Point of slight clarification.

I'm trying to figure out how broad 'Situation' is supposed to be.  I've been considering it as the immediate elements of the setting, thrown into juxtaposition, roughly analogous to 'scene'.  As a rough example, the characters in the Situation are the characters present in a given moment of play.  However, that's a big distance between the set-of-all-potential that is Setting and the set-of-actual that would be 'Situation'.

A quick glance at the good ol' glossary gives me these:

Provisional wrote:
Setting
Elements described about a fictitious game world including period, locations, cultures, historical events, and characters, usually at a large scale relative to the presence of the player-characters. A Component of Exploration.

Situation
Dynamic interaction between specific characters and small-scale setting elements; Situations are divided into scenes. A component of Exploration, considered to be the "central node" linking Character and Setting, and which changes according to System. See also Kicker, Bang, and Challenge.

Scene Framing
A GM-task in which many possible Techniques are used to establish when a sequence of imaginary events begins and ends, what characters are involved, and where it takes place. Analogous to a "cut" in film editing which skips fictional time and/or changes location. A necessary feature of System.

This would make Setting the set-of-all-potential, Situation the set-of-all-significance, and Scene the set-of-all-actual.

Callan, I don't understand your second sentence.  Clarify?

Joshua wrote:
Example:
Setting: Verona, Italy; Rennaissance.
Situation: Two Households, both alike in dignity, two star-cross'd lovers.
Scene: Romeo and Juliet on the balcony.

Joshua wrote:
Example:
Setting: Verona, Italy; Rennaissance.
Situation: Two Households, both alike in dignity, two star-cross'd lovers.
Scene: Romeo and Juliet on the balcony.

Chris, I'm not saying that these three are determined and nested from the start of play.  Rather, these are all parameters that cannot exceed their parents' parameters.  You can't have a Situation that includes elements that are not included in the Setting -- Romeo cannot get abducted by aliens.  You can't (shouldn't) have a Scene that does not include elements of the Situation -- a scene where Romeo plays checkers with Tybalt and never talks about the fued, Juliet, or elements of their own characters that would relate to fueding or love.  It'd be a boring, empty, pointless Scene.

Hm -- is Zilchplay when Scenes are framed with no relation to the Situation (often because there is no clear Situation)?

In any case, whether these parameters are set from the start and do not change, can be changed by the individuals playing, or are created and changed through play itself, they still describe (I'm thinking) the relationships of setting elements.

Joshua wrote:
In any case, whether these parameters are set from the start and do not change, can be changed by the individuals playing, or are created and changed through play itself, they still describe (I'm thinking) the relationships of setting elements.

Heya,

One time, long ago, Ron explained Situation like this to me:

Character + Setting = Situation

At frist I didn't get it, but then as I thought about things it came to me in a rush.  Character wasn't just the PCs but the NPCs as well.  The example of Romeo and Juliet I'd like to expound on in this case.  The true Situation in that play (IMHO) is really the "Ancient grudge breaks to new mutiny, where civil blood makes civil hands unclean, from forth the fatal loins of these two foes, a pair of star-crossed lovers take their life"

Let's Romeo and Juliet the PCs for the game.  The Situation for them would include "The Ancient Family Quarrel," "The Teenage Tendancey to Look for True Love for the First Time," and the whole "star-crossed (ill fated/cursed)" aspect of their existance.  The feud comes from the setting elements of Rennaisance Italy, the Aristocracy, and a generally premissive atmosphere of violence in Verona.  The characters of Lord Capulet and Monatgue plus guys like Tybal, Benvolio, Sampson, Balthasar, etc. are the real movers and shakers of the violence.  Put those characters and the setting together, and BOOM you have the situation Romeo and Juliet faced.

Peace,

-Troy

Joshua wrote: Rather, these are all parameters that cannot exceed their parents' parameters.  You can't have a Situation that includes elements that are not included in the Setting -- Romeo cannot get abducted by aliens.  You can't (shouldn't) have a Scene that does not include elements of the Situation -- a scene where Romeo plays checkers with Tybalt and never talks about the fued, Juliet, or elements of their own characters that would relate to fueding or love.  It'd be a boring, empty, pointless Scene.

Troy, I really don't like the Setting+Character=Situation thing, because to me Characters are a subset of Setting in the first place.  "Setting+Characters" is like saying "Vegetables+Carrots".  I think it's far more profitable to say that Situation is the juxtaposition of selected Setting elements.  What the juxtaposition is and what it 'creates' is a matter decided by whatever goal the players have -- an arena, a fronteir, a love triangle, whatever.

Eliot, yes, I used the different language very specifically, because while these three are nested, they are not perfectly nested.  Situation definitionally cannot include any elements outside of the Setting, but a Scene can and almost has to include elements not in the Situation (but still in the Setting).  In Romeo and Juliet, not every single element of every single Scene has to do with fueding or love (the Situation) -- Romeo drinks his poison, but the posion is outside of the Situation; it's just a convenient piece of the Setting.

Of course, as soon as I started composing this reply I had difficulty thinking of a Scene element that wasn't directly related to the Situation, because R&J is pretty damn tightly constructed.  Most of the elements included in each Scene relate to the Situation directly or indirectly (take a moment to think about it -- or if you didn't teach Freshman English like I did, go read a quick scene from an online script).   I'll submit that the impact of a given Scene is directly proportional to how many of its constituent components are part of the Situation -- a pretty simple signal/noise distinction.  That's why I'm wondering if Zilchplay is when the Scene is pure noise, without any elements of the Situation at all.

