I've been playtesting my materials for the Timestream game I'll be running at Southern Exposure at the end of the month. Todays game was very fun, and provided some examples of the bricolage that I think is so central to rewarding Sim play. If people want more on bricolage, shout out and I'll dig up the links.

Anyway, Timestream is pretty much impossible to play with anything resembling a set storyline. The character creation and R-map creation mechanics create a set of played characters linked by a web of Anchors, and play tends to end up revolving around one or two central anchors that bind the characters across time. Thus, the process of bricolage is critical to the actual production of plot/story/events/what have you. For Timestream in particular, the key question to "unlocking" the kind of bricolage that needs to happen in play is "What, right now, right here, would be cool?"

Now, for this game I pre-generated a set of characters and their Anchors. The players select characters, choose some options (their actual time-affecting powers, and their primary goals and obstacles to those goals), and are ready to go. One of my regulars was unable to show up today, so it was myself and two players. We're all college students and experienced role-players. I don't think its particularly relevent to my point here, but I'll be more than happy to fill out our RPG histories and personal backgrounds if need be.

Weldon picked up the artist character (Victoria), a "bleeding-edge" media artist and Temporal Manipulator from 2002 NYC. Pat chose the end-of-his-rope dock worker Thrall (Joe) from 1990 NYC. The most central Anchor to the overall R-map (6 characters in all) is Daniel, who is Joe's son and a possible patron for Victorias as-yet-unknown art.

The point during play that really "clicked" for me in terms of bricolage was this: Victoria has just saved Daniel's ass from being hauled off by Mafia polookas for an as-yet-unknown reason. Joe is being forced by his Master to track down someone named "Lambetti" in Victoria's timeframe. I cut from a scene with Victoria to Joe walking down the street, still unclear on what his Master wants him to do and trying to be proactive in some manner. I asked myself "What would be cool, right now?" I decided that a car pulled up next to Joe and a Mafia-looking palooka yells "Hey Dan, where the hell you going? We need to get to the meeting!" Over the course of the scene, we determined that (young) Joe looked just like Dan, that Dan was apparentely quite the joker ("Come on Dan, drop the act, this is serious) and that the guys in the car were going to meet Lambetti.

Click, click, click. A connexion was forged. I knew it, and I'm pretty sure the other guys knew it - of course Joe looks like Dan. Of course Dan was going to get Joe in trouble with Lambetti, whoever he was, and Lambetti would send thugs after the real Joe.

Now, this was cemented with the next scene with Joe: "Lambetti leans across the table and asks you what you're going to offer him in way of apology for what you've done to him." Ding! Obviously Pat now had to have Joe do something to piss of Lambetti. It was a good moment.

Continuity was created, not by an overarching story, or even by plot points or prepped bangs. Continuity was created, I would argue, by the process of bricoling our knowledge of the current situation and these characters with the sense, given by the game text, that these characters should and will be connected, in play, through their Anchors. This process was supported by system, both the cascading effects from character creation and actual mechanics having to do with Anchors.

I think this kind of thing happens frequently in role play, but usually on the Technique level - i.e., this GM is so good, he totally links everything that happens. I'm not going to know for sure until I see some actual play reports, but Timestream absolutely requires this kind of bricolage in order to be...well, coherent is the word I would use, but not necessary in the  Forge sense of the word. Continuous, perhaps.

As for a specific question, I would ask that, given this example, does anyone know other games that reliably support or create this kind of process of bricolage? I'd love to check them out. Other discussion questions or topics stemming from this post are totally kosher as well.   

Nathan P.:

If people want more on bricolage, shout out and I'll dig up the links.

Arturo,

Cool.

Here's the big one: Bricolage APPLIED (finally!). The groundwork is in the Ritual Discourse in Role-Playing Games article.

Also: Bricolage and Continuity and Bricolage and Play at This Is My Blog.

Also, do a search for Silmenume in the Theory and Actual Play forums for the last year, and pretty much everything that Jay posts about has something to do with bricolage.

Any other core threads that I'm missing, feel free to post.

