On this thread Doctor Xero wrote:

Doctor Xero wrote: But in the name of sanity, please make a comment which has nothing to do with the use of the term "interactive" in its legitimate, scholarly meaning.

Doctor Xero wrote: In literature studies, relating to and being inspired by something, such as the already-written text, is called "interactive" and has been for many, many years.

Doctor Xero wrote: Also, in studies of literature and film and storytelling, the term "interactive" is used precisely as I have used it. I see no reason to rewrite the pertinent field's lexicon capriciously. As I have mentioned before, if The Forge has a different term for the same notion, I will happily adopt it when writing here and restrict my use of the term "interactive" to writing papers for literary and culture studies journals.

Doctor Xero wrote: I have not once intended VoINT to refer to player-to-player interaction, only to player-to-text interaction (except when the latter influences the former).

Doctor Xero wrote: If the player brings it, it is not pre-existing, and therefore there can be no interaction with any pre-existing structure if the structure is brought by the players. There is nothing physically or notionally with which to interact if people sit down at a table and say, "Okay, what do we want to be here?", and therefore since there is nothing with which to interact, their actions must be grounded independently of the non-pre-existent structures.

Well said, Walt.

I'm also curious as to what is meant by.

If the player brings it, it is not pre-existing, and therefore there can be no interaction with any pre-existing structure if the structure is brought by the players. There is nothing physically or notionally with which to interact if people sit down at a table and say, "Okay, what do we want to be here?", and therefore since there is nothing with which to interact, their actions must be grounded independently of the non-pre-existent structures.

Walt Freitag wrote: Do I care? Not as far as the definitions of VoIND and VoINT are concerned. But I'm really sick of being bludgeoned with what the "legitimate" meaning of "interactive" is according to literary scholars. Their opinion on the matter means less to me than that of the cat toy package copywriters.

Walt Freitag wrote:

Doctor Xero wrote: If the player brings it, it is not pre-existing, and therefore there can be no interaction with any pre-existing structure if the structure is brought by the players. There is nothing physically or notionally with which to interact if people sit down at a table and say, "Okay, what do we want to be here?", and therefore since there is nothing with which to interact, their actions must be grounded independently of the non-pre-existent structures.

By the more common meaing if "interactive," the one thing that everyone agrees a person can truly interact with, the one thing that can always respond to a person's actions in an interesting and meaninful way, is another person. So, this too comes out as just the reverse. You can't interact with text because it doesn't change no matter what you do.

Valamir wrote:

Doctor Xero wrote: If the player brings it, it is not pre-existing, and therefore there can be no interaction with any pre-existing structure if the structure is brought by the players. There is nothing physically or notionally with which to interact if people sit down at a table and say, "Okay, what do we want to be here?", and therefore since there is nothing with which to interact, their actions must be grounded independently of the non-pre-existent structures.

I don't understand this distinction at all.
...(example deleted)...
How is this any different in terms of level of interactivity. The players can still go inside, climb on the roof, throw rocks, burn it down, or kill the occupants.

The only thing that is different in these two examples is who had the authority to declare the cottage into existance.

Glad you brought this up, Walt!

I am not particularly a literature scholar, myself, but it seems to me that insofar as one talks about interaction with a text in the sense of the written, graphic word, the usual focus is on hermeneutics -- that is to say, interpretation. While some hermeneutic models, notably that of Hans-Georg Gadamer, want to push for the act of reading as a fundamentally conversational, interactive process, he did have to argue for that. Furthermore, my sense of the hermeneutic philosophy situation right now is that Gadamer has pretty much lost the battle.

{Jargon off}

In fact, what confuses me about this use of terms is that I would also read it precisely the opposite way, but for different reasons than Ralph and Walt have proposed. Here's why:

The usual distinction made is between textuality and orality. In speech, we converse with each other, and there is some sense in which there is necessarily interaction at a personal level guiding our interpretations of words. So when some guy says to me, "Hey, Bob -- bite me!" I have to interpret this. But I have lots of contextual cues by which to do so. Does the guy mean this literally? If not, is he mad at me? Is he kidding around? Since my name isn't Bob, is he even talking to me? If I'm still confused after running through a very complicated version of this process, I ask. "Hey, what do you mean?" And he explains, or not, as the case may be.

