So, about a year ago, I played in a game based loosely on various World of Darkness books and rules.  It was not without hitches, but was generally fun, and folks looked forward to returning for each week's session.  I posted about this game here, and voiced various incorrect understandings about the Big Model.  I've since improved my understanding, but this game still has its lingering mysteries for me.  Here's the biggest one:

David wrote: Matt is the GM; Meg, John, Paul and I are the players.
. . .
John's character is extreme.  He was born and raised as a lizard.  He's spent most of his life in the Amazon.  Most of his kin hate technology . . . He's played [his character's] views with great passion during discussions with my "death is good" nut and Meg's atheist tech geek.

When success is on the line, though, John's decisions are quite predictable -- whatever's most effective.  The results follow a pattern illustrated by this example:

During a time crunch, he once tried to convey a concept, in-character, by starting with, "You've seen the Matrix, right?"  Paul and I instantly gave him odd looks, and Matt yelled, "John!"
"What, Matt?"
"Has your character seen the Matrix?"
"Uh, well, he could have..."
"When?"
"Recently.  He's been trying to understand his new environment."
(Skeptical looks all around.)
"Would he understand it even if he did see it?"
"Oh... probably not.  Good point."

Sometimes this is followed by a second, more character-appropriate attempt.  When it's done well, everyone at the table smiles in approval, and John sometimes throws in something like, "Sorry about the Matrix, I hadn't though it through."

On days where someone's mean about calling him on such a discrepancy, or John's not in a good mood, this can go less well.  "Matt, you know what I want to explain to the guy, can't we just say my character explains it?!"

Ron wrote: So here's what I mean - if you're in a scenario, then the investigations, conversations, and fights are part of making that basic scenario into the SIS, and resolving it as a feature of an ongoing, developing plot (for lack of a better word).  Think of this as "starting large," from the GM's prep, and then you guys all "fill in small" with the characters' actions and their outcome. But then, conversely, those actions and outcomes end up strengthening and making more internal sense out of the big picture, most typically when the GM returns to the prep stage for the next session.

In this case, what I'm saying is at first not relevant to GNS, because it's merely the useful interaction which generates an SIS, with a bit of a defined division-of-labor between GM and the rest of the group. No big deal. However, when this is made into the primary, driving aesthetic goal of play, so that the syncretic, responsive attention to the whole SIS' integrity not just a key feature, but actually a goal in action - there you go, that's some Sim for you, baby.

A great deal of the aesthetic power of Simulationist play, as I see it (and I mean that literally), lies in (a) adding to or developing that package, and (b) enjoying its resiliency against potential violation. At its least extreme, this is pure emulation. At its most extreme, it is parody. In between, you get modifications like "Lovecraft on a starship" or "steampunk fantasy" and so on. In each case, the goals are just as I've stated with (a) and (b).
Always remember the (b)! Without it, (a) is merely the chassis for any Creative Agenda.

Hiya,

Great post! Let's see if I can do this like throwing darts: toss, hit; toss, hit. If it doesn't work, then we can shift into a more lengthy-posting mode.

There are actually two parts to your question, I think. The first is "what is the 'right,'" and the second is, "jeez, why bother."

----

The key to the first question is that "Dream" is a grammatical variant of "the Dream" meaning the SIS - because it's a verb. It refers to the act of contributing to the SIS, which barring some kind of telepathy means talking (of which the SIS is composed), and which also means prompting and adding to whatever it is everyone else is able to contribute from that point on.

So if that's "Dreaming," then what is the right? It is the right to be listened to, and in the specific context of Simulationism, to tweak the shared material very strongly. Whatever the parameters are for that group and that game (a given reference, like Firefly or whatever; a given commitment to known physics; a genre as such; an aesthetic value given to depicting one's character; whatever), everyone else has to deal with what you are doing to the "input" material of play. That's your right: to have the contribution be taken seriously and enter into the realm of "the played," toward that end.

That's why Simulationist play is, using most existing RPG systems, delicate - because every time someone opens his or her mouth, there's a risk that the material-of-input will be stretched past the breaking point. And yet the point of play is literally to see that material stretched, at the very least put through its paces as genre or whatever, and in many cases to sustain significant challenge. Otherwise there's no snap or verve to the experience.

The group relies on a shared, constructive denial that they avoid such breaking points. Hitting one evaporates the denial and means that everyone is looking at one another with the essential contrivance revealed ... and their hopes of pushing the parameters they wanted to push, constructively or colorfully or whatever, completely dashed.