I'd like to change what I just wrote--a bit.

I was thinking of each of the three levels (setting, situation, scene) as a set of elements, with each level as a literal subset of the higher level. If Setting contains the element Renaissance Verona and not the element Mars, then Mars can't be in the Situation because Situation is a subset of of Setting.

My mistake was viewing Situation as subset of Setting, when in actuality it's a set of relations of Setting elements and metagame interests. Scene is then an operation whose domain and range is Situation.

At least, that's how my ancient recollection of set theory tends to grapple with these concepts. To me "nesting" is an inappropriate metaphor because it makes me think of subsets, but YMMV.

I'm thinking in Venn Diagrams that I can't reproduce in text.

Situation is more than a set of elements; it is a set of elements which are related.  As such, the elements that are included (and related) are a subset of Setting, hands down.  It's just that there's more than just a set of elements -- there's a set of elements and the relationships between them.  I'm not sure if the relationships themselves are part of the Situation, or if the Situation is merely comprised of the elements that are related.  The relationships may be the rules by which the set is defined.

A Scene is composed of a set of elements, all of which are also a subset of Setting, and some of which are a subset of Situation.  If the Scene is composed of elements from the Setting but not the Situation, what you have is a dead scene.  I suppose you can easily mount an argument that a Scene is the set of elements included in motion, much like Situation is a set of elements in relation.

Joshua wrote:
Example:
Setting: Verona, Italy; Rennaissance.
Situation: Two Households, both alike in dignity, two star-cross'd lovers.
Scene: Romeo and Juliet on the balcony.

Joshua wrote:
You can't have a Situation that includes elements that are not included in the Setting -- Romeo cannot get abducted by aliens.  You can't (shouldn't) have a Scene that does not include elements of the Situation -- a scene where Romeo plays checkers with Tybalt and never talks about the fued, Juliet, or elements of their own characters that would relate to fueding or love.  It'd be a boring, empty, pointless Scene.

(In reply to Joshua)

Well there's only so much you can do in trying to fit humanities concepts into a mathematical model. But I'll try.

I would argue, the key is that Situation is the collection of relationships between elements (in-game and metagame). To be worth exploring, a scene must at least have the potential to alter or expand the collection of relationships. If you're thinking in dramatic terms, then at some point you want to say, "enough", and concentrate on scenes that alter existing relationships. Concretely, the only way to do this is to include elements that are already tied into the web of relationships that is Situation.

IMO that's why we're tempted to see Setting, Situation, and Scene as nested boxes, but they aren't really.

(In reply to John)

I agree--which is why, just now, I specified that a worthwhile scene can be one that only has the potential to expand the collection of relationships. Placing an priority on definitely altering/resolving the existing relationships is what I'm calling "focus" in this thread. And I think it's very much a matter of taste.

Hi Joshua,

Callan wrote:

This would make Setting the set-of-all-potential, Situation the set-of-all-significance, and Scene the set-of-all-actual.

I'm not sure about defining it that way...it would seem to be attaching the terms to parts of the game world rather than attaching it to the act of players investing into various ideas. Ideas that also happen to be creative focuses and some of them only exist (nested) inside another creative focus.

John wrote: ...in an RPG, which elements are truly significant is only known in retrospect.  A setting detail which may have seemed insignificant before play might turn out to be crucial for how the game plays out -- indeed, such things are often the most interesting bits of the game, in my experience.

Lets say that [setting > situation > scene] are nested. What implications does that have on game writing?

As an author, I have an idea of how I'd like my game to be played. The players can of course take it and do what they want with it - A gamist "My Life with Master" for instance - but since I'm writing the game I want to write it in such a way as would make my preferred type of play easy to do.

I will follow steps I took in a Gen Con game in the late 90's "Romeo and Ethel the Pirate's Daughter". (Which was a hoot to play.)

My first job is to describe the setting. This could be a wordy source book or something as abstract as boardgame icons. In Romeo and Ethel I did it as I do in Engle Matrix Games, the world was divided into an area map with key locations, there is a cast of characters (with a paragraph showing who they are), and a short introduction to the game that suggests what is going on (which suggests what the players need to do.) In this case it was played on two levels. On one level the characters were the characters in the story, on the next level they were actors in Elizabethan London putting on a show (complete with a depressed Shakespeare, a arrogant producer, and the dog "Use the dog Will. Everyone likes the dog.")

I tend to favor giving key information and trusting the players to imagine the blanks filled in.

Situation in part comes from the character's write ups (that suggest relationships and conflicts) and the opening introduction. The game could be explicit on what to do (as in a boardgame) or wide open. I see my job as a game writer to be to come up with a world that can be played with in many ways so I set up many potential struggles and trust the players to supply the spark to make them come alive.

Scene framing I think is a technique of play, just as the glossery says. It is the players enacting the situation, so the situation may be that Romeo is a lusty lad how will fall for the first pretty face he meets. The scene would be Romeo and Ethel meeting, with subsequent scenes exploring that relationship.

As a game maker I affect scene framing by the rules I include with the game. This is where "system matters" comes in. I use rules that suggest but don't require players to do any one thing. Player arguments judged by the referee is a negotiation of what the shared imagined space includes. The referee apportions authority/control over changing the world based on the likelyhood of an argument happening. Meanwhile the players are negotiating/jockying for control over what actually does happen in the game.

