I broke this off from Xenopulse’s (Christian) thread Complications Instead of Failure as I felt this would be too far out of the original subject matter.  A link to the post I am responding to is here.

Hey Jason!

Jason wrote: I don't see a conflict between concessions and bricolage either, but I'm willing to accept that's because I probably don't get what exactly is meant by bricolage.  I don't see anything unique in bricolage from roleplaying in general, and I don't think pure bricolage is possible. …

Jason wrote: …Someone has to be introducing new elements (engineering) or all you'll get is unguided group meditation (or less harshly, Walt's Zilchplay concept).  I don't see why this specific method of introducing new elements impedes such play, when other methods (which must be happening if we are roleplaying) do not?

That's cool, Jay. I'll just set it up for you again and you can whack it off the tee.

First, I note that you refer to "the GM" as the person who overtly introduces new objects into play. In the spirit of the other thread and Forge discussion, I think it might be worth asking if "the GM" is a specific person, or if "the GM" instead refers to someone whom the bricoleur stands in relation to.

You also mention that the bricoleur can "propose" new entailments, and my question is, what determines which entailments get accepted?

In a related question, how can you tell the difference between an entailment and a "new object"?

(Right now I'm thinking that a critical observer can't really tell the difference. All he can do is observe that the participants sort things into one category or the other; he might also be able to gain some insight into the process including its political, social, formal, etc. aspects.)

Well, heya Jay!

By "not unique from role-playing in general" I actually meant "present in Nar and Gam", which I admit wasn't very clear.  Bricolage appears to me to be just one of the fundamental ways in which people interact with the SIS.  People can modify existing elements or create new ones - both actions occur in any role-playing.  So, I suppose I was saying that bricolage is part of Exploration (if we are talking about Exploration as a process and not a collection of objects).  I wouldn't say it was the whole though, because engineering is also part of the process.

By elements I did mean exploration elements, like situation and character.  Though I didn't have a scope in mind, so that could mean a whole new character or simply an aspect of a character that was previously undefined (like what their sixth birthday party was like).

I was going to start talking about ring species, the non-existence of opportunity costs, induction/deduction, negative definitions of Sim, how meta-game concerns are techniques and not agendas, and all sorts of other wackiness that might have gone somewhere... but I think I should check my understanding of bricolage instead:

This is an actual play example from last session...

The previous few sessions went like so:  The characters went to this planet where a gateway to an under/mirror world sprung up and had to fetch someone from the underside.  There was much darkness and boating.  There was a little quarreling over fruit.  It all ended up all being a strange spin on Christianity - if the underside denizens found out about the normal world then the devil would make with the apocalypse.

At the beginning of the session I had to decide what my character would do.  Try to close the portal?  or let the situation lie? 

The next GM was ready to go, and a couple players would've tried to set me on fire with their brains if I started introducing more conflicts.  I wasn't terribly worried about catching fire, but I was also ready for it to end (even though it was quite a bit of fun).  The story had already climaxed, so play would have been pretty weak if we'd tried to pick it back up.  I had my decision.  I needed to let it lie.  The choice was made for both social and dramatic reasons.

So, I set myself to the difficult task of motivating my character to let it lie.  I decided that she wanted to close the portal, so that there was no risk to the locals, but she would not because it was the only path to a world that wasn't under the thumb of an evil god.  She couldn't bring herself to extinguish hope even if it would ensure safety.  In the processes of justifying this viewpoint I expanded the concept that the god of the sea (the devil) and the underworld where the same entity.  The locals had made similar statements, such as referring to the god of the sea as the sea itself.  My expansion of the concept was that the god of the sea made the world, and that hope could not exist in a realm created and ruled by an evil god.

I used only existing elements of my character.  I had to make up new elements about the world, but they grew directed out of the existing material.  I had meta-game reasons.  It was obviously Nar. 

Bricolage or engineering?  It looks like both to me, though mostly bricolage.

Hi, Jason. Um...

Jason wrote: ring species

ewilen wrote:
Hi, Jason. Um...

Jason wrote: ring species

What?

