Okay, so I think this is an "Ask Ron" thread.

Ron,

Regarding Infamous Five #4, what's the current state of things Vanilla and Pervy? A quick seach reveals not much discussion on this in the last couple years. Did this issue basically just get hammered out to everyone's satisfaction to the definitions in the Provisional Glossary? Are "vanilla" and "pervy" still frowned upon in favor of "points of contact?" Are people still consciously designing in consideration of Points of Contact, or did this turn out to be a relatively unimportant design issue?

I'm not conscious of which designs have intentionally gone for vanillaness or perviness.

Also, was rules-light vs rules-heavy dismissed as a fruitless argument, or just as totally irrelevant to this particular piece of theory?

Am I asking totally stupid questions here?

I'll shoulder on Ron's turf, because points of contact are very much in the foreground, at least for me. My understanding and de facto practice has been to discard "vanilla" and "pervy" as general terms in favor of points of contact. The latter is a more powerful and exact visualization, because you need not just talk about how much, but can also consider the where and why. In practical design it's usually not the case that vanilla or pervy is better, but that you have to consider the points of contact you choose very carefully. I might still use the terms, but only to describe something in a general way, not as an analytic conclusion.

Nowadays, visualizing the actual play experience is a central design tool for me. And the idea of there being the "soft" stuff, which now and then is in contact with the "hard" stuff is a very basic starting point for that. What's more, when you grasp the idea of points of contact, you can analyze other things than SIS vs. system as well; things like how narration rights are shifted, or literary sources are referenced, or moments of immersion arranged. It's all about internally coherent activities with their own momentum and how players switch between them. Points of contact are the transmission system of a rpg design.

A general point: we don't really talk much here about our design practices and the processes. That's one thing that could get more attention if only because it's so interesting. In this case, for example, I have no idea if points of contact are at all relevant for the design process when other people here start to design. We might talk about how this or that game has these points of contact (although we review and analyze actual games too little, too), but I don't remember anybody writing about how the concept impacts his design.

That being said, I personally think that Trollbabe is very interesting as a points-of-contact excercise. I don't remember knowing if it's intentional, though. MLwM and Heroquest are pretty much from the different ends of the spectrum, if you want that kind of examples. They aren't intentional, though.

Rules-light vs. rules-heavy I don't want to touch on, I've lost the little understanding I had on that topic. You could say that it matters for points of contact insofar as handling time matters. That is, it's irrelevant for the points of contact per se, but certainly will affect the overall experience in adjunction with them. That's as far as I understand that topic.

Hiya,

Eero wrote,

My understanding and de facto practice has been to discard "vanilla" and "pervy" as general terms in favor of points of contact.

(Re-reads Eero's first paragraph very slowly.)

Ah. So "points of contact" is a more useful term, not because of the aesthetic objections to the whole pervy/kinky metaphor, but because the concept is not adequately described by just "high" or "low."

Cool, that makes sense.

Thanks,

Larry wrote:
Ah. So "points of contact" is a more useful term, not because of the aesthetic objections to the whole pervy/kinky metaphor, but because the concept is not adequately described by just "high" or "low."

I think Points of Contact is probably the bit of Forge jargon that I am having the most trouble understanding.  I've read the linked threads and the glossary but something about exactly what it is trying to express eludes me. I'mn hoping someone can express it in plain English for me, because I'm still trying to grok the rather specialized terminology in use here.

Is it as simple as "when do we resort to the game rules to settle something?" and I'm making a big deal over nothing, or os there some kind of deeper nuance that I need to understand to really get what's going on?

Jeff

drnuncheon wrote:
IIs it as simple as "when do we resort to the game rules to settle something?" and I'm making a big deal over nothing, or os there some kind of deeper nuance that I need to understand to really get what's going on?

Ron wrote:
The steps of rules-consultation, either in the text or internally, per unit of established imaginary content.

Hiya,

I want to make a fairly subtle point clear, though. And I'm not sure whether I can articulate it correctly the first time, so bear in mind we may have to triangulate through dialogue.

This is not quite how I've looked at it in the past and should not be taken as plain-and-simple Ron Says. These are some of the issues that need to be considered to refine the concept a little.

Points of Contact concerns using specific applications (techniques) of the system. It does not actually concern looking up the rules, although the latter is clearly related to it. In other words, looking up the rules in order to follow or critique them is a form of Points of Contact, but a fairly obvious and crude form, and Points of Contact is a broader concept, including more things.

