(split from Musings on mechanics and The Dream)

Ron Edwards wrote: Again and again, people object that what I'm describing can't be what they do because the essay text doesn't feel like what happens during play

My understanding is that Ron is making a fairly classic distinction between how gaming works and how you, the player, think it works.

To draw a famous example from anthropology, consider a taboo against using an expectant mother's or father's own name, as opposed to calling her "Mother of Baby-Flower" and him "Father of Baby-Flower."

On the one hand, you have what used to be called the "reasons" for the taboo: "If we call them by their names, the baby or they will get sick."

On the other hand, you have what used to be called the "social function" of the taboo: by calling the woman "Mother of Baby-Flower" and the father "Father of Baby-Flower," the society affirms that this new addition is part of an established family, and is part of established nuclear-familial relations, which is to say the baby, when it arrives, is part of the community and has a place therein; this affirms and strengthens kinship bonds throughout the community, because everyone is now a participant in this birth, not just the parents (and mostly the mother).

My impression is that Ron is saying that players are usually fairly good at describing the "reasons" for their gaming behaviors, but that, as Radcliffe-Brown put it, "it is to fall into grievous error to suppose" that gamers are necessarily even aware of the "social functions" of their gaming behaviors.

Ron's model more or less claims to describe gaming behavior, choice, and so forth as it actually is, from one type of perspective. That is not the same as saying that it accurately describes how any particular gaming group understands itself to behave.

Thus you can have gaming that the group says is X, and Ron's model says is Y, and both are accurate. The group now says, "But that means the model is wrong, because it doesn't feel like what we do." Ron is saying, "No, we're talking about radically different perspectives on the gaming behavior."

Note that unlike functionalist anthropologists, Ron is not saying that the "reasons" are less valid than the "social functions," i.e. that the "reasons" are mere superstition while the "social functions" are what's really happening. It's just a question of perspective.

That's my impression, anyway.

{The reference here is: Radcliffe-Brown, A.R. Taboo. The Frazer Lecture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1939. Reprinted a great many times in various places, as it's not very long.}

clehrich wrote:

Roger wrote: As far as I can tell, "the essay text doesn't feel like what happens during play" is the only legitimate basis for criticism of game theory.

My impression is that Ron is saying that players are usually fairly good at describing the "reasons" for their gaming behaviors, but that, as Radcliffe-Brown put it, "it is to fall into grievous error to suppose" that gamers are necessarily even aware of the "social functions" of their gaming behaviors.

Ron's model more or less claims to describe gaming behavior, choice, and so forth as it actually is, from one type of perspective. That is not the same as saying that it accurately describes how any particular gaming group understands itself to behave.

Thus you can have gaming that the group says is X, and Ron's model says is Y, and both are accurate. The group now says, "But that means the model is wrong, because it doesn't feel like what we do." Ron is saying, "No, we're talking about radically different perspectives on the gaming behavior."

John Kim wrote:
So is there any possible basis for criticism of Y?? From what you say, it sounds like the model is above criticism -- because claims of gamers that it doesn't match their game can be dismissed because they don't understand even their own games. I don't think you actually mean that, but you're not offering any possibility for criticism here. How should criticism of game theory proceed, if not from how it fits actual play?

John Kim wrote:

clehrich wrote: My impression is that Ron is saying that players are usually fairly good at describing the "reasons" for their gaming behaviors, but that, as Radcliffe-Brown put it, "it is to fall into grievous error to suppose" that gamers are necessarily even aware of the "social functions" of their gaming behaviors.

So is there any possible basis for criticism of Y?? From what you say, it sounds like the model is above criticism -- because claims of gamers that it doesn't match their game can be dismissed because they don't understand even their own games. I don't think you actually mean that, but you're not offering any possibility for criticism here. How should criticism of game theory proceed, if not from how it fits actual play?

Personally, I think that while you can try to claim that gamers don't understand the analysis of their games, the onus must be on the theory to show that that is the case.

Moreover, I don't think that the perspective of social function you suggest is at work here.

Well, I was going to answer the question but I think that the discussion moved elsewhere.

Roger, wanna take it to private email? We might do better there.

Best,
Ron

If we're misreading you, Ron, we'd all like to know how and why. I'd like to hear your response to Roger's question.

Hello,

Chris, I have no idea whether you or John are mis-reading me. What I can't seem to get over (and this is my fifth attempted reply, so that tells you I'm really gagging on this), is that Roger asked a simple question that I can answer very simply ... and y'all leaped into the gap and created an enormously complex set of points and questions instead.

It seems entirely at odds with all the points you raised in your excellent Site Discussion post. Why not just ... take a few hours to chill out? Maybe let me respond? Maybe see what someone else has to say?