If I'm reading a book, however, and I turn the page and find the words "Bite me!" written at the top, my interpretive process stops before I get to the author. That is, I can't say to the book, "What do you mean?" and expect an answer. In short, the textual situation is not conversational.

Thus the classic problem of interpretation (Plato goes on about this, and everyone since) is that text is not interactive. It's oddly divorced from its author, as compared to speech.

Now the usual conclusion is that I, as reader, must construct the text by interacting with it within my own mind; this is called interpretation. Traditionally, the goal was to understand the meaning and intent of the author. More recently, particularly since Heidegger, it's been recognized pretty broadly that you can't get there from here: you can't get The Meaning for sure. So what do you do instead? And then it all goes crazy. But at base, there is a sense in which interaction with a text is always and necessarily interaction with my construct of the text, which I then check against my expectation, which I then put against the text again, and so forth.

As a result, the traditional read of the speech/writing distinction is that ultimately speech is interactive in a conversational sense, while writing is ultimately independent of author and even of reader.

Now post-Derrida's Of Grammatology, there has been a big push to undermine this distinction, for a whole bunch of reasons I'm not going to get into here, but the upshot is that we have moved toward independence in speech. Much of the argument has, in fact, argued that the conversational model doesn't even hold for conversation! In short, the post-structuralist move has been to challenge the interactive and assert the independent. You don't need to go that far, of course, but to claim conversely that interactivity is necessarily the basis of written interpretation seems contrary to almost every model I know outside the purely mystical (and deliberately transgressive).

To take the video game example, which I like, we could compare video games to speech and television to writing. You can only view and interpret television; you can't interact with the characters except in your own mind. In video games, the medium reacts to you, making the process interactive and, in a loose sense, conversational.

I made a little pitch about this at the beginning of the Ritual essay (see Articles section above), where I argued that John Kim's and Ron's uses of literary models for RPG's is a bit deceptive or confusing, because those models necessarily deal with a non-conversational medium; RPG's, by contrast, are entirely conversational, or mostly so.

Thus I am at a loss to explain the "ordinary" meaning of interaction in literature, unless what's meant is interpretation.

{jargon on}
The only way I can parse this is by saying that what the player brings to the table is required for any interpretation to happen, and thus interaction must occur within the confines of what the totality of players bring to the table, which is certainly the case, but that would be true regardless of the hermeneutic situation. That some RPG's demand a considerable prior structure of particular kinds of data and others do not has nothing to do with the hermeneutic procedure of entering the world in front of the text and returning for reflection and so on.

{jargon off}
I don't buy it.

Chris Lehrich

I don't think this is the distinction Xero is drawing at all.

I x-posted with John.

John Kim wrote: I don't think this is the distinction Xero is drawing at all. He is talking about interaction with "pre-existant structures" -- by which I think he means ideas created prior to that moment. So if the GM invents a cottage on the spot, that is still "creation" rather than "interaction". Within this usage, "interaction with text" means that something was already prepared rather than being made up on the spot: i.e. a map, a character, or other fictional creation.

John Kim wrote: Doctor Xero only brought up this point (about literary theory usage), what, three days ago? So I think you're overreacting to say about how awfully sick you are of it. I mean, it would be one thing if Xero demanded that everyone else use his meaning -- but I don't think he is. He just wants to talk about "interaction" in the specialized context of "interaction with text" -- as distinct from other sorts of interaction. (I think this needs to be clarified, but that's a separate issue.)

Valamir wrote: If the GM says "what do you do?"
and the player says "we walk down the road"
and the GM says "you see a cottage".

Then the players can do anything they want to interact with that cottage. They can go inside, they can climb onto the roof, they can throw rocks at the windows, they can burn it down, they can kick down the door and kill everyone.

If the GM says "what do you do?"
and the player says "we walk down the road"
and the GM says "ok, and what do you find down the road?"
and the player says "I think it would be cool if there were a cottage here"

How is this any different in terms of level of interactivity?

