Theory Without Jargon - Help for the Desperate - Number 1


Version 0 (Draft)

The Forge is a place where people talk a lot about the theory of role-playing games. The people at the Forge have been doing this for a long time, and have developed their own specialized vocabulary, which can make it hard for new people to get in on the fun. These articles are here to help.

The first thing to understand is that role-playing games are a form of social entertainment. These are not CRPGs like "Neverwinter Nights" or "Baldur's Gate." The type of role-playing game that we talk about at the Forge is played by a bunch of people communicating with each other. How that communication takes place exactly depends on the group. Some people play "FTF" (Face to Face) which means that a bunch of people get together at someone's house, or at a club, or wherever, and play by actually talking to each other and acting things out. Other people play through text-based formats, like eMail, IRC, Wiki, and so on. For now, our working definition of role-playing is: "a social group entertaining itself through collective imagination."

If you've already been playing this type of game for a while, right about now you may be thinking "No Duh! Where's the good stuff?" Stick with me, though. This is more important than you may have realized before.

In role-playing, like fiction-writing, the primary activity is "making stuff up." Since an author works on his own, he's in control of every detail. He invents his original material, changes it, throws some of it out, adds new, revises, revises, revises, until he has what he wants. But unlike fiction-writing, there are a lot of participants involved in a role-playing game. That "collective" from our working definition opens up a whole lot of problems that need to be solved.

First of all, for role-playing to be practical at all, people have to take turns talking. Most published games don't talk about this. Every group has to work this out for itself. This seems like a simple deal, but every group has a different dynamic in terms of who talks when.

Further, when someone says something, everyone else has to agree to imagine what that person said (or that person must retract or ammend his statement) if the game is going to continue. Imagine that Alice, Bob, and Carl are over at Alice's house playing an RPG. If Alice says "there's a bush growing here," then everyone else has to agree to imagine a bush growing at that particular juncture in the game. It's the same if Alice says "there's an Orc hiding behind the bush growing there," and it's the same if Alice says "The Orc that was hiding behind the bush growing there jumps out and surprises Boron and Celia." In order for the game to proceed, everyone has to agree that there's a bush, that there's an Orc, that the Orc was hiding behind the bush, that the Orc has jumped out, and that Boron and Celia are surprised.

This works just fine as long as everyone is always in agreement about what happens. Each player invents a contribution that he thinks would be cool, tells it to the other players, and they imagine it with him. In actual practice, though, it's not usually this simple. If Bob and Carl don't want a bush, then Alice has to convince them, or she has to agree that, no, there isn't a bush there after all. If there's some reason that a bush shouldn't be there - say, Alice is not the group's designated "inventor of bushes" - she probably shouldn't be making that particular contribution in the first place.

A lot of times, a particular player will have something specific in mind that he'd like to imagine that isn't compatible with what another player want's to imagine. (Let's say that Alice wants to imagine that the Orc kills Boron, but Bob would rather that Boron go on to have many more imagined adventures.) In a case like this, there has to be some way to decide what the "official" version of imagined events will be. Until we know for sure that Boron is alive (or dead) we can't continue. There are a lot of ways that this can happen. Some examples: one player can be designated as a de facto authority who decides such cases, some mechanical procedure is followed (dice are rolled, chips are bid, rock/paper/scisors is played), or the players just negotiate, discussing and revising (just like that fiction author) until a compromise is reached.

When a group of players decides to use a particular book of game rules, what they are doing is agreeing to a set of methods for establishing continuity among their imaginations. Most sets of rules have a combination of the methods mentioned above, along with many other possibilities.

A side note: A lot of people like to claim that RPG rules model the physical nature of the locations that the players imagine. This can be true - rules that do this establish continuity among the players by referencing third-party descriptions (lists, ratings, tables, and things like that) of the imagined environment. But don't let anyone fool you into thinking that this physical representation is a requirement for a functional RPG. It's just one of many ways to set things up.