SUMMARY

Game writers present the setting. They influence scene framing by the rules they write. They may suggest situation but that is more up to what the players want when they play the game. The players can also ignore our rules and go off in their own direction if they want to so we really have little control over situation or scene framing.

Chris Engle
Hamster Press = Engle Matrix Games

MatrixGamer wrote: Game writers present the setting. They influence scene framing by the rules they write. They may suggest situation but that is more up to what the players want when they play the game. The players can also ignore our rules and go off in their own direction if they want to so we really have little control over situation or scene framing.

Hi Joshua,

I get you now. But really then it's about someone at the table saying 'the balcony scene fits inside the warring families situation...that's how it is'.

I think when your trying to figure out how broad situation is, your trying to figure out how broad any particular player will insist it is. You don't know until they insist on it (unless you work out some currency they can pay off their insistance with).

Admittedly, Callan, Situation is defined by the play group.  However, Situation is definitionally "between" Setting and Scene, which is what I was trying to nail down.  Whatever the Situation is, it will be smaller (or equal to) the Setting and greater (or equal to) one Scene.

Joshua wrote:

John wrote: ...in an RPG, which elements are truly significant is only known in retrospect.  A setting detail which may have seemed insignificant before play might turn out to be crucial for how the game plays out -- indeed, such things are often the most interesting bits of the game, in my experience.

You have (half a) point, John -- the significance of elements are sometimes recognized only in retrospect.  In other game situations, they're perfectly plain from the start, either in terms of mechanical design (glamour in Changeling, self-loathing in MLwM) or in terms of stated player preferences ("I want to play a Jedi Knight who falls in love").  And in other games yet, the setting is drastically changed right in the middle of it.  Who hasn't played in some campaign that got "restarted" or shifted to somewhere else?

I think Eliot's got the right approach, and it's one that I can fake like I implied from the start -- that these distinctions certainly exist, but they are created and modified through play.  Which means that the significant elements are determined in play, as you say.

Joshua wrote:
I think it would be far more useful to say that, as game designers, we need to be conscious of and perhaps offer mechanical procedures for determining the scope of the Setting, Situation, and Scenes.  (We talked about this in Scope & what I mean by it.)  I also think it would open some very viable areas of exploration when we start fiddling with player access to those procedures -- we know what a game looks like when the GM has absolute control over what's in and out of Setting, defines the Situation, and frames every Scene.  What's it look like when the GM can't frame scenes at all, or when the Situation is explicitly created by players spending currency?

An interesting and useful discussion, this thread, with a good general tone of writing: critically constructive (to my mind at least).

ewilen wrote:
I would argue, the key is that Situation is the collection of relationships between elements (in-game and metagame). To be worth exploring, a scene must at least have the potential to alter or expand the collection of relationships. If you're thinking in dramatic terms, then at some point you want to say, "enough", and concentrate on scenes that alter existing relationships. Concretely, the only way to do this is to include elements that are already tied into the web of relationships that is Situation.

IMO that's why we're tempted to see Setting, Situation, and Scene as nested boxes, but they aren't really.

Joshua wrote:
I can see an argument that Situation is the relationships of elements in the Setting, sure.  These are illustrations, not "the way things are" that we're talking about.  I find it easier to talk about it as nested boxes because I think that can be a useful tool for 'paring down' a overly large setting into one nice bite-sized chunk of content to play.

Joshua wrote:
There's no entry for "Scene" itself, but the definition of Situation says that it is divided into scenes, and Scene Framing suggests that those scenes would be what I was calling Situation.  So now I'm wondering if Setting, Situation, and Scene are nested within eachother.  This would make Setting the set-of-all-potential, Situation the set-of-all-significance, and Scene the set-of-all-actual.

John wrote: To me personally, I feel there is a big difference between Predicted Significance and Significance-In-Play. However, they are obviously related.

pekkok wrote: This way, one ends up with a map where everything is "present" to some extent - but certain elements, in their concordance and complicity, rise to the foreground forming a constellation (the Situation), while others, more or less detached from this current complicity, fade into background.

In sum, the Situation seems to me something one has to perceive through a point of view, and something that is susceptible to changes with the alterations of overall balance - but as such, forms a manner of perceiving a constellation of elements affecting a viewpoint, and a general impression of the balance of this constellation.

In this manner, I find this pair of concepts, Setting and Situation, both useful and robust - not universally useful, but then again, what is? (To explicate, I can think of instances of rpgs where the concept of Setting is not all that fruitful - for example when the topos and the question of Setting is exactly what is explored in the game, and is not, as such, preordained for any player, GMs included. But this type of games are exceedingly rare, and will probably stay that way.)

1. Can Scene be stripped from its narrative connotations, and how it should be defined as such?

John wrote: LARPs generally do away with scene framing -- the time and place are always continuous and specified.  Dungeon crawls or other mapped-location gaming are another case of continuous time and placement -- where the GM cannot simply pick of the PCs, say that it is an hour later, and place them at some other location.  There, scene framing generally occurs only through collective agreement to skim past time.

Joshua wrote:

John wrote: LARPs generally do away with scene framing -- the time and place are always continuous and specified.  Dungeon crawls or other mapped-location gaming are another case of continuous time and placement -- where the GM cannot simply pick of the PCs, say that it is an hour later, and place them at some other location.  There, scene framing generally occurs only through collective agreement to skim past time.

