The Social Mode

[Ron Edwards]

Good enough as points, Sean. M.J., I trust you're all right with that.

Um, lemme know through private-message when this seems to happen, OK? Third-party mediation is a good thing.

Best,
Ron

[Sean]

Sure thing, Ron. No offense intended, MJ, and I meant everything I said about my respect for your opinions and character, at least as I know them through this board. I thought twice before posting that, but this general kind of thing seems to happen and generate bad feelings both here and on other boards from time to time, and I thought it was worth confronting directly.

By the way, MJ, I'd like also to apologize to you if my post seems like an overreaction. It may be that it just seemed obvious from where you were sitting that I was making a value judgment - impossible to interpret my words in any other way - and if so, then I understand completely where you were coming from. In that case, I ask you to please forgive anything overly aggressive in my reply, and simply take my word for it that that's not where I was going with that particular remark.

Collegially yours,

Sean

who will now get back to work, and return to this thread when he has time to explain what else he's thinking along these lines.

P.S. Apologies also to Jay for misattributing to him the point about LARPing - I'll go do some thread hunting and figure out who I was thinking of instead.

[Silmenume]

Heya Ron,

Let's see a person "Exploring System" as M.J. names it, and a person adding value to Exploring System as you're naming it. I'll betcher boots you're both saying the same thing.
Bob is playing, um, GURPS. He and the rest of the group take great joy in finding the various tables, sourcebooks, and concepts that permit them to know that (a) his howizter is fired at a time that makes sense relative to the other events going on, (b) its accuracy and extent-of damage are correct for its time for that historical period on that planet, and (c) that the damage itself is commensurate with expectations regarding the body armor of the targets that are caught in the explosion.
This took effort. It took communication. And it sure as hell required more than one person at the table to be interested. And if this kind of interest turns out to be what floats this group's boat most - i.e., this was a "payoff" moment in social and creative terms - that I think I'm satisfied that it's a value-added situation.

Zilchplay says absolutely nothing about whether or not the players actions added value but that the players actions did not add to the content of the elements of Exploration.  Zilchplay explicitly states that content is added to the SIS, i.e., a conversation about the Explored Elements took place, but that nothing explicitly/meaningfully was added to the Explored Elements.

I believe that you contention, by the way this is my interpretation of you statement so if I am wrong please correct me, is that by meaningful you are specifically addressing the players interests in a satisfying way.  That is what I had in an earlier thread called the meaning creation portion of roleplay, which is not selfsame as the fact creation portion of roleplay (Exploration).

The issue here lies at the heart of what is the definition of Exploration?

Is Exploration just the employment of the elements of Exploration?

Is Exploration the employment of the elements of creation with the result of adding to said elements of Exploration?

Both instances added to the SIS – a conversation took place, and "stuff" was added into the SIS, but was anything new introduced into the "situation"/elements of Exploration?

I'll give a congruent example.

Two individuals are sitting a table.  Both have fictional texts, i.e. stories.  They have agreed on a system where by each individual rolls a d4.  They roll until one person has a higher number than the other.  The person who won the roll now reads from the text for as many minutes as the number on the d4 showed up.  When that person's time is up, the other person rolls a d4 and reads out loud for as many minutes as is shown in the die.  They repeat the process until they have enjoyed themselves enough.

All the elements of exploration were employed, including system.  They read out loud so the information was communicated into in the SIS.  For the sake of argument we'll assume the two participants enjoyed what they did and they learned a few nifty things in the process, i.e., they would describe the event as value added.  But is this Exploration?

As the currently most accepted definition of Exploration (Walt and myself excluded) it would be considered a valid form of roleplay.

Not only would it be a valid form of roleplay, it would considered a form of Creative Agenda because it filled all the criteria listed above.

This contrasts with my understanding of Creative Agenda which implies that not only are we "creating" we are "creating" towards a goal.  The creating part can be observed directly.  The "towards a goal" must be inferred over time.  As to what the players really enjoy is outside the model other than to say we can only assume that players engage in those actions that they find rewarding.