Now I'm supposed to respond to Roger ... but also dissect all that stuff to your and John's satisfaction too? Moses & Mohammed eatin' beans!

I'm going to do you two some disrespect, for which I apologize in advance. I am going to completely ignore every post in this thread so far except the first. This is absolutely non-Forge behavior on my part and would ordinarily only be tolerated if you two were entirely off-topic. Bluntly, I have no idea whether you are or aren't. (And again, this whole "mis-reading" comment really gets up my nose. I'm trying to get over that, and I know that if I did try to address the stuff you and John are talking about, it would keep me from doing so effectively.)

I'm also requesting, with any luck with respect this time, that you guys leave me & Roger some space for a few posts.

Roger, here goes:

The essay isn't about how role-playing feels, and simply never includes the topic as a definitional issue. It's about what people do at a social, creative, and procedural level. The reader is expected to step back and look at himself or herself, in play with fellow players, and see whether what he or she does is like what I'm describing. Whatever the experience feels like is left up to the reader's privacy. The closest thing to it is Creative Agenda, but even that leaves most specific emotions wide open for the reader to fill in. Two people can be engaged in Step On Up together and feel very differently about, for instance, losing, even as they agree procedurally on what it actually is, during play.

Let's say we were talking about music. My essay would then be about stuff like music-to-society, or technical stuff like chords and tempo. Creative Agenda would be analogized to something like different patterns in playing music (who knows what, something anyway). It wouldn't include a damn thing about the sensations of playing music. It would definitely say something about how all sorts of sensations would or could be involved and expect the reader to fill in his or her sensations as seemed appropriate.

So a person comes to that essay with a very strong commitment to the sensations he experiences while playing music. Frustrating essay, eh? He's looking for "what he does" in the essay, and using these sensations as a yardstick. He might even encounter his exact CA in there, in social and creative terms - but hey, where're the sensations that he bloody well knows are involved? And where's the sense of validating these sensations that he was looking forward to? Not there? Well then! (1) Ron must not get it, and (2) he must not approve of it.

Back to role-playing, even if the person acknowledges that my description of a given Social Contract, a given CA, a given set of emphases on the Explored Components, and a given set of Techniques and Ephemera is dead-on for him and his fellow players, I must still be getting it wrong because the sensations aren't "there."

If you want to read the essays critically and to apply them to your own role-playing, then here's what I suggest. First, recognize that any of our actions and favored activities in life can be discussed at a level that leaves feelings out of it - not denies them, not says that they're not there, but just isn't talking about them today. We can do this with any art form, with cooking, with sex, and with work. Anything. I readily accept that feelings are involved in all of these and that we wouldn't do them without the feelings being involved. Fine - now we move on and talk about this other level.

Second, keep in mind that the core of all role-playing is a "shared imagined space," and therefore we have to focus on the sharing part - that is, after all, what all the procedures of play are actually doing, permitting us to share what we imagine as we imagine it, and not accepting it as "done" until it's shared. What I'm driving at is that it's a group activity, and therefore the real variables of interest are not internal to the single practitioner, but rather conducted (and therefore observable) among the participants. So when you reference your own experiences in thinking about the Big Model, you should be thinking about "what we did and said together, and how we responded to one another," rather than "how I felt about it at the time."

Third, all the discussions in Actual Play bring all those feelings right up front and center, after all. That's what those discussions are for, in many cases. That's where the individual experience and concrete satisfaction/dissatisfaction are put right into the spotlight. Sometimes we find out that someone does X and others do too, but for different emotional reasons. Sometimes we find out that one person gets emotional-satisfaction out of X, but another person gets the same kind of satisfaction from an entirely-different Y. I could keep going with all these "sometimes" examples because they are wonderfully diverse, and every post in Actual Play helps us all to understand where and how the emotional aspect of role-playing comes into the structural/aesthetic description provided by the Big Model.

Does any of that seem helpful, or make sense?

Let me clarify one more thing. I am not claiming that role-players do not know what they feel, or that I'm talking about what they "really" do when they think they're doing something else. This is not about denial or telling people what they are "really" doing, although those issues come into Actual Play discussions sometimes. The specifc answer to your question is a matter of clarifying what the subject for discussion is.

Best,
Ron

The idea that the model discusses "what was done" still eludes me since it *doesn't* discuss techniques or actions at the table but rather the social results of actions (Joe gained cred for steping on up).

The results are in the realm of "what was felt" (Joe felt validated by the others for being a gamin' stud).

If we don't think Joe felt validated for his gaming studliness then we have something other than gamist play going on.