Nathan, I'm very interested in this meme of conscious, iterative, collaborative creation.  I've got two games of my own which explore parallel tracks: first, my microgame testing ground Conquer the Horizon.  All players throw in content, and figure how to manipulate that content towards their own goals.  There's also a similar element of play in Dynasty's Freeform Setting, even though it's "just" a card game.  It looks like you've got similar principles applied to the plotline, and that's incredibly intriguing!

Capes also ends up doing this, as well: the only thing the published rules supply are some chunky archetypes, and there is no 'game prep'.  Therefore everything is developed in play, building on what's already been established.

The mental gymnastics around temporal causality loops (that is what the game is about, right?) sounds like great fun, although I wonder if everybody is "up" to doing such stuff.  Have you tried out the game with a broad range of people?  I'd be interested to know how people react to a game that more-or-less demands that they make up both cause and effect while sitting inbetween both of them.

One of the things our monkey minds are best at is making sense out of whatever we encounter.  Patterns & order get created out of whatever we see: hence, the Rorshach test, as well as movie continuity--carrying meaning over from one image to another. 

The above games, as well as Primetime Adventures, Universalis, Under the Bed, Snap,  Polaris and Breaking the Ice all benefit from & take advantage of this aspect of psychology. Collaborative games thrive upon it. We want to imbue meaning, and when everybody gets to add their input we will often plain old want to move in the direction of making connections between what we see.  It's satisfying, and sort of natural to the eye, from a creative perspective.

This is a powerful approach to game design. When you hook up the engines of everybody's creativity to the cart, we can really go places. 

The mental gymnastics around temporal causality loops (that is what the game is about, right?) sounds like great fun, although I wonder if everybody is "up" to doing such stuff.

I've never run across this word before. Bricole - to tinker (says the online French dictionary)

I would have used Gestalt Psychology terms to get at the same idea. Give people half a picture and they construct the other half out of their imaginations.

This collection of mental artifacts described in Bricolage seems a lot like what I call the matrix of information about the world that players use in Engle Matrix Games. I used to use an actual set of cards to shoe the matrix of the world until I found that I could make any argument I wanted out of the dregs of cards left over. I realized that if I could do that then why have the cards at all. People's brains supply the matrix - the scenario information I provide is the bare bones of a cue so they know where to find what they already know.

I see that I'm more influenced by German thinking than French. Kant and Hegel.

Chris Engle
Hamster Press = Engle Matrix Games

Hey Nathan!

Congrats on your play test.  Much of what you described in your first post certainly jives with my experiences.  For the last several months as I have gotten an ever increasing understanding of Sim I have finally begun to wonder (or despair - depending) if it was even possible to create and publish Sim facilitating tools/Mechanics/games.  While the idea of a relationship map is not particularly new, I find that your inclusion of it within your system to be very exciting.  Finally a Sim “design” that doesn’t focus on Mechanics but instead turns that focus to relationships.  The whole thing of mythic bricolage is observing the inherent/latent relationships and bringing them out into play while expanding upon them at the same time.  The key is that once a relationship is “made” in the SIS it cannot be “unmade” as though it never existed, however the relationship can be highly mutated.  What’s interesting to me in your efforts isn’t just the inclusion of R-Maps as an entity or thing, but rather that you’ve introduced a technique into your design that starts to facilitate the change of the thinking behaviors of the players.  IOW how things interact (what their relationships are) is what mythic style bricolage focuses on.  Right on!

The notion of Anchors is also a very good idea.  I have a friend of mine who runs occasionally who just doesn’t get the vital importance of “backstory” so we have these Characters who basically float about and are without Anchors.  Bricolage can’t start in a vacuum; it needs preexisting structures to “seed” the process.  The “seed” structures are essentially the first principles, as it were, of the process.  No structures, no bricolage.

Nathan wrote: Now, for this game I pre-generated a set of characters and their Anchors. The players select characters, choose some options (their actual time-affecting powers, and their primary goals and obstacles to those goals), and are ready to go.

Nathan wrote: The point during play that really "clicked" for me in terms of bricolage was…Click, click, click. A connexion was forged. I knew it, and I'm pretty sure the other guys knew it - of course Joe looks like Dan. Of course Dan was going to get Joe in trouble with Lambetti, whoever he was, and Lambetti would send thugs after the real Joe.