This maintainance of continuity is a really big deal. There are many, many ways for a group to operate. The social interactions can be as simple as plain negotiation (freeform play, for example), but it can also be very structured, with different people having the final word on different things. A shared understanding of how continuity is to be maintained is very important for play to be successful.

Let's suppose that Alice, Bob, and Carl are using a fairly standard RPG setup where Bob's and Carl's contributions consist of describing what their characters do and feel, while Alice (the GM) is in charge of describing the environment (including animals and other people) that the characters are in. When those spheres of influence interact (say, when the Orc attacks Boron) we need to be sure that we have agreed ahead of time how to handle it.

Unfortunately, a lot of published game texts aren't very clear about this part. Most groups have to decide for themselves what the game's writer realy meant. This can cause a lot of grief when someone who's used to play a game a certain way tries to play with a group that has a different take on things. There've been a lot of internet flame wars about the "right" way to play various published games.

What happens is that some player has made an assumption about the type of contribution that is expected from him. It has to be an assumption, because groups seldomly discuss these things up front, and our game text doesn't offer any help. (I'm not saying that there are *no* games that address this stuff, but a lot of them don't. So, this ends up being a common problem.)

Things get screwed up when some other player has also made an assumption - one that conflicts with the first player's idea. All too often, both assumptions are based on different interpretations of the rules. Each player feels that he knows exactly what the rules say, and the other guy has it wrong, when in fact, the problem is that the game text that the group agreed to abide by was unclear in the first place.

So, the game grinds to a halt while everyone argues about who gets to say what, and which rules support which side, and so on. People can feel pretty strongly about this stuff. Sometimes it's not pretty.


The Bottom Line

At this level of theory, we're dealing with social interactions between people. During play, each player contributes to the contents of every player's imagination. Prior to play, the group establishes an agreement that defines the nature of acceptable contributions from various group members, and procedures to follow when contributions are in conflict. Unfortunately, this agreement is often not verbaly articulated, leaving players to guess and feel their way through play until they get an idea of how things should work.

Hey, nice post. I like this. I gather you intend to go on from here and explain some of the basics, at least, of the local Forge jargon and theory?

Couple points.

First, I think you should make clear that the Forge is not, as a rule, about LARPs. I have it on good authority that this ticks off the Nordic crew sometimes, that we tend to talk about "all RPGs" as though it were obvious that LARPs aren't RPGs. And if you're going to go into Forge theory, I think it's wise to set LARPs outside quite explicitly, for clarity's sake if nothing else.

Second, as you go along here, I recommend coming back to the previous chapters (including this one) and adding in little bracketed things like [See "Lumpley Principle" in chapter 3] and the like. That way a reader can, at the end, go back and read chapter 1 again with a new understanding. He or she can go along and say, "Oh, I see. You're talking about the Lumpley Principle, here it is in action, I get it." And at the very least, the reader can identify problems in understanding: "This is the Lumpley Principle? Why?" Like that.

That's not something you can probably do now, but bear it in mind and come back at the end.

One question for other readers. It strikes me that some of the rhetoric at the start, e.g. "The people at the Forge have been doing this for a long time," could be taken as a bit triumphant. And of course, a big part of the point of such a set of articles (or single long one), I presume, is to introduce people to this stuff gently and slowly without being overbearing. So what do others think? Too much? Just right? How about the porridge?

I'm looking forward to chapter 2!

To answer Chris's question, I do agree that the language at the beginning is offputting. I say this because I was initially offput, myself. ;)

OK.

First, that intro paragraph has nothing to do with the rest of the thing, and can be deleted without any problem at all.

Second, Chris, I'm gonna try and avoid using any Forge specific jargon at all, at the suggestion of one of my friends. Some of the Forge jargon is like... right on (Setting, Character, Situation) so it's kind of hard to avoid, because that's just what that stuff is CALLED. But I'm leaving out stuff like Lumpley Principle, TITBB, and so on. If people want to know what forge jargon maps to what theory concept, I'm more than happey to cover that in comments and threads.