Classic example: playing superheroes, including a team member character who is willing to kill and talks tough. This requires a great deal of judgment and acceptance of risk, because if Wolverine-clone just turns around and guts Cyclops-clone in some scene or another when he's annoyed ... it's more than merely violating genre. And it's even more than the social gaffe of removing someone else's character from play. It most especially means that the player has broken the input-material (comics, superheroes, Marvel, X-Men) in a way from which it cannot recover, and he and everyone knew damn well that he didn't have to do that. The other people know that it was a gratuitious act, and that this person has violated their right to contribute further to this whole situation - it's now unplayable.

Within those limits of constructive denial, though, each person does have a powerful and perceived-as-inalienable right (i.e. social agreement) to stretch and challenge and work with any of the agreed-upon, valued, existing material that they treat as input into play. So it has to be done, or it won't be fun; the right to do it is the essence of powerful Simulationist play; and tacitly avoiding breakpoints in the material, which make doing it further impossible, is obligatory.

Traditionally, the systemic approach relies on probabilities and quantities, placed into relation with one another. Another, later approach that immediately became so widespread as also to be called traditional, relies on method acting and depiction. I suggest that neither works particularly well, and it's not surprising that the immediate fix (to privilege one member in the group with complete propositional and complete veto power) isn't satisfactory. After all, what good is a right when it's only to hit your mark and deliver your cued line? It's also not surprising that "system" became a dirty word for the latter group, because what good is a resolution technique which causes those breaking-points to happen  (i.e. the gunman rolls critical hit and critical damage and Superman fails his Health roll, and is killed by a pistol shot)?

I give all respect to some good tries, though: Unknown Armies, Fvlminata, and others come to my mind. I think we could also discuss Ysgarth, Hârn, the Avalon Hill version of RuneQuest, and similar games, which succeed so well in their weights-and-measures approach to everything in play that any character is guaranteed to be utterly plausible and utterly boring. And I have a sneaking suspicion that Pendragon is really successful, but people more experienced with it will have to investigate why.

Only recently, I think, has Simulationist play entered a systemic revolution. There are a number of good examples, of which my favorite is Dead of Night. I hope that the various Actual Play postings about it already show why and how it works as such. I'm sort of cursing at the moment too, because I keep remembering a title that I mean to mention in this same context, and yet failing to post about it because I forget, and now I'm forgetting again - and knowing I'm forgetting. Damn it.)

----

As for "why bother?" Well, I've noticed that once someone really gets the concept of Creative Agenda and understands the various options pretty well, at least one of three seems awfully unattractive to them. It was Simulationism for me, too. At first, all I wanted was finally to get consistent and fun Narrativist play of certain forms into action; then, secure that I and others could do it, I found myself branching into some forms of Gamist play with great zest and even ruthlessness. Only then, much later, did I find myself enjoying some forms of Simulationist play.

All I can say is, it's a lot like attending a big fun party in which everyone ... geez, I'll pick a real example, dresses up like a concept in evolutionary biology. I went as Constraint (a trench coat, label on the back) / Adaptation (only shorts underneath, label on my crotch). Other people went as the Plastic Phenotype, the Wild Type, Kamikaze Sperm, and Mosaic Habitat. Sue me, it was grad school, OK? My point is that we all liked seeing concepts with which we were familiar get lovingly twisted or even a bit abused into funny costumes which were references to them. The actual concept and controversy over adaptation vs. constraint is one thing; my extremely rude costume was another; and the payoff was realizing how the costume brought the concept into visual reality by mocking it. So I mocked it, and yet celebrated it, and it worked.

"Let's do Lovecraft on a space ship!" is a lot more potentially risky to the concept of the Mythos than it looks, at first. You're really putting one set of ideas (existential horror, nihilism, a-rationality) into a box of entirely different ideas (optimism, technophilia, faith in can-do, positivist science). Will it work? Even without knowing that you're doing this, only overtly processing "X with Y!" color in your mind, that's what makes the whole thing fun. It's not like someone says "Let's do Lovecraft in a rowboat!" Whether they pick another era, or pick another genre-trope to combine with the Mythos, it's only fun if it puts a little pressure on the Mythos ... can it do what it does (inspire a frisson of fear, revel in the breakdown of the mind, end quite badly for most concerned) in this new context which doesn't quite lend itself to such things?

