There were some excellent points made in the recent thread Reward Cycle; as I read it, though, I was brought back in my thinking to the problem that I've had understanding my own game in the light of Ron's recent emphasis on "Reward Cycle" as "Unit of Play".

The problem is that Multiverser lacks a reward system in any mechanical sense, yet it is clear that players express and pursue creative agenda during play. To complicate it, because of the multiple staging aspect of the game, although players are playing simultaneously they might not be playing "together" in the strictest sense of the word. I, as referee, am playing with John, Kyler, Adam, Donna, and Bryan, pretty much all at once, but their interactions with each other are mostly social and advisory much of the time.  Thus each of them negotiates an individual social agendum with me (not formally) through play, and we can have multiple agenda in the single game. Further, because of the one-on-one nature of so much play and because of the drastic changes that can be made to setting, situation, color, and to some degree system on the fly during play, some players drift naturally between agenda in response to those changes--agendum being renegotiated.

I am certainly curious of what Ron makes of that; but I'm not posting this so much to ask him as to make a stab at it myself. If my analysis fails miserably, perhaps he'll tell me where I went wrong; if it succeeds, perhaps it will throw some light on the connection between "instance of play" and "reward cycle".

My first observation is that Multiverser play tends by its nature to be very episodic.  It has to be. Even if a player spends his entire character time in a particular world doing the same routine or mundane things, eventually something kills him and he's in a new world, starting a new chapter. Quite apart from that, though, within the same world players tend to focus on one thing at a time, creating episodes in which they were doing this, then they were doing that. The recent exposition of my world The Dancing Princess illustrates this fairly well. There is a period in which the character is assimilating to the medieval setting and so becoming part of the world, then a period in which he goes on the quest to rescue the princess, and thereafter a period in which he again settles into the world after this success. Each of these episodes has its own characteristics.

My second observation is not new to me at all; it is that with Multiverser play is its own reward. People play because they have fun. I have said repeatedly that reward systems are either icing on the cake that reinforces the reward already present in play, or they are incoherent efforts to persuade people that they should have done something different from what they really enjoyed. Having fun is the reward every game hopefully offers; getting points or character advancement or extra dice or levels or whatever the game mechanically provides can reinforce that if it points the same direction, but can't make the game fun otherwise.

Long ago, in relation to gamist play, I postulated the existence of major versus minor victories, suggesting that the gamist players who lose the big battle still congratulate themselves on how well they did against all the little battles, and thus they enjoyed the game despite "losing". I expect that this happens in all agenda in some way. In connection with episodic play, however, it poses an interesting question. At what level are we looking at episodes versus events? For example, I've got a guy in my Spy World (he really wanted to go there) right now going through the terrorist-occupied tower looking for the bomb. I think that being in the Spy World is not usually an episode, because player character spies usually survive several missions and each of those missions can have its own character. On the other hand, to this point the current player has had to deal with guards on the entrance, a lone gunman in a hallway, the discovery of explosive devices on doors, the rescue of a fleeing hostage, and a couple of other events each of which required specific thought and consideration. He's heading into the moment when the terrorists will have high ground and numbers to their advantage, and he'll have to decide how to handle that; thereafter, he has numerous other events ahead, including one in which terrorists use hostages as body shields. Play will take quite a few sessions to get through this entire scenario (in part because it's mostly done in forum format).

Some of those events have the character of being episodes, but not all of them do. What I see, though, is that the player responds to the resolution of certain events in a way that suggests a milestone has been passed. It is for him the end of something and the beginning of the next part. Coupled with that is that ethereal sense that fun has happened.

That is the reward cycle in action. Because players are in different time and space streams, it hits each of them at different moments; but because they are sharing their stories with each other as they create them, they are on a mutual admiration track, even if they have different individual agenda--the player who is using the Prisoner of Zenda track to make moral statements about his refusal to resort to violence or deception in his effort to save the King can still cheer the player who just beat the tar out of the tough terrorist who took him on one-on-one, and the guy coming out of the fight can respond to the discoveries of the one who is trying to determine how to build a city in the jungle and civilize the primitive natives. The reward comes at the moment agendum is successfully engaged in a complete way. Thus the player's perception of "that was good" becomes the definition of the reward cycle, and at that moment we can look at what was "good" and see agendum.