Chapter two is on the way. I just posted the draft of it to my LJ.

Very, very nice stuff indeed. With the changes clerich suggested, it'd be an excellent introduction to what happens here. As an alternative to the bracketing, you might consider a footnote system that would link key concepts to corresponding terms and theory. That way the primary text's flow would be preserved as it is now.

I think one more sentence (or paragraph) about how the players not only add elements to the game, but how those elements build upon one another, might be useful. It's implicitly there now, but since this looks like it's going to be a set of articles that even non-players will be reading, I think it best to explain the story construction process a bit further.

clehrich wrote: One question for other readers. It strikes me that some of the rhetoric at the start, e.g. "The people at the Forge have been doing this for a long time," could be taken as a bit triumphant.

Hey J. Tuomas,

Thanks for your kind words. :) In chapter two I talk about setting, character, and situation, and how they interact, and also about how it can be difficult to just come up with something out of nothing, which is why we use setting info (and so on) to help get us started. Do you think that covers the "building on" aspect well enough?

As I mentioned on your LJ, I think this is great, and I am looking forward to the rest of the series.

Paganini wrote: In chapter two I talk about setting, character, and situation, and how they interact, and also about how it can be difficult to just come up with something out of nothing, which is why we use setting info (and so on) to help get us started. Do you think that covers the "building on" aspect well enough?

Just one question, Paganini. Who is this written for -- someone who's new to the Forge and wants to get involved, or someone who just wants to know what the Forge is about?

I'm assuming it's for someone who's just new to the Forge, yet wants to get involved, in which case I'm all for including Forge-speak throughout. I mean, it's hard to have an introduction to a field of research without hitting on some of the jargon, or at least mentioning major points of it. Leaving out the Forge-speak would seem to me to be valuable only if you were writing this as a general, "what goes on at that crazy Forge place" article.

I didn't find anything insulting about the intro, but then I've been on the Forge for a short while already, I'm not just reading this article as my first contact.

Hey Andrew,

I think I'm going to use jargon if it seems natural to do so, but I won't go out of my way to make these articles "how to speak Forgeish." These are about the theory, not about how we describe it. Once someone reds these articles it should (hopefully) be no big deal for them to go to the glossary and say, oh, so *thats* what this is talking about.

Great job! I've been working on an essay about collaborative gaming that is along similar lines with yours, for a while now. The 5 elements are such a natural way to break out the aspects of gaming.

You've got a great relaxed way of describing the issue of contributing that seems like it would be easy to read for newbies. Jargon just gets in the way. If we want other people to understand, gotta speak some language they can understand. Best of luck with it.

yrs,
Emily Care

Well,

I admit I have quite some problems with the assumptions here.

First off, only the DM will must of the time "make up stuff". the players modify that stuff. I assume here that "actions" are not "stuff".

The idea that a DM has to convince B and C of there being a bush is not correct in my opinion. B and C have to accept A's decription of the scene on a principle of charity: that A is not abribtraily making up elements to have fun at Bs and Cs expense.
Thus there is an authority over elements as well as outcomes. the rules you cite for a principle of continuity don't cover this. Negotiation over "stuff" is the exception rather than the rule.

The more I think about it, the problem seems to be a non-distiction between ontology (setup) and ontogeny (moves). a certain move in
a chess game is not in the same way an element of a chess game as a playing piece.

Your texts strikes me as teleological rather than descriptive. You are aiming at narrativism (where the question becomes wether we are still
dealing with a game) and collaborative styles (where the taking of roles becomes blurred). So I think you aiming to high when explaining ROLEplaying GAMES.

As a side note, it is not a problem of being unclear in the rules that leads to different interpretations of the rules. It is strictly impossible to design a system that can handle everything from falling in love to star system generation and does not need interpretation. Making a system is in itself an interpretative endeavour.