About your example, I don't understand--are you saying that your character decided to let it lie after all because she realized that the god of the sea (the devil) had created the underworld, and thus the underworld was not a path to hope?

Personally, I think it sounds like engineering, because one of the things you had to make up was "This is a good justification for why my character acted (believed/was motivated) in that way."

Ring species...okay, thanks.

If I understand correctly, you're saying that the people, in play, couldn't tell if you were engineering or bricoling. You took stuff in the SIS and used it, unaltered, to create something new in the SIS: your character's actions and, possibly, publicly stated conclusions and intentions.

But since you were after all engineering in your head, I have two ways of looking at things within Jay's paradigm.

1) You were GMing/engineering, and in fact your GMing style was a form of intuitive continuity ("no myth") without the knowledge of the other players.

2) You were bricoling, but only if we take bricolage as applying specifically to objects within the SIS.

ewilen wrote:
Ring species...okay, thanks.

If I understand correctly, you're saying that the people, in play, couldn't tell if you were engineering or bricoling. You took stuff in the SIS and used it, unaltered, to create something new in the SIS: your character's actions and, possibly, publicly stated conclusions and intentions.

But since you were after all engineering in your head, I have two ways of looking at things within Jay's paradigm.

1) You were GMing/engineering, and in fact your GMing style was a form of intuitive continuity ("no myth") without the knowledge of the other players.

2) You were bricoling, but only if we take bricolage as applying specifically to objects within the SIS.

Jason wrote:
like its dirty little cousins Stance...

Jason,

If you haven't read Victor's threads on Dethroning the SIS and Shared Imagined Space, Shared Text (particularly the latter) I think they might be worth a look. I'm sure there are other threads including some started by Chris Lehrich, as well some articles by John Kim ("Story and Narrative Paradigm in RPG's" and others). The reason I raise these is that there is a tendency in some Forge discourse to treat the "stuff" outside the SIS in a sort of undifferentiated manner. These threads and articles address the "stuff" and break down its structure and dynamics, shining light on categories such as private imaginings and judgments as well as public utterances which aren't "officially" part of the "game world". There may be contexts in which these distinctions are irrelevent or could even be considered illusory, but in other contexts, such as when we're focusing on the interaction between individual aesthetics/psychologies, they're highly relevant.

In plain terms, I'm not sure I completely understand what Jay, or Chris, or Claude Levi-Strauss mean by bricolage...but I think I can tell the difference between analyzing my character and engineering him or her. Even if that is an illusion, it's a "real illusion", and we should be able to turn our inquiry toward questions such as how such an illusion comes about, and what can be done to foster the illusion (if it's aesthetically desirable).

--Elliot

Ok.  Elliot’s first up cuz he responded first!

ewilen wrote: First, I note that you refer to "the GM" as the person who overtly introduces new objects into play. In the spirit of the other thread and Forge discussion, I think it might be worth asking if "the GM" is a specific person, or if "the GM" instead refers to someone whom the bricoleur stands in relation to.

Valamir wrote: What does it take to realize the potential Conflict in a situation?

1) At least one player must be interested in the situation and committed to seeing the situation change.  The engine for that change in most role-playing games is the player’s character.

2) The situation must involve adversity.  The change that the player desires to see occur cannot happen without effort or sacrifice. Typically it is the player’s character that experiences the effort or sacrifice.

3) For a Conflict to be relevant there must be consequences that alter the SiS for both success and failure.  Whatever the outcome, once a Character gets involved, the SiS will be changed.  There must be something at stake.

It is possible to have a situation resolve in a manner that changes the SiS but is not a Conflict because there is no adversity.  For instance, take any background event involving solely NPCs run by the GM, or any situation which is proposed and resolved by the same player.  If the same player is representing both the adversity and the force for change then there can be no conflict because both sides are ultimately in agreement (being run by the same person).  There may be the illusion of conflict.  The single player may pretend to be opposed to himself, but ultimately there is no real adversity.

ewilen wrote: In a related question, how can you tell the difference between an entailment and a "new object"?

clehrich wrote: We’ve said that particular things have entailments constituted by their intrinsic properties and their prior uses in bricolage…

clehrich wrote: And to be clear, a myth or a ritual []is the machine.  It is the result of such a process.  The concrete objects are things in nature, like flowers and animals and such.

