Hi,
Brian here. This comes from the "New guy has a question" thread. I have no idea about how to create links back and forth. If someone wants to tell me, I'll gladly learn. Sorry. I think this discussion could go under 'game play,' 'theory' or here. So here I stick it cos this is where I was inspired.

The discussion moved onto what would call the methodology of actual role-playing with a GNS rpgs. Now this interests me a great deal because having recently graduated from Univeristy, I am an actor by training if not yet by profession (its coming).

Chris Kubasik made some very interesting and very accurate comments about about role-play and "actor stance". But I think I have to make a few points and let anyone who wants to, take a swing.

1) An actor in character has knowledge of the charcter's over all goal which we call the super-objective.

2) But that the actor-in-character must also bear in mind the goal for each scene or the objectives.

3)This is the crux of the matter, well in my mind anyway, much of acting and the dramatic tension of a scene arrises from the actor-in-character encountering and dealing with obstacles. These things an actor and a player character rarely and should rarely know.

So how do we reconcile this with G/N/S play? Is there an ideal?
I think not given the multitude of individual tastes within each G,N, and S play. But is there a common middle ground from which people can begin exploring their tastes?[/code]

Anywho, just had to spit this one out - acting is my life. Let he who is without sin...

be cool, be happy and have fun y'all,
Brian.
(Hey, I figured out how to bold-face type!)

GNS specifically tackles the goal of each decision a player makes via their character. A scene could have dozens of these GNS decisions, and a game system hundreds. GNS really only looks at the objective of each individual decision, suggesting (inherently in the model) that gamers have one of three and only one of three objectives possible underlying each "act of play". Stances address the mode in which the player addresses the act of play, primarily from the wants/needs of the character (actor) regardless of what the player thinks is a good story or strategy; primarily from the wants/needs of the player to create a good story or for strategic reasons (author); or by primarilly manipulating not the character but other objects/events surrounding the character to achieve the player's own goal (director).

If I expressed this poorly or mis-applied something, someone else will kindly correct me... and don't worry if GNS and related game theory is confusing. I've been around here since last summer and its only been in the last month or two that it all has really started to come together for me.

In a flimsy nutshell, Narrativism puts priority on story over realism & strategy... Simulation puts priority on realism over story & strategy, Gamism puts priority on strategy over realism and story. People get really bogged down trying to define what a story is, what realism is (by which I mean emphasis on the sensation of being the character and preforming 'believably') and defining and redefining all the terms. There are plenty of people here who can provide more precise information than I have.

So how does this compare with acting, and the goals an actor faces? In my opinion, the actor is attempting to convey the words and intentions of a script, whereas a roleplayer is conveying words and intentions which could become a script. So the goals may very well be the same, but the platform is different.

Laurel's weird 8 am ramblings on her 23rd day without caffeine or candy

Hello,

Fang and I hashed out some of these issues a while ago ... I'll do some hunting for threads.

The use of "Actor" to describe one of the Stances is not my invention, but that of the people who brought up the issue of Stance in the first place, on the r.g.p.a discussion group. Their use, which I have altered a little, is definitely not consistent with the profession or act of "acting" in theater terms, as Fang pointed out.

As Christopher has pointed out, the actor in theater terms is, in RPG Stance terms, pretty much in Author stance. [I refuse to get into a more elaborate debate about this, but my reading of Stanislavsky puts even his "method" approach into the same basket.]

So please, no one with theater experience should try to correlate their knowledge in that medium with the term "Actor" as a Stance, in the RPG medium. Laurel has stated the differences among stances quite well, and I request that we all recognize that they are specific to the RPG discussion, per se, and by itself.

Best,
Ron

Hi,

Well, first let me say thankyou Laurel. I've been groping around this whole G/N/S thing and I can see that I was going in the right direction but you've made the journey a lot faster. Hang in there, caffeine/candy addiction can be a bitch to beat...I'm going through caffeine withdrawl at the moment myself.

OK, I'm sometimes guilty of circulocution and muddy thinking, especially when I'm thinking on the fly (and it seems to me that you've got to move fast around here or the discussion will leave you behind).

So I should clear some things up:

1) I'm not trying to say that role-playing, as in rpgs, is like acting. To me its more like group inprovisational storytelling in a certain theme based on certain characters and with rules.

2) All the expressionistic arts share certain fundamentals. And yes, I consider rpgs to belong to the arts as an abstract expression of ideas. My coments about acting arose from the similarity in expression. to forward my humble oppinion: yes it is author stance but not completely.