Of course, maybe I'm completely off base; but I'm sure I see agendum at work in the games I run, and there's no reward system operating, so there has to be some "cycle of reward" that defines an "instance of play", and this is at this point the best I've got.

Thoughts?

--M. J. Young

I feel like we are very much on the same wavelength, Mike.  No wonder I like playing with you so much.

Hi MJ,

A "reward system" and a "reward cycle" are two different things. Confusing, I know. A "reward system" speaks about mechanics. Getting experience points for killing things is a reward system.

It is my understanding that a "reward cycle" speaks about Creative Agenda and the general cycle of dramatic build-up->climax->cool-down. (Ron can correct me if I'm wrong.) As a generalization (if I'm right on this), I believe a reward cycle more or less corresponds to a single "adventure" or "story". In typical DnD, getting the info, hacking through the dungeon, killing the Big Boss, and then finding the treasure would correspond to one cycle. Notice that sometimes that corresponds with leveling up, but sometimes not. That's because levels are a "reward system".

You mentioned that in Multiverser, play is usually episodic. While I can't be sure without playing the game, I would bet that each "episode" probably corresponds with a reward cycle. You mentioned players reacting to certain events---how often does that happen?

M. wrote:
My second observation is not new to me at all; it is that with Multiverser play is its own reward. People play because they have fun. I have said repeatedly that reward systems are either icing on the cake that reinforces the reward already present in play, or they are incoherent efforts to persuade people that they should have done something different from what they really enjoyed. Having fun is the reward every game hopefully offers; getting points or character advancement or extra dice or levels or whatever the game mechanically provides can reinforce that if it points the same direction, but can't make the game fun otherwise.

timfire wrote:
Hi MJ,

A "reward system" and a "reward cycle" are two different things. Confusing, I know. A "reward system" speaks about mechanics. Getting experience points for killing things is a reward system. It is my understanding that a "reward cycle" speaks about Creative Agenda and the general cycle of dramatic build-up->climax->cool-down.

Vaxalon wrote:

timfire wrote:
Hi MJ,

A "reward system" and a "reward cycle" are two different things. Confusing, I know. A "reward system" speaks about mechanics. Getting experience points for killing things is a reward system. It is my understanding that a "reward cycle" speaks about Creative Agenda and the general cycle of dramatic build-up->climax->cool-down.

If that is true, then I feel my point is even stronger, that there are multiple reward cycles operating at different amplitudes and wavelengths throughout the game, of which Ron's is but one.

My understanding was that "reward cycle" was an attempt to narrow down "instance of play" so the actual instance of play could be identified more clearly (or at all). If you cut the link between "reward cycle" and "system", especially "explicit system", especially "rules mechanics"--if you cut that link, you might as well keep calling it instance of play. Or am I missing something crucial?

- Frank

talysman wrote:
...Ron has just confirmed that what he means is the smallest *group* reward cycle for the game, and further clarified that he's not talking about moments of individual player satisfaction, nor is he talking about character advancement systems.

The way I understood it, Reward Cycles include, but are not limited to mechanical cycles.

There has to be a better way to put this...

Basically many things could comprise a reward cycle in any game. For one set of players playing ruleset X, it's simply the mechanical reward cycle like leveling up. For another group playing with the same rule set, it's winning each "adventure." For another group, it has nothing to do with any of that, but with a dramatic cycle. For yet another group it has to do with how often the players pat each other on the back.

Basically it has to do with what the players are concerned about in terms of recieving a reward, and in terms of giving rewards. For a group, a cycle will be either based on a coherent agenda, in which case the expectations of giving and recieving rewards match, or based on an incoherent agenda, in which case the expectations will not match. That is, for one player, perhaps all they care about is the social pat on the back for "good roleplaying." For another it's all about leveling up.