Underlining added by me.

clehrich wrote: You also mention that the bricoleur can "propose" new entailments, and my question is, what determines which entailments get accepted?

clehrich wrote: We ask, “Is the structure of this thing analogous to the structure of (part of) my CA?”  And “Is the structure of this thing analogous to the structure of (part of) my Social Contract?”  We can answer this question immediately, because the way we got that thing into the game in the first place was by understanding it as a structure, as range of possibilities rather than an iron, so we’ve already done the structural work.  We just say, “structure A, structure B: are they close?”  Sort of like saying, “this is blue, that’s blue, they’re both blue.”  For the same reason as we can see that both are blue, or both are trees, or both are mechanics, we can also see that this mechanic will not violate CA without ever posing the question directly.

Hey, Jay, I'm going to have to think about your answers later but for now I just want to clarify that one of the above quotes is me, not Chris. ("What determines which entailments get accepted?") Just so that nobody gets confused...

Regards,

Elliot

ewilen wrote:
Jason,

If you haven't read Victor's threads on Dethroning the SIS and Shared Imagined Space, Shared Text (particularly the latter) I think they might be worth a look. I'm sure there are other threads including some started by Chris Lehrich, as well some articles by John Kim ("Story and Narrative Paradigm in RPG's" and others). The reason I raise these is that there is a tendency in some Forge discourse to treat the "stuff" outside the SIS in a sort of undifferentiated manner. These threads and articles address the "stuff" and break down its structure and dynamics, shining light on categories such as private imaginings and judgments as well as public utterances which aren't "officially" part of the "game world". There may be contexts in which these distinctions are irrelevant or could even be considered illusory, but in other contexts, such as when we're focusing on the interaction between individual aesthetics/psychologies, they're highly relevant.

In plain terms, I'm not sure I completely understand what Jay, or Chris, or Claude Levi-Strauss mean by bricolage...but I think I can tell the difference between analyzing my character and engineering him or her. Even if that is an illusion, it's a "real illusion", and we should be able to turn our inquiry toward questions such as how such an illusion comes about, and what can be done to foster the illusion (if it's aesthetically desirable).

Sorry about the mix-up Elliot… and thanks for the clarification!  All that cutting and pasting is bound to gum up at some point or another.

Hey Jason,

Jason wrote: I'm actually rather preoccupied with how to create similarity among the perceived events that exist in each individual player's heads - enough similarity that when those players "touch" the SIS they do so at the same point.  The bricolage/engineering dichotomy seems to be specifically concerned with how elements in the SIS and molded are moved about, so I think that intent is simply outside its scope.

Jason wrote: My thinking is:  cliche is to genre, as entailment is to myth.  In other words:  genre is akin to myth, and the use of genre is bricolage.  So a very common example of bricolage in role-playing is the use of genre.

Silmenume wrote: You are half right.  The thing is that the bricolage/engineering-analogy does reach into thinking processes.  At one level both “processes” are methodologies of knowing.  The basic difference between the two, as I understand it, is that the bricoleur (such as the myth maker) can only play with memes using tools are already available to him and deals with the “odd fittings” as an intrinsic part of the process while the “engineer,” if he has an idea that is not readily represented by what tools already exist, will create a new tool specifically designed to address that need and only that need.  In a round about way one can say that the engineer is actually paring down any entailments before the tool is used while the bricoleur tries to find ways, using already existing tools, to make the entailments manageable while doing so in an aesthetically pleasing way.  In Sim terms the aesthetically pleasing part is the wow factor while the already existing tools include the entirety of Character history and Setting history (with Mechanics sitting in there in an oddly uncomfortable sort of way).  The intent of both means (bricolage and engineering) are the same, but how they go about creating “knowing” are very different.

I’ve spent some time thinking this over and I’m not getting it.  I think part of it stems from not being sure what is meant by “genre” and “cliché.”  For example, bricolage is a process while genre is a quality or thing depending on the definition.  One could possibly say that Genre is very loosely analogous to Setting (specifically culture) and like culture does provide a background of meanings that seed the mythic bricolage process.  However, culture (or in the case of Sim – the Dream) is a product of the mythic bricolage style process as people try and make sense of the physical world and their relationship and/or place in it.