This is exemplified in my question surrounding the Sim/Nar divide, which seems to me (presently) to be based entirely on what types of emotions were felt by the participants (under the condition that there is a premise-style question in the resolved situation).

This is mostly because I'm still not clear on how the input-validation works/looks like under GNS Sim (awatin' Ron's post).

-Marco

Marco, I think you're complicating things. It doesn't matter whether Joe felt validated, just that validation was offered for a specific kind of behavior. It doesn't even really matter whether the person who offered validation really meant it. It also doesn't matter why Joe stepped on up. You could literally have a bunch of really miserable people all performing Gamist behaviors even while they all privately feel that gaming should be different.

Or, put another way... if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck... even if it doesn't think like a duck.

So, going back to Roger, the basis for criticism would have to focus on actions - do you feel that certain behaviors really belong in a different CA, or do you feel that there are relevant behaviors the current CAs don't address? Something like that.

Personally, I think a theory/model like GNS is one that can't be "proven wrong" it could only be incrementally refined or completely replaced by something better. Although... I'm not sure how one would define "better" in relation to something like this either.

jdagna wrote: Marco, I think you're complicating things. It doesn't matter whether Joe felt validated, just that validation was offered for a specific kind of behavior. It doesn't even really matter whether the person who offered validation really meant it. It also doesn't matter why Joe stepped on up. You could literally have a bunch of really miserable people all performing Gamist behaviors even while they all privately feel that gaming should be different.

OK, great comments all 'round, and I'm OK with your points, Marco. I really do think that the Sim/Narr is not about feeeeelings involved, and we can deal with that one of these decades. Thanks for the reminder on that one.

Roger! Roger!!! Can you give me some indication that you read any of this, and weigh in with what you think?

Best,
Ron

Yes, I've read it. Just took me a while to digest it all.

It makes a lot of sense. Focusing on actions and external processes rather than thoughts and internal processes seems to be a good idea.

The only thing that seems a bit incongruous with that is that it seems to me that Creative Agendas are fundamentally defined purely in terms of internal processes.


Cheers,
Roger

Hello,

That's Marco's big point about Narrativism vs. Simulationism, or perhaps about Creative Agenda as a whole.

I disagree with this point, although not perhaps in the way that is ascribed to me. I suggest that any Creative Agenda can be reliably or at least defensibly inferred through experiencing play with the people involved (i.e. being one of them), or from watching them, and with appropriate questioning, through interviewing.

However, I do readily concede that all such inferences might be incorrect in any particular instance. That applies to "inference" as a concept and is accepted by any practitioner of empirical analysis from the beginning.

Roger, my concern with your statement is your use of the term "purely." Take a look at these three things:

Story Now requires Premise, which is to say an imaginary situation which throws a real-world problematic issue up for judgmental grabs.

Step On Up requires Challenge, which is to say an imaginary situation which puts real-world strategy and guts on the line.

The Right to Dream requires, h'm, we need a term, how about "Focus?" Maybe "Topic"? Which would mean which elements of the to-be-Explored material are going to be used as foundational, and as the topic for celebratory play. So ... an imaginary situation which permits us to elaborate upon and celebrate the baseline features of the topic.

In my view, all of them are discernable upon seeing all of the System in action, eventually. I consider the two fundamental features of System to be:

IIEE
Reward

They both operate all along the scale from moment-to-moment to many-session, depending on the game and group, which is why "instance of play" has always been left a little open, but also considered to be at least a full session and probably more.

So you must consider a real-live, operational role-playing group engaged in "what they do," using the IIEE and Reward procedures in the usual fun-or-not and feedback-into-more-play fashion we associate with this hobby.

I think that discerning any of the following among that group is pretty easy, given that you and I are both humans and understand the "language" of social rewards:

1. One of those CAs described above in action most of the time

2. Some functional combination of them (I think this is rarer than most would like to think, but am willing to split the difference)

3. A rather crazy-quilt effect of multiple CAs, usually associated with not much happening in-game, as well as with some repetitive disputes over how to conduct those fundamental features of System

4. A muted and (to many eyes) rather boring focus on the imagined material, with only occasional and perhaps even hidden satisfactory moments relative to one or more CAs

5. Plain old confusion about what the hell is going on, with sporadic and sometimes bizarre attempts to satisfy one or more CAs

6. All-out war over what CA is to be satisfied, or about how to do it for one or more CAs

7. No CA or even SIS to speak of (this is sadly more common than I would like, leading me to distinguish "gaming" from "role-playing" - in my view, many gamers are not role-playing no matter how many dice they roll or characters they make up or how many hours they sit around together)

I'd like to point out that the above construction of possible observation completely removes dysfunctional play from Simulationism. I specifically want Mike Holmes to acknowledge that I am treating Simulationist play as a fun and distinctive mode/CA of its very own.

