It appears I have some misconceptions about GNS, as evidenced by something I said in http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=16217.0;topicseen.  Anyone care to illuminate me?  Thanks much!

Hello!

I'll start by clarifying that my post wasn't a challenge. I inferred that you did want to talk about Creative Agenda stuff, and invited you here so we could do that and not screw up Jay's thread. If I'm wrong, and you really don't want to get all this terminological stuff bleated at you, then let me know and we can just have a beer.

Assuming the former, though, here goes.

1. There is no triangle. That's more than just a weird little statement, because a triangle implies common ground among the three corners, and indeed, a necessary connection. People used to talk about the "Threefold Triangle" and that imagery and its resulting implications sometimes creep over into talking about my stuff.

It doesn't apply to my stuff (the Big Model), though, because Creative Agenda is a very distinctive thing - as I've written recently, it's like the difference between one guy who rides his motorcycle to work and back, and another guy who suspends a motorcycle upside down, surrounds it with bronzed cabbages, and gives it a name like "Cosmos." You could say they both like motorcycles, and you could even say they both conceivably could sell their motorcycles. But to say they exist on two ends of any sort of spectrum with common aesthetic grounds of "what to do with a motorcycle" is pretty dumb - or a person would have to be so PoMo to justify it, that I'm not interested in talking to that person.

You could make a triangle out of three guys who ride their motorcycles differently - a racer, a guy who commutes to work, and a guy who pretties up the bike most of the time and tools it around a little at shows. But to me, taking that to aesthetic and creative stuff like role-playing, that's just one CA with a variety of techniques/approaches.

2. Working off your post (and let me know if my quoting is butchering it),

I don't think it would be any undue burden to assume that your typical gamer monkey could consider the elements of a game in both competitive (Gamist) and explorationist (Simulationist) terms simultaneously.

... I think it's hyperbole to state that striking off to one of the GNS poles is the only way to have 'good' roleplay.

In fact, taking such an approach to extremes will actually delimit meaning to such a degree that it closes down new opportunities for new meaning.  I'd much rather have a little G-and-S in my Narrativist gaming experience, if you will.  I don't want to 'stay on target' on just one interpretation of elements within the SIS; I want to play with them, look at them in continually changing light, and see what different facets and subtleties I can find.

For a given instance of play, the three modes are exclusive in application. When someone tells me that their role-playing is "all three," what I see from them is this: features of (say) two of the goals appear in concert with, or in service to, the main one, but two or more fully-prioritized goals are not present at the same time. So in the course of Narrativist or Simulationist play, moments or aspects of competition that contribute to the main goal are not Gamism. In the course of Gamist or Simulationist play, moments of thematic commentary that contribute to the main goal are not Narrativism. In the course of Narrativist or Gamist play, moments of attention to plausibility that contribute to the main goal are not Simulationism.

Ah.  So the Agendas are now wholly divergent and exclusive, eh?  I must say, I find that a little sad.  I much preferred the triangle, with its attempt to describe many different kinds of play along a two-dimensional spectrum, rather than an attempt to categorize many different kinds of play into three rough groups.  This disturbingly looks like a trend towards dogma to me.

Let me see if I've got this right, then: Creative Agenda is an agreed-upon common goal created at the Social Contract level, intentionally and explicitly negotiated by the players around the table to guide play that occurs thereafter?  Or am I stating it too strongly?

What's the status of Hybrids, then?

No. What you seem to be missing is that Ron's model describes observable and theoretically supported human motivation towards play. The point is not to describe or categorize play styles or anything like that, but rather to pinpoint the purpose of why you play in this particular instance. This has nothing to do with labelling play styles, and it's not particularly rough or fine either. It's not even an abstraction, because there's no approximation to it at all. Consider: how, exactly, could you have a Creative Agenda half-way between Gamism and Narrativism as they are defined in Ron's model? That's like saying that I'm eating a fruit that's half apple, half orange.