To say that something is value added to said players makes reference to an internal state and thus cannot be used to denote an Agenda, Agenda can only be inferred from behavior (what has someone freely done a lot of).  Conversely one can play a game with a very clearly defined CA observationally and be very unhappy, i.e., there was no value added.

To look at the various CA –
Gamism – one must add to the events in order to achieve victory.  If the player merely converses about the events then he cannot get to victory.  Does this mean that the player derives meaning/added value from Victory alone?  No.  It could come from any part of the march to victory, including employment of system.  However he must add to elements of Exploration in order to address challenge.

Narrativism - one must add to the events in order to achieve theme.  If the player merely converses about the events then he cannot get to theme.  Does this mean that the player derives meaning/added value from Theme alone?  No.  It could come from any part of the creation of Theme, including employment of system.  However he must add to elements of Exploration in order to address premise.

Simulationism - one must add to the events in order to achieve the Dream.  If the player merely converses about the events then he cannot get to the Dream.  Does this mean that the player derives meaning/added value from expanding the Dream alone?  No.  It could come from any part of the creation of the Dream, including employment of system.  However he must add to elements of Exploration in order to expand the Dream.

So it begs the question – is it enough to merely converse about the elements of Exploration, like talking about a book while using a system and learning things about the book (or in this case system) or must something be added to the elements of Exploration as well?

Aure Entaluva,

Silmenume

PS – Sean I was not perturbed in any way about the misattribution.  I was more concerned that those who may come after looking for the reference may get lost.  I do appreciate you making the effort nonetheless.

[M. J. Young]

I apologize, Sean, if I misinterpreted your words. The passage I quoted really sounded to me as if it said, "Exploration of system is impossible as a creative agendum; if you were doing that, you wouldn't really be playing, and if you really started playing, you would automatically move into another creative agendum."

I know I've written some things that were not at all what I meant, and that I've put some things badly enough that when they were quoted back to me I was shocked that I'd said anything remotely like what they heard--but there it was, in black and white. Anyway, getting called on those lets me fix the miscommunication, so that's a good thing.

And whenever I read anyone saying that such-and-such isn't really playing, the little bells go off.

Which worries me, because over on http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=9826">zplay - liberating Sim and embarrassing Exploration! (I hope that's where it was) I just declared that Zilchplay does not exist because it is not exploration, so someone might be hitting me with the same response before I get back here tomorrow.

However, to Jay, that's my response to anything regarding zilchplay at the moment: I don't think it exists.

(Like the ROUS, I'm sure.)

--M. J. Young

[contracycle]

One question I think is missing from the social mode constructions is the following: why RPG?

I would suggest that the classic poker night probably discounts the gamist CA, as it were, in favour of "hanging out" mode.  I grant that engaging in a low-confrontation social pastime as an excuse/vehicle for hanging out is perfectly reasonable.  But, why then should any given group or individual choose this particular form of entertainment?

At a cursory glance, this migt imply there is one person with a strong interest and others who are just along for the ride.  But, overall, I don;t see think that the prposed social mode falls with the remit of RPG so much as within the much broader social contract between the people.

[Rob Carriere]

I'll give a congruent example.
[Two people taking turns reading fiction at each other.]

If the two people get to choose where in their text they start reading with each move, I think this would be creative. Sort of analogous to making a collage instead of drawing.

SR
--

[DevP]

Social mode, eh? I seen it. I'm somewhat nervous about trying to bring up too many RPGs in my group of friends; it's not the dominant activity, and it's associated with very time/focus/emotion-intensive campaigns and the like. The baggage associated with RPG is "major investment", and the college kids are skittish enough about commitment as is. So what then?

In part as a "pressure valve" for myself, I've ended up doing what could be considered a Social Mode, perhaps. An interesting example was when I introduced Donjon to some folks (and they loved it). I don't feel that heavy Nar or Sim was going on (there was certainly too much OOC/self-conscious joking, which fit the mood); there was a Gamist element, but I don't feel that it dominated. The atmosphere was exploring these Kewl New Rules I brought over, trying out the adventure, seeing where the dungeon ended up... And indeed, I feel that, since we weren't super-immersive, I could see more than a little of the players' own personalities. (Of course, this is usually true even in immersion.)