A group who never looks up the rules because they know them (and their modifications) so well is still utilizing all the Points of Contact for the system. This is one of the reasons why "rules-light" is a useless term, because this group will consider their system to be light (i.e. painless) despite its many procedural contortions.

I also want to remind people that rules are textual and system is procedural. Rules are what the books say or what we've formally agreed upon about those books. System is what's actually done during play. Points of Contact is ultimately about system.

So the key issue about Points of Contact is whether they change in nature, whether they force a "stop" in the process of play, whether they are familiar, and so on. A system with high Points of Contact requires more cognitive shifts of attention regarding "how we do this," as you go along. It is often associated with sudden changes in scale in the SIS that are supposed to be equally and consistently formalized, such as considering who's standing where, and then considering whether someone's finger slips on the trigger. A system with low Points of Contact is clearer about when we do or do not employ specific features of the system, and those features tend to be very much alike throughout play - so we might not know what is going to be resolved, but when we get there, we are fully prepped to resolve it the same as we did before.

As I often say, so-called freeform play is actually incredibly high in Points of Contact for this very reason, as every contribution to the SIS is being vetted not only for how it works for everyone else, but also readjusted in whether it's OK for that person to contribute at that time. It's extremely prone to subtle Calvinballing, enforced through approval and disapproval rather than through shouting out rules.

I do not want to imply or get into a High-Bad, Low-Good way of looking at this. In some games, for instance, a totally different subsystem for (say) magic stuff works very well, and that Contacts-based shift is a fruitful part of play. Or in another, the same might be said for combat and movement among spacecraft as opposed to among people.

H'm! Looking over this, I'm pretty comfortable with it, less tentative than when I first started writing. Larry, how's it working for you?

Best,
Ron

Ron,

I'm understanding Points of Contact in terms of layers of abstraction that don't quite sync up with the Big Model. Points of contact being anyplace a player has to grab a chunk of System to interact with the SIS. In an information science idiom, a point of contact is like a handle a program has to grab before it can pass some data to another device. That sound about right with you?

I understand that it doesn't directly correlate to handling time, since a group of players may have the system down pat and not need to touch the book. Although it seems to suggest a greater learning curve to novice players.

It is often associated with sudden changes in scale in the SIS that are supposed to be equally and consistently formalized, such as considering who's standing where, and then considering whether someone's finger slips on the trigger. A system with low Points of Contact is clearer about when we do or do not employ specific features of the system, and those features tend to be very much alike throughout play - so we might not know what is going to be resolved, but when we get there, we are fully prepped to resolve it the same as we did before.

I do not want to imply or get into a High-Bad, Low-Good way of looking at this. In some games, for instance, a totally different subsystem for (say) magic stuff works very well, and that Contacts-based shift is a fruitful part of play. Or in another, the same might be said for combat and movement among spacecraft as opposed to among people.

Ron,

As I understand the use of the word system here, it's the procedure by which events are resolved during play.  As such it is not the written rules themselves but how they are used by the group - and that includes techniques like GM fiat (even on small levels like "I'm not going to bother rolling a survival check for that orc you took to -5 hp").

But if we're talking about system in that sense, aren't we contacting it at every moment we play, regardless of what it is?  When a group is playing D&D, and the DM says "Behind the door you see an orc guarding a pie", that may or may not be rules, but it is system (since part of the system is that the DM is the creator and arbiter of the world and the player's situation, as opposed to that being a shared responsibility as it might be in other games).

From what you say above, though, it sounds like you are suggesting that a system like D&D 3e, which has a fairly unified roll-under system for resolving most situations, and then has a much more detailed (and different) systems for combat and magic, is a system with high Points of Contact, whereas Wushu, which uses the same mechanic for literally everything, would be a system with low PoC.

Assuming that I've got that right: is it the level of detail of the D&D system that causes it to be high Points of Contact?  Or is it the change in the mechanics that causes it to be so? And if it's the latter, are they more like Points of Change rather than Points of Contact?

Jeff

My explanation can be found in My Unified Theory of Exploration.  The last four posts contain an edit about unstructured drama resolution.  There are further details in the parent thread, but those initial zilchplay threads were very heavy.

My definition of Points of Contact hasn't changed with time (at least not that I've noticed). I defer to Ron as to whether or not that still agrees with the big model.

Hello,

Larry, you wrote,

As a side note, I'm a little sad that "vanilla" and "pervy" are not the terms du jour. It took me forever to figure out how the hell pervy could be an antonym for vanilla. When I did figure it out, I was terribly amused by what a cute piece of gamer de-programming Edwards had come up with. Oh well.