I dunno if LARPs really do away with scene framing.  Having never LARPed myself, I may be completely wrong about this, but if you're at a LARP and you leave one area with players in it, walk alone down a hallway, go to the restroom, and then walk further down the hallway to another area with other players in it, were you really roleplaying in the hallway?  Especially if you were playing Vampire or something, and your character really doesn't have to visit the restroom (to phrase it more delicately than I did at first), isn't there a transition there between one scene and the next?  Moreover, if you're GMing at a LARP and you set up something to happen when players enter a room, isn't that scene framing?  Admittedly, scene framing is less of a concern, or does not structure the game experience as much, but I wouldn't say it disappears entirely.

Joshua wrote:
Similarly, just because a dungeon crawl is continuous doesn't mean that there are no scenes to be framed.  Especially if the party gets split up, attention will have the jump between one group and the other; similarily, the players will often call breaks for the restroom, smokes, food runs, and these are placed at "appropriate points" when the characters have cleared out a room or something.  Alternately, when the characters enter a new room, the GM often frames the scene that occurs (inside the room are four goblins worshiping at an altar!  they attack!).  So again, from my perspective, scene framing happens, it just happens differently.

John wrote: I'm not following your definition of "scene"... The definition I am giving of "scene framing" with respect to RPGs is that it is a break in time, where you pick up at a new time and place, and there is a process of establishing who is where.

Joshua wrote: The base requirements for a scene are a set of fictional elements (characters, sets, props) juxtaposed to some sort of immediacy (physical or otherwise) and a little interaction between those elements.  You can get that out of just about any gaming scenario I can think of, narrative concerns aside.

I'm going to plug my idea again, and also draw attention to Joshua's earlier formulation of "situation" as "set of all significance".

A scene is sequence inside a narrative that changes or adds to the situation. It takes some problem or relationship in the situation, changes or adds to it, and produces a new situation. You can even have changes in time and space within a scene--for example, cutting back and forth between Luke in his X-Wing and the control room of the Death Star, or a flashback in montage with current events that explains the significance of what we're watching.

The problem is that without formal enforcement of scene boundaries, the definition of scene and significance in roleplay is bound to be subjective. IMO, formalism goes hand-in-hand with conflict resolution, while task resolution is amenable to less formally defined boundaries of scene and significance.

ewilen wrote: A scene is sequence inside a narrative that changes or adds to the situation.

Joshua wrote:
While a "change of time and place" certainly does signal a scene change, that's not always the case.  A lot of Shakespeare doesn't change the time or place, but shuffles the current batch of characters off the stage while another batch enters (Tempest does this constantly).  The scene-change is denoted by different characters in the set of involved elements, rather than a different place in the set of involved elements.  Framing that scene would involve deciding which elements go and which elements stay -- which may be the physical location, or it may not.

Now, not every character entrance and exit denotes a scene-change, and admittedly the line is fuzzy, but that's not the same thing as saying that a LARP is composed of one mammoth scene, happening in all places and throughout the entire game.  Similarly, in the dungeon crawl example, I'm not saying any pause to go to the bathroom constitutes a change of scene.  In my play experience, people run off to the bathroom when there's a lull in the action.  That lull in the action, I would argue, is the scene break.  Similarly, when the party is split up, jumping the action between the two groups is very similar to the jump cuts you mention regarding film.

Reading back through this thread, it looks as you've got a very good working definition of a scene. It's quite a loose definition and it seems to involve some or all of:

- Being set in one place and time
- Being a sequence that changes or adds to the situation
- Being between a particular set of characters, until someone enters or leaves

Interestingly, you can think of an example of what's commonly called a "scene" that breaks each of those rules: "The scene where we got chased by the dragon" clearly wasn't set in one place and time; "The scene where we got drunk in the tavern for the hell of it" needn't have changed the situation; and "The scene where we summoned lots of demons" didn't end when a demon entered. But the definition of "scene" is still useful.

I'd prefer you kept the definition loose. If you try and define it any more exactly, there's a danger that the term loses all significance.

(For example, you could insist that a scene must change the situation, but then you'd be left with lots of sequences of events that don't change the situation, and you'd have to decide what to call them. Non-scenes? Interludes?)

So, in my opinion: it's an interesting discussion; I think it's a good working definition of a scene; but there's a danger that, if you try to define "scene" any more exactly, the term will stop being useful. Keep the definition loose.

(As an aside - and I can't remember whether this has been mentioned - it looks as though there's an interesting connection between "Scope" and "Setting". But that's going off at a tangent.)

Graham

Joshua wrote:
I have trouble seeing anything in RPGs as outside of specific points of view.  PoV is sort of the base currency of roleplaying to begin with [my italics - pekkok].  All players around the table will have a different conception of what is in the Setting, the Situation, and the Scene -- one of the functions of playing the game is to bring those differing conceptions into closer alignment.

Joshua wrote:
Your exception doesn't need to be excepted if you accept that the Setting can be changed in play according to specific procedures that add and remove elements of the Setting.  Usually these are "the GM makes it up" but other games (Universalis) afford other options.  None of the three sets are preordained -- but most of them are probably pre-loaded with content.  Whether that initial set changes or not is subject to the proclivities of the game being played at the table.

Joshua wrote:
I wouldn't, for instance, say that a scene needs to be "wrapped up" -- lots of scenes, in and out of narratives, are not wrapped up, are left on cliffhangers, or simply end or get cut away to another scene.  The base requirements for a scene are a set of fictional elements (characters, sets, props) juxtaposed to some sort of immediacy (physical or otherwise) and a little interaction between those elements.  You can get that out of just about any gaming scenario I can think of, narrative concerns aside.

