Here's something I was thinking about as I was retooling some aspects of Kathanaksaya. I have read the Story Now article, and I looked over the glossary, but I can't seem to find what I'm looking for. Basically, what I want to know is whether or not it is possible to design a game that promotes vanilla Narrativism without using pervy Narrativist mechanics. Also, I'm wondering if there is more to be done to promote vanilla Narrativist play besides keeping the Simulationist and Gamist elements from taking center stage.

Hi Green,

I don't think you're using the word "pervy" in the same way I understand it. Most narrativist designs are in fact low in "pervy"-ness - ie, they tend to have fewer points of contact per imaginary event processed than many other game designs. The Pool is an example of low points of contact narrativist design.

You might want to read Ron's glossary for the term.

http://indie-rpgs.com/_articles/glossary.html

Also check out Points of Contact and Vanilla Narrativism.

Is Ron's useage of "pervy" what you had in mind? If not, can you explain further?

Hiya,

Um. Now I have to get complicated.

First, Alan, I actually think The Pool is pretty damn pervy, since it forces System to carry all the other aspects of Exploration and provides little or no means to do it. You have to "contact the System" almost all the time, and by that I include all of the resolution and narration that is not associated with dice rolls of any kind.

So let's kinda sidestep that particular example.

Green, I'm not entirely sure what common ground we're working from. Since Sorcerer and to a lesser extent Trollbabe are rock-solid committed to a Vanilla Narrativist approach, and since nearly all of my writings are about such play, I guess I'm having a hard time seeing your perspective at all, especially since you've read the essays and the glossary. I really dunno what to tell you beyond what they say.

Can someone help out?

Best,
Ron

Green: I read your "pervy" to mean "unconventional." My take is that any game that actively provokes Narrativist play will seem strange to conventional gamers. It'll have at least one crucial rule they don't get or don't buy.

Back in the dark ages, we played Narrativist with conventional rules. How you do that is, you work out a Narrativist social System above and around the rules. You take the conventional rules and apply them unconventionally.

But then as soon as you start to formalize those social arrangements into rules written in a game text - bang! Unconventional rules. Conventional gamers reject them as unworkable, weird, insane. So it is and so it shall be, unless Narrativism stops being radical and becomes just another convention.

If I'm misreading your "pervy," sorry! At least I'm not the only one.

-Vincent

I meant "pervy" in the sense that Ron defined it. After reading through the glossary and articles again, I realized that what was confusing me is the difference between high points of contact and low points of contact. Although I intuit that there is indeed a solid difference between the two, when it comes to Narrativist-facilitating games, it's hard for me to grasp how these are illustrated. Perhaps some examples of mechanics that show the difference would help.

Ron, I have to admit that though you've tried to explain it many times and I've tried to understand it, I still cannot perceive relative density of "points of contact" between systems.

Doesn't the Lumpley Principle imply that every decision put into effect about the content of the shared imagined space must "contact system?" If so, then how can systems differ from one another in that regard?

- Walt

Hey Walt,

Consider a high level game of DnD. Every time the dice are rolled there is a very good chance that a dozen or more PoC are being utilized, and those are just the ones gathered from the character sheet. You have a myriad of modifiers and adjustments from multiple sources that effect the imaginary content.

Then consider Trollbabe. It has few PoC to consider when compared to the DnD example. Much of the resulting effect on the imaginary content is left loose, depending more on the imaginations of the participants to fill in the details . As opposed to having those details filled in by depending upon an increased number of mechanically quantified PoC.

In practice, the reliance on imaginative narration seems to result in far fewer PoC than reliance on mechanical quantifiers when it comes to determining the effects of an action on the imaginary content.

Basically, just because every decision put into effect about the content of the SiS must contact system, does not mean that the complexity of that contact is the same for all systems.

Hope that helps.

-Chris

Would TROS be an example of a Vanilla Nar with high points of contact?

[edit: Wait a minute, re-reading this thread I got confused - Green, are asking about Vanilla Nar games with high or low points of contact?]