How do RPGs fit in? Why didn't we just grab a pint at the corner? Well, if nothing else, I see RPGs as possible engines of Cool-creation. Most mediocre example: a game that's just a large table of humorous events, where you roll a d1000 to see which one happens. Each player rolls the humorous events, everyone chuckles, and you pass the dice. The agenda is creating of Cool things, but we're talking Cool for the player and the social group. Perhaps some games of MLwM is this way: you choose to puruse small-N moral choices and angstin' and such, but this (along with the rules) are a mechanic for generating Cool events, which are experienced by individual players (as players), and thus integrated into the group's discourse; you can refer back to the wicked good time you had with the Cool events that were generated.

Indeed, I'm looking back to the ill-fated high-school D&D sessions; incoherence/zilchplay/omniplay? No social contract/shared-CA? Or was it the Social Mode?

Perhaps if we consider the Socializing mode, we can prioritize it properly and make better games. Just as prioritizing for G/N/S can give us a coherent direction, maybe focusing on a Socializing-specific game (I'm thinking about http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=9800&start=15&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=">the talk of using RPGs to find hookups) then we can engineer a good different kind of game.

(Side note: I think it's debatable if the Social Mode I took was the best mode; presenting a more clear Sim Agenda that I want could lead to the coherent game I want, etc. But I think there's evidence regardlesss.)

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

I think that I'm getting confused again. Are we talking about zilchplay? Or are we talking about socializing as a major feature of why people role-play? Or what?

Because I very strongly support the notion that the ultimate goals ("fun") and their success/failure are social. To dichotomize social goals apart from role-playing goals, particularly at any definitional level, strikes me as immensely mistaken.

I didn't think that was where the ideas on this thread were going, though ... until the last few posts. Jay or anyone, clue me in. Is this a tangent?

Best,
Ron

[Sean]

Thanks for your measured and thoughtful response, MJ.

My 2 cents on Ron's question: Ron, I think that if there is anything answering to Zilchplay, it's a Creative Agenda that says: let's dampen the G, N, S, and (if it exists) X (or whatever else remains to be discovered), all of them, because we prefer bumping along incoherently to focusing our play on anything in particular. 'Attenuated exploration is the best!' It's not my bag, but if it floats other people's boat, then hey.

I don't believe at all in play with no CA, which is what some defenders of zilchplay seem to support. An incoherent CA is based on not knowing better, or preferring brief satisfactions to longer-lasting ones, or wanting to keep a group of people who all want to hang out but enjoy very different parts of the experience together. (Except in that last case its an X CA, on the view I'm exploring in this thread anyway.)

But that's not what I wanted to discuss/defend/explore in this thread: what I was interested in was role-playing with the creative agenda of getting to know the people around you better/socialize with them/build community. This is present in all other modes, yeah, but I think there might be both a point and a payoff to explicitly thematizing a social interest in RPGs (which I would characterize as either community-building or deepening our understanding of other people, at least in a preliminary way) and building games which support this. I don't think such a focus on this necessarily reduces to Sim in the way that I do think a focus on Exploration of System reduces to Sim, because I don't think the payoff/motive is in the Dream, but in the greater community or shared understanding of individuals - in the real-world social relationships. This is a secondary payoff of role-playing in other modes as well, sure, but why couldn't you make it a focus? And doesn't that focus answer to a separate set of human desires and goals than those which underlie G, N, or S?

I think actually the casual poker game is a great example for the social mode, leaving off that it's not role-playing and so only partially relevant. It starts out as little-g and little-x in the service of big-X. But the very strong Gam-facilitating rules-system, and the fact that Step on Up is part of the competitive social interaction and is increased by increasing pots of money, tends to turn casual games over time into little-g and little-x in support of big-G.

I have some more arguments for X and some thoughts about it in terms of the Big Model but I seem to be strapped for time to write them up coherently now. I'm working on it and will post a new thread when I'm ready. In the meantime, there are other threads for talking about Zilchplay, but that's not what this thread's about - it's about whether or not the social dimensions of RPGs are the sort of thing one might wish to characterize in terms of a fourth mode.