Sophist,

Welcome to the Forge. My name is Thomas. I have a question for you.

sophist wrote: The idea that a DM has to convince B and C of there being a bush is not correct in my opinion. B and C have to accept A's decription of the scene on a principle of charity: that A is not abribtraily making up elements to have fun at Bs and Cs expense.

As a side note, it is not a problem of being unclear in the rules that leads to different interpretations of the rules. It is strictly impossible to design a system that can handle everything from falling in love to star system generation and does not need interpretation. Making a system is in itself an interpretative endeavour.

Hey Sophist,

First off, only the DM will must of the time "make up stuff". the players modify that stuff. I assume here that "actions" are not "stuff".

The idea that a DM has to convince B and C of there being a bush is not correct in my opinion. B and C have to accept A's decription of the scene on a principle of charity: that A is not abribtraily making up elements to have fun at Bs and Cs expense.
Thus there is an authority over elements as well as outcomes. the rules you cite for a principle of continuity don't cover this. Negotiation over "stuff" is the exception rather than the rule.

Interestingly, it's Sophist himself who's doing a teleological (prescriptive) argument, it seems to me. He's effectively decided that roleplaying games are games with roles, which for him apparently means players in actor stance all the time.

The argument that narrativism is not gaming and no-GM play is not taking a role is very familiar to me from Finnish discussions. Especially the requirement of there being an exclusive role is common hereabouts. The GM is of course given a special place, because he's ideally the only player who doesn't have a role. Or he has the role of "the rest of the world".

My answer is usually to note that there is no point to the discussion unless one side agrees to limit himself to the other's assumptions. Like in this case: any arguments based on a different definition of roleplaying are logically flawed in the context of the article. It's like I were writing about vegetables, and somebody tried to suggest all kinds of carrot-specific points into my article. If I took him up the article wouldn't be about vegetables anymore, it'd be about carrots only.

So my suggestion is that Sophist should just bear it. Write another article about the theory of GM-focused games, how about?

Wolfen wrote: You are also incorrect in stating that this essay is aimed only at Narrativist play. Everything here applies to all modes of play. I would even hazard to say that the details of this first essay, at least, apply even to LARP play, which is considered somewhat of an odd-duck, in that it doesn't follow many of the standard rules of RPGs. I will say with utter certainty that it applies to purely-sim Free-form Roleplaying.

Write another article about the theory of GM-focused games, how about?

Several things. The essay is not about LARPS. Don't even go there.

(I have never played a LARP, never read a set of LARP rules, am not interested in LARPS, and am therefore singularly unqualified to write anything about them.)

Bob, in fact, installment number three will be almost exactly what you describe. I intend to cover - in a basic way at least - the peculiarities of ownership distribution and such that make up GM-full play.

sophist wrote: The idea that a DM has to convince B and C of there being a bush is not correct in my opinion. B and C have to accept A's decription of the scene on a principle of charity: that A is not abribtraily making up elements to have fun at Bs and Cs expense.

Heh. I stand corrected.

Or do I?

I tried to make sure it was clear that I was uncertain as to the application to LARP, as I know there's a lot I don't know about the hobby. However, I *have* LARP'd before, and my limited experience with it doesn't preclude any of what is said here.

Perhaps I would be on firmer ground if I specified that it may also apply to small-scale LARPs, where everyone is interacting in an intimate setting not altogether unlike table-top RP.

But as Nate has specifically stated that he doesn't want to go into LARP, I will say no more on the subject. I just wanted to clarify my mention of the hobby. If anyone is interested in pursuing this line of conversation, please feel free to PM me.

I would also appreciate footnotes that would read something like:

1 - On the Forge folks usually refer to this as "The Lumpley Principle"

or some such. I know there are glossaries but this seems like a great oppurtunity to get a clear explanation in a context rather than just sitting in a list like the glossary.

greedo1379 wrote: I would also appreciate footnotes that would read something like:

1 - On the Forge folks usually refer to this as "The Lumpley Principle"

or some such. I know there are glossaries but this seems like a great oppurtunity to get a clear explanation in a context rather than just sitting in a list like the glossary.