Or if you're sticking to one genre or set of tropes, e.g. Bob's fantasy world, then it's a bit simpler - can the agreed-upon system actually sustain our characters' actions? If I cast this spell and do this and that and the other thing, are we able to celebrate Bob's world, or does it all get fucked up when we find the system can't cope? Playing Rafael Chandler's game Dread is a great example: you have to kind of jump straight into a no-holds-barred mode play, and you know that your character might do one last great deed, or that he or she might end up being as useless and worthless as a hero as he or she was in the back-story. Can the system live up to the necessary suspense and the shocking outcomes? As it happens, it can. It's fun to see it do that.

I mean, don't get me wrong, David, because I'm not trying to convince you to like Simulationist play. It is perfectly OK not to like a particular Creative Agenda, and it is also perfectly reasonable for the dislike to manifest as "why the hell would anyone do that?" After all, it's quite possible that that's exactly how a preference against a given agenda is experienced by definition.

My point in all of this is that past experience at the Forge has shown me that, over time and given much rewarding and coherent play experiences, one's CA preferences do tend to broaden.

Best, Ron

Ron,

Boom!  The first toss hits my first dart board smack in the middle.  I think it's a bullseye, tranforming "The Right" from something lame into something not lame, but I'm still squinting to make sure it isn't lodged in the "Big Model Structure" board divider next to the bullseye or some such.  More response to follow after further digestion.

The first toss also shakes the wall, dislodging my second dart board, which is labeled, "How could The Right: Lame Version be a fun goal?"

The second toss hits a whole new dartboard I hadn't seen before, which is labeled, "How could The Right: Not Lame Version be a fun goal?"  And then an "I'm not trying to get you to like Sim" disclaimer falls out, which cracks me up, because my entire past history of roleplaying includes no Narrativist play and only a few isolated occasions of maybe-Gamist play, and the bulk of what I've loved about roleplaying to date has been Simulationism if it's been any CA.  "Like Matt's Werewolf game, but with fewer hitches, more immersion in the 'place' of the gameworld, more player direction of what to Explore, and my favorite color bits," is largely what I'm interested in playing, GMing, and designing.

I have some thoughts on Sim design, and some questions about Dread and Dead of Night, but I'll wait on those until I've made sure that "The Right" is truly in "Not Lame" territory in my mind.

Ps,
-David

Here's my take on the why do it question:

Have you ever heard of the concept of a finite game? A finite game is like, say, checkers, you play towards a stated goal, at the conclusion of which, you quit playing. On the opposite end you have infinite games... an infinite game is a game that you play in order to keep playing. That's the goal of play. The most important of these games is life itself... under a certain train of thought, living is one big infinite game that we play in order to keep playing. Another good example is World of Warcraft, or any other MMO. People participate in those games in order, primarily, to keep participating. The SIMs and other simulation style video games follow a similar model...
So why do it? Well, if we think of life as an infinite game, and we see people as being wired to play that game, to get pleasure from its experience, than things that simulate life, but allow for faster, more immediate gratification of reward cycles have an appealing and almost addictive quality, its like living life with less risk (you don't risk dying, or ruining your real life by taking chances) and more compact, quickly delivered rewards (in the form of in game goals). Also, the simulated experience's rewards are more tangible, since they normally measurable in the game's construction.
So the point is, its enjoyable... we're wired for it to be.

This doesn't exactly apply to Simulationism, Big Model Style, at least not all of it, but I definately think its the base line for most on the market RPGs, that the games are suppose to be infinite in the sense that the only purpose of play is continuing the act of play until it becomes unsustainable...

Ron,

Okay, I'm inching closer to being able to look at your post and say, "Inspiring reason to roleplay?  Check!"  But I'm not quite there yet.  So, I'd like to address my first two of several potential hang-ups:

Hang-up 1: "input-material"?

I'm gonna go back to the Werewolf game to tackle this one.  For anyone reading along, please check out the earlier thread on this game if you get disoriented.

Matt approached me and said, "I want to run a White Wolf game.  Based on Werewolf, but with the players playing different changing breeds."  I'd never read a Werewolf book before, and I told him so.  He asked how much Werewolf mythos I'd soaked up over the years, and we had a nice discussion about Werewolf's deities and metaphysics.  Matt didn't want any one metaphysical interpretation to be obviously "true", but he showed a distinct preference for complexity over simplicity; extremists were likely to be farther from the truth than those with a more nuanced view.  Regardless, PCs and NPCs were intended to do a lot of bouncing metaphysical interpretations off of each other.  I told him, "Sounds like something I can have fun with."