Both John and Graham -- I'm not trying to define "Scene" in ways that don't work for you guys; I'm trying to define scene in such a way that the term is flexible enough to cover the range of meanings we attribute to it.  It's a tall order, but I don't think it's impossible.  I'm thinking something along the lines of:

Scene: a sequence of events involving a set of story elements (which may be characters, locations, props, or other fictional content) which addresses the situation.

Note that:

• The definition is very flexible, the necessity of which Graham pointed out.
• A character enterring or leaving the physical proximity of the other elements of a scene does not begin or end the scene because the character is still involved (a part of the set of elements) whether he is present or not.  (If the messenger is sent off to the High King, that doesn't end the scene because the other characters may continue discussing matters of import.  If, after the matters of import are discussed, we "cut" to the messenger running down the road, that's probably a new scene.)
• A chase scene still fits the above definition, even if it changes location constantly, because either (a) the location is irrelevant and not a part of the set of elements or (b) the location is defined broadly (the city) instead of specifically (K street) or (c) there's simply more than one location in the set of elements.
• Determining where one scene ends and another begins is scene framing.  I'm not trying to determine the boundaries of a scene definitionally (for instance, when a character enters or leaves -- we all recognize that that's way too restrictive).  I don't see my provisional definition of Scene as being incompatible with the current definition of Scene Framing.  Scene Framing is the technique by which we select the set of involved elements and give them a little shove to make them go.
• I do think Eliot's on to something that a worthwhile scene is one that at least attempts to address the situation.  If you're not doing that, you're just passing time.  Graham, I would call this an interlude or something similar, because it's not participating in the thematic dynamic of the game as a whole.  It's fluff.
• In-character actions that change the set of significance (the Situation) are not affecting the scene or scene framing at all; they are doing something entirely different, either focusing or addressing the premise.

And Graham, yes, this is very much related to Scope and Focus -- I make the connection explicitly at my blog in the article Focusing the Scope.

pekkok wrote:

Joshua wrote: one of the functions of playing the game is to bring those differing conceptions into closer alignment.

I don't think the function of the game is to bring "differing conceptions into closer alignment". ... That is we rely not only on points of view, but differences between those points of view to create interest. If those differences are lost, well - we might call it a "happy ending"... but there's a reason why we don't usually continue playing or witnessing the situation: there's no interest left to pursue.

ewilen wrote:
A scene is sequence inside a narrative that changes or adds to the situation.

Joshua wrote:
That's why I said one of the functions is reconciliation; the other function is developing increasing detail by means of the differences in our individual conceptions.  This is drifting off-topic into the more abstract, but I'd be happy to continue this aspect of the conversation in PM.

I think a Scene isn't necessarily all in one place but perhaps point of view is a more useful yardstick. A scene is usually "viewed" by a single lens. Imagine a scene in which one character mentally spies on a dozen different places. The scene is from the point of view of the spy.

When multiple characters start a scene together and a couple split off, the GM will cut back and forth between them. The different points of view required to see all the characters creates separate scenes. If the two groups of characters can communicate telepathically, they might be visible through the same lens and thus exist within the same scene.

pekkok wrote: Yes - but this leaves out a key question: Whose Situation?

Joshua wrote:
Both John and Graham -- I'm not trying to define "Scene" in ways that don't work for you guys; I'm trying to define scene in such a way that the term is flexible enough to cover the range of meanings we attribute to it.  It's a tall order, but I don't think it's impossible.

contracycle wrote:
And, we must remember, whatever Shakespear DID he did becuase of the technical limitaitons of his day, not becuase he was sticking to some definition of "scene".  I'm sure he would have leaped at the chance to work with modern CGI, and to be able to do more scene changes than he was actually able to at the Globe.

contracycle wrote:
The "cut" definition is more than adequate - if, for whatever reason, the director decides that, for the progress of the story, the spotlight has to shift, then a scene changes.

Hmmm.  I tend to disagree - some of your argument I take as overly reliant on definitions.  Lets remember definitions can be local - both film and theatre use scenes, but only film uses cut.  Does that suggest ythat a cut and a scene are inherently distinct, and that a cut can never be a scene change?

I'd agree that neither apply strictly to RPG but we will only be able to discuss their usages in general before we can make a definitional statement.

You mention interleaved "scenes"... let me suggest we call that a complex scene rather than asserting that merely because there is a cut, per the glossary, there must also be a scene change.  As I mentioned, film has different opportunities than stage performance - on the stage, changing the scene means changing the scenery - and that means bringing the lights down and breaking the action while you shift physical props.  Whereas, a film editor can splice two bits of footage with no interruption between the two.  IMO, though, such cutaways and interleavings are still the same scene, because the subject of action has not changed.  When the subject of action is resolved, its likely the next scene will be located somewhere other than wither of those two locales, and probably with time having moved significantly onward.  I don't think the nature of "scene" has changed merely becuase new techniques and technologies change some of the old constraints.  We have still witnessed only a single event, albeit from perspectives that would not have been technically possible until recently.

contracycle wrote:
Hmmm.  I tend to disagree - some of your argument I take as overly reliant on definitions.  Lets remember definitions can be local - both film and theatre use scenes, but only film uses cut.  Does that suggest ythat a cut and a scene are inherently distinct, and that a cut can never be a scene change?