----------------

One more thing though.

There are lots of ways you can

- compete/step on up
- make stories/address Premise
- dream/discover
- build community and get to know people better

inside and outside RPGs.

I would maintain that the way you do all four of these things in RPGs is different than the way you do it in other contexts; and that this difference itself constitutes the interest and importance of doing these things through RPGing.

I maintained earlier, falsely I now think as per MJ's rebuttal, that only the Narrativist had a special and unique thing to get to through RPGs that he couldn't get in some other way. MJ replied that there were unique Gamist challenges in RPGs as well; I think he was suggesting that Sim constraints provide this (little-s in the service of big-G).

What made me realize that MJ was right about this part was the following. My first reaction to what MJ said, as a chessplayer, was: bullshit. There is not a single tactical challenge I have ever met in RPGs equivalent to what a 1600+ rated chessplayer can put to me over the board. But OK, that's a statement of personal comparison; it's one I would defend, but I fully agree that the tactical challenges of the two types of game are different, and require somewhat different mental skills to cope with.

And it seems to me that that's all you need for a preliminary answer to the 'gamist hard question' - I like this form of competitive challenge. Of course, the follow up - why this form as opposed to some other - still may be hard, but if you described the unique features of RPG tactical challenges and said that these were the ones you liked, then you'd be on your way to a real answer, I think.

But once I've been through this kind of thinking on the problem, I become once again convinced that MJs (and Gareth's) answer on the social mode can't be sufficient. Because of course there are unique things that you can learn about people, unique tests you can put them, unique ways of building community and interacting, that come about through RPGing, too, and if you say that that's how you like to make friends and learn about people and build community you're essentially answering the "Socialist's Hard Question" in the same way the Gamist does.

This by itself doesn't constitute a defense of the social mode - to do that you have to explain why Interpersonal Interaction is separate from Focus on Exploration of Participants and therefore why this is not another form of Sim, at a minimum. On the other hand there may be the tools to do this already, by comparison to the work that's already been done on the other modes. That's what I'm trying to work out right now.

[M. J. Young]

Whether or not there's "exploration of participants" as a fourth mode (I'm still doubtful, but I think there's more to bring forward before I'm persuaded), poker night is not that.

Poker night is definitely a social event; role playing game night is equally a social event.

However, the social game of poker is still fundamentally gamist. The decisions made in play are all geared to winning, to meeting the challenge presented in play. Certainly as you play and kibbutz, you discover each other--but you do so while making gamist decisions about play.

You can learn a lot about the people with whom you play role playing games by playing and kibbutzing, but the in-game raison d'etre for play is going to have to be something other than trying to get to know the other players. What the character does is going to reflect the creative agendum the player is using--eventually, if not immediately. The fact that the expression of creative agendum is so attenuated that we can't identify it does not demonstrate that it is absent, but rather that the player hopes to get what he likes from such play without pushing for it. That's where we are, I think--creative agendum attenuated. I am still, at some level, expecting play to be about something in particular. It may not be the thing that got me to get in the car and drive over here, but it is the thing that drives my character decisions in play.

Looking back at poker night, when that full house comes down, everyone groans, throws down their cards, and says, "Take it." They aren't there for some high Nevada National Poker Championships, but they are playing for the win. That isn't the motivation for why they're together, but it is the motivation behind the actions they take in the game.

To look at it a different way, when you're dealt the cards and you look at them, why do you bother? In a moment someone is going to ask if you want to swap some cards, but why would you care? You're making in-game decisions that are geared toward winning. You don't "care" whether you win or lose in the sense that it's going to spoil your night, but that's still the agendum that defines your approach to play. Almost you can't play poker without that. (I say almost, because a computer can play poker by being programmed to consider the odds and make the most advantageous choices. The computer is not really trying to win; but it has been programmed to emulate the conduct of someone trying to win. This leads back to the active and passive versions of the modes--someone playing poker who isn't trying to win isn't any fun to play with, so if you're going to play poker, you either actively undertake the challenge, or passively work to make the challenge enjoyable for those who seek it, and either way that's gamist play.)

--M. J. Young