Spawned from another topic, link to be added momentarily...

James Holloway wrote:

Vaxalon wrote:
I mean... one of the things that defines a person, is the sum of his memories and experiences, things that show up on the character sheet as skills and abilites. To change those around from one game session to the next... it doesn't seem to me that it would be the same character.

Those exceptions I mentioned? They're important here.

Let's say I'm making a character for DnD. He's an ex-marine... a fighter trained to fight aboard ship. I give him a few cross-class ranks in perform (sea chanties)... not because I want for an adventure to, at some point, revolve around that ability, but because it's just something he might know, and it helps define the character.

...the idea raises a whole slew of interesting questions about the relationship between the character, the character sheet, and the experience of play, and that your reply touches on a bunch of them (is the character sheet a descriptive document about the imaginary character or a catalogue of the character's system components? Both? Neither?). I wonder if John Kim's "role of the character sheet" thread would be a good place to explore them, or if we could maybe start a new one, because I'd love to talk about them.

Vaxalon wrote:
In my opinion, a character sheet starts off as a catalogue of system components, but as I go along, it becomes more and more of a descriptive document, because I jot down little notes about who the character is, whether the system touches on that aspect or not. I consider those ad-hoc notes to be just as much a part of the character sheet as his Strength score. That's one of the reasons I dislike cramped character sheets that don't have any room for making notes about the character.

I've put some comments in the prior thread as they seemed to follow on more easily there.

But yes, I agree with your identification of the crossing of currency into Colour as a problem, in the conventional sense, and touched on this in that post to the eralier thread.

contracycle wrote: I've put some comments in the prior thread as they seemed to follow on more easily there.

But yes, I agree with your identification of the crossing of currency into Colour as a problem, in the conventional sense, and touched on this in that post to the eralier thread.

James Holloway wrote: Why not just say he can sing and have done with it? It's never going to come up, I should hope, and in order to be able to sing at all well he's going to have to waste points....

Vaxalon wrote:

James Holloway wrote: Why not just say he can sing and have done with it? It's never going to come up, I should hope, and in order to be able to sing at all well he's going to have to waste points....

That assumes that to do so is a "waste"... I'm the one spending them, they're my points, and if I think that putting two skill points into the ability is a fair price, then it's not a waste.

Whether or not that's the way it's handled is highly dependent on social contract, and through social contract on ruleset.

Vaxalon wrote: In my opinion, a character sheet starts off as a catalogue of system components, but as I go along, it becomes more and more of a descriptive document, because I jot down little notes about who the character is, whether the system touches on that aspect or not. I consider those ad-hoc notes to be just as much a part of the character sheet as his Strength score. That's one of the reasons I dislike cramped character sheets that don't have any room for making notes about the character.

Jason Newquist wrote:
Would you agree that to the extent that these ad hoc notes are not introduced into play and do not experience an opportunity for scrutiny and acceptance, they're a form of game-inspired marginalia, but not part of the game itself?

James Holloway wrote: Is the content of the character sheet necessarily part of the SIS if it never appears in play?

Yes, but they all have the POTENTIAL to be explored in the game.

Also, I would argue that something doesn't have to be part of the SIS to be important to the game play for everyone involved.

Vaxalon,

For clarity, I divided your quote because the topics are slightly different. Hope you don't mind.

Vaxalon wrote: Yes, but they all have the POTENTIAL to be explored in the game.

Vaxalon wrote: Also, I would argue that something doesn't have to be part of the SIS to be important to the game play for everyone involved.

Sure!

I've got a note on my character sheet. "Jonas is posessed by a demon. He'll try to ingratiate himself with the party, but the demon will gradually drive him to more and more corrupt acts." I have to write stuff like that down, because if I don't, the secret gets forgotten, and the facade becomes the character.

Jonas's secret is vitally important to how he's played, and how he interacts with the rest of the characters. Even if they never discover his secret, Jonas's play will be dominated by it, and all of his relationships with the other characters will be colored by it.

Cool example!

But until the secret is shared (and accepted), it can't be a part of the shared imaginary space. It's just a cool performance instruction you've written to yourself. It has implications galore, and those become part of the SIS or not, according to your performance.