Well put, pekkok, and better put than I could have put it.

pekkok wrote: In roleplaying, one of course cannot construct a scene as in film or drama, especially as to their development. But you often can set a scene, bring in the elements, think about the potentialities of their interplay. And, personally, I find this both interesting and crucial area of roleplaying: You set up an interplay, a balance of forces... and see what happens.

But the concept of the scene is simply not made for the same issue as cut; and because the traditional concept of the scene is present in roleplaying, meaningfully and importantly, it would be silly to place the concept somewhere else, without a rhyme or reason. It's a powerful unit of meaning - there's no need to spoil it.

pekkok wrote:
Additionally, cuts, or shots, could be useful terms in roleplaying, I think, mainly because of the many points of view, and the necessity frequent changes between them, often for pragmatic reasons (changing which character is the focus of the action etc.).

contracycle wrote: Ok then - how SHOULD they be used?

Apologies for everyone in want of them for my sluggish responses - I'm being savagely mugged by this thing called work...

Joshua wrote:
Yes, and: scenes are not strictly delimited from their inceptions.  It's quite possible to introduce new elements of the scene, remove some elements, or change some elements, and it is this process which is presently fascinating to me, because in most games, the resolution system is the only thing that performs this function (poorly), and the GM can just toss stuff in at will.  I think we'd find some very intriguing play come out of a rule set that governs how to reformulate the scene as it's happening.

contracycle wrote:
So, based on what you know, how do you think scenes should or could be suitably constructed for RPG?

pekkok wrote: In traditional theater, and especially in film, things are authored dominantly before representation - in theater, the actors of course have a certain level of authorship in the midst of representation, true - but the structure is still worked out beforehand, as the script.

In roleplaying, the balance is crucially different: While there's usually preparation work beforehand, the most dominant, essential time of authorship is concurrent with the representation - we "write" the "stuff of dreams" as we go along.

That's my cue!

Rather, I wanted to jump in anyhow, and this is a good segue. In Universalis we simply say that a player "closes" a scene. For whatever that's worth. It seemed appropriate at the time. And it matches Lehrich in that it's about the SIS being a part of the ritual space established. So it's more like religion than film, at the end of an important part you have a closing.

Of course, then, at the beginning we use a film term and call it scene framing. So no consistency there. :-)

BTW, there's a special rule in Universalis called "Fade to Black. Which isn't particularly appropriate, really, but means that the scene itself cannot be "reopened." Because to get that "interleaving" effect in question in Universalis, you'd simply come back to a scene that had been opened previously. You can do this ad infinitum, opening a scene, closing it, and then reopening it, until somebody decides to Fade to Black (which only happens if somebody is worried about people coming back to the scene).

There are also "mini-scenes" which are nested scenes, flashbacks and that sort of thing. Entire scenes can also be flashbacks.

Note that I don't think that the only reason to have scenes is to change the situation, as presented above. Well, from one respect I do. Adding to the situation is changing it, too. That is, I'm not seeing a "should" here, because all scenes alter the situation. There's a scene in which two characters are playing chess that doesn't seem to relate to the rest of the situation? Well, it puts the two characters in a particular place, at a particular time, doing some particular activity. That's all pertinent stuff.

I think too much emphasis is being placed on Situation as dramatic, essentially. Sim aside, from a gamism angle, effective situation is simply setting up a potential for a character to step on up. But there will be some potential zilch-ish play in simply doing management of elements in moving them around. I think that sim situation only requires potential conflict and such if and when there's a hybrid going on, or that conflict is required by genre. That is, one can do "existence" sim in which you don't have to explore this sort of stuff.

So largely we're talking about quality as it pertains to modes of play. Which says nothing about the definition itself. Situation is merely statements about the spatial, or social arrangements of setting elements vis a vis each other. The chair is in the room is situation - every "box text" you've ever read is situation where it is not strictly color. Exploring what a chair is like to sit on is exploration of setting (and a character's response is exploration of character). Exploring why it's in a room is exploration of situation. Exploring what fabric it's made of is exploration of color. Though all of these could be different in different contexts.

Situation is not a subset of setting. It's the element of the inter-relation of such items, which is often the most interesting thing to investigate, though not always. Why is the barkeep abusing his wife? Answering this question is exploring the situation, developing it, changing it.

Remember that these elements do not exist outside of play and the exploration of them. It's not that we have some setting that pre-exists, and then we arrange it to create setting. We explore the setting by introducing bits of it. We explore situation by looking at how they are inter-related. We exlore color through description of the setting that's not otherwise reacted to. Character is "just" a specialized (and possibly the most interesting) form of setting to explore, and mutually exclusive from setting. That is setting is all such elements that are not character. Sometimes it's hard, as with organizations, to tell where the setting ends and a character begins.

So I see something like a cut scene, as simply an introduction of new situation to be explored in other scenes. A "change" only insamuch as the overall situation is changed by it being larger. As such, the question of whether or not play "should" advance situation along like plot, is purely a matter of preference. Some people may prefer meandering play that addresses situation only whenever it wants to do so.

Some other notes. LARPS have one scene framed, as I see it, for most of them. That is, you walk into the room, and you enter the scene as it's presented physically to you, usually with an explanation that the room is a spaceport bar, and any other rooms players go to are other parts off the spaceport. I think that the idea of continuous scening is only found in RPGs, and perhaps the movie Rope by Alfred Hitchcock (facetious), and it's highly fascinating. Only in RPGs is there a notion that the whole world can be one big "set" and that there are no cuts really so much as speeding along the action. No, we're not supposed to imagine it this way precisely, but when the GM says, "OK, after three days of travel, you find yourself at the next city" he's not neccessarily cutting per se. Instead imagine that the action is just taking place really, really fast like a sped up film. The point is that in all RPG play this happens. That is, the GM says, "You eat your meal, and a guy comes over to talk to you." You don't do the meal eating in real time unless it's a LARP.