You don't look at some play and say that it's 47% gamist or something like that. Rather, you recognize that humans have a motivation and drive to compete, and therefore there is gamism. Then the problem becomes to perceive who has it and when. If you can't perceive whether something is gamist or narrativist, that doesn't mean that it's partly both. That just means that you don't have direct access to that person's brain!

Joshua wrote:
Let me see if I've got this right, then: Creative Agenda is an agreed-upon common goal created at the Social Contract level, intentionally and explicitly negotiated by the players around the table to guide play that occurs thereafter?  Or am I stating it too strongly?

Hello,

Eero's correct in all of his points, especially the part about explicit negotiation. I have no idea where you got that from what I wrote.

Your comments about dogma and so on lead me to think that you'd really rather be talking about styles and details and techniques, and that distinctions among CAs are simply out of your zone of interest. When you say "kinds of play," I think you're talking about techniques - and yes, there is of course an immense and multivariate spectrum there.

Have you seen the first couple of pages of the Provisional Glossary, in the articles section? Despite the title, the article isn't a huge list for memorization. The first section is a complete description of the Big Model using a minimum of terms. Maybe that'll help you see where your interest in styles and techniques and my terms for CA are simply different topics entirely.

Best,
Ron

I think you're right in regards to my disinterest in using the CAs as currently defined, but if you don't mind, I'd like to pester you (and whoever else wants to reply) a bit more so that I at least understand the term, whether or not I make much use of them.

The provisional glossary's definition of CA -- The aesthetic priorities and any matters of imaginative interest regarding role-playing.-- makes no reference to a Reward Cycle, which I've seen a couple times as being touted as central to the determination or definition of a CA in any Actual Play.  I understand that this is an ever-developing beast, so by no means am I criticizing or demanding an update; I'm just explaining the sources of my misunderstanding as I see it.

Here are my current questions:
Is a Creative Agenda determined before play begins, or is it only something that can be determined after a complete reward cycle has been completed?  That is, is it prescriptive or descriptive?
The glossary says there are three 'currently recognized' CAs -- are you still holding out the possibility that other CAs exist?  Alternately, is 'Gamism' a CA, or are there many Gamist CAs?
Is the origin of these terms observed behavior (we have seen people play in three ways), or are they more a matter of design and function of role-playing games (we see that every RPG has three pirmary aspects)?
Are reward cycles mutually exclusive, incapable of overlap or running concurrently?
What is the status of the term Hybrid?

And probably a question Ron is loathe to answer: what are the differences between the current Creative Agenda and the old-school modes?

If I should split any of these up into separate threads, I will; I just doubt starting six threads all at once would be a good idea!

Hello,

I actually did address why the reward system isn't mentioned in the definition in a recent thread; I'll hunt it up for you.

Now for your questions, very briefly - more later.

Is a Creative Agenda determined before play begins, or is it only something that can be determined after a complete reward cycle has been completed?  That is, is it prescriptive or descriptive?

The glossary says there are three 'currently recognized' CAs -- are you still holding out the possibility that other CAs exist?  Alternately, is 'Gamism' a CA, or are there many Gamist CAs?

Is the origin of these terms observed behavior (we have seen people play in three ways), or are they more a matter of design and function of role-playing games (we see that every RPG has three pirmary aspects)?

Are reward cycles mutually exclusive, incapable of overlap or running concurrently?

What is the status of the term Hybrid?

And probably a question Ron is loathe to answer: what are the differences between the current Creative Agenda and the old-school modes?

O-Kay!  Coherence is defined as fulfilling a CA.  There are currently three recognized CAs.  Therefore Coherent Play is, by definition, following one of the three recognized CAs.  I think that was the basis of my problem understanding everyone's Greek.  The modes of the threefold model were descriptive of all play; Creative Agendas are descriptive of only their corner of the roleplaying world -- that's the landmark difference that I had missed.

So Hybrids are vanishingly rare and fragile -- is that another observation (not a a posteriori conclusion)?  Do you hazard to speculate why that is?

Hiya,

So Hybrids are vanishingly rare and fragile -- is that another observation (not a a posteriori conclusion)?  Do you hazard to speculate why that is?