Matt then told me about his gameworld.  He briefly filled me in on the general mood and milieu of World of Darkness, to an extent that left no impression on me whatsoever, and then proceeded to give me a detailed history of New York City from the year 2005 to 2011, establishing the Werewolves as both dangerous extremists and the dominant power in the area.

I like playing maverick and dissident characters, so I decided to be a servant of the Wyrm, the Werewolves' enemy.  The Wyrm is something between simple Death/Destruction and hideous Corruption/Putrefaction, so I said, "How about a were-vulture?"  Matt loved it.  I decided that my character would believe that "Death/Destruction" was true and good, while "Corruption/Putrefaction" was a baseless smear campaign.  Matt told me that this view might be dead right, or dead wrong, or neither; "Cool," I said.

John and Paul had played plenty of World of Darkness before, and had read many World of Darkness books, so their pre-game chats with Matt were somewhat different.  Paul picked a were-panther because he'd loved their powers and color for almost a decade.  John picked a were-dinosaur because he liked their combat stats, and then invented a "let's all get along, all viewpoints are valid" ethos because, well, that's what John's like in real life.  Meg had never roleplayed before, she primarily wanted an excuse to be snide and bitchy.  She didn't care about metaphysics, so she made a character who didn't either.

Matt clarified to each of us: "I want to run a game where the PCs have a reason to stay together as a group, and that reaosn is going to be that they all want to help, in the way that seems best to them.  Helping humans and deities is nice, but the focus is on helping changers."

So, here's my question:

First session, we sit down to play.  What's the package we're going to be exploring?  What's the "input-material"?  What's the "stuff" that we're going to stretch and challenge and reflect and celebrate but not violate?

And here's my answer:

We show up with a variety of shared and individual ideas and expectations. 

We all agreed that (a) our PCs were working together as a group, for some cause greater than individual self-interest, (b) our PCs would initially hold quite disparate metaphysical assumptions, (c) we were going to Explore Matt's version of Future New York City, which included just about every creature in any White Wolf source book, and maybe (d) some other stuff I'm not focusing on now.

No problems there.

I personally had a few unimportant ideas/expectations, e.g. the Black Spiral Dancers would be the main villains, religious moderation would prove to be "better than" extremism in the end, my character's views would influence New York City.  None of these happened, but I didn't mind, which is why I retroactively call them unimportant.

No problems there.

I personally had a few strongly-held ideas/expectations, including the idea that my character would be feared, and treated with a certain respect that is aesthetically consistent with someone who is feared.  I didn't want to bluster and command, I wanted to be subtly creepy and unnerving.  I even spent a lot of character points on some powers intended to pull this off.  I made a mirror that could affect anyone whose face it had reflected, making them see themselves as a rotting corpse whenever they looked in any mirror for a certain duration.  Unfortunately, I hadn't prepared myself for the pattern of play that this game would entail: prep for Action Mission, go on Action Mission, make progress, repeat.  There was no time for, and no point in, terrorizing individuals, and the pragmatic nature of the inter-PC discussions inclined everyone to treat my character as just another opinion rather than a creepy dude.

Problem.  Seriously.  The first time I said something ominous that was just brushed off with, "Yeah, anyway, what's the plan?" I felt, "Well, I can't play the game I wanted to play anymore."

The problem, as I see it, with this kind of play:

It's hard to get everyone on the same page about the boundaries of the "inviolable" portion of the package for Exploration.

So what happened?

Well, play moved along, and I readjusted my expectations.  In our first session, there was a big fight, with lots of emphasis on tactics and color, and John's character got killed, and then quickly resurrected as soon as the fight was over.  The NPCs we interacted with were all slotted into their belief-set niches and showed no inclination to debate, but the metaphysical arguments between the PCs were enormous fun.  The Setites appeared, announcing themselves as "main badguys" to anyone who's seen them used as Vampire's "more evil than thou" trump card.  We took over a magic cave that benevolent NPCs told us was super-important and super-useful.

Accordingly, when it came time for session number two, the shared material that would serve as "input" for play had been both clarified and expanded, getting everyone slightly more on the same page than we had been before about the package Matt wanted us to work with.