Wolfen wrote: Perhaps I would be on firmer ground if I specified that it may also apply to small-scale LARPs, where everyone is interacting in an intimate setting not altogether unlike table-top RP.

Heh, well.. May I retract my vehemence on the topic of jargon?

There've been some good points made here. Mostly what I objected to was the use of the jargon in the article itself, which you had done in a few small places in the first article. If footnotes is all you had in mind, then I misunderstood, and I'm all for that.

I have to admit that I am in many ways guilty as charged. However I am trying to mount
a sort of defense here. I will be quoting a some of snipptes here, but it will be
not for nitpicking, but I think it will be more conevient for all if I not answer
every post individually.

Lord Smerf:
It sounds as if you are discussing a very specific subset of role playing and then saying that all role playing is like this. That seems somewhat narrow.

komeradebob:
Specifically, in design terms, I'm thinking of the fact that the GM + character players model is the prevailing model of tabletop games. My personal "Whoa! I never thought of that!" moment when I first started checking out the Forge was reading posts that discussed different styles of game duty and authority distribution.

timfire:
GM: As you walk up the mountain path, a gobling jumps out from behind a bush...
Player: Wait! I thought you said we were above the tree line, why is there a bush this high?
GM: Whatever, so the goblin jumped out from behind a rock...
What just happened? The GM made a assertion, that there was a bush. The players didn't think that made sense, due to said logic. So the GM backed down

Sophist,

Ah, I see your point now (I think). You're saying that "more people play this way, so the essay should be written to this way." The thing is, that no matter which of your three scenarios of GM/Player interaction you use, all of them are doing exactly what the essay says. It's just a matter of different methods of negotiation.

Let's take it one at a time:

GM: you are walking a sandy waste. You see a dragon appraching in the air.
player: I hide behind bush/rock.
GM: Did I say anything about something like that being there?
player: But I want it and I am contributing it to the game.

GM: you are walking a sandy waste. You see a dragon appraching in the air.
player: is there something to hide behind? let's say a bush/rock.
GM: No.
Player: damned.

GM: you are walking a sandy waste. You see a dragon appraching in the air.
Player: No there is no dragon, besides there is an oasis I am contributing an oasis to your game where I can rest now. Or convince that I can beat up the dragon,
'kay?

Alright. Gonna take a softer line this time, given something to work with.

Sophist, you either missed, or chose not to acknowledge, a whole other scenario, somewhere between your first and third scenarios.

GM: You are walking in a sandy, barren waste. You see a dragon approaching in the air.
Player: I hide behind a rock.
GM: As you hide behind the rock, you notice...

In the above scenario, the player's contribution is given just as much value as the GM's. The GM accepts it because it doesn't go against any of the expectations of the scene. Had the player said bush rather than rock, the exchange might have gone more like this:

GM: A bush? It's a sandy, barren waste, man. There's not much chance of bushes.
Player: Not even a small one? Hm. Well, a rock, then.
GM: Cool. So as you hide behind the rock...

Or what about this scenario:

GM: Sandy waste, yadda. You see a dragon approaching in the air.
Player: Hold up, a dragon? I thought we were playing a western.
GM: Trust me.
Player: ...alright. So, seeing as I've never seen a dragon, I gawk in amazement..

Anyhow, you get the idea. I could easily add another scenario where the GM's contribution is given the bullshit call, and he has to change it for the game to continue. The point is that even with guidelines inherent in the game's text, negotiation still takes place.

The point of the essay is to get people to look at the process of roleplaying in a new way. It's true that most people here at the Forge will just nod in approval, as the basic ideas have been hashed out before, but the essay isn't aimed at them.. If it were, it wouldn't need to be sans jargon.