-Jason

You are absolutely correct... and irrelevant to my point.

The note on the character sheet may never be shared OVERTLY... but since its implications are important; therefore, something can be important to play without being a part of the SIS.

SIS isn't everything.

Vaxalon wrote: You are absolutely correct... and irrelevant to my point.

The note on the character sheet may never be shared OVERTLY... but since its implications are important; therefore, something can be important to play without being a part of the SIS.

SIS isn't everything.

I can, or not...

If the game is *OVER* then in the post-game discussion I might talk about why my character was acting the way he was.

Right, so there are things (that could very well go on a character sheet) which influence what players do in the game, but aren't assertions about SIS contents at all. They can't be, because they're statements in isolation, yeah?

I got confused because your example seemed to suggest that you were claiming that your guy was a demon (which was never brought into play), rather than having implied "Play Him This Way!" brackets around it.

-Jason

Jason Newquist wrote: Right, so there are things ... which influence what players do in the game, but aren't assertions about SIS contents at all....

I think thats fair enough, if you have the rights to that sort of creation in the SIS. More common, I think, is the case where the character has a secret that is shared with the GM; in the ciurcumstance it might be thought of in the same light as all the other stuff that is SIS-relevant but ont currently on display.

I apologize if I'm being obtuse, and I thank you for your patience. I am finding this, my first extended Forge dialogue, very useful!

Let me get back to the topic which spun us off to see if I can re-trace my thoughts. Earlier:

Vaxalon wrote: I jot down little notes about who the character is, whether the system touches on that aspect or not. I consider those ad-hoc notes to be just as much a part of the character sheet as his Strength score.

Jason Newquist wrote:
It's worth saying: I don't doubt that your vision is privileged among all possible visions, due to your creative ownership of your character.

The STR score is part of your character. The ad-hoc notes are part of your vision for the character. They seem very different.

Does this make sense?

-Jason

James Holloway wrote: It just seems like an instance of differently-privileged inputs.

Jason Newquist wrote: I don't get to single-handedly decide a damn thing about my character.

Vaxalon wrote: I disagree with this, vehemently. At the very least, you single-handedly decide what your character thinks.

Shreyas: Agree!

Clarification: what's "TIT"?

Thanks,
Jason

Jason Newquist wrote: We don't like retcons for our actual play. We're very sensitive about how we say things with respect to IIEE: "I shoot you" vs. "I pull the trigger". All of this is because going back and rewriting actual play wrankles. ...And that's not true of things that aren't Explored in actual play.

Jason Newquist wrote: I don't get to single-handedly decide a damn thing about my character. The GM doesn't get to single-handedly decide a damn thing about the game world. Not a damn thing! Until these visions are brought out in play (and chargen is play, too), they remain vision: napkin notes, or fan fiction. They're not "game stuff", I don't think, until we're at the table, the thing is in the air, and we buy into it.

(...deleted duplicate post...)

In games with charater ownership (Capes isn't always one of them, for example) you ALWAYS have things that you haven't shared with the group, but which color the play you DO share. Those elements are important to the game, even though they aren't formally part of it, yet, or even at all.

Go back and reread:

"Something can be important to play without being a part of the SIS."

Vaxalon wrote: In games with charater ownership (Capes isn't always one of them, for example) you ALWAYS have things that you haven't shared with the group, but which color the play you DO share. Those elements are important to the game, even though they aren't formally part of it, yet, or even at all.

Go back and reread:

"Something can be important to play without being a part of the SIS."

Okay, let me take a slightly different tack on this.

Abel and Baker are playing two characters, Phil and Quincy.

Outside of play, Abel and Baker decide that their characters are secretly in cahoots. They even go so far as to play a little interaction between their characters away from everyone else.

Then they join the rest of the group. Their conspiracy will certainly color their play, but the conspiracy itself is not something shared with the group.

Vaxalon wrote: Okay, let me take a slightly different tack on this.

Abel and Baker are playing two characters, Phil and Quincy.

Outside of play, Abel and Baker decide that their characters are secretly in cahoots. They even go so far as to play a little interaction between their characters away from everyone else.

Then they join the rest of the group. Their conspiracy will certainly color their play, but the conspiracy itself is not something shared with the group.