I'm sorry if I'm rehashing old ideas but my interest was fired by the ideas (and probably a mild ego surge that people thought my stuff was worth replying to). It just seems to me that one can't completely disassociate the more formal performance arts from rpgs. If we could, then why are we using the same words? I dunno, I guess Ijust feel that there are some related basic concepts (stress related and basic, I agree they're not the same thing).

Anywho, thanks muchly for your input.
And...ah...Ron? What's a BBC? Sorry.

'ave a good one,
Brian.

Hi Brian,

No need to apologize! These are all good questions, and when someone says, "We discussed this already," they aren't saying, "... you moron."

As for the terminology thing, that's the hell of it. Plenty of terms in my essay are "inherited" rather than "derived" - stance, actor/author, exploration, Gamism, Simulationism, and lots more. Some of them mean exactly what their original authors used them for, and some of them don't. Some of them, as terms per se, have created no trouble, some of them have. The problem with (a) developing new theories and (b) writing about them, is that no one knows from the outset which of these terms and meanings are going to be problematic and which aren't.

And then, once the new theory or essay or presentation is there and being discussed, it's extremely dangerous to start retro-replacing the terms with new ones - if other disciplines offer anything to go by, going too enthusiastically in this direction is disastrous and the basic principles get lost or muddled very quickly. Such terminological shifts are best saved for real fundamental shifts in the line of thinking.

So I use fairly academic standards of precedent to avoid these problems, which relies on (1) citing where the terms come from originally, (2) defining them as carefully as possible (including relative to their source, if the meaning is changed), and (3) expecting readers to accept that the terms have local meanings, and to abide by them.

Does that create jargon? Sure. Is it meaningless jargon? I hope not. Does it create a learning curve for understanding? Sure. Is that curve too steep? I hope not. Is this situation kind of a pain in the ass? Yes. However, is this situation better than freely revising terms left and right as current debate dictates? Much.

Best,
Ron

Brian Hose wrote:
3)This is the crux of the matter, well in my mind anyway, much of acting and the dramatic tension of a scene arrises from the actor-in-character encountering and dealing with obstacles. These things an actor and a player character rarely and should rarely know.

Hello,

This is my first post, as well, though I have been reading the page for some time. I haven't, however, read all of the old discussions, though I have read the GNS paper on the site.
I believe there is a problem in the use of the stances as they are used here. The stances, as they are written and as they are being described in the article here are being used to answer two different questions. First, why a player does what he or she does in a session, and secondly how the player goes about it. The real problem is that actor stance (at least in this post) is being used to describe a behavior and an intent which may not always be concurrent, and as intent is already covered by the main body of GNS theory, I question the reason it has been included in the concept of the stance.
As I see it, as an intent:
Actor stance is being used to describe a particular aspect of simulationism, that of character exploration (or deep immersion in the character.) Author stance is basically being used to describe narrativism (or possibly the decision making process in general) and is only being used in this manner.
And as a behavior:
Actor stance is being used to describe the player's use of only his character's own actions (for whatever reason those actions are taken) to influence the environment or outcome of the session. Director stance on the other hand is used to describe the player's active use (not through the actions of his character only) of other characters, events, objects and such to influence the outcome of the game, and is only being used in this fashion.
As I have explained it, I question the need for the first two examples of stance (first Actor and Author) as they describe the intent or reason behind decision-making, something that the main theory of GNS already describes, and possibly inappropriate for being called a stance. Further, when combined with the other two examples of stance as written (second Actor and Director) they fail to partition either intent or behavior, particularly arising from the confusion caused by naming the two Actor stances identically, when they describe different things entirely.
As I see it, the first Actor and Author stances are not able to coexist, clearly forming a partition of intent (at least those intents that they are able to describe), and second Actor and Director likewise form a partition (and in this case I would put forward that they actually partition all in-game behavior of this type - either a player uses other characters, items, events, or not).
I'd like to write more now, but I have to meet with my advisor for research, but I will try to expand on the subject later. Please post replies/commentary.

Hello again,
Ron, I've got to hand it to you. YOu really know how to present a very cogent arguement. And I can't say that I really disagree with anything you said. All I might say is why are those particular terms the ones that are inherited? I hope you didnt get the idea that I was offended to references about topics already being covered - I was just trying to be polite and oppologise for any social faux-pas.

To mike,
I have to be honest up front and say that I'm an actor so that colours my perspective on role-play. I want truth in character because truth is the core of an actor's profession. I don't think that's a bad thing because I believe that truth in character role-play does more to advance the idea of narrativist-story telling (I hope I used that right).