The takeaway, as I see it:

Getting everyone more on the same page about the "inviolable" package through play is an important feature of much successful Simulatonist play.  (Am I overgeneralizing?)

Now let's skip ahead several sessions.  We went on many missions, had many arguments, always worked as a team, always made some sort of progress toward understanding the Evil Plot or defeating it.  When the PCs clashed about what to do, play tended to drag a bit.  Paul had left the game due to increased family obligations, leaving me to deal with John and Meg at "what do we do?" time.  I formed a plan, which was to side with some powerful fringe psychos (Spiral Dancers) in order to accomplish what we wanted (Werewolves lose power) in a particularly destructive way (sic Vampires on 'em).  John, true to his character concept, was pretty malleable, while Meg, true to hers, was quite the opposite.  A fun answer occurred to me: brainwash Meg's character.

I came up with a plan and the Black Spiral Dancers agreed with me on it.  Matt was a little nervous, but he seemed more curious to see if I could pull it off than invested in stopping me.  I came up with some lie that entailed John and some NPCs going to Staten Island while Meg and I went to Harlem.  I presented it flawlessly, and they both went for it.  Matt played through John's entire mission with him, exploring these tunnels with nothing in them.  Then he played through me and Meg entering the Harlem sewer, and our lights being blown out, and some sort of attack, which ended with me "unconscious" in the sewer and Meg unconscious and being led to walk the madness-inducing Black Spiral.

Session over.  Matt turns to Meg.  "Um, your character's about to be transformed from a mousy, rationalist, OCD geek into a chaos-worshipping turbo-slut.  How do you feel about this?"

I crossed my fingers.  Had I broken the game or not?  Did this count as "working together"?  Is a team where one member brainwshes another still a team in the "oddball supers tac squad" paradigm?  Did subverting Meg's character to Spiral Dancer influence allow her to still "work for a greater good"?

My takeaway from this:

Truly pushing the boundaries of the "inviolable package" is fun, and rewarding when it works, but risks totally ruining the game.

I'm wondering if we're on the same page regarding these italicized points.  If we are, Sim play seems scarily fragile by definition.  Your example where Wolverine-clone kills Cyclops-clone is an obvious case of, "You didn't have to do that and ruin our fun, asshole," for the group you imagined, but could be perfectly legit package-stretching in a different group.  Further, this variation isn't just group-by-group, it's player-by-player!  What might not break the game for me might well break it for Meg!

I think this simply supports the point you made when you said "Sim play under most existing systems is delicate", but this seems like a big deal to me, so I want to be sure.

How "safe" to play?

It seems to me that the obvious way to avoid such maybe-breaks is to "play safe", and stick comfortably within the boundaries of the "yes, agreed on by everyone, definitely" package of "inviolable" material.  Regarding this, you said, "there's no snap or verve to the experience."  I wonder: do you believe that to be categorically true, or just a matter of taste?

Let me ask that another way: suppose that after several missions in Matt's Werewolf game, we'd just stuck to the pattern of "follow GM lead, fight things, get GM's scrap of info, repeat".  Suppose his leads had all been obvious, our choices had all been predictable, and we'd explored and expanded the package without ever really putting any pressure on it.  Hardly sounds ideal, but I think I've enjoyed games like that for maybe as long as 2 or 3 instances of play, and even if my memory's off, I don't see why it wouldn't be possible.  So.  Is that still Simulationist play?

Does Sim cover the full "challenge your input material" spectrum from "no challenge" to "push it 'til it almost breaks"?  Is that what you meant with this quote?

At its least extreme, this is pure emulation. At its most extreme, it is parody.

Hi David,

Let me try a quick stab at your 2nd hang-up. These things tend to sound pretty abstract and complicated when you don’t relate them to a conrete experience of play where you saw them in action. I like to look at constructive denial this way: The source material has a life of its own. Well, of course it doesn’t, but that’s what it feels like. It’s a pretty intuitive thing. Someone does something that seems kind of inconsistent? But it can’t be, it simply can’t, because our source material is alive, it will not let the inconsistency pass. It will shake and rumble and then it will smooth down and whatever that something was will have become incorporated. That’s what constructive denial feels like… as long as it works.