Perhaps you do have a point, though, at the end of it all. The terms are fairly clear to me, but Joe-Gamer may not take it all with the same level of matter of course acceptance. I'm not really sure how it could be reworded to be more familiar to the average gamer though, and still keep the meaning and intent intact.

One quick note, in case this wasn't clear earlier (I don't think I actually said it):

An essay presenting RPG theory to non-gamers looks very different than one presenting theory to gamers. Gamers tend to have a lot of intellectual baggage about "What RPGs are" that has to be examined before real theory discussion can take place. The non-gamer has the advantage of a clean slate.

These seem to be written for the non-gamer. A gamer could understand them, but only if he's willing to give up some of his assumptions and read with an open mind. The non-gamer has no assumptions to give up...

Thomas

LordSmerf wrote: Sophist,

Ah, I see your point now (I think). You're saying that "more people play this way, so the essay should be written to this way." The thing is, that no matter which of your three scenarios of GM/Player interaction you use, all of them are doing exactly what the essay says. It's just a matter of different methods of negotiation.

Let's take it one at a time:

GM: you are walking a sandy waste. You see a dragon appraching in the air.
player: I hide behind bush/rock.
GM: Did I say anything about something like that being there?
player: But I want it and I am contributing it to the game.

The player offers that there is a rock. The GM says, "Did I say there is a rock?" The player begins negotiation, "But I want one to be there..." And off it goes. We don't know enough from this example to say what the end result of this negotiation is.

GM: you are walking a sandy waste. You see a dragon appraching in the air.
player: is there something to hide behind? let's say a bush/rock.
GM: No.
Player: damned.

Same deal. The player offers "something to hide behind". The GM says "no". Except in this example it's pretty clear that we have a Social Contract which says that the GM wins negotiation if he wants. So the negotiation was "rock to hide behind?" "no". But that doesn't change the basic nature of what's happening, just the specifics.

GM: you are walking a sandy waste. You see a dragon appraching in the air.
Player: No there is no dragon, besides there is an oasis I am contributing an oasis to your game where I can rest now. Or convince that I can beat up the dragon, 'kay?

Same deal as the other two, except that this time we see no negotiation. All we see is the player suggesting something.

But all of these, at their base, are the same thing. What the essay talks about is what role playing is if you peel off all the tradition. This is what's really happening.
So, it's not a case of presenting a "certain type of role playing" in the essay. This is about what role playing is.

Hey sophist,

Here's my take on what is going on: I think the *term* 'negoitation' is being used in a non-intuitive manner (as also seen the thread on contribution). I wouldn't describe a televised poker game as a negoitation between players (i.e. a player looks at his hand and the pot and says "hey guys, I know what the rules say--but let's talk about this whole straight-vs-flush thing.")

That never happens. There just isn't much "negoitation" in poker in the way the term is usually meant. I think that's the problem here.

Nathan, I think, certainly is meaning these essays to apply to general commerical RPG's where the GM does, indeed, have full veto power over much of the setting and situation accoridng to the books. I think the terms being used are just misleading ones. The player is putting someting on the table to negotiate with: his continued participation in the game.

It may not be much (the game has too many players already and the GM says "goodbye") or it may be a 1-on-1 game and the GM is really invested in keeping it going, in which case the outcomes of the player's requests will be weighted much more evenly.

But that still doesn't mean that negoitation is the term I think most people would use when describing the resolution of a poker hand in Vegas.

-Marco

Sophist,

Marco is definitely onto something. Clearly you are reading something in the word "negotiation" that I am not. The term, to me, has zero implications of winning/losing, it's just how we figure out how to do things in a social context. "Discussion" also works, but I believe it is too general to be practical.

The "negotiation" we're talking about here is the exact same negotiation that you are involved with when you try to figure out what movie you and your buddies want to watch tonight.