This is not to say that I think that any other point of view is worthless. I have no beef with out of character knowledge, I just like to present a reason for that knowledge existing (some sort of precognitive ability is one that we used once when a player had played the adventure with another group).

I do think that there is player knowledge and then there is character knowledge. The example that springs to mind is most likely a very tired one: in D&D a player will understand how magic works (limitations and so on...) but would their fighter character have that knowledge? Depending on character history maybe, but then again, maybe not. So what do you do?

I am very curious about using OOC and why people think they should. I'll admit that while I've been role-playing for about twenty years its all been in only about five different games at different times and they've mostly been gamist. I supose that my arguements could be said to better fit a simulationist model but I still think its relative to narrativism. Comments?

God, its 5:03 am here in Brisbane.
May the Schwartz be with you,
Brian.

Hello,

This is my first post, as well, though I have been reading the page for some time. I haven't, however, read all of the old discussions, though I have read the GNS paper on the site.
I believe there is a problem in the use of the stances as they are used here. The stances, as they are written and as they are being described in the article here are being used to answer two different questions. First, why a player does what he or she does in a session, and secondly how the player goes about it. The real problem is that actor stance (at least in this post) is being used to describe a behavior and an intent which may not always be concurrent, and as intent is already covered by the main body of GNS theory, I question the reason it has been included in the concept of the stance.
As I see it, as an intent:
Actor stance is being used to describe a particular aspect of simulationism, that of character exploration (or deep immersion in the character.) Author stance is basically being used to describe narrativism (or possibly the decision making process in general) and is only being used in this manner.
And as a behavior:
Actor stance is being used to describe the player's use of only his character's own actions (for whatever reason those actions are taken) to influence the environment or outcome of the session. Director stance on the other hand is used to describe the player's active use (not through the actions of his character only) of other characters, events, objects and such to influence the outcome of the game, and is only being used in this fashion.
As I have explained it, I question the need for the first two examples of stance (first Actor and Author) as they describe the intent or reason behind decision-making, something that the main theory of GNS already describes, and are possibly inappropriate for being called a stance. Further, when combined with the other two examples of stance as written (second Actor and Director) they fail to partition either intent or behavior, particularly arising from the confusion caused by naming the two Actor stances identically, when they describe different things entirely.
As I see it, the first Actor and Author stances are not able to coexist, clearly forming a partition of intent (at least those intents that they are able to describe), and second Actor and Director likewise form a partition (and in this case I would put forward that they actually partition all in-game behavior of this type - either a player uses other characters, items, events, or not).
I'd like to write more now, but I have to meet with my advisor for research, but I will try to expand on the subject later. Please post replies/commentary.

Hi Danny, and welcome,

I've only been here a few days myself and while you were posting your article I was writng my last one. So having just read your post I have to say that I like it. I especially like your comments about actor vs author in relation to sim vs nar. Your later comments about the need for these stances in relation to the style of role-play (sim vs nar) I think is interesting too. It makes me think of something someone said somewhere (its too early in the morning to anything other than vague, sorry) about practical crossover from style to style during play.

Happy gaming, and may the schwartz be with you,
Brian.

Danny Cline wrote:
how the player goes about it. The real problem is that actor stance (at least in this post) is being used to describe a behavior and an intent which may not always be concurrent, and as intent is already covered by the main body of GNS theory, I question the reason it has been included in the concept of the stance.

Hi Danny,

Welcome to the Forge, and I'll start by saying that you've nailed the intent/action distinction precisely. Using Actor stance during play something a person might do - how it fits into that person's GNS preferences during that instance of play (say, a session just to have a nice big instance) wouldn't be clear unless we knew a lot more information.

For example, I might play in a very Narrativist fashion, and part of that goal would be met by hitting Actor stance in a crucial moment of role-playing the character's words and actions. How that related to Author stance during the other moments of play, and how those two stances worked together for my enjoyment (and hopefully that of everyone else), is worth a whole thread of its own.

Contrast that example with this one: another fellow might play in a very Simulationist fashion and part of his goal is met by hitting Actor stance in a crucial moment of role-playing the character's words and actions. As an isolated moment of play, this isn't anything different from the above example. But if we consider when during the session the moment came, and what decisions (and stances) were involved in the moments before and after this one, a whole different pattern will emerge such that his goals, very different from mine, are being reached.

Just to be efficient I'll toss my answers to Brian into this post too.