See how this allows for agenda identification?

"Play is it's own reward" is a truism, but a useless one. This assumes that the "reward cycle" idea doesn't take into account the fun of the play somehow. But it does. If, in fact, there were no other rewards being given out than play itself, then play itself is the reward cycle. And that says something itself about the agenda. That said, I don't personally believe that there are no other reward cycles in your game, just not mechanical ones. I'm betting there are social reinforcement ones (is the game more fun to play with others than solo? Why would this be if there weren't social reinforcements going on?). Further, I'm also betting that the cycles happen to somehow coincide with transiting between worlds.

But that's all speculative. My point is that it didn't seem to me that Ron was focusing on mechanics exclusively. Yes, the mechanics of a particular game may in fact be how the game supports a particular agenda. But as we all know, rules are not actual play, and it's how it all ends up being used in play that's the important part in discerning agenda. Reward cycles are about looking at what the players reward in play by any means, not just mechanics.

Mike

What Mike said.

Best,
Ron

Now I'm totally confused.

That's odd. I think my post was quite clear. Perhaps you're not feeling well, Fred?

Mike

No, I'm confused about Ron's agreement, because your post, Mike, seems to refute at least part of what Ron says about reward cycles.

Which part? Re-reading the original thread, and other stuff Ron has said, I'm not seeing any contradiction. If you could point out the problematic part?

Mike

The contradiction, as I see it, is that you and I are talking about "reward cycles" and Ron's CA identification talks about "the reward cycle".

As I understand it, Ron acknowledges that reward cycles exist at a shorter wavelength than the multi-session one that he uses for identifying CA, but they aren't important to identifying CA because they aren't "group" reward cycles.

What I'm saying is that reward cycles happen at a large number of scales.  The IIEE cycle is, after all, a reward cycle of a kind.  The "Effect" part at the end is the reward; "I tried to get this thing to happen in the game, and it did.  I win."  IIEE is possibly the shortest wavelength in the game. 

There's also a reward cycle at the scene/encounter level, and the session level, and then Ron's (it might be called the 'story arc' level), and then a bigger one I'll call the "epic" level.  Some of them are better at rewarding different things than others, and by focusing on any one of them, you strengthen the things that are best rewarded at that level.

Ron puts his CA emphasis on the "story arc" (again, my term) level, as I understand what he means, because that's the shortest wavelength reward cycle that's a group reward cycle... but I don't agree that it's the smallest group reward cycle.

Mike wrote:
Basically many things could comprise a reward cycle in any game. For one set of players playing ruleset X, it's simply the mechanical reward cycle like leveling up. For another group playing with the same rule set, it's winning each "adventure." For another group, it has nothing to do with any of that, but with a dramatic cycle. For yet another group it has to do with how often the players pat each other on the back.

You seem to be thinking that reward cycle means only one reward per cycle or something. Levels being a prime example. Thing is, even with a level-based system, there are other, smaller rewards that happen in between on the level cycle. They're all part of the overall reward cycle. The one from which you can really get an idea of agenda. In fact, it's from the multitude of rewards that are each tells that only the "reward cycle" can elucidate the agenda. That is, if all you had was leveling up as evidence, that alone would be scarce evidence of the overall agenda. It's the stuff in between.

And in fact, some of the rewards in between will seem out of place with the agenda. This is the other reason why you need to look at the overall cycle. Because those outliers seem otherwise to indicate a "mixed" or "incoherent" play possibly, when in fact they don't neccessarily.

Yes, this does mean that what demarks the edge of a reward cycle might be fuzzy to some extent. But watch enough play, and you'll catch the reward cycle.

Take our IRC HQ play. The HP awards have nothing to do with the reward cycle in terms of agenda. Mostly because I only give them perfunctorily, and never cite anything about why I'm giving them. They're not really rewards at all, merely fuel for the real reward system, which is using the HP to raise up abilities or bump. Basically look at how people use HP in the game for a few sessions, where they've gotten a chance to build some up and spend them, and more importantly time during which players have applauded certain narrations, and such social reinforcements as we do (like me and you posting back in mail) - a cycle - and you get the agenda for the game.