1:"I want to see X"
2:"I want to see Y"
3:"Well, Z is sort of like X and sort of like Y"
1:"Oh, yeah, I'd be willing to watch Z"
2:"Yeah, me too"

Who "won" here?

The point is that players are led to believe they can make up things as they please, and the GM must negotiate with them or accept "i want it"

I think Negotiation is exactly the right word to use for precisely the reason that its non intuitive.

Which of course is not the same thing as "not correct".

It isn't most what people would think of when they discuss communication in RPGs. It isn't a word that most people would use if asked to describe the nature of that communication at the table. It isn't how most people conceive of the events that occur around the table.

Most people are wrong.
Because it IS, in fact, exactly what is going on.

Use a more familiar word and people will skim on through thinking they already know what you're talking about...just as people skim through rulebooks thinking they already know how to play.

Use a word that makes them stop and think "wait-a-minute...negotiation?...how's that work" and you've got their attention. Hopefully long enough for the concept to register.

Valamir wrote:
Use a more familiar word and people will skim on through thinking they already know what you're talking about...just as people skim through rulebooks thinking they already know how to play.

But its NOT ignoring the connotative meanings AT ALL.

Its not immediately intuitive because, as I said, many people wouldn't pick that word off of the top of their head to describe what happens at the table.

But after its explained...it IS exactly what is happening at the table. The events at the table are every bit as much an ongoing negotiation, in the traditional sense of the word, as any contract discussion going on in a corporate board room.

For example, when Sophist says:

Maybe so, but negotiation is not a basic building block of any actual game I know of.

Valamir wrote: But its NOT ignoring the connotative meanings AT ALL.

Its not immediately intuitive because, as I said, many people wouldn't pick that word off of the top of their head to describe what happens at the table.

But after its explained...it IS exactly what is happening at the table. The events at the table are every bit as much an ongoing negotiation, in the traditional sense of the word, as any contract discussion going on in a corporate board room.

Yeah, looking at the essay, it discusses outright Negotiation as a more "free form" method and rules about who gets to decide what as a more common RPG-centric one. I think that's pretty good really. I was more influenced by the recent threads about "contribution" and dice-fudging.

-Marco

John Kim wrote:

Valamir wrote: But its NOT ignoring the connotative meanings AT ALL.

Its not immediately intuitive because, as I said, many people wouldn't pick that word off of the top of their head to describe what happens at the table.

But after its explained...it IS exactly what is happening at the table. The events at the table are every bit as much an ongoing negotiation, in the traditional sense of the word, as any contract discussion going on in a corporate board room.

To me, the word "negotiate" generally implies a back-and-forth process before arriving at consensus. i.e. If I hand someone a contract and they immediately sign, then I think most people would say that they didn't negotiate. However, by your usage this was a negotiation. i.e. In game terms, even if someone says something and it is immediately accepted as part of the fictional reality -- this is still considered "negotiation".

The term didn't "catch me"--I am, however, aware that a common conotation of negoitation involves each party with a specific outcome in mind and then there is back-and-forth over that outcome striving for mutual satisfaction.

As, depending on play styles, most (or a great deal) of input to SIS in RPG's may be accepted tacitly, I would be inclined to say that often input is accepted or modified or rejected based on a set of agreements the parties have made by sitting down and getting the game together (most simply, these are "the rules" we're playing by) and that negoitation per se happens when the rules are deemed unclear or inapplciable by one of the parties.

I would also note that "the rules" may be a gross oversimplification since RPG's, although they have rules--as do other games--also can require a great deal of personal judgment on the parts of the players and may not have set goals or "win conditions" making most rule-sets only part of the contract of play the players are under. (etc. etc.)

-Marco

LordSmerf wrote: John, do you have a better word for this? I think "negotiation" is just about right. There is some potential for confusion (which may have caught Marco, Sophist, and others) in cases where one (or multiple) player's input is never questioned. But I think "negotiation" can reasonably be applied here, and I've not heard a suggestion for a clearer or more precise word... Suggestions?