So, back to your "purely," Roger. Given that CA plays a unique role in "nailing the Big Model together," it certainly is constructed of participants' desires, motives, intentions, and all those similar words. But for purposes of recognizing and discussing it, I do not turn to telepathy or to gut-responses or "know it when I see it" thinking. (These have all been accusations leveled at me in the past.) I look to the interactions and social reinforcements among the real people as they conduct System.

The real fuel for role-playing is social. Look for social reward systems (the biggest possible "thing" in role-playing, perhaps even best considered the head or cap of the Creative Agenda nail), and you will see CAs in action.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: Hello,

That's Marco's big point about Narrativism vs. Simulationism, or perhaps about Creative Agenda as a whole.

I disagree with this point, although not perhaps in the way that is ascribed to me. I suggest that any Creative Agenda can be reliably or at least defensibly inferred through experiencing play with the people involved (i.e. being one of them), or from watching them, and with appropriate questioning, through interviewing.

Ron Edwards wrote: Given that CA plays a unique role in "nailing the Big Model together," it certainly is constructed of participants' desires, motives, intentions, and all those similar words. But for purposes of recognizing and discussing it, I do not turn to telepathy or to gut-responses or "know it when I see it" thinking. (These have all been accusations leveled at me in the past.) I look to the interactions and social reinforcements among the real people as they conduct System.

Ron Edwards wrote: 7. No CA or even SIS to speak of (this is sadly more common than I would like, leading me to distinguish "gaming" from "role-playing" - in my view, many gamers are not role-playing no matter how many dice they roll or characters they make up or how many hours they sit around together)

Ron Edwards (Musings on mechanics and The Dream) wrote: So I'm asking that people look over some of the Sim points again, especially those in the essay, and put a big gold star on every single paragraph, with the star meaning AND HE LOOKED UPON IT AND FOUND IT GOOD.

Hiya,

Thanks for laying it out like that, Marco - very clear, very helpful.

The way I see it, strong empathic emotions are potentially present in any sort of role-playing, in terms of player identifying with the fictional situation faced by the fictional characters. I have never tried to state that empathic emotion is present in Narrativist play and absent in Simulationist play.

The crucial role of Premise in defining Narrativist play, as I see it, is this: the fictional character/situation invokes a generalizable human dilemma (moral, ethical, problematic, whatever one wants to call it). It's not just that I empathize with, for example, a character's dire fear of death in the face of attack. It's that the choice between parenthood and personal risk speaks to me as a person in terms of my own life-experiences and choices (and those of my acquaintances, etc), even if I never have to deal with the slavering jaws of zombies/aliens/whatever.

Narrativist play prioritizes, if you will, one's personal desire to speak back when something trips a trigger like this.

Simulationist play, on the other hand, may include a very similar or even identical situation in play - but the priority is different. It is to celebrate the Stuff (model, topic, whatever we arrive at in this thread) given certain features of that Stuff as a baseline. It doesn't matter in terms of aesthetic priorities how (in ethics/problematic terms) each of us copes with the situation, only that we enjoy the situation and actively contribute to its sensations and imagery.

(Note that I am not saying anything about active/passive, author/non-author, broad authority vs. narrow authority over elements of play, etc; all of those are dials which spin nicely in each category. Pick Narrativist play with extremely "normal"/Vanilla features as well as some kind of hard-core Director-ish Sim, and the distinction still seems clear to me. The whole claim that Vanilla Narr = Sim was always meaningless to me.)

To my knowledge, and much to my frustration, any number of folks who've tried to address these (now I realize, very good) concerns of yours, Marco, have done so by veering off into Techniques and also confounded emotion per se with generalizable issue.

I fully grant that diagnosis, if that's the right word, is harder when the Sim Situation includes stuff that to other people would be rich Premise-meat, or vice versa. But I don't think it's a deal-breaker or relies on telepathy; I think it just requires more observation and more attention to the nuances of System especially over the long run.

Best,
Ron

Hi Roger,

I wonder if defining CA in terms of social interactions, rather than internal motivations, might be useful. I realize that this has been done to some extent.

Ron Edwards wrote:
To my knowledge, and much to my frustration, any number of folks who've tried to address these (now I realize, very good) concerns of yours, Marco, have done so by veering off into Techniques and also confounded emotion per se with generalizable issue.

I fully grant that diagnosis, if that's the right word, is harder when the Sim Situation includes stuff that to other people would be rich Premise-meat, or vice versa. But I don't think it's a deal-breaker or relies on telepathy; I think it just requires more observation and more attention to the nuances of System especially over the long run.

Best,
Ron