So I agree that "cut" is a good term, but that it should mean moving about inside a scene like in a movie. The quickly eaten meal is not a new scene - the same elements are present and time is not skipped per se - time is merely gone through at a rapid rate so we can avoid having to relate boring details. Similarly, in some play, moving from city to city with "Three days later" is the same thing. It's a very simulation angle that says that the characters exist without dramatic constraint in the game that requires this sort of thinking - note that in such play, if a player says, "Oh the way, I stop off and get X" it's legitimate. Because, essentially, narrating past the opportunity to do that is sort of a "mistake" in a way. Players always have an opportunity to do what "might" be done in the time passed in this sort of play.

I think it's rare around here these days, but I think that most play is really better thought of as single-scene play with lots of cuts, rather than as Framing from scene to scene. Certainly this is what happens in a LARP. For play that tries to match LARP simulation levels, I think it's accurate to say for this play that there's only one scene, generally. Of course there may be exceptions, and variations. Most play probably actually does have occasional scene closures, and framing to new scenes. Sometimes done grudgingly, "Hmm, let's skip the travel parts, howabout, and just go to the next city, OK?"

That's my couple of pennies on the subject.

Mike

Mike, you seem to be using the word "situation" to mean the stuff that's immediate to the player's point of view; that is not, as I understand it, Situation.  It's that level of stuff that I started using "Scene" for, so that Situation can be "stuff that's important."  The definition of "important" gets determined by the group according to their own agendas.  A chair in a room is a Scene (or probably a Set -- add action and it's a Scene); unless the chair is important, in which the chair in the room is a Situation.  Does that jive with your thinking, or are we speaking different languages at eachother?

I agree, Scene does not need to "progress" the Situation, just change it or even comment on it -- I think "address the Situation" covers all contingencies.  Two guys playing chess can address Situation even if they don't rock the world -- it may underscore their characteristics, or express their relationship, etc, and such things are usually important to the players.  But if it's a scene of two old guys on the other side of the planet from the rest of the game and have no significant relationship to the rest of the game... well, it's not addressing Situation, and anybody in the game would be right to say, "Waitaminute, why are we dealing with these old guys playing chess?"  (And then, yes, the good GM/player ties it into the game, but by doing so, he makes the chessplayers significant, and retroactively makes that scene address Situation.)

And yes, Framing Scenes can simultaneously add elements to the Setting.  I'd say most of the heavy lifting of a Scene is selecting elements from the Setting (itself generated, seeded, and modified by prior scenes and other processes) and arranging them, but there's always the possibility of introducing something new, and the most interesting way to do this is by introducing it right into the player-characters' faces (or wherever their PoV happens to be at the time).

I'd agree that a lot of games are one long scene.  I'm skeptical of whether this is a good thing.  Lots of games are about dungeon crawls, too, and for some instances that's good and for some that's inappropriate and unfun.  I find Scene Framing as a technique to be another tool in the shed that allows players to focus on what's important (ie, address the Situation) rather than include the important bits along with every other detail that's between them and their target.  Mind, for some kinds of play the 'every other detail' is the important thing, so they have less need for scene framing.

Thanks for the description of Universalis' scene-framing, scene closing (which is also used in teevee, so you were consistent after all!), cuts, and fade to black.  I really need to order me a copy of that -- it sounds like a fun toolkit to tinker with!

Joshua wrote:
Mike, you seem to be using the word "situation" to mean the stuff that's immediate to the player's point of view; that is not, as I understand it, Situation.  It's that level of stuff that I started using "Scene" for, so that Situation can be "stuff that's important."  The definition of "important" gets determined by the group according to their own agendas.  A chair in a room is a Scene (or probably a Set -- add action and it's a Scene); unless the chair is important, in which the chair in the room is a Situation.  Does that jive with your thinking, or are we speaking different languages at eachother?

I agree, Scene does not need to "progress" the Situation, just change it or even comment on it -- I think "address the Situation" covers all contingencies.  Two guys playing chess can address Situation even if they don't rock the world -- it may underscore their characteristics, or express their relationship, etc, and such things are usually important to the players.  But if it's a scene of two old guys on the other side of the planet from the rest of the game and have no significant relationship to the rest of the game... well, it's not addressing Situation, and anybody in the game would be right to say, "Waitaminute, why are we dealing with these old guys playing chess?"  (And then, yes, the good GM/player ties it into the game, but by doing so, he makes the chessplayers significant, and retroactively makes that scene address Situation.)

I'd agree that a lot of games are one long scene.  I'm skeptical of whether this is a good thing.  Lots of games are about dungeon crawls, too, and for some instances that's good and for some that's inappropriate and unfun.  I find Scene Framing as a technique to be another tool in the shed that allows players to focus on what's important (ie, address the Situation) rather than include the important bits along with every other detail that's between them and their target.  Mind, for some kinds of play the 'every other detail' is the important thing, so they have less need for scene framing.