Sorry, Chris, it doesn't. If imaginative narration involves few PoC, then why is The Pool a high PoC game, as Ron describes it, because of its reliance on unaided imaginative narration? Why is narration-when-no-dice-are-being-rolled in The Pool higher in PoC than narration-when-no-dice-are-being-rolled in Trollbabe?

The rules in D&D are constraints, which direct or limit the outcome. Points of Contact. But The Pool is pervy, high in Points of Contact, specifically because it lacks such constraints. The systems in Trollbabe and Sorcerer provide more guidance/constraints (reducing the "have to make stuff up" Points of Contact) by implementing rules (adding more "have to pay attention to the rules" Points of Contact). It looks like a wash.

I could totally grok a measure based on "how many different rules typically influence a given situation." But that's basic rules-heavy vs. rules-light. That's not what PoC are, as far as I can tell.

- Walt

Edited to add: Timothy, "Vanilla" and "with high Points of Contact" are exact opposites. "Pervy" and "Vanilla" are earlier, totally synonymous, terms for "high/many Points of Contact" and "low/few Points of Contact" respectively.

Hiya,

Walt, you asked,

Why is narration-when-no-dice-are-being-rolled in The Pool higher in PoC than narration-when-no-dice-are-being-rolled in Trollbabe?

Ron,

Your above explaination of Points of Contact seems to focus on contact with the process of creating system, rather than reference to the accepted elements of system. Do we want to make a distinction here? Perhaps games have two different kinds of PoC requirements.

I've started a new thread for discussing this, as I think it's off this thread''s originator's intent.

Pervy & Points of Contact
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=11607

Walt Freitag wrote: Timothy, "Vanilla" and "with high Points of Contact" are exact opposites. "Pervy" and "Vanilla" are earlier, totally synonymous, terms for "high/many Points of Contact" and "low/few Points of Contact" respectively.

Green wrote: I'm wondering if there is more to be done to promote vanilla Narrativist play besides keeping the Simulationist and Gamist elements from taking center stage.

Sorry Walt,

I should have, as Ron has done, put in examples for when a game does not have clear cut rules in a particular area for the handling of play.

A large number of PoC can be present during play due to a lack of rules as well as from an abundance of rules. So, yes, a game with very little in the way of system, like The Window or The Pool, may have as many PoC as a game with pages and pages of system.

A Point of Contact refers to any instance where the system must be referenced (or invented in some cases) during play in order to determine effects on the imaginary content. It doesn't really matter how thick or thin the game manual may be, it's what must take place during play that counts.

That should mean that increasing familiarity with a particular game can result in a decrease of PoC during play. Or maybe it just means that those PoC can be referenced more quickly. Or both. Anyone care to help me with that? Ron?

-Chris

*edit: to note the cross-post with Alan and Tim.

C. Edwards wrote:
That should mean that increasing familiarity with a particular game can result in a decrease of PoC during play. Or maybe it just means that those PoC can be referenced more quickly. Or both. Anyone care to help me with that? Ron?

Hey Gareth,

That's pretty much how I think about it also. You would only be reducing the amount of reference time for any particular PoC, not eliminating it all together.

Thanks.

-Chris

p.s. I like the term "jellyware".

But apparently, reducing the amount of refernce time by having the rules well-learned would have an impact on gauging points of contact.

Explaining why Trollbabe is vanilla (low in points of contact), Ron Edwards wrote: In Trollbabe (when rolling's not involved), there are very clear rules for how Scenes occur and how Conflicts occur within them. Once you understand those rules, they are very easy to apply in multiple different ways without having to reference them and wonder (work out) how they apply.

Yeah, I read that, but I don't think that what it implies is necessarily true.

I'm going to post my reply in Alans thread here.

-Chris

Hi all.

I wonder a little about "high points of contact" vs. "focus on Exploration of System" re the Vanilla/Pervy distinction.

I like the second definition a little better (for "pervy"), but I think it's not high/low points of contact per se that quite (close, but not quite) makes this distinction. Rather, it's when there are intra-systemic points of contact: when you start exploring the imagined space by exploring the system rather than by, well, imagining things.