About the terms, it's kind of a long story, but suffice to say that I originally simply planned to adopt the Threefold Model (Gamism, Simulationism, Dramatism) without much or any modification. As time went on, my construction of those terms and their relationship to things like Stance and Exploration became very distinct, to the extent that many who'd constructed the Threefold considered me to misunderstand it. I realized that (rather than misunderstanding) I'd essentially created a new model entirely and decided to go with that, because I thought it made more sense than the Threefold had in the first place.

I think that none of the existing terms are bad for the role they play in my ideas, so precedent has remained pretty much my default choice. I also think that the essential construction of the ideas and their relationship to one another is what matters more than the label we pin on a given idea, as long as the local definition of the term is well-presented and understood.

About OOC discussion and/or knowledge, one of the things that has been worked over pretty thoroughly is that historical Gamist and historical Narrativist play have generally abandoned the traditional approach (from late-80s games, anyway) that "you are your character." Both of these modes of play are all about player goals (where "player" refers to both GM and everyone else), so nothing seems to be detracted from play if OOC conversation is included and integrated with IC conversation.

You mention your familiarity with the Gamist version, which I think is pretty common - the player makes "his guy" go here and do this without apology, so to speak, or worrying much, if at all, about what "the guy" might fictionally want to go. The Narrativist version might be summed up as the idea that I can play my character's ignorance of his uncle's murder better, and with more ability to bring an excellent situation into future play, if I, the player, am fully aware of both the murder and the presence of said uncle's corpse in the trunk the character is sitting on. The emotional response of the character, when he finally does realize it, can now be maximally timed, placed, and enjoyed by me and everyone else.

I have to emphasize that I'm talking historically. Therefore (for instance) Narrativist versions of IC knowledge or (for instance) Simulationist versions of OOC knowledge, neither of which is terribly common historically, are certainly possibly and certain constructions of them might well be very successful.

I also have to emphasize that the IC/OOC distinction is not a Stance issue.

Hope that helps and/or is interesting!

Best,
Ron

Hey, thought I'd toss in my two copper marks' worth..

Though I'm not totally sure I fully understand Actor/Director/Author stances, I think I've got a pretty good grasp on what they mean, as well as the GNS model. So here goes.

I believe I'm mostly a Simulationist/Narrativist, in my game play... I find I get the most enjoyment out of playing up character faults, ignorances, and personality quirks. I do like to do things using the contrasts of IC/OOC knowledge (like sitting on the trunk where the dead uncle is hidden, etc.) but for the most part, I do my damnedest to keep my characters from acting on OOC knowledge. If it's something I really, really want them to do, I always try to find some way to get the OOC knowledge that would bring about the desired action to become IC knowledge in a feasible manner. In this, I think I flit between Author and Director, when I'm trying to arrange such things, but I find the most satisfaction out of getting into Actor stance, where I ignore anything my character doesn't know, and play up their perceptions, biases, flaws and quirks.
This is due, in large part, to the fact that I am an avid participant in a quality Freeform Roleplay forum on AOL. Sometimes I play just to play, and therein I am fully the Actor. Other times I play for story, and there I take on the stances of Director and Author, all while attempting to not compromise the Actor stance which is being played out in the roleplaying chat-room. I've done this for quite some time, and since I've begun, I've noticed that my tabletop RP has been effected by it.

My point in describing this is to point out that it is possible and highly entertaining to play narrativist and simulationist styles without ever having your character act upon knowledge they do not have. I consider it a mark of skill as a roleplayer to be able to forego opportunities which only exist by taking advantage of OOC knowledge.

Hi everybody,

This is kind of embarassing, but I have to do it.

Ron wrote:

"So please, no one with theater experience should try to correlate their knowledge in that medium with the term "Actor" as a Stance, in the RPG medium."

He's right, of course. Since I started this awkward discussion last night I'm going to apologize. It was one o'clock in the morning. I had spent the day hammering out 20 pages of screenplay... And wasn't thinking quite straight.

I managed to conflate issues of IC/OOC, Stance, and GNS mode -- all while talking about actual acting, and not the use of Actor Stance in RPGs.

Oops. Sorry about that.

I'll try to make only bold statements from now one when I'm pretty certain I'm actually engaged in the specific topic at hand, and not just typing because of caffeine induced momentum.

Take care,
Christopher

Hello again,

Thanks to everyone for their replies and commentary. Also, I'm sorry about the double posting - an accident due to my unfamiliarity with these boards.