The way that Abel and Baker play their characters will set everyone else up to accept Abel and Baker's vision.

If they set everyone else up effectively, it looks exactly as though they had the power to make things true about their characters independently all along. They didn't, of course; Fred, you're getting suckered by "looks exactly as though."

You can see it plain as day if they fail to set everyone else up. Everyone else is like, "cahoots? But that doesn't make any sense."

-Vincent

To clarify for Jason: TIT = The Impossble Thing.

Jason Newquist wrote: But, in any case, I disagree that such things are part of the "game world" or the "character". Those things only exist to the extent that they're shared and agreed to (including all the various social contract variations, per John's point). I claim that anyone making statements about SIS stuff that's unsupported by the SIS -- like you talking about charcter's thoughts, for example -- is simply making statements of vision, not statements which bear truth value in the game. Whether they *really apply* to your guy or not can only determined in play, by Exploration.

Jason Newquist wrote: Thanks for the other example. Here's what I think I can say about it...

* A&B have collaborated in their approach to the game, and have brought their visions partially into accord.

* A&B's interaction stuff on their own is, if it's a game, a different game than the one played with the other people, and serves as provisional input which the new group may accept or reject, to the extent that game acts rely on it, or are colored by the "backstory".

lumpley wrote: The way that Abel and Baker play their characters will set everyone else up to accept Abel and Baker's vision.

If they set everyone else up effectively, it looks exactly as though they had the power to make things true about their characters independently all along. They didn't, of course; Fred, you're getting suckered by "looks exactly as though."

You can see it plain as day if they fail to set everyone else up. Everyone else is like, "cahoots? But that doesn't make any sense."

John wrote: I would say you (Vincent) are getting suckered by the delusion of "truth".

In a sense, as long as we assume consensus is reached, then everyone in the game has absolute power to assert truth simply by sticking to their position.

I think I agree with John. If everyone has to agree to something for it to be true, and one player steps out to the bathroom, and play appears to continue, does that mean that nothing happened until the player returns? If the player is never appraised of exactly what happened, but merely infers the missed portion from what happens afterwards, does this mean those things were never true (since it is possible that the missed events will someday be described to the absent player, and the absent player will say "Absolutely no way did that happen! That character would never have done that, and if they had, my character would have known about it instantly and stopped them!")?

There is local truth as well as global truth. How the global truth gets turned into local truth, and how the local truth gets turned into global truth is obviously a social contract issue, but that doesn't mean the local truth isn't truth. The local truth may be provisional, but so may be what appears to be global truth.

To the extent that there is a truth in a roleplaying game, my local truth actually exists. It is what I think happened in the game. Global truths don't exist in the same sense. No one thinks the global truth. To say that global truths exist is only to say something about the relationship of our individual truths. If we all agree that something happened in the game, then we can say that that thing is part of the global truth. However, for us to agree that something happened, we have to each individually think it happened.

If I think one thing is true, and you think another thing is true, there are three things that can happen: we can agree that either of those things happened and continue play with a somewhat disjointed reality; we can work to resolve our differences and reconcile our different truths; or we can decide that our truths can not be reconciled or coexist, and we can break the game. In each of these cases, we each start with a local truth, and we each end with a local truth, but in only one case do our local truths merge into an agreed truth. Even in that case, our shared truth need not be a global truth, since another player may not agree to our reconciled truth.

Obviously, it is important to try to keep the personal versions of events close to each other (or at least reconcilable, "Your character is demon-possessed? Wow, I hadn't guessed it, but I guess it makes sense"), but those personal versions of the truth are what actually exist inside each of our heads.

lumpley wrote:

John wrote: I would say you (Vincent) are getting suckered by the delusion of "truth".

Nope! True = accepted by everyone.

There's no other functional definition of "true" in RPGs, that I've heard of. All other measures of "truth" break down in the face of any participant's non-acceptance.

Whatever. Wrt in-game stuff when I say "truth" you can substitute "consensus" with no loss to my meaning. If for purposes of this thread we go forward without "truth," but with "consensus" only, I'll conform to that too.

-Vincent

I have never argued that you can get consensus by any other means than presenting the material to the group. That's pretty hard to argue, neh?