So, Mister Lee, we meet again!

Jason wrote: I don't disagree that differences in thinking are involved in bricolage/engineering, just that the behavior, the process, is really what bricolage refers to.

Jason wrote: When I say bricolage seems like a Technique, I say so with a certain amount of discomfort.  That seems like the correct classification within the Big Model, but I don't feel the concept fits well into the model.  Much of the stuff Chris went into doesn't map to the Big Model well.  It's not suppose to.

Jason wrote: I don't think bricolage will provide an identify for Sim.  From what I can see, it doesn't meet the criteria for a Creative Agenda nor is it a process unique from Nar or Gam.

Jason wrote: The concept of meta-game free play is just fine, but within the Big Model that classifies as a Technique and not a Creative Agenda.  I also don't think meta-game free and bricolage are all that related.  There is always a purpose, a need, of some kind (an agenda if you will).

Jason wrote: Concessions can be built from existing material, just like my hope example.

Silmenume wrote:
So, Mister Lee, we meet again!

Well, yes and no.  Because the “process (or behavior)” of bricolage does exhibit a distinct behavior from that of an engineering based process to achieve similar goals (a working solution to a problem) it follows, ipso facto, that bricolage uses a different methodology of thinking as well.  However, I must take some blame for not being entirely clear (of perhaps just plain lazy) for not using the full term, “mythic bricolage” or “mythic style bricolage;” which does carry some very important additional connotations.

I’m not sure I should speak on Chris’ behalf, but if you look at his Bricolage APPLIED thread he very explicitly marries bricolage with many concepts of the Big Model.  However, I too believe that bricolage does not fit well with the Model – as it stands.  My preliminary thoughts right now are something along the lines of –

[snip]

I am sure they can be, but that wasn’t my point.  My point was that the players, as opposed to the GM, are NOT the ones building the concessions/entailments in Sim.  Building concessions is an engineering process.  That is the players would be creating their own fallout.  The methodology of bricolage is such that the players must deal with the fallout as it is exists.  They must make their choices with the costs (as it were) as they are.  This is analogous to the bricoleur scavenging for his parts and having to make do with what he has on hand as opposed to milling and machining a part to meet his specific need; which is an engineering process.  So, yes, concessions could be built from existing material – but the critical point is that the players are not the ones building the concessions.  This is definitional of bricolage.

Hey,

I realized I should note that I know there were a lot of other topics addressed in this thread.  I'm not trying to blow them off.  I'm just trying to narrow down to where I see the difference of opinion - the Big Model versus bricolage as it relates to priority versus process.  I think we might be cluttering ourselves up a bit and adding to the confusion. 

Also, it's probably not worth worrying about "mythic style bricolage" versus "bricolage".  I'm just assuming we are talking about "RPG style bricolage", so any use of the word "bricolage" reads pretty much the same to me.  I'm rather "big picture" in perceptions.  For example, I can see the conceptual distiction between Premise (Forge definition) and theme, but I don't think it's an important distinction; theme doesn't happen without Premise, and even more confounding is that Premise is often back-filled after the theme has already been revealed.  If you feel there is a concrete tangible distinction between the three then set me straight, otherwise it's all "RPG style bricolage" to me.

Hey Jason,

Sorry about the slow reply, but I’ve been doing more ruminatin’ than postin’ lately.

Jason wrote: Hmmm.  We seem to have reached the point of talking in circles and splitting hairs.  I'm not sure if we can get any farther, so we might just have to agree to disagree.  Let's see...

