough harmony to drift together in similar patterns, AND (3) select a game system that facilitates (1) or (2).

A and B seem to me non-controversial, and the sociological research which is establishing them is happening right here on this board. It is somewhat informal, and is not ready for publication in a peer-reviewed journal, but I see no reason not to think that there's strong initial plausiblity to the view. (c) is tougher to establish, but once again given that (a) and (b) are right I think that there's a strong initial case to be made for (c) too.

The practical hypothesis, which is empirically testable, is found in d. Ron's writings and many of the frequent posters at the Forge suggest that d1 is the way to go; many newcomers and a few of the frequent posters in the community keep open that d2 is also a legitimate possiiblity, and arguably M.J. Young's and Fang Langford's work are attempts to push in this direction. Marcus holds out for d2, and not surprisingly, because he's in a group where d2 seems to be working out for him, through good communication, natural harmony, long experience, or whatever.

From a practical standpoint, both in play and design, d1 is the more interesting direction to pursue right now, since the theory is new and explicit design along these lines is relatively new as well. It seems likely moreover that good work along d1 lines is likely to be more helpful to d2 than the other way around, just like you study foxes and rabbits first as a prelude to modeling a complicated real-world ecosystem.

[greyorm]

I am pursuing d2 for various personal reasons, despite that the same group was for years incredibly dysfunctional and I found myself frustrated with the game more often than not, coming very close to quitting RPGing altogether. A few specific details can be found in Actual Play in the thread "Stupid Player Tricks."

More interesting and topical to the current discussion is that I'm doing it without d3 -- that is, we are continuing to use a system not designed for our style of play. Though that has become more and more a problem of late as our style asserts itself and conflicts more often with the system.

So when I proclaim that it "worked for me" I mean that. It worked for me. It has been tested and utilized to excellent effect by myself in an actual gaming environment, even with the deck stacked against me, so to speak, in terms of group behavior and game system.

Understanding of the model led to understanding what was going wrong in play, explaination of why I was frustrated, and provided me a clearly defined goal to pursue, and (along with discussions on these boards), methods by which to reach that goal.

That is, I kept trying all this stuff in an effort to achieve certain results. The fact was that my efforts were incompatible with the results because of the underlying style of play -- ultimately, the methods I utilized were enforcing the wrong priorities in play.

That I love my game now is testament to the model's effectiveness and applicability.

[M. J. Young]

What is this Legends of Alyria game, and how does it's play support GNS?

Hmmm...how to summarize simply?

Seth Ben-Ezra, of Dark Omen Games, was on the Gaming Outpost boards when the original article was published. There was a lot of argument then about the validity of simulationism as a mode or goal, and he came out strongly declaring himself simulationist (and I've no reason to doubt that assertion).

Then he began working on Legends of Alyria. It has taken longer than I think anyone expected, but I believe the text is nearing publication and several of us have seen the draft and played the game. What is fascinating about it is that almost no matter what you try to do with it, it plays narrativist.

Character creation is not a matter of each player creating a character he likes. Rather, all the players get together and create a collection of characters who have connections to each other. In the http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=5994&start=0">Young Playtest Group First Storymap thread I outline something of the process there. We started with a paladin, created a villain who had tricked the paladin into believing that the woman who was helping people was a villain, then gave the villain an assistant and the woman a companion, and created a village girl who admired the woman and didn't trust the villain, and gave these characters traits to fill them out. Then, once the characters are all created, the players decide who is going to play which one. So from the beginning everyone has been interested in creating interesting characters with interesting relationships with each other that become the set up for the story.

The character numbers, too, are fascinating. Understand that this is a game set in something of a post-apocalyptic world. Some of the characters may have access to the advanced technology of the ancients, and some may have magical abilities given by spirits of good or evil, and some may have pyschic abilities powerful enough to blow city gates off their hinges. Yet in the resolution mechanics, none of that matters. The characters have three attributes and a small number of traits. The dice system says it doesn't matter if you're strong enough to rip my head off my shoulders and throw it into orbit; if by my force of will I stare you down, you've been intimidated and can't do it. Those traits are things like "highly values friendship" or "socially inept". The rating system is a five-point scale for attributes, and for traits only four of those values are possible--two for good traits and two for bad ones. As part of resolution, players can use each other's traits against each other. Thus you would think having high traits gives you an advantage--but it doesn't. The way it's set up, if I've got the highest rating in something like "purposeful", I can use it to my advantage when I can explain how this situation fits with the fact that my character is purposeful--but the other players can use it against me if they can suggest how this situation would cause my purposefulness to be a disadvantage. Every trait you have is both an advantage and a disadvantage, and to the same degree. There is no way I've found to "game" the engine, and I play with a table full of gamists.