John Kim wrote: I don't think this is the distinction Xero is drawing at all. He is talking about interaction with "pre-existant structures" -- by which I think he means ideas created prior to that moment. So if the GM invents a cottage on the spot, that is still "creation" rather than "interaction".

Walt Freitag wrote: I'm honoring that request as far as the original thread is concerned.

Walt Freitag wrote: Similarly, labelling text or the reading of text as "interactive" doesn't strike me as very informative.
---snip!--
I question why literary scholars would bother with a descriptor that appears to be so uselessly universal. If reading and reacting to a text makes the text "interactive," then no text being discussed can ever fail to be "interactive"
---snip!--
A text becomes interactive when and only when the player influences the text.

Walt Freitag wrote: But I'm really sick of being bludgeoned with what the "legitimate" meaning of "interactive" is according to literary scholars. Their opinion on the matter means less to me than that of the cat toy package copywriters.

[Wow, I wrote a whole damn essay, when I just started out saying, yeah, what they said.]

Doc Xero uses the terms "interactive" and "independent" as they are used in literary criticism to describe the relationship of a reader to a text - or a viewer to a movie. Now, I do think that literary criticism has some validity when applied to role-playing games, but we must be ready to adapt to the differences between the media.

A text, in the literary criticism sense, is a static thing - it is complete in toto _when_ the reader encounters it, even before he goes through the process of experiencing it. When the reader experiences is a text, he cannot change it. His only means of interacting with it, is by responding with emotions and thoughts and conversation to others about the text.

On the other hand, a role-playing game does not have a text in this sense. The material of an actual play session is a series of elements added to a collective fantasy that all the players agree exists for the purpose of their game. I like to call this body of material the "shared fantasy". Others have referred to the "place" this material exists as the "shared imagined space."

The shared fantasy has some similarities to a static text, but does have some differences. The key one being dynamism. While some shared fantasy material may exist (my character, my sword, the kingdom, the history of past adventures) before a given session of play, the complete material (events, new NPCs, new places) of a game session does not exist _until_ the play session is complete. The material of a game session is created by the players.

So, unlike a static text, where the reader's only means of interaction is emotional, intellectual, or conversational, the participant in a role-playing game can also interact by _creating_ new elements of the "text." Even if those new elements are only "what my character does," they are a proactive act of creation.

For these reasons, shared fantasy is a cumulative entity that comes into existence during play. Imagine a cycle, as Ralph did:

GM: "You find a road. What do you do?"
Player: "We walk down the road."
GM: "You see a cottage."
Player: "I knock on the door."

The GM's first statement introduces a road into the shared fantasy. The player then introduces his character's action into the fantasy. Then the GM produces the cottage and the player adds another action to the shared fantasy.

Both the player and the GM are making additions to the shared fantasy - the "text." The only distinction is that the GM has introduced elements of the environment, while the player has introduced elements of action restricted to his character.

Noth the GM and the player conceived their additions to the shared fantasy _based_ on the existing material. They interacted with the existing material. Yet, some of the material they interacted with did not exist until just seconds before they addressed it.

Now, in the other example, we see the player contributing, not just action elements, but environmental elements:

f the GM says "what do you do?"
and the player says "we walk down the road"
and the GM says "ok, and what do you find down the road?"
and the player says "I think it would be cool if there were a cottage here."
GM & other players: "Ok"
Player: "I knock on the door."

In this case, the process remains the same. First, the cottage did not exist in the "text." Then it did, and then the player interacted with it. The only difference that I can imagine is that, in the first example, the player continues to experience the novelty of the unknown, while in the other case, he may _also_ experience the novelty of knowing what he wants to find in the cottage.

At first, it may seem strange to players to create then interact with an imaginary element - they may feel that they no longer have the wonder of discovery if they are the one who created it. However, I argue that creation itself also has a wonder of discovery. Though from my personal experience with writing, I know that the sense of wonder is often also tinged with performance fear: not knowing what your next creation will be.

Finally, the point of all this is that the "text" of an RPG comes into existence as players add to it. Each new element is created to be consistent with what has already been agreed to be part of the "text." This consistency may lead the player to address what exists in the text, but they may also create new elements that dove-tail into the fantasy in a way that doesn't violate previously created material.