... it sounds like you are suggesting that a system like D&D 3e, which has a fairly unified roll-under system for resolving most situations, and then has a much more detailed (and different) systems for combat and magic, is a system with high Points of Contact, whereas Wushu, which uses the same mechanic for literally everything, would be a system with low PoC.

Assuming that I've got that right: is it the level of detail of the D&D system that causes it to be high Points of Contact? Or is it the change in the mechanics that causes it to be so? And if it's the latter, are they more like Points of Change rather than Points of Contact?

Ron wrote:
"Level of detail" is unfortunately a difficult term; it's not entirely clear whether a person is saying a rules-set is detailed because it's promoting high Points of Contact, or vice versa.

For instance, let's say we were playing AD&D2 and knew the rulebook really well - and our System was close to that but with some mods of our own. So far so good? Well, how often do we "refer to System" in order to "play right"? Whether we're consulting and confirming our shared understanding in purely verbal terms, or looking at our three-ring binder of rules mods, or looking at the book itself, the point is that we have to do something mentally just to be sure.

Ron,

Does a game written clearly have fewer Points of Contact than the exact same game (in terms of System) written poorly? 

That is, do you consider the conveyance of the System to be System in itself?
Is the System an ideal that the text references, but never expresses perfectly?

I'm going to take the risk that I'm all wet here, because honestly points of contact has always been a bit unclear to me in application as well.

All systems rely to some degree on authorities. These include rules, character papers, die rolls, setting descriptions, attributes, skill ratings, target numbers, skill descriptions, resources--all technically external to the shared imagined space.

A point of contact, if I understand it aright, is a moment in play in which an authority is referenced, internally or externally. Thus if we think, John's character's strength is 27, and that's pretty high, so we'll decide he can do this, we probably have a point of contact, whereas if we think John's character is strong enough to do this, without reference to the authority of what his strength score actually is but rather because it is our impression of the John's character, we probably do not have a point of contact.

Again, I may be all wrong on this, and if I am I hope someone will tell me why.

--M. J. Young

Hmm. So over the course of this thread I've gone from uncertain to confident to a little muddy.

So I'm wrapping my head around Jason's theory...

cruciel wrote:
Points of contact are simply how often this process is regulated by mechanics.  Most of the time the process cycles through in a moment.  For example, "Bob picks up his cup of coffee."  This still had to pass through Conception -> Proposal -> Validation -> Integration, but because the Validation mechanism was simply the unstated phrase "No argument here, go ahead." instead of a mechanical element, we can say that event had low points of contact.  This applies to phases other than Validation (The Integration of Bob picking up his coffee is also not mechanically regulated) - Validation is just the easiest to example.

...

The points of contact help maintain the Fidelity threshold by continually Validating statements before Integration.  Points of contact also help maintain 'variable control' in the same fashion.

Hi Ron,

Quick stupid question here: The example of shifts between something like where someones standing, to whether their finger slips off the trigger. The shift in System use, it makes me think of something like putting away one procedure manual then pulling out another and opening up that one. Kind of like if I'm playing a computer game and then my partner asks what we need to get when we go shopping, I have to mentally withdraw from the game 'folder' to the shopping 'folder'.

Is that close to what the term 'points of contact' means?

I don't know if this helps, but back in June of last year I offered the following in this thread

Silmenume wrote: I think, that POC like CA is something that is expressed during play, not something inherent or created by something the publisher did.  Like M.J. pointed out earlier, everything that goes into play must run through system.  So the question becomes what then is special about a moment in the game that is called a Point of Contact.  My feeling is that a Point of Contact is any moment in play where the negotiation of credibility becomes overt.

If there is lots of contest/negotiation over credibility then the game is high points of contact.  If there is very little contest/negotiation over credibility then the game is low points of contact.  We only become aware of the negotiation process when the ratification process is anything but silent consent.  I would thus say focus on overt negotiation of credibility is where you'll find your points of contact.

Jay,

I can dig that. So points of contact include anytime someone:

• Says, "Roll for that."
• Cites a rule.
• Says, "No, I think it should be..."

I'm trying to identify more of these "ephemera level" events.

My read on this is that a Point of Contact is whenever the focus of play shifts from inside the SIS to outside it.

That is, any time you pause in adding to the SIS to decide if you can/should/will be allowed to make the change you want based on System.