Further, players have a currency that lets the override the resolution engine entirely, by spending their inspiration/corruption points. However, this does not give them control of the outcome--that is, if you spend a point, that doesn't mean you win. If you spend a point of inspiration, the situation is resolved in a way that favors ultimate good; if you spend a point of corruption, it favors ultimate evil.

Seth created this game partly as an effort to understand narrativism, but perhaps more because he realized that the ideas he had for a game world were so packed with moral issues it needed a game system that enabled those issues to become the centerpiece of the game. The system he (with Scarlet Jester) devised does exactly that. It doesn't do most of the things most games do, and yet it does that one thing that so many gamers are trying to do (create engaging meaningful stories that sound like fantasy novels rather than war reports) so well that hardcore gamists find themselves creating such stories against their preferences.

Anyway, I'm a fan. Ron's a fan, too--his preliminary review in the thread http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=8004">My editing is done is just as full of praise for this game as I am. I know Seth is trying to get through the publication part, and don't know exactly how he's doing that, so it's kind of in limbo (he's not giving out playtest PDF's, but the book's not yet available), but if you ask on the Alyria forum you can at least join the naggers pushing him to get it out the door.

--M. J. Young

[marcus]

Legends of Alyria sounds like an interesting game, and I'll have to get hold of a copy when it comes out.

Still, I would argue that the fact that a purely Narrativist game can be created and enjoyed does little to demonstrate the truth of the GNS model. What you would really need to show is that, all other things being equal, such "Purist for GNS" games (if I may irreverently add a new term to the lexicon) are invariably superior to their Non-Purist for GNS rivals.

Marcus

[pete_darby]

Errrr...... for a start, what's purist for GNS? A game that only supports one agenda? A game that easily accomodates drift?

And compare it to what? A game that doesn't support any agenda? A game that manages to support multiple agendas in a given instance all the time every time (because the models' got overlapping agendas in convergence)? Or just a basically "incoherent" published game (Ron's poster boy for that is Vampire: The Masquerade, mine's GURPS) that sets up mutally opposing agenda within the books, and cannot be played without drift, according to the model?

Because even if we could agree on what two products we were comparing, forgistas could claim that the play is what matters, because it's a model of play, not game design. Sure, it can inform game design, in the same way a theory of acting can inform playwriting, but in the same way Stanislavski, or Johnstone, or Brechtianism can be applied to any play, so the model can be applied to the play of any game.

And we also get into the whole "this game's better than that game" thing that can only fall into a sinking pit of despair unless we can agree on a common set of standards to judge them by (and if we're arguing about the validity of a model in the first place, I don't think we'll be able to), or admit that the play's the thing, the experience is subjective, and all we can get is anecdotal evidence.

[marcus]

By "Purist for GNS", I was thinking of any system that fell within Ron's dictum in "System Does Matter" that "I suggest a good system is one which knows its outlook and doesn't waste any mechanics on the other two outlooks". I hadn't thought of a system that easily accomodates drift. What would such a system be like?

I had though that GNS was, inter alia, a theory about game design. I realise that the model has progressed somewhat from "System Does Matter", but the statement I quoted certainly looks to me to put the GNS model in this category.

I realise that there are practical difficulties in comparing games and playing experiences, but in my view without such comparisons the model cannot be validated, and can be nothing more than a bunch of terms some like and others don't.


Marcus

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

I'd like to call attention to the word "suggest" in that sentence you've quoted, Marcus.

Its use means the sentence could just as well be written as a question:

"Is a good system one which knows its outlook and doesn't waste any mechanics on the other two outlooks?"

Perhaps understanding the sentence in this light is key to this and other threads you've begun. It's not a clarion call toward The One True Way of game design. It's a question.