I got to worrying about what I wrote last time after I went home, and it seems that my description of the two actor stances was incorrect. It seems that only the ACTOR INTENT stance and not the ACTOR MEANS or BEHAVIOR stance is included in the definition. Perhaps I was also wrong about exactly what AUTHOR stance means as well, but in looking over the definitions, I am still forced to conclude that the notion of stances as they are written (and I guess as they were traditionally written) does not go well with GNS.

In the case of ACTOR INTENT stance, the only information provided is superfluous, describing as a stance what is by its definition one of the types of Simulationism (Character Exploration). In the case of AUTHOR stance, I see I was wrong yesterday in tying it to Narrativism, as it could easily be used in a Gamist or even Simulationist way also. However, I still believe that the information provided is unnecessary, and perhaps even completely meaningless - in AUTHOR stance I do what I do for my reasons, and not my "character's" - simply describing all methods of play other than that described by ACTOR INTENT stance. (Which does contradict my worries over these stances not partitioning all possible intents - though what they seem to partition the field of intent or decision into is, for lack of better terms "Certain types of Simulationism" and non-"Certain types of Simulationism," which is clearly superfluous information within the GNS framework.)

On the other hand, DIRECTOR stance actually does proivide new information. It says not anything about the player's decisions (which are covered more or less completely under GNS I think) but about what means he or she takes to implement those decisions. As such, DIRECTOR stance is unrelated to the other stances as they have been defined traditionally. One can easily see someone in AUTHOR stance also being in DIRECTOR stance, or someone in AUTHOR stance not being in DIRECTOR stance. Though one in ACTOR INTENT stance is usually not in DIRECTOR stance, I suspect it is possible for one to be in both stances. (The example I would propose is one of the traditional "hemchmen" scenarios - the player controlling multiple characters at once, as in Ars Magica - but none of them necessarily acting on anything but the perceived desires or knowledge of the characters themselves.) I won't discuss ACTOR MEANS stance here, as it was apparently due to my misunderstanding of the definition, but as I described it, it fits with DIRECTOR stance and not the other two.

My suggestion about the use of these stances which Ron says are holdovers from other models is that they should probably either be modified so they provide some sort of useful information or discarded. As it is, I think they confuse the more important things discussed by your model (the GNS structure particularly) while not providing any new information in any kind of coherent useful way. AUTHOR and ACTOR INTENT stances are unnecessary (and perhaps in the case of AUTHOR stance meaningless) creating an arbitrary division of something that has already been divided in a clearer and more natural way. DIRECTOR stance could be made useful, with the addition of other stances, but seems right now to be a mere add-on to a structure that is otherwise ill-placed in your model.

Anyway, I hope that this doesn't seem like useless complaining. I know that coherence in your model is a goal of yours Ron, and I think some changes in the stance definitions would be helpful in order to avoid confusion.

Hey Danny,

I respectfully disagree with your conclusion, because I think you are expecting the Stances issue to dovetail in some kind of 1:1 way with GNS, and they are not intended or expected to do so.

We are talking about different levels or scales of play. Much as the interactions of tissues, the interactions of chemicals (molecules), and the interaction of atoms are related but not in a 1:1 way, the decisions and modes of play (GNS), the stances (person-to-character relationship), and the details of system (e.g. DFK) are related as well, but not 1:1.

If we look across role-playing among real people, we'll see a whole bunch of Stances in some combination across the people and across time. If we look again, for the same exact period, we'll see a whole bunch of different GNS preferences being expressed too. Now I do consider Stance to play a causal role in expressing whatever GNS preference is occurring, for a given person, but the Stances change more quickly and occur in more combinations than the GNS preferences.

By inserting the "intent" issue into Stance, you are trying to make the term apply at a level that it's not designed for, and tangling yourself all 'round. I agreed with your distinction between intent and action, but did not realize that you were combining them in your effort to talk about Stance.

I strongly recommend that you review the topic without putting "intent" into the picture at the Stance level - consider Stance to be a technique, and GNS to be goals. You'll see, as I described in my previous post, that Stances operate as a small-scale (faster, more instances) causal factor, one of many, that go to produce the GNS outcome of interest.