Consistency of creation is one of the general traits that shows up in all role-playing. Each time a player must create something consistent with the existing material, he is also interacting with that material. I think that the scale between "interactive" and "independent" may have some application if we look at how strict players are in enforcing consistency with existing material. But the use of director stance techniques (where players have some control over the fantasy environment) are not related to enforcement of consistency. Players who enjoy director powers can also work hard to maintain consistency with existing "text." I can offer myself as an example and many other people I've played with.

So I think “VoInt” vs. “VoInd” breaks down into two separate scales which address things we already have terms for: One scale is how much Director stance power a player prefers, and the other is how strict the player likes their consistency. Because these scales are uncorrelated – one can be high while the other is high, or one can be high while the other is low – they cannot be conflated into a single scale.

Wow, you have some good points, Alan! I hadn't considered the way many people are used to thinking of books as static things. Mea culpa.

Alan wrote: A text, in the literary criticism sense, is a static thing - it is complete in toto _when_ the reader encounters it, even before he goes through the process of experiencing it. When the reader experiences is a text, he cannot change it. His only means of interacting with it, is by responding with emotions and thoughts and conversation to others about the text.

Alan wrote: Each time a player must create something consistent with the existing material, he is also interacting with that material. I think that the scale between "interactive" and "independent" may have some application if we look at how strict players are in enforcing consistency with existing material.

Doctor Xero wrote: I respect people whose sense of style allows them to go out and purchase wonderful clothes to wear (independent of what's already in the wardrobe closet). I also respect people whose sense of style allows them to stay with what's in the closet, buying nothing new, yet arrange and mix-n-match their clothes such that they look just as wonderful (interactive with what's already in the wardrobe closet). I don't see the two as identical actions from the perspective of person-to-wardrobe interaction.
---snip!--
I do not consider the ability to adapt to one's circumstances to be inherently any less creative than the ability to create fresh. The ability to interact creatively with my environment is fairly important in this world today, just as valuable as the ability to create independently of pre-existing paradigm.

Valamir wrote: I don't think it is either. Which is why the word is a completely bizarre choice. The distinction of pre existing vs. spontaneously added is a reasonable distinction to make. Problem is, and where the discussion got derailed, is that there is ZERO logical association between this distinction and the word "interactive".

Alan wrote: So I think “VoInt” vs. “VoInd” breaks down into two separate scales which address things we already have terms for: One scale is how much Director stance power a player prefers, and the other is how strict the player likes their consistency. Because these scales are uncorrelated – one can be high while the other is high, or one can be high while the other is low – they cannot be conflated into a single scale.

Now, the word "interaction" implies at least two pre-existing objects which, well, interact. So having one toy do something to another is "interaction", whereas creating a new toy is something else (perhaps just "creation"). That said, I also have problems with the original terms. But first let's try to clarify the distinction, and then make practical suggestions for what the terms should be.

Valamir wrote: It is obvious to me that Dr Xero has confounded two completely unrelated topics. What he is trying to differentiate is *not* whether something pre exists or doesn't pre exist. What he is trying to differentiate is who he's willing to give the authority to spontaneously create that which doesn't pre exist.

In "VoInt" play only the GM has the authority.
In "VoInd" play other players also have such authority.

This has nothing to do with interactivity or independence at all.

Valamir wrote:

John Kim wrote: Now, the word "interaction" implies at least two pre-existing objects which, well, interact. So having one toy do something to another is "interaction", whereas creating a new toy is something else (perhaps just "creation"). That said, I also have problems with the original terms. But first let's try to clarify the distinction, and then make practical suggestions for what the terms should be.

Understood, but I don't this is a useful distinction.

For this to be the case, every cobblestone of every road must be mapped in advance. Every room in every cottage and every item in those rooms must be known with precision in advance. *EVERYTHING* must be known in advance. Because only then can everything the player character encounters in the game be said to "pre-exist" and only then can the game be said to be VoInt.

Ralph wrote: It is obvious to me that Dr Xero has confounded two completely unrelated topics. What he is trying to differentiate is *not* whether something pre exists or doesn't pre exist. What he is trying to differentiate is who he's willing to give the authority to spontaneously create that which doesn't pre exist.