What I *am* saying is that there can be IMPORTANT information on the character sheet that is not consented to. The SIS isn't the whole story.

Jason wrote

But, in any case, I disagree that such things are part of the "game world" or the "character". Those things only exist to the extent that they're shared and agreed to (including all the various social contract variations, per John's point). I claim that anyone making statements about SIS stuff that's unsupported by the SIS -- like you talking about charcter's thoughts, for example -- is simply making statements of vision, not statements which bear truth value in the game. Whether they *really apply* to your guy or not can only determined in play, by Exploration.

So all these things that we might write down on our character sheets which pertain to stuff that's not yet been Explored (with John's qualifier here, as well: to the extent that valid Exploration is defined by the social contract of the group), it's just vision stuff. It's not character, it's notes on a napkin for future play, or fan-fiction/discussion of play that's happened in the past. It's game-inspired, but it's not really game.

....

I'm not talking about Explored stuff, though. I'm talking about notes on your character sheet that are unexplored. And my fundamental claim is that they pertain only to your vision of the character, rather than to the character itself, and that there necessarily is a difference between these two things.

John Kim wrote:
This gets back to Jason's question: how can things be important in a game if they aren't agreed on by consensus? There are many LARPs where there is essentially never consensus -- i.e. no "truth" by your definition. Everything is just groups of players going and talking with each other in pairs and small groups, so there is never an event where all the players will buy into something.

Hence my example of the sub-group collaboration.

Vaxalon wrote: What I *am* saying is that there can be IMPORTANT information on the character sheet that is not consented to. The SIS isn't the whole story.

Okay, then let me go back to the original statement.

There can be information on the character sheet that is important to play, but is not part of the SIS. The SIS is not the sum total of the game.

That's transparently obvious. There are a billion things that affect the game that are not part of the SIS - the rules system, the social contract, each player's individual expectations, the effects of weather on the players' moods, a butterfly flapping its wings in Tibet...

And some of them are IMPORTANT. Like the player's vision of the character. Others are not important.

Again, transparently obvious.

I'm a little confused about the thrust of this thread here...where are we trying to express that we didn't all know beforehand?

I think some people have read what I had to say, misconstrued it, conflated it with something else, and constructed arguments against that something else.

Vaxalon wrote: I think some people have read what I had to say, misconstrued it, conflated it with something else, and constructed arguments against that something else.

Oh, we probably do, Jason... but it's immaterial to the core of my point.

So here's a collection of statements which indicate where I think things sit right now. I apologize if this is tedious or obvious. I'm working this out for myself for the first time...

* Ad-hoc creations, like notes written on character sheets or RP among a sub-group during game dotwntime, might be valid and authoritative form of Exploration, or not, per social contract. The events in which these things take place might or might not be instances of actual play.

* Those ad-hoc creations which are NOT authoritative forms of Exploration create game-inspired material. Game-inspired material is not part of the SIS until it is brought (overtly or covertly) into actual play. Game-inspired material may be useful ("important") in structuring what happens in actual play.

* When we say that a statement is "true" of SIS stuff, we mean that it is consistent with player consensus. Some of the coolest game discussions occur when we try to make truth statements of complex SIS stuff.

* How consensus works in a highly distributed game (or any game, for that matter) doesn't seem to be well understood, either. Is there a point where you get enough collaboration -- and where people who have no idea that this is going on and people who have dissenting opinions don't matter due to the otherwise overwhelming agreement and entrenchment of the thing into play?

* There are degrees of "acceptance into the SIS". Someone can sit quietly and hear something totally cool and resolve to involve it in the game as much as possible. Or, someone can sit quietly with reservations, and resolve to avoid something as much as possible, and remain satisfied if it's simply ignored -- but because they don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, they don't cause trouble. Or, I can sit quietly and interpret you to mean something else quite apart from what you mean, or what other people interpret you to mean.

* Our claims on the SIS which have not yet been Explored in actual play (and are thus not in the SIS themselves) constitute our personal vision of the SIS. Having a personal vision of the SIS is a necessary part of play. Nothing is accepted into play without being a part of someone's vision first.

-Jason

I don't have any problems with any of that.