Best,
Ron

Ron,

Thanks for the reply, though I'm not sure that you're addressing exactly the issue I was trying to bring up. I don't expect stance to go in a one-to-one correspondence with GNS; actually I would prefer not to have a parallel to GNS figure into the stances, as I think it causes problems. If stance is used to describe something different from intent, perhaps a means or behavior, I think it would be more relevant, and the stance issue could be made more coherent. However, my reading of the current definitions indicates that intent (or something very similar) is what two of the stances actually refer to (Actor and Author) but not the final stance (Director). Of course, this is unless I am misreading them or the version of the paper I am reading isn't current. Further I think it's important for the word "stance" itself to have a consistent meaning across all three (or however many) stances; this is really the main point I'm trying to communicate here. We need to know what the concept of "stance" categorizes or examines; now it seems to examine different things depending on which "stance" we are in. (Excerpts from "GNS AND OTHER MATTERS OF ROLE-PLAYING THEORY" follow.)

>>In Actor stance, a person determines a character's decisions and actions using only knowledge and perceptions that the character would have.

>>In Author stance, a person determines a character's decisions and actions based on the real person's priorities, then retroactively "motivates" the character to perform them. (Without that second, retroactive step, this is fairly called Pawn stance.)

The definitions above seem to consider a mental state regarding decision making as the only issue in deciding of stance. The question asked here and thus the apparent definition of "stance" itself is: "Why does the player make certain choices for his or her character?" or perhaps in the case of Actor stance "How does the character make choices for his or her character?" This is a very different question than we are asking below.

>>In Director stance, a person determines aspects of the environment relative to the character in some fashion, entirely separately from the character's knowledge or ability to influence events. Therefore the player has not only determined the character's actions, but the context, timing, and spatial circumstances of those actions, or even features of the world separate from the characters.

This definition asks not why the player makes certain choices, but what in-game resources the player uses. The question of why the player takes certain actions (or his or her in-game proxies, whether they be characters, object, or events do) becomes irrelevant here, and only the number and type of these (previously paranthetical) in-game proxies is the issue, and thus here the definition of "stance".

Note that neither other stance considers this issue. It may seem in Actor stance that one should control only a single character, but there is no explicit restriction against controlling more (though in actor mode controlling an in-game event admittedly stretches the definition). In addition, if there is an implied restriction, the same language is used in Author stance and so the implied restriction should be found there as well.

I agree that even in my second post my link between the first two stances and GNS may have been incorrect or incomplete, but nevertheless the Actor and Author stances do tread the same ground as GNS, i.e in-game decision making. Even if this is not the case (and admittedly, these first two stances may not be examining exactly the same issues as GNS) the difference between the apparent meaning of "stance" between Actor / Author stance and Director stance makes me wonder why these definitions are included together.

There are several ways to make the meaning of "stance" consistent through the definitions, primarily by changing or deleting definitions. I don't know whether you would be comfortable doing this or even whether you see what I am getting at (or if you do, whether you agree with it). I'm sure you could see these as well. The primary fixes would be

1. Deleting Director stance; not a good option in my book. (I'm not completely convinced that "stance" even means exactly the same thing in Actor and Author stances.)
2. Modifying Director stance to give "stance" a similar meaning as in Actor and Author stances; probably not a good option because I don't see what the new definition would be.
3. Modifying Actor and Author stances to agree with what Director stance implies "stance" should mean. Here the new definition of Actor stance would be obvious, but the Author stance again doesn't really fit in with this meaning. (We could use a Procrustean solution and delete Author stance to force a fit here.)
4. Ignoring the issue, and not having a definition of "stance" itself. Here we treat the three stances as somwehat unrelated definitions. They are all called stances, but "stance" doesn't mean anything. This is really the best option if no one feels it necessary to have "stance" have a particular meaning.

I think I'll quit for now here. This is probably long enough already and perhaps already so esoteric it has become meaningless. (Hurray me!) If this makes it clearer what issues I was trying to discuss, I'll be pleased, as I think my last post must have been unclear.

Thanks again and have a good week.
Danny

the motivation issues you raise above are what GNS positions are about. What Stance is about is defining how the player interacts with the game world. Interaction by definition is a two way process.


Actor: In Actor Stance a player only interacts with the game world through the vehicle of his character. He only effects the game world by having his character effect it, and his only source of knowledge about the game world is that which is filtered through his character. This means only the characters knowledge and goals and personality go into making decisions. A diagram might look like this.

Player<----->Character<----->World


Author: In Author Stance a player also effects the game world only by having his character effect it, however he is not limited to the knowledge and goals of his character. Rather information about the world that is passed to the player without first being filtered through the Character is used to make decisions. In addition to the characters knowledge and goals and personality, decisions also use the players knowledge and goals and personality.