In "VoInt" play only the GM has the authority.
In "VoInd" play other players also have such authority.

Walt Freitag writes (at length) wisely and clearly on the topic of interactivity, and the way this phrase is interpreted (and not). However; at the end he makes a statement I consider to be slightly problematic:

Walt Freitag wrote: ... especially when in general people are capbable of being interactive and text is not.

I agree with Ralph that most of the examples which Doctor Xero adduces in illustrating "independent" play are purely questions of credibility distribution and director stance. However, in arguing for the definition of "interactive" play, Doctor Xero insists that it is something else--that it is about players interacting with pre-existing elements of the shared imaginary space.

Now, I'll be the first to agree that there are pre-existing elements in the shared imaginary space which are not known to all participants. The very concept of the prepared scenario declares that the players have accepted that the referee has information about the shared imaginary space which they are accepting as true but unknown to them. Many games would not function without this aspect.

However, it seems to me that for Xero's position to hold, these three things must be true:

• The world is fully created in every relevant detail prior to play;• The character players are interacting with the text;• The character players can recognize the difference between information that exists in the text and information that is invented on the fly.

It is not that I think these things are not always true. I am persuaded that they are always false.

Ralph does an excellent job of addressing the first of these. In the late seventies and early eighties there were referees who did massive amounts of work on their worlds, trying to have everything in place. I myself was mapping out a city somthing like twenty five miles east to west and twenty north to south, in which ever building was marked and identified on the map. However, I did not have detailed information on the residents of those buildings, in the main. Some of the detail cannot be present. That doesn't mean it's not important detail; it means that it was not foreseen to be important detail at the point at which the information was coded. As referee, I cannot know what details are going to be sought by the players, so I can't have them all in place. I absolutely must invent some on the fly.

This holds true even (or perhaps especially) if I am running a canned scenario. It's not all in the package; I'm inventing some of it.

The second point is that the players are interacting with that text--with the created objects in the materials. They absolutely are not. As someone has said, the text doesn't talk to you. I'm not talking about whether the text is interactive in a literary sense. I'm talking about whether the text is part of the shared imaginary space directly. It is not, and cannot be, because it cannot speak into the shared imaginary space--the players are always and only interacting with the referee, the person who has the credibility to define those objects within the shared imaginary space. The text per se does not get into that shared imaginary space save through his interpretation and presentation thereof.

Having those objects pregenerated and recorded on paper has many advantages for the referee, but their existence in that form is completely irrelevant to the character players. They do not read the text. If the text is read to them (as it sometimes might be), it is only because the referee has decided that the best way to bring this object into the shared imaginary space is to read the description from the text. The players have zero interaction with the text, or with anything in the text. They are interacting exclusively with the referee and with each other.

The third point crept out a few times. Doctor Xero has at least implied that objects created by the referee at the moment they are introduced to the shared imaginary space lack some quality that makes them detectable as less interactive than objects which existed in the text, or even in his mind, well in advance of their introduction. That is, he thinks you can always tell whether the referee is presenting what he wrote before or making it up as he goes along. Now, there are referees who ad lib poorly, and there are referees who prepare poorly; and certainly there are times when we know our friends well enough that we can tell which they are doing. However, I have been known to pick up a book or paper, read from it, and change the words while I'm reading so it says what I want it to say instead of what the paper actually says. I have similarly presented what I thought was in the book, only to realize later that I remembered it wrong but wasn't going to change it now. I have invented material on the fly in response to player questions that they never knew was not part of the package--one of my tips for referees is to make it feel as if the world was fully detailed before they arrived. If you ask me what's on the north wall of the room, I will tell you, even if I've never given it a thought, and you will not know if I invented it at that moment or ten years before.

I'm suddenly reminded of a wonderful game my wife ran years ago. We were stranded, rescued by a primitive tribe, and were being inducted into their group. In the course of our interactions with them, we became acutely aware of their use of feathers to signify status in many ways--we struggled long and hard to work out the meanings of the colors, so we would be able to understand how the culture worked. The module seemed to have created a very richly diverse culture.