Jason wrote: My hope example was intended to illustrate that you can have the same result, the same bricolage behavior, from an engineering or bricolage mindset.  I am not saying that there is no difference in the intent/mindself/thinking methodology/etc.  I am saying that the concept of bricolage refers to a process, not the thought behind that process.  If bricolage is meant to refer to both unified then the distinction between bricolage and engineering falls apart.  Unifying intent and action into one concept requires intent A to only yield action A and intent B to only yield action B.  Once A can yield B and B can yield A you can no longer say that the intent and action are unified, so the unified definition becomes meaningless.

clehrich wrote: Bricolage APPLIED (finally!)… Suppose we step back from the actual machine for a minute and look at it like the engineer.  Yes, that thing there is an iron, but from the perspective of the machine in which it is placed it is really a meaning: it means “local heat, heavy, etc.”  We may only be using “local heat,” but it’s still heavy.  But from this perspective it isn’t “iron.”  So the structure of “iron” put this way is (Local Heat)&(Heavy).  If we look at a whole big elaborate machine, we’ll see a long column of such meanings intersecting.  We’ll also see some apparently contradictory meanings: because we wanted the heating thing to be light, we have both Iron (Local Heat)&(Heavy) and Helium Balloon (Really Big)&(Delicate)&(negative-Heavy).  In this machine, Heavy and negative-Heavy cancel out, so we get a light total.  You see?

The thing is, any structure like this is a horrible mess if it takes into account every single potential meaning, because every thing we use has a huge raft of potential meanings, i.e. is structured densely.  This isn’t true with engineering, because you design things to have one meaning and little else, but in bricolage you’re stuck with the vast entailments of actual things as they really are.

c wrote: A lot myths, says Lévi-Strauss, seem to begin with “What if?” when seen from this perspective. They don’t necessarily need to explain anything, though that might be a good place to start. Instead, they say, “Okay, we’ve got all this stuff hanging around and all these myths and everything spinning in the air. So what if we introduce a new situation and see what happens?” And then they kind of walk through how the machine functions, and notice that some gear over here is out of alignment when that situation comes up, and that means they have to tinker with that gear to get it to work: the Bear can’t have sex with the Eagle any more. But now that that’s happened, we immediately want to jump into other stories about Eagles and Bears, because we know for sure that a lot of tinkering is going to be necessary, and that’s fun.

…

The essential point about myth is that it isn’t exactly about anything; it is made of things, and it manipulates things, but it doesn’t really discuss things. It puts different things in all kinds of odd and unlikely complicated relations and plays with the whole mess to get more things in. And it borrows, constantly, from every other sphere of life and every other myth, to develop really interesting and sophisticated solutions to what amount to aesthetic problems.

Jason wrote: Sim cannot be misplaced within the model.  There can be no such thing as Sim play that exists outside the context of the Big Model… It is simply definitional of Sim that it is a Creative Agenda within the Big Model.

Jason wrote: Anything that is not well served by the model cannot be Sim.  …   Sim must be defined using the existing structure of the model.  That's not a bad thing about the model - it's just the nature of models.

Jason wrote: It cannot be a Creative Agenda unless it is a concept, thus a structural definition of Sim cannot be Sim because it cannot be a Creative Agenda.

Jason wrote: For something to be a Creative Agenda it has to be definable without the procedures that might associate it.  (Which is what folks around here mean when they say "Don't conflate Technique with Creative Agenda.")

Jason wrote: PS:  One of the main reasons why Sim has failed for me, and I don't bring this up normally, is that the model is designed to facilitate communication and Sim only accomplishes the opposite by causing threads to decay into talk about it instead of what the topic was to begin with.  Everything about the model, except Sim, seems like a brilliant success.

No problem Jay, I haven't been around either on account of exams.  Don't worry, you aren't being a knucklehead or a jerk or anything.  I think we are still talking passed each other.  I am a bit frustrated, so I hope I'm not being rude.  There is one thing I'd like to see if we can talk about - the hope example.  The rest I'm just going to respond in brief to, just because they deserve responses, and we should probably let them go.

*****

Regarding the Big Model...  The words concept and structure did indeed get slippery on me.  That's okay though.  We can call Creative Agendas aesthetics.  Hell, we can call them tuna fish for all I care, because it really doesn't matter.  My point was that for something to be a Creative Agenda it has to be the same kind of thing as the other Creative Agendas.  If it isn't the same kind of thing as Gam or Nar, then it cannot, simply by definition of the Creative Agenda layer, be Sim.