Before I say what I think it is, can you see the agenda of the IRC HQ game from this? What would you say it is?

Mike

Asking me what I think the agenda is not a good idea, Mike, because I really don't subscribe to the theory. 

It's like asking a heavy duty socialist what the "best" price for bread is, given an inelastic demand curve and restricted supply.  He'd say "free."

When we're in the middle of a big combat, such as against the giant snake, we're going gamist all the way.  We're scrounging around for whatever augments we can dig up, working out what kind of advantages we can bring into play from the environment, and the like.  The same during the numerous scenes where Archelaus and Okhfels were going head-to-head.  Archie and Okhfels have spent a lot of points making themselves better at fighting each other, and Isadora has put a lot of points into her fencing along the way.

I don't think there's a lot of Narrative play because I really don't see people driving the game in any particular direction.  You might say it's nar play because lots of the PC's do stupid things because they're dramatic, but I'm not sure that really qualifies.  I don't know how you'd identify Nar play from spending HP though.  Perhaps the fact that Thomas spends almost no points at all identifies him as having a more narrative focus in his play than the rest of us.

At first I didn't think we had much sim play, but since agreement on what sim means still seems scarce, I think I was just misidentifying it.  The side-play you and I have had about the Teth background may have been sim depending on your definition.  I spend a lot of my personal head-space exploring the question, "what is Okhfels like, inside his head?" but since that's a 1-person game I don't think that applies either.

After some thought, however, I'd say the play is pretty heavily sim, where the world being simulated is a relationship-heavy soap opera set in your Shadow World.  The thing that seems to matter most to us as players is the relationships, and exploring how they evolve.  After all, if you look at the character sheets, we've been hitting those relationships pretty hard.

In the light of the Big Model, of course, I'm wrong.  It's not kosher to identify one scene as Sim and another as Gam and another as Nar, skipping from one agenda to another as the player mix and their interests change.  That's incoherent play and as a result, not as much fun as coherent play.  According to the Big Model, we're supposed to have a single constant agenda (that may be made up of a mix of named or unnamed agendas) that doesn't change on a small timescale.

First, if you really don't subscribe to the model, then the whole issue of Cycles of Reward is a moot one. It really is only important in the context of the idea of creative agenda. Not to get too tautological, but the reward cycle is that cycle during which you can discern Creative Agenda.

When we're in the middle of a big combat, such as against the giant snake, we're going gamist all the way.

Archie and Okhfels have spent a lot of points making themselves better at fighting each other, and Isadora has put a lot of points into her fencing along the way.

I don't think there's a lot of Narrative play because I really don't see people driving the game in any particular direction.  You might say it's nar play because lots of the PC's do stupid things because they're dramatic, but I'm not sure that really qualifies.

The side-play you and I have had about the Teth background may have been sim depending on your definition.  I spend a lot of my personal head-space exploring the question, "what is Okhfels like, inside his head?" but since that's a 1-person game I don't think that applies either.

The thing that seems to matter most to us as players is the relationships, and exploring how they evolve.  After all, if you look at the character sheets, we've been hitting those relationships pretty hard.

It's not kosher to identify one scene as Sim and another as Gam and another as Nar, skipping from one agenda to another as the player mix and their interests change.  That's incoherent play and as a result, not as much fun as coherent play.  According to the Big Model, we're supposed to have a single constant agenda (that may be made up of a mix of named or unnamed agendas) that doesn't change on a small timescale.

Mike: "Yes."

Everyone else: "See what Mike said and especially, how he supported it."

Best,
Ron

I had a big long post to make here, but you know what?  Just forget it.  It's clear that I'm so far away from the Big Model in the way I think about games that I probably shouldn't bother anymore.

Most of what I had to say wouldn't helped anyone, including me.  I'm having more fun in HQ than I've had in just about any other game.  I have my own explanations for why, and noone's going to take them seriously under the present circumstances.

I need to sit down and actually write Panaesthete.