Thanks for the description of Universalis' scene-framing, scene closing (which is also used in teevee, so you were consistent after all!), cuts, and fade to black.

pekkok wrote:
Based on what I commented for Joshua above, I see only one way to approach this (might well be because of my current poverty of vision): The type of interplay inherent to the Scene should be analysed down to elements that create the basic tensions establishing that interplay.

To concretize, here's a quick sketch of the direction this could take us, if pursued:

Looking at a game situation from a Scenic viewpoint, you would not merely have character called John, character called Jane, so forth: you would also define them with "roles" that make up the Scene, as "forces" in play. Thus, John could be defined as the "Adversary of Jane", a "Humorous Distraction", or perhaps a "Figure of Repentance" etc. (These terms are just depictive phrases to sketch the idea I'm after, not well-honed terms of Scenic roles.)

This way you could superimpose the definitions of the Scene on the ongoing play - to make a sort of Scenic lens, if you will.

Now this was, obviously, a deliberate design choice, and perhaps if I understood French the conversation would have contextualised it for me.  Nevertheless, the overall experience was mostly illustrative of why normal movies do use scene changes, because it was relentlessly dull.

Mike wrote:
Which is to say that it's not really so much cutting and framing that's important at all, IMO. It's getting to the interesting moments that's important.

But the point is that you don't frame for the sake of framing, but only when the current scene has used up it's potential.

On you're first point, I'm not trying to say that cutting and framing aren't effective tools - I couldn't personally do without them myself anymore. I'm saying that they're only important insamuch as they get us to the important stuff. If there is another way to get us to the important stuff, then that's just as effective. Basically I'm trying to focus in on what the priority is in terms of using these things.

Which is the second point. To always be moving to the important stuff. How do you know when a scene has lost it's potential to contain important stuff? Well, first, you have to know what the important stuff is. This is a matter of understanding the agenda that everyone is enjoying primarily, and we could have a whole thread just on that subject. Secondly, not to hand wave it, but often you just "know" that it's time to move on. That is, if the current scene is boring, and you can't think of how to make it non-boring, then perhaps rearranging the elements with some framing is what you need to adjust the situation so that things are interesting again. But, lastly and more precisely, a more conscious way is to watch the players for what they're responding to, and what they aren't responding to, and adding more of what they're responding to. If the current scene can't reasonably handle more of such additions, then it's time to frame to a scene that does.

Aesthetics comes into the picture as well, of course. I've made the mistake, more than once, of "framing in", or having enter a scene, one character too many. That is, often the best way to alter the situation to make it continue to be interesting is to have a character arrive just then. After about three entrances, however, it can start to seem really contrived. The level to which they seem contrived, of course, being related to how contrived each is individually. That is, if the scene is supposed to be a meeting where everyone is expected to arrive, then each of these arrivals isn't at all contrived, but just part of continuity. Again, it's about three "just happened along" entrances where things start to seem stretched. Perhaps more for different groups (maybe only one every other scene or less for some groups that are really into continuity as an end). The point is that when you reach that level of aesthetic boundary for this sort of thing, it's often best to end the scene, and start others with the characters in question who you want to include in the action.

This doesn't always work, of course, given that it might only be the confluence of a certain set of characters in certain relationships that creates the fun situation. For instance, if two characters are in bed together, and one's husband comes in, that's a pretty standard interesting situation (if cliched). If you frame the wife to the husband in the next scene, you don't have the situation in question. In that case, the only way to engineer it is with a "coincidental" arrival.

So, obviously it's a balancing act. Add to the current scene where it doesn't blow the group's plausibility meter, and as is required to take advantage of the opportunities that the scene offers. Which is not to say to always take them all - having the husband show up every time becomes boring itself. But just to make as much new situation you can with what you have to work with. And as soon as that situation has played itself out, and mixing it up further is no longer as interesting as framing to some other combination of elements, it's time for a new scene. When that's true is going to depend on the group playing and their agenda, and other aesthetic considerations that we can only make gross generalizations about.

Mike

contracycle wrote:

Mike wrote:
But the point is that you don't frame for the sake of framing, but only when the current scene has used up it's potential.

Right - but how to do you determine that?

John wrote:
Still, I would throw a few more thoughts here.  One of the issues scene framing is that they inherently release tension to a degree.  By skipping forwards in time, you're allowing that there isn't current tension over what will happen in the next moment.  The few movies which have continuous time often play on that interest.  For some of the better examples, see Hitchcock's Rope (as already mentioned) and Running Time. 

There is also a price to be paid in exposition.  By cutting in time and place, you generally have to re-establish the time and place and immediate circumstances.  i.e. Where have we cut to?  How long has it been?  What is happening?  If you can instead introduce new elements into an existing scene, then these questions are already answered...  If the time and place aren't so relevant, then cutting may not be justified. 

This is really cool stuff, but are we still on topic? Perhaps a new thread on honing cutting technique instincts.

I generally think that often in RPG play the tradition is to let a scene go on until the GM asks, "Anybody want to do anything else? No? OK, then on to the next scene." For a lot of groups, however, like ones looking for tension (I don't think all are - especially not all the time), that's probably after the boat has sailed. Doing a good job of cutting before you've dragged on too far, and the tension has drained out of the scene, is a difficult talent to practice, but a good one to have.

I do alright, but am too "sharing" a GM to make early cuts unless I really know that it's time.

Mike

I concur with Mike.

I've got a lot of good stuff out of this thread, but if we're going to start talking about cut techniques, it's time for a new thread.

I think this thread is done, but if anybody has anything to add about the distinctions between the Setting, Situation, and Scenes, by all means post here.