This usually in practice corresponds to 'high points of contact' but is not conceptually equivalent. It's easy to imagine a game in which there are a lot of points of contact with the system, but each one facilitates/keeps you bouncing along in the shared imagined space. I think perviness is when thinking about the system replaces grooving on the SIS.

You may be using the term 'pervy' differently, and as I said, in practice this correlates pretty well with high and low points of contact. I'm just pushing for a qualitative difference (not points of contact with the system per se, perhaps, but when one contacts the system and then moves on to another part of thes system maybe, rather than moving along in the SIS) rather than the purely quantitative one. Not the 'how many' but the 'how'.

This is completely off the top of my head, and I may be well out in left field or something on this one; but it struck me, so I thought I'd type it.

It's necessary to distinguish "system" from "rules". "System", as Vincent observed, is the totality of how we come to agree about the content of the shared imaginary space. "Rules" are the individual articulated or articulable fragments to which we refer as part of system.

Points of contact is less about system than about rules; and it's less about how many times you have to refer to the system (a non-question; you refer to the system continuously at all times), nor even how many times a rule matters. It's about how many different rules must be integrated into play.

The easy illustration is to take a D&D example. I need to roll to hit an opponent. These are the rules that must be referenced to do that:

• My character class• My current level• My strength or dexterity bonus (even if I don't get one, I have to know that)• Magic plusses on the weapon (again, even if zero)• Racial bonus• Weapon specialization or other class bonus (again, even if it does not apply)• Defender Armor Class• Shield value (that is, if the attacker has withstood more attacks than the shield defends, the shield no longer counts)• Number of previous attacks defender has faced this round (for shield value to matter)• Combat table• Die roll• Dice of damage done by this weapon• Attribute-based damage bonus• Weapon-based damage bonus• Racial damage bonus• Class or specialization damage bonus• Die roll for damage

I think that's everything. Those are all points of contact, because they represent discrete bits of information that must be referenced or created to resolve the outcome.

At the other extreme would be, flip a coin, on heads the opponent takes a point of damage.

Does that sound more like the PoC distinction?

--M. J. Young

I am replying to myself because I think I did not wrap that post up clearly.

The point is that a point of contact is a discrete rule or bit of information that must be referenced to establish new information within the shared imaginary space. No matter how quickly we can do it, or how many shortcuts we've devised to streamline the process (e.g., the D&D player could have all of the relevant information put together as a THAC0 for the weapon written on his character sheet, with the damage dice and bonuses next to it so he doesn't have to chase it all down), there are still a lot of independent bits of information to include (and sometimes someone has to go through everything and update that number to reflect character or equipment changes). The coin flip example was an effort to reduce everything to a single rule. At that point, it doesn't matter how often you have to reference that one rule; what matters is that there's only the one rule. That's a low points of contact game.

Does that make sense?

--M. J. Young

Makes sense to me, MJ. That's what I think of when I think of points of contact.

I guess the point of my note was just to distinguish between two kinds of perviness. One goes with high points of contact in yours and Ron's senses both. Another goes with cases, like you see with masters of the rules minutia in various versions of D&D, or Champions chargen, where exploration of Rules becomes a primary driver of and securer of interest in what's going on in the SIS.

When I think about the kind of play I would call 'pervy', I really think about the second. But the first often leads to the second. Still, I can imagine a low points of contact game where the few points of contact there are really involve you and wind up taking you off into a little sub-game that really generates its own little separate reality: moments of perviness in a sea of vanilla. Whereas low points of contact that doesn't do this is just vanilla.

A not-totally-satisfactory example, although pretty good, is what it does to Champions play when people start taking variable power pools. The game stops for a chargen-style, ultra-pervy rebalancing act that takes you out of the flow of play and into the system as part of the game.

High-level 3e D&D is full of this, especially with the 3.0 Haste that gets you an extra partial action, since in effect each round becomes a complicated, rules-intensive balancing act where you're trying to maximize your effectiveness before the next round of play comes along. D&D combat is fairly high POC to begin with, but the 'round scheduling' that comes up like this takes it to a whole other level, and that's the level I tend to think of as pervy.

The lab rules in Ars Magica might be another example, a subgame that takes you almost entirely out of role-playing and has all these terms and conditions of its own.