Years later I picked up that module to run it for someone else. I discovered that the feathers, and a host of other aspects of their culture which had riveted and driven us to explore, were completely missing from the material. My wife had invented it all on the fly while we were playing.

Finally, I have used material directly from my books or notes and had the players believe it was specifically improvised at that moment because it fit their interests so perfectly.

Players are completely in the dark about what actually is in the "text" that they've agreed to use. I could bring one of my old creative writing notebooks to the table and pretend it was a scenario, and you probably would never know otherwise.

Doctor Xero likes to explore cultures and peoples and other aspects of the created world. He believes that these will be more real if they are created in advance of play. I can see an argument for that, and perhaps indeed there is truth to the notion that the same person will create a more consistent and believable culture if he takes time in advance of the game to think it through than if he makes it up on the fly. However, some referees can improvise a culture so swiftly and consistently that Margaret Meade wouldn't know it wasn't pre-written; and some can't create a consistent or interesting culture if they spend five years hammering out the details with cultural anthropology text books in front of them.

I think the entire idea that the pre-existence on paper, or even in someone's mind, of a fact about the explored elements is a red herring. It is irrelevant to play. I say this as one who does put a lot of facts about many of his scenarios on paper in advance of play. They are not the scenario; they are not explored by the players. Those are nothing more than notes for the referee, so that he can more readily create the scenario in the shared imaginary space.

When professional witnesses take the stand, they often have notes. Detectives have notebooks, medical witnesses have charts and nursing notes, engineers have calculations--all of these things seem to the layman to be evidence. They are not. The only evidence in these situations is the words of the person testifying. The notes lend that testimony the appearance of veracity and so enhance the credibility of the witness in the eyes of the jury.

In the same way, reams of description of an imaginary world are nothing to the players but a tool to make it seem that the referee knows what he's going to say.

I'm tired; I hope I haven't rambled too much.

--M. J. Young

Hi MJ:

I notice we're using two different definitions of "text" in a role-playing game. I've written about it as the actual material in the shared imagined space. You're talking about text as actual written material that the GM has, either from his own work or a published source.

I only mention this because, if we place the shared imagined material in the place of text, players do indeed interact with it - at least in the literary sense Doc is using.

Hey Doc, what do _you_ mean by text in an rpg? Is it something recorded somewhere in advance of play?

Hi M.J.

I don't think you rambled at all. (In fact, I'm once again in awe at the generous gift you make of your clarity and intellect on these discussions.)

Everyone,

While I'm not willing to insist (yet) this whole VoINT/VoIND isn't a drug-addled chimera, until Dr. X clarifies, with specific answers, the questions raised by Ralph, Alan, Walt and others, as well as responding to M.J.'s excellent post, no one really can go further with this discussion. There's just too much in the air that's currently undefined in terms of what he actually mean in practice. (Not theory, but actual peddle to the metal practice.)

Everyone, let's step back a moment and see what Dr. X has to offer. If we don't, we're just spinning the axel on this one.

Christopher

Respecting the wish to wait for Xero, I'll address a side topic that was brought up. I didn't see Walt explain to John why this is such a touchy subject for him. Consider, John, that Walt as a founding member (I think) of the Society for Interactive Literature he's been fighting these definitional wars about the term interactive since before many of the posters here were born. What, 1982 or so, Walt? This is far from a new issue. People have been abusing the term Interactive for a loooong time now. Walt is know in many disciplines as an expert on the topic.

Mike

M. J. Young wrote:
However, it seems to me that for Xero's position to hold, these three things must be true:

• The world is fully created in every relevant detail prior to play;• The character players are interacting with the text;• The character players can recognize the difference between information that exists in the text and information that is invented on the fly.

It is not that I think these things are not always true. I am persuaded that they are always false.

--M. J. Young

Caldis wrote: Xero's claim was that his two modes were opposite ends of a spectrum.

Seeing it as a spectrum invalidates point one on your list, the gm will be creating at some point the frequency will just be smaller the closer you get to the 'interaction' end of his scale. I fully agree with point two but again when viewed as a scale you can see that the gm will have less to interpret the closer he sticks to the text.