Examples for us to disagree about:
There is an orc. I want his treasure. I announce, "Bob sneaks up behind the orc, kills him and takes his treasure."
No PoC, I was just narrating based on what I wanted to do.

There is an orc. Bob is established a sneaky guy who has killed many orcs who likes treasure. Bob should easily be able to kill the orc and take his treasure. I announce, "Bob sneaks up behind the orc, kills him and takes his treasure."
No PoC. There were considerations as to what I could do, but they were based entierly on things that exist in the SIS. I was in the 'game world' playing my game.

There is an orc. Bob is a 20th level Assasin and orcs are 1 hit die monsters. There is no point in rolling this since I completely outclass it. I announce, "Bob sneaks up behind the orc, kills him and takes his treasure."
PoC. The rules were referenced to see if the action would be accepted.

There is an orc. I want to kill the orc, but Jake is playing an orc and he is trying to establish tht orcs are really tough fighters. If I just run up an kill him, Jake will raise a fuss. I'll sneak up instead, that will probably mollify him. I announce, "Bob sneaks up behind the orc, kills him and takes his treasure."
PoC. In this case, there is a significat Social Contract element to the System being used. There was a shift from 'wanting to kill the orc' and 'figuring out if I will be allowed to kill the orc'.

That's my take on it anyway. I didn't include any examples of external negotiation because that seemed clearly to be a PoC.

So, Universalis would be high PoC because every time you try to add to the SIS you ahve to be concerned with coin management and whether the other players are liekly to challenge you. Whereas, My Life with Master (I think, having only read about the game), you use mechanics to determine a general outcome, but then have pretty much free riegn to narrate a whole scene.

Am I even close? :)

Hi Larry,

A player may curb his proposal in anticipation of a point of contact, but those thoughts are not "referencing" the POC themselves.  A point of contact only occurs when the player proposes something to the group.  The group process then references any Points of Contact. 

Alan,

I'm not sure what that has to do with my posts to this thread. Perhaps you are replying to "daHob?"

Silmenume wrote:

Silmenume wrote: My feeling is that a Point of Contact is any moment in play where the negotiation of credibility becomes overt.

Right On!!!

Larry wrote:
Jay,

I can dig that. So points of contact include anytime someone:

• Says, "Roll for that."
• Cites a rule.
• Says, "No, I think it should be..."

I'm trying to identify more of these "ephemera level" events.

In case anyone cares, all of the recent posts are making a hell of a lot of sense to me.

Best,
Ron

M. wrote: So I agree. A point of contact is a moment during which we are citing authorities in support of individual credibility to determine whose version of the shared imagined space is accepted. If it's just said and accepted without reference to anything outside the shared imagined space, it's not a point of contact. If we have a connection to something outside the shared imagined space that is used to determine whose description or perception of what happens is accepted, that's where a point of contact has occurred.

It took me a moment to figure out what you were after, Callan.

I think on reflection that it's not; it is a distinction between first person play and third person play, I think, but referencing what someone said that way is not a point of contact so much as a means of interacting with the shared imagined space directly.

Both statements amount to [I wash my clothes in the fountain] [which Jim just described]; both reference something in the shared imagined space. In the latter case, it is being explicitly recognized that this is that particular object, as viewed from the outside of the shared imagined space. I see the argument that we are appealing to "what Jim described" as an external authority, but I think we are rather appealing to an object established in the Shared Imagined Space that happens to have a metagame label on it, "Described by Jim".

I can also see a slight change in this that would be a point of contact:
Bob: "Last week Jim described a fountain. According to my notes, it is here, it is large enough to bathe in it, and the water is clean. I wash my clothes in that fountain."

At that point the point of contact is created by reference to the notes, which are an authority concerning what has been established in the shared imagined space.

So maybe your case is one of those "the rabbit or the duck" pictures. It really depends on whether we are referencing an object in the shared imagined space that is most quickly identified as "the one Jim described" or whether we are referencing an authority that amounts to "the description Jim gave" to establish the existence of the fountain.

Have I muddled the matter entirely?

--M. J. Young

No, not muddled. I'll try and get across the emphasis I wanted (in the way I imagined it being said).

PoC:
Jim describes a fountain.
Bob "You know that fountain Jim described? Because of that I can go and wash my blood stained clothes in it"

Or even more explicitly:

Bob "Because Jim described a fountain, I go and wash my blood stained clothes in it"

This is the intent the first PoC example should have contained. The wording could be taken to be something else. If I was immersion inclined I might only read it as just an SIS references, I think.