Player----->Character----->World
^______________________|


Director: In Director Stance not only does information flow from the game world without being first filtered through a character, but the player can effect the game world directly rather than being limited to effecting it only through the actions of a character.

Player<--------------------->World

Hi Danny,

I'm not sure whether we're going 'round and 'round on this or not, although I hope it's more of a spiralling toward one another ...

Here's my call: Stance is, was, and shall always be about how a person declares something about what a character is doing - and by "doing" I mean in the broadest sense. By definition, that means that the circumstances of the character are also involved.

Now, you are right in spotting that Author and Actor stances share the "player's still in the character's head" and "player isn't messing with the environment" qualities. However, Author and Director share the quality of "player's priorities come first," which makes a nice exclusion of Actor. In other words, I think that we really have three categories on the same level, not one packet of two and one packet of one.

"If stance is used to describe something different from intent, perhaps a means or behavior, I think it would be more relevant, and the stance issue could be made more coherent."

This puzzles me, because stance is indeed used to describe something different from intent, specifically a means or behavior. As I've stated here and there, one can't distinguish Author and Actor stance based on one quick glimpse - but given a few scenes and a few observances, they are pretty damn different. My examples in the essay are chosen to show how different. In other words, I think you are, in fact, misreading the descriptions of Author and Actor as overly "intent" based. The whole "why" that you are seeing as inherent to (say) Actor, is specifically not an issue. One can hit Actor stance for a wide variety of reasons (intents).

In other words, you should apply the same reading you gave to Director stance (technique) to Actor and Author stance as well, and expand the necessary observation-time of the actual play in order to make this possible. Once this is achieved, then "goal" or "intent" can remain where it belongs, that is, as a GNS issue, and Stance can remain where it belongs, as a technique issue.

So now to your fixes - I think what needs to get fixed is the big picture, most likely all the way back in the first part of the essay, such that the layer occupied by GNS is clearer in people's minds, and no techniques are ever, individually, confounded with a given intent of any kind.

Best,
Ron

Hi Ron,

Sorry this is so late. I was busy with work and such.

I realize that when we are dealing with such purely psychological topics there is bound to be some confusion about what they are about. Perhaps I am the confused one between the two of us (assuming only one of us is confused) but I still feel that there is something wrong here. However, it is becoming clearer to me now that you are getting my point. However, we may have reached an issue on which we disagree and one in which further arguments may be fruitless in changing our minds. In any event, I'll respond here to your post rather than go over my main points like last time, as I feel I was clear enough then.

My main point of contention here I think in your claim that stance is about how a player declares what a character is doing. Even in "the broadest sense" I think some of these stances as written are not at all about player commands to a character. In fact, it is far from clear to me that any of these stances describe methods of player declaration of in-game agent action. The only one of these stances as written that seems to mesh with this description is actor stance, and there it is in this broadest sense you mention. Actor stance certainly describes a certain limitation on the commands a player may issue an in-game agent, and in this sense does discuss then how these commands are issued. However, the other two stances are much more problematic as regards this description of stance.

Author stance is probably the fuzziest of the stances to begin with - fuzzy in the terms that even if it were describing a behavior rather than an intent, the behavior is not, in general, an observable one. (A player may, to an outside observer be entirely within the bounds of actor stance, but actually acting within author stance - as long as the actions of the in-game agent are made due to the player's real-world priorities, they can coincide with actions that would fit the character's in-game motivations.) This stance seems to me to in no way describe how a player issues commands to his or her in-game agents, but rather why (here in the broadest sense; as in due to real world concerns). I admit there is some symmetry with actor stance in this but I am unsure whether that means that in these cases your description of stance fits or whether these stances are both merely descriptions of intent. (Or perhaps both the "why" and the "how" in these cases are so tied together to be indistinguishable.)

Director stance is where this meaning of stance really seems to break down, though. Even allowing for the widest possible definition of character here - using "character" to mean any and all in-game agents or proxies - we still have problems. Here the player's stance says nothing about why or how he or she gives commands to in-game agents, but merely what form those in-game agents take (absent except perhaps by implication in actor and author stance), in particular how many of those agents there are. (Also, whether those agents are representative of conscious beings in the structure of the game or events or objects other than the conscious.)

Part of the problem is with your description of stance. Rather than "How a person declares something about what a character is doing" we might say "how a person affects the structure of the game" or perhaps "how a person affects the in-game environment." In work like yours, it is too limiting to use the term character in the traditional sense; the possibility of role-playing games in which players control no true characters or control many (sometimes controlling many characters in actor stance even) are limited by this description. Even in this sense, however, some problems with actor and author stance still remain, I believe.