Assuming the answer is "certainly yes," and then objecting to its certainty, is a bit of a circle.

Did I make such an assumption at the time of writing that essay? Maybe ... but I don't think so, not too badly anyway. In my favor, I did pick my words carefully - "suggest" vs. "submit," for example. And I did help found the Forge in the interests of expanding my understanding. The Forge is working out the answers, much as Sean (Calithena) outlined so well a couple of posts above.

Best,
Ron

[marcus]

Hello, Ron.

I realise that your model has progressed considerably from the "System Does Matter" essay, as you pointed this out to me in the Sorceror Forum and said that the matter of concentration on a single outlook was not as black and white as that first essay might be read to suggest. Looking through your other essays, however, although the point isn't made as starkly, I got the impression that you remained of the view that concentration on a single outlook in game design was at least a pretty good rule of thumb. Was that simply a misreading of the model on my part?

If "System Does Matter" did indeed merely ask the question "Is a good system one which knows its outlook and doesn't waste any mechanics on the other two outlooks?", does the GNS model have any answer to this question?

Marcus

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

Direct questions. All right ...

1. I do think "one Creative Agenda at a time" is at least a pretty good rule of thumb, when thinking about game design. That may not necessarily mean "pure G, N, or S" though. There are at least a couple pretty good hybrids (with Simulationism subordinate) out there, and I have often said that G and N play are socially and structurally extremely similar, and thus some game systems do a nice job for either.

Also, "at least a pretty good rule of thumb" is a very good way to put it. It's certainly not the same as, "Ron says it's just one, man! He said!"

I do think that trying to please any and all role-players with one game design is probably a lost cause and the source of some pretty bad games. Yeah, bad games. Pretty judgmental thing to say.

2. My current answer to the question is, "A game design is better insofar as it's clear about the Creative Agenda it best helps to bring into social reality." I don't think any and every combination of G, N, or S is reliable for a Creative Agenda. Which ones I think work well, and why, is pretty well developed in the "hybridization" sections of the current three-essay series. The final one, which is currently quite close to being ready for first-draft reading, presents some new thoughts about that.

Best,
Ron

[M. J. Young]

I hadn't thought of a system that easily accomodates drift. What would such a system be like?

All right, I will assert that Multiverser is a game system that easily accommodates drift. I won't assert that this is the only way it can be done (I think Fang's ideas about transition had a lot of promise), but I will point to the features of the design which I believe make drift feasible.

[*]Working with Multiverser, I have more and more realized that what we traditionally call setting versus what we call system (in this case, mechanics, techniques, rules) are two parts of the same thing. I just this morning published http://www.gamingoutpost.com/GL/index.cfm?action=ShowProduct&CategoryID=54411&ProductID=77990&publisherid=54849">Game Ideas Unlimited: Songs

After all, for most composers of songs (the famous lyricist/composer teams may or may not be included in this), we're not creating words set to music, or music with words attached, but a song.  The feeling that the words express must be consonant with the mood of the melody; the emotional dynamic of the progression must be conveyed and amplified by the lyrics.  We're not writing two things that we put together; we're writing one thing that has two distinguishable parts.  So, too, the game designer isn't creating a setting and a system most times, but a game.

 If you'll permit me to push the comparison further, those two distinguishable parts may be distinguishable in the analysis, but they are not as clearly distinct in the reality.  Frequently the structure of the lyric is part of the music--word phrases are written whose strong staccato pronunciations amplify the rhythms of the music, or music is written to draw out the flow of the words.  I have often said that nearly ever sentence can be teased into giving up its own melody; without too much difficulty, I could sing this article to you, improvising what the melody needs to do with each phrase, because the words and the music are inextricably tied together in a song.  The words are music, and the music words.