As for point three I may be getting this wrong but I dont think that differentiating which is created on the fly and which was in the text is the concern, I think it's more having the text as common ground to start from and a safety net to more fairly adjudicate when a possible conflict could occur between two visions of the same situation.

According to Walt Freitag's original post, on the parent thread Doctor Xero wrote: If the player brings it, it is not pre-existing, and therefore there can be no interaction with any pre-existing structure if the structure is brought by the players. There is nothing physically or notionally with which to interact if people sit down at a table and say, "Okay, what do we want to be here?", and therefore since there is nothing with which to interact, their actions must be grounded independently of the non-pre-existent structures.

Then, earlier in this thread, Doctor Xero himself wrote:

John Kim wrote: I don't think this is the distinction Xero is drawing at all. He is talking about interaction with "pre-existant structures" -- by which I think he means ideas created prior to that moment. So if the GM invents a cottage on the spot, that is still "creation" rather than "interaction".

Precisely!

M. J. Young wrote: The second point is that the players are interacting with that text--with the created objects in the materials. They absolutely are not. As someone has said, the text doesn't talk to you.

M. J. Young wrote: I'm not talking about whether the text is interactive in a literary sense.

M. J. Young wrote: I'm talking about whether the text is part of the shared imaginary space directly. It is not, and cannot be, because it cannot speak into the shared imaginary space--the players are always and only interacting with the referee, the person who has the credibility to define those objects within the shared imaginary space. The text per se does not get into that shared imaginary space save through his interpretation and presentation thereof.

I agree with M. J.'s interpretation of what Xero said and implied so far in regards to improvisation by the GM. But I wish we had a more definitive statement on that from Doctor Xero.

So, let me pose the question again: If a GM improvises with no prepared notes or plan at all, while the players decide only their characters' actions just as in traditional tabletop play, is that VoINT or VoIND?

This is equivalent to asking, which is the critical difference between VoIND and VoINT: whether or not elements are being invented during play, or whether or not players other than the GM are doing the inventing?

Until we have a definitive answer on that from Xero, we're just debating interpretations and speculating (as I did in my last post) on what the implications would be if the intended meaning was one or the other.

Thomas, you're right that that the form of interaction with the text you're talking about, such as following system procedures expressed as text during char gen, does take place. But I don't think that has any bearing on the VoIND vs. VoINT distinction that Xero is trying to establish, because there's no discernable difference in the use of text for such purposes between the systems and play styles he describes as VoIND and those he describes as VoINT. Most systems have character sheets and rule books that describe procedures for character generation. Except in those rare cases where participants discuss and create rules on the fly, rule systems always pre-exist and reference texts describing those rule systems are often brought to the table.

Since what we're discussing is text that might or might not pre-exist, I've assumed that we're talking about maps, descriptions of locations, NPC descriptions, timelines or schedules or other forms of planned events, and all the related stuff that would generally be called "the GM's notes," or material that would be included in a module or in a sourcebook for a specific setting.

- Walt

Walth; you yourself said in the opening of this thread: Do I care? Not as far as the definitions of VoIND and VoINT are concerned. Neither do I care for the distinction between these. They sound like too much gibberish for me. Who of sane mind would try to distinguish anything by inventing two phrases so close to eachother? Please!

Walth; you continued with this: But I'm really sick of being bludgeoned with what the "legitimate" meaning of "interactive" is according to literary scholars. I fully agree with you in this; no full and final meaning of the word "interactivity" may be founded on how the word is used within the clique of literary scholars. Their special use of the word is limited to their particular field.

Walt Freitag wrote: Since what we're discussing is text that might or might not pre-exist, I've assumed that we're talking about maps, descriptions of locations, NPC descriptions, timelines or schedules or other forms of planned events, and all the related stuff that would generally be called "the GM's notes," or material that would be included in a module or in a sourcebook for a specific setting.

Tomas HVM wrote: As a player of the game, the GM is given special assignments, by the gamesmith or the other players. He is still a player! As such he interacts with the material in question, wether it is made by him or by someone else, and he will continue his dialogue with it throughout the game.