It may be possible that the question "how" answered in these stances is too intertwined with the question "why" I see to separate. It is also possible that merely rewording the question will not really turn a "how" into a "why" or vice versa. The question "How does a person affect the in-game environment?" may simply be too broad to answer in a coherent way. We answer this, in the stances:

Actor: "By following the apparent motivations of the player's in-game agent or agents."
Author: "By acting through in-game agents in accord with the player's real-world priorites." (Which still seems to me an odd way to answer this question, perhaps as though answering a different question.)
Director: "Through the use of multiple in-game agents."

Not only are these different answers, they are answering the question in regard to such extremely different factors that the question each answers may not even be the same. Why not instead:

"Through the use of a single in-game agent."
"Through the use of multiple in-game agents."

or some other answers to much more focused questions. If there have to be more of these questions answered, at least we get the information to each clearly.

In any event, I think I've gone on long enough. I'll let you decide whether there is still anything useful coming out of this before I follow this up again. As always, I appreciate your comments.

Danny Cline

Danny,

I've got some thoughts here, but a few things first . . . 1) Thanks for participating - I'm always impressed with the work so many folks (new, old or whatever) put into their posts here, and 2) I'm a bit lost as to why you see "How a person declares something about what a character is doing" as remarkably different from "how a person affects the structure of the game". The two are very close correlates in my mind, and this thread has helped me realize just how close that correlation is (at least in my mind). But since I'm not sure I fully understand the distinction you're drawing . . . my thoughts may not actually address your concerns. If not, I hope they have value in some other way . . .

First let me say that it seems to me there is no "pure" Stance. It is (as I and others have said on the Forge before, I think) literally impossible for a sane person to be TOTALLY "in the head" of a fictional construct - your Actor Stance will always be colored by your own "desires", and thus could be seen as "tainted" by Authorship. Every statement about what your character is doing makes assumptions about the nature of the environment that could be seen as "Director" power - at the absurd level, you're assuming/asserting/Directorially creating that there is air to breath/talk, ground to walk on, and etc. Less absurdly, you'll "create" that there is an available shopkeeper to talk to when you say "I go talk to the clerk". And even the most extreme "Pawn" player (who sees the character as just a piece to move through the game) needs to be able to look through that pieces' "eyes" at SOME level (Actor Stance) in order to make meaningful statements about the conduct of play.

So it seems to me that when we talk about Stance, we MUST be talking about both the how and why, and about both the character and the environment, in every case. Actor Stance is really saying "I'm *focused* on what the character would think" in making this decision, because it must be assumed that there is some element of Author and Director involved as well. What kinds of things am I most directly taking into account as I make a statement about what's happening/what I intend to happen in the game? What limitations (by game rule or group convention) are there on what I *can* include in my "what's happening" or "what I intend to have happen"? These are things to look at when determining Stance. Like GNS as a whole, while you can't always clearly observe a particular instance as a particular Stance, you can usually figure it out given time and contextual information.

BTW, I do think the single agent/multiple agent distinction is usefull, I just think it's a different issue than Stance, and Directorial actions aren't neccessarily about "multiple" agents - the focus may still be on the "single" agent of the character, i.e., Directorial only in relation to "your" character vs. Directorial in relation to the characters' of others. That may be a bigger factor in peoples "taste" than the Stance itself - e.g., some folks might be happy to have Directorial power in ways that are directly related to their character, but be really turned off by having other players impact their character.

Hope there's value here somewhere,

Gordon

Hey Danny.

I think my first big thread here was on this very topic, or one like it. Back in October and November, it looks like.

Is Director Stance Real?
Further on Stances
Stance and Event Resolution
Making Stuff Happen Stance
Making Stuff Happen non-Stance

The conclusion I drew from all that was that Director Stance is about viewing the lead characters as unique in the game -- as lead characters, whom the game is about, not as simply one more game element. If you do that, Director Stance makes sense. If you think the lead characters are the same kind of thing as the weather or the crate of bat guano or the shopkeeper, it makes more sense to have Actor Stance wrt the weather, Author Stance wrt the crate, Pawn Stance wrt the shopkeeper, instead.

(Hence the association of Director Stance with Narrativism. Simulationists inclined to share power just change the focus of their Author, Actor and Pawn Stance instead. Both share power, but from a me-and-the-game-world point of view, as opposed to a me-and-my-character point of view, Director Stance as such looks like nonsense.)

-Vincent