 So, too, setting and system are not as distinct as you may think.  I have noticed of Multiverser since it was published that the current world setting in which the character is playing becomes part of the rules that control play, even without altering any of the rules as we understand them.  Introducing a setting steeped in challenge will lead most players to play with a view to tactics, meeting the challenges, while a setting in which moral and ethical issues are a major part of the background often brings out strongly issue-oriented play, and yet another which is strange and peaceful calls for more explorative approaches.  Setting is system; it is that part of system that dictates location-dependent events and encounters.  System meanwhile is setting, that part of setting that controls what happens, how the world is altered.  Roleplaying game theorist Ron Edwards has said that system is the equivalent of time in the game:  it is the aspect of the game that controls change within the world.  Thus even fully generic and universal systems become fully integrated into their settings, as system and setting are parts of the same whole, not elements in a construction kit but definitions overlaid by distinctions we've made.  Anyone who has ever, after taking a bit of college level psychology, tried to figure out where their spirit ends and their body begins, understands this.  We can see that each has a clear place that is its own, but the edges between them are too fuzzy to identify.

All of which is to say that because it is possible to rip the character completely out of one setting and into another, it is possible to change essential rules that influence the creative agenda.
[*]Players are completely independent of each other in play. This is equally important in the game's facility of drift. On another thread fairly recently (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=8756">Narrativism for the Soul) I was being rather reflective of games I'd played prior to understanding GNS, and it occurred to me that a lot of those games were to some degree incoherent because I would drift them; that isn't necessarily incoherent in itself, but for this. I would take the game where I wanted it to go, because I combined a certain level of social power in the group with a level of social ineptness, the combination of which meant that I would take the game off in some direction that interested me at the time and everyone else either went along or socially dropped out for a while. In Multiverser, what one player decides interests him doesn't matter to anyone else; everyone can pursue his own interests and his own creative agendae independently, going on completely unrelated adventures, entertained by each other's play certainly, but not locked into playing either with or against whatever objectives the others have.
[*]There is absolutely no rewards system in the game. Advancement is controlled by assessment of character practice in game time. What we discovered in testing was that play was its own reward. What I didn't realize until much later was that people sought to do that which they found rewarding. Some went for the challenges at every turn; some took things as they came and spent more time nosing around trying to discover what each world held; some got involved in great issues. We ran a version of the Costner film The Postman in independent parallel for four different players, and each handled it entirely differently. One tried to rally citizens to rebuild the ruins of the nation, appealing to their patriotism and their faith. One took on the Army of Eight singlehandedly, using guerilla tactics to harry and terrorize until he had a clean opportunity to kill their leader. One let them take him wherever they wanted, and then quietly worked to subvert the army from within until the army itself revolted against its leadership and tore down the structure. The fourth headed out away from the army and tried to help people rebuild their lives in the ashes of the destroyed world. Each played the game he wanted to play, and found it interesting and exciting to do so. By not artificially rewarding any particular conduct, the game didn't tell the players what they had to do to "win", and so they all won on their own terms.
[*]The rules use a toolbox approach at almost every turn. If a character decides to run to try to get to his vehicle before the monster catches up with him, the referee has his choice of at least three ways to determine the outcome--he can use the player's success/failure roll to determine how fast he ran (and do the same for the monster), and place that against the distance; he can regard the success/failure roll as meaning whether he ran fast enough; or he can determine that the character ran and then use a general effects roll to determine whether he managed to reach the vehicle in time. By providing several options for resolving most situations, from very loose to very tight, the game lets the individuals customize play to their preferences on the fly.[/list:u]
There are a lot of other elements involved, but I think these are the main points. Again, there may be other ways to make a game that facilitates drift. The difficult part usually is finding a way to facilitate drift without leading to player conflict. That is, if we're all eager to play narrativist we can probably drift Rolemaster and OAD&D and even Axis and Allies to narrativist play with relatively little effort. But if I'm suddenly wanting to play narrativist and explore my relationship with the princess and the problem of being a commoner in love with royalty, and Bob wants to get back out there and fight those orcs for love or money, either the game has to keep us together (in creative agenda terms) or it has to let us separate (in play). If the whole group will drift together, you've got functional drift. If everyone drifts a different direction, you've got dysfunction or incoherence.

That is often solved on the social level, as people cooperatively share screen time, as it were, each allowing the others to do what they like in exchange for knowing there will be time for what each likes.

What makes games which attempt to support all three modes incoherent usually is the tendency of groups to drift them to one goal and believe that is "how you're supposed to play"; and then to cross-pollenate other groups such that players all have a different idea of "how you're supposed to play" and try to impose that on each other.

I feel like I'm starting to ramble, so I'll wrap up here.

--M. J. Young