Paganini wrote: There are a lot of ways that this can happen. Some examples: one player can be designated as a de facto authority who decides such cases, some mechanical procedure is followed (dice are rolled, chips are bid, rock/paper/scisors is played), or the players just negotiate, discussing and revising (just like that fiction author) until a compromise is reached.

Paganini wrote: This maintainance of continuity is a really big deal. There are many, many ways for a group to operate. The social interactions can be as simple as plain negotiation (freeform play, for example), but it can also be very structured, with different people having the final word on different things. A shared understanding of how continuity is to be maintained is very important for play to be successful.

Just to throw my own two cents in:

I think the term negotiation is just fine. However, as an essay to the average newcomer, I think you may want to consider introducing the concept in a different order.

I think most people think of the word as generally meaning, as John Kim said, a "back and forth" process, rather than a "sign-this-at-gunpoint" process. I think the word "negotiation" works for both, if you think of negotiation as a means by which everyone comes to an agreement about something.

I would say that your standard, heavy GM-power based game uses something along the lines of the gunpoint-style negotiation. "I dive behind a rock." "No, you don't. There are none." "Oh." Sure, the metaphorical gunpoint victim doesn't have all that much say in the process, but in the end everyone has signed off on whatever it is. The negotiation method in such a game is "GM is always right."

I think that the above scenario is more in line with what your stereotypical roleplayer expects from a game. Of course, in practice you usually get a little more flexibility (calling BS on either side, and so on) but usually with the old standby of GM having "final say."

So if I'm a random newbie reading this essay:

1. I think of "negotiate" as being something back-and-forth, not at gunpoint.
2. I am accustomed to gunpoint-style play.
3. The first thing I read is that RPG's consist of people "negotiating" about what happens.

Of course, I'm going to be very much in disagreement with the whole shebang, and will be much more skeptical about the rest of the paper.

So I guess my own suggestion (as someone who doesn't really take part in any of the discussion here, but lurks quite a lot) would be to ground the essay more in the "standard" mode of play to begin with, and then subvert that viewpoint gradually.

For example, explain how when people need to agree on what's happening, the tradition is to use a body of rules and appoint someone as referee over the game. Go with that for a while, then point out that even though the referee is supposedly all-powerful, in practice they usually aren't. People can call shenanigans, make suggestions, beg, whine, or just plain walk out. Point out the same with respect to the rules, and how often they are ignored or changed, based on what the players want. You now have a toehold with which to convince people that the dictator GM and untouchable ruleset is merely a very restricted, special case of a larger phenomenon.

That's my idea, anyway.

"Negotiation" is a term commonly used to describe similar processes elsewhere, and in that sense it also fits well here.

For example, it's in use on the social aspects of Winnicott's theory of potential space - which I refered to earlier on this thread - and its applications. That part of the theory is about the creative process between playing children: each kid introducing new elements to the play, others appraising the elements based on how much they like them and how well they fit to what's already been agreed upon, and then accepting them, modifying them or rejecting them from the common "reality" of the play according to those principles. These negotiations are not always made with the intent of mutual satisfaction, and may contain dominance issues that either lead to the play breaking up or one view becoming dominant. Also included is the idea that some forms of play have essential, pre-accepted elements that must be accepted as the immutable basis of any further negotiations. (Referenced from Korkee, 1997)

If that fits the concept of "negotiation" as far as academic speak is concerned, why wouldn't Nathans' almost identical definition of role-playing element construction do so? That is the moment of negotiation. The part Marco would refer to as negotiation is in my opinion interpretation of already-negotiated elements.

I was out of town for a couple of days, and picked up a really nasty flu bug, so I basically spent the last week in bed. I'm back now, but, sorry for my lateness in getting back to these.

John wrote:
But for the process as a whole, I think "contribution" is fine. So (from my other thread), I would say that Will the Writing Guy contributes but does not negotiate.