Nathan wrote: Continuity was created, not by an overarching story, or even by plot points or prepped bangs. Continuity was created, I would argue, by the process of bricoling our knowledge of the current situation and these characters with the sense, given by the game text, that these characters should and will be connected, in play, through their Anchors. This process was supported by system, both the cascading effects from character creation and actual Mechanics having to do with Anchors.

Nathan wrote: …but Timestream absolutely requires this kind of bricolage in order to be...well, coherent is the word I would use, but not necessary in the  Forge sense of the word.

Nathan wrote: …As for a specific question, I would ask that, given this example, does anyone know other games that reliably support or create this kind of process of bricolage?

Nathan,

As someone mentioned already, a Capes campaign seems to have this sort of bricolage in play, also.  The sessions I've played in have had more in the way of setting exploration bricolage than plot-explaining bricolage as yours seemed to have.

An example: In a session I was recently in, we were in a scene where a group of government agents with superpowers were investigating a scene where a scarecrow came to life and attacked a group of teenagers and a farmer. One of the government agents theorized that this was perpetrated by the Martians. We then, through an argument between my character and his, established that there was a war against the Martians in the 1920's in which the Earth beat them back and hasn't heard from them since. This was a major plot point, and it all arose because of an argument between my character and my friend's about whether the scarecrow was a Martian creation or not.

Now, I'm not totally up on bricolage and it's meaning, but does this sound like what you're looking for?

I finally have some time to respond - thanks everyone for your comments!

Joshua:

Joshua wrote:
Capes also ends up doing this, as well: the only thing the published rules supply are some chunky archetypes, and there is no 'game prep'. Therefore everything is developed in play, building on what's already been established.

Joshua wrote: The mental gymnastics around temporal causality loops (that is what the game is about, right?) sounds like great fun, although I wonder if everybody is "up" to doing such stuff. Have you tried out the game with a broad range of people? I'd be interested to know how people react to a game that more-or-less demands that they make up both cause and effect while sitting inbetween both of them.

Emily wrote:
The above games, as well as Primetime Adventures, Universalis, Under the Bed, Snap,  Polaris and Breaking the Ice all benefit from & take advantage of this aspect of psychology. Collaborative games thrive upon it. We want to imbue meaning, and when everybody gets to add their input we will often plain old want to move in the direction of making connections between what we see.  It's satisfying, and sort of natural to the eye, from a creative perspective.

This is a powerful approach to game design. When you hook up the engines of everybody's creativity to the cart, we can really go places.

The real trick is making it easy to come for anybody to come up with stuff.  It's not easy coming up with this on the fly.

I am curious about the actual Mechanics – both those dealing with the Anchors and your resolution systems.  I’m developing the opinion that what are all lumped under “resolution systems” have very different roles in the various CA’s.  In Nar they are called conflict resolution system.  The problem is that the different roles of resolution Mechanics in G/S have not yet been discerned.  I do think that task resolution is the role of resolution Mechanics in Gam.  I do not think it is useful to continue to regard Sim resolution Mechanics as task resolution, for that paradigm hides what I think their true purpose.  I believe the role of resolution Mechanics in Sim is to establish and maintain norms of fictional world behavior such that the Players can develop a reliable “feel” for the world and thus can anticipate and build on that “feel.”  So – do tell about your Mechanics!

Hey Jay! I hope I can answer some of your questions. Thank you for the exhaustive response.

Silmenume wrote:
You have managed to highlight some very important but frequently, or nearly always, lacking elements in most “Sim” facilitating game designs.  Its almost no surprise your game went as well as it did!

“Bricoling your knowledge” is the extending of your “knowing” of the world – just like myth!  However, near as I can tell, you didn’t set out to “increase your knowing of the world,” rather you went to work on "What, right now, right here, would be cool?"  Yet the result of that process lead to an increased “knowing” of the world.  Just like one’s addressing Premise leads to Theme even if the Player is not interested in the least in Theme itself.  I should also note that the mythic bricolage process inherently creates continuity (by always being mindful of the past), but I think you know that.  I support your argument!

Nathan wrote: …but Timestream absolutely requires this kind of bricolage in order to be...well, coherent is the word I would use, but not necessary in the  Forge sense of the word.

"…in order to function"?