This is shown even by what you wrote: As the setting and drama evolves, he needs to reassess the material and his use of it, against the ever changing game environment and it's demands.

M. J. Young wrote: ... the text itself is not accessible to the character players except through the mediation of the referee.

M. J. Young wrote: ... if I pick up a game text that describes a setting or an adventure, I can interact with the text; but if the game is run in play, I cannot interact with the text as a character player--I can only interact with the referee's interpretation and presentation of that text, and that is not the same thing.

M. J. Young wrote: ... if I as a character player have read the text, that provides no guarantee that I know how that text will be presented in play.

Guys, I notice that Tomas' disagreement with MJ is based on a disagreement about defnitions.

Tomas uses "text" to refer to the gamebook itself.

MJ uses the term to mean all recorded materia, including hand written notes, thatl the GM might have about the adventure.


Maybe we should agree on what is what - and be careful not to confuse analogy with actuality.

If we use Tomas' definition, he is right that players can read and respond to the game book.

If we use MJ's we see that players can indeed only know the referee's notes from what the referee says about them.

This disagreement isn't useful because it's about two different things.

Alan wrote: Tomas uses "text" to refer to the gamebook itself.

I walked away from this and came back, because I wanted to consider it.

It seems to me that the example of the player reading a handout from the text does not violate my assertion that the player only interacts with the text through the referee. The very name "handout" (in English, at least--Tomas may have meant something else by it) implies that I, as a character player, receive it when the referee decides to give it to me.

I will admit that there are games in which the position of the referee is functionally eliminated, and that in such games all players interact directly with the text. Universalis is only the most convenient and uncontroversial that comes to mind. However, in such cases, what players are doing is exactly what Doctor Xero says is not interacting with the text--they are creating at that point, expressing individual vision.

So while I'll concede to Tomas that games could be and have been designed in which players do interact directly with the text, I'm going to suggest that in this context that is moot. Doctor Xero wants character players to interact with the text by having objects in the text appear in the shared imaginary space which were previously unknown to them, so that they can explore these and uncover aspects of them which are found in the text but not known to the players prior to this exploration (a very simulationist objective, in my opinion). I maintain that in this case, all such exploration is mediated through the referee. Even if the referee reads from the book, or hands the player a handout at that moment, this is mediated by the referee, who has made the decision that this material should be given to the players in this form at this moment.

The literary example that springs to mind is the first time I read Lord of the Rings and Merry and Pippin encountered Fanghorn. I had no idea that there was anything like this in Middle Earth, and I was at that moment riveted by the idea of exploring what these creatures were like--a desire which Tolkien obliges by providing a great deal of detail about their psychology, their culture, and more. I was not similarly interested in the halflings or the dwarfs, as having read The Hobbit I knew to expect these, as well as the elves and the wizards. The experience Xero wants is akin to this, discovering something about which nothing is already known, and exploring what it is about. When you do that from a book, you're interacting with the text. When you do it in a roleplaying game, you're either inventing those details yourself (which he categorizes as independent) or you're getting them from the referee. His distinction, however, appears to be that if they are recorded in the papers from which the referee is running the game, that's interactive and the players are interacting with the text, and if it's invented on the spot by the referee that's independent. My answer is that the players are not interacting with the text in either case--they are interacting with the referee, who is either presenting his view of what the text presents or making it all up as he goes along, and that in either case the players cannot tell which he is doing, and are not interacting with the text at all, but with the referee. Hence the interactive/independent distinction fails here, because what he calls interactive does not in this context exist as he defines it.

Clear?

--M. J. Young

M. J. Young wrote: ... discovering something about which nothing is already known, and exploring what it is about. When you do that from a book, you're interacting with the text. When you do it in a roleplaying game, you're either inventing those details yourself ... or you're getting them from the referee.

Tomas wrote: To discuss how the interactivity behaves in the different relationships within the game, is a highly meaningful discussion. What sort of demands does the verbal and written interaction place on it's human source? What possibilities for influencing the gameplay is inherent in each of these forms of interactivity? What pitfalls are there? How can we map the various forms of interactivity at play in a single game?

I, for one, is especially interested in the way gamesmiths make their presence felt in the actual game.