I think here we'll need to agree to disagree.  I think the model is complete.  Which we'll see when Ron makes the Big Model Ask Ron forum.  Even if it wasn't complete, G, N, and S no longer have any impact on the structure of the model - they are just little divisons inside the actual concept - Creative Agenda.

*****

You don't need to convince me there are different thought processes involved in engineering and bricolage.  I've been agreeing with that all along. 

*****

As for the hope example...  Well, it's Nar because I gave a crap about my character's motivations.  That's all you need for a Nar priority.  That's it.  Really.  It just snowballs from there.  It's painfully simple.  All this business about Premise, addressment, moral, ethical, whateverness is just literary criticism junk that gets piled into the definition.  It's all correct junk because of the nature of stories, but it's just analysis stuff that isn't needed for play.  However, whether or not it was Nar doesn't matter.  The Big Model itself doesn't matter for the example. 

The question is:  Was it engineering or bricolage?

Here's what I'm trying to get at (hopefully better explained).  We have two terms (bricolage and engineering) and we've been talking about two layers.  We have intent (thought process) and action (expression process).  Now, to still have two terms one of three things must be true:

1)  Our two terms refer only to action.
2)  Our two terms refer only to intent.
3)  Our two terms refer to both intent and action combined, but the relationships are exclusive.  Meaning, bricolage intent can only yeild bricolage action, and engineering intent can only yield engineering action.

If, as my hope example is intended to illustrate, engineering intent can yield bricolage action, then we must either add a third term or choose from #1 or #2.  I've been choosing #1.

Hey Jason,

Alas…I think we are going to have to agree to disagree.

Under the rubric of “Making Things” we can have both Industrial Factories and Cottage Craftsmanship.  Yes both processes “make things,” but their products and their processes are completely different.  Thus even if both were “making drinking glasses” there is a profound difference between something produced by Corning and another produced by a glass blower.  Or better yet lets use the rubric of “makes glass things.”  A Corning factory turns out drinking glasses while a glass blower might produce glass figurines.  Their means, and products are very different though they both might be motivated by analogous desires.  Just because they both make glass things does not mean they are doing the “same thing” any more than the engineering thought process and the bricolage thought process are producing the same things even though both seek to produce “knowing” (glass things – as it were).  One cannot use industrial processes to produce hand made things.  One cannot use “engineering” thinking to produce “bricolage” effects.  Certainly, I have very recently argued that bricolage can by yoked (subservient) to engineering processes, but that does not mean that the engineering process can produce bricolage effects.  That they are not “doing the same thing” is central as the Big Model is based upon process and not upon product nor upon intent.

To put it in already published game terms the picking and choosing and referencing of Spiritual Attributes is an Engineering process.  The creation of Kickers is an Engineering process.  The use of tokens in Universalis is an Engineering process.  Any meta-game currency employment is an Engineering process.  However, once this is done another process takes place, under the constraints provided by the Engineering process and that is bricolage.  This is the “playing out” of those Engineering inventions.  Bricolage is an iterative circular thought process while Engineering is linear process in that it seeks a  specific goal.  So I will have to agree to disagree with you as I choose #3.

Jason wrote: Well, it's Nar because I gave a crap about my character's motivations.  That's all you need for a Nar priority.

Jason wrote: My point was that for something to be a Creative Agenda it has to be the same kind of thing as the other Creative Agendas.  If it isn't the same kind of thing as Gam or Nar, then it cannot, simply by definition of the Creative Agenda layer, be Sim.

Jason wrote: You don't need to convince me there are different thought processes involved in engineering and bricolage.  I've been agreeing with that all along.

Fair enough.  Let's call it quits and good day.

Though, could you provide a link or hints to the thread(s) that discuss what you mention in the quote below? I would like to see how Premise was divorced from character motivation in actual play (disproved the Nar ripple effect):

Actually that is not correct, and if I recall correctly, that idea had been discussed and was debunked about a year ago – give or take.  Worrying about Character motivation is not definitional of Nar nor is it limited to Nar; Addressing the Premise question is.  So, in this matter too, I’m afraid I am going to have to agree to disagree.