I like your breakdown, especially about the safety issue. You are asking all the right questions. But the answers are only to be found in actual play. There is no fool-proof step by step instruction to this. Shared appreciation for whatever constitutes your “package” is key. You can build mechanics to facilitate that, but it has to be there in the first place (this is true for any Creative Agenda).

The scope of how the “starting package” is established at the beginning of play is vast. I kind of don’t know where to start. Even for a specific RPG setting as “package”, the scope is still vast. I don’t want to derail this discussion by going into too much detail right now (plus, I’m at work and I already spent way too much time writing this).

- Frank

P.S.: Don’t get hung up on the “steering clear” thing. It’s not a paraphrase for “actively looking for obstacles”. It’s rather just like, y’know, “keeping your boat in the water”. The trick is to know what water looks like, not what obstacles look like.

Hello David,

I think Frank has tended to Hang-up 2 about as clearly and accurately as anyone could possibly do it. What he hasn't done, and what I'm not sure can be done in this venue, is explain and confirm that such an approach can work, effortlessly, to someone who hasn't experienced it and has in fact experienced a great deal of the converse. I'm not speaking of you specifically, but rather of someone whose coping-mechanisms (which result in consistent shallow, risky-in-the-bad-sense Simulationist-play, or conversely, substantial but boring and surprise-less Simulationist play) are so well-developed that they've practically taken on the definition of role-playing itself for that person. To such a person, Frank's posts will read like some kind of pop-culture feel-good reassurance, rather than the cogent and accurate descriptions they really are.

As I say, I think he did the job for that Hang-up, so I'll speak to Hang-up #1 in detail.

Hang-up 1: "input-material"?

I want to run a game where the PCs have a reason to stay together as a group, and that reaosn is going to be that they all want to help, in the way that seems best to them. Helping humans and deities is nice, but the focus is on helping changers

We all agreed that (a) our PCs were working together as a group, for some cause greater than individual self-interest, (b) our PCs would initially hold quite disparate metaphysical assumptions

How "safe" to play?

What about pushing it 'til it does break?

Ron wrote: So I absolutely must distinguish between Simulationist play as represented by most game design and practice until recently, and Simulationist play as an existing potential activity, in the context of System Does Matter and the Big Model . . . If you look at Frank's posts, bear in mind that . . . he's talking about the latter.

Hi David,

My best write-up of such a game of my own is this one. I got a little bitchy with Adam Dray in the beginning, but Adam remained patient and did help me explain much better than I could have on my own. However, the stuff related to System (as per the Lumpley Principle) is mostly about unwritten System. The mechanical rules (Vampire 2E, as it were) only played a minor role in the context of Creative Agenda and Reward System. As for a report to illustrate how well-designed mechanics facilitate this style of Simulationist play, I fear I am of little help. Yet.

- Frank

P.S.: Danke für die Blumen, Ron!

Ron,

You've clarified that the act of dreaming which the "right to dream" fortifies is not passive observation, but active probing.  I have this lightbulb going on that tells me that the right to dream is largely the right to contribute to the creation of Situation.  The "inviolable package" is a statement of what kind of Situations* you will create and Explore.  The package covers Setting (what "Lovecraft on a Starship" looks like to a player character, and how it functions when they interact with it) and Character (what the players will use their characters for in the context of this Setting).  Setting + Character = Situation.

So what do the players use their characters for?  The players pose questions ("What would happen if I tried to form an acid cult on this Lovecraftian Starship?") to the Setting**, using their characters to perform actions ("I try to form the cult!") that create the kind of Situation ("Let's find out what happens!") that pressures the System ("Geez, will we be able to find out what happens?") used for keeping the "inviolable package" safe ("Yep, we were able to find out!  This type of Situation seems viable, let's do another one next week!") instead of broken ("We couldn't find out.  This type of Situation is not guaranteed to be viable using this System.  We need to either change the System, give up, or accept that our fun will be intermittent.").

Yes?  No?  I have a ton of questions brewing in response to your last post, and I think it'll help me shape them if I'm actually on the money with this formulation.

* I'm dividing up the "Situation" component of Exploration (which is present continuously during play) into individual "Situations".  These correspond roughly to individual "interests the group is pursuing".  If that fits with Big Model usage, good.  If not, I should re-word this whole post.
** by this I mean a Situation in which the player characters aren't yet doing anything.

Hi David,

Well, you’re right about nearly everything, but some of it applies to all of role-playing, and some of it applies only to a subset of Simulationist play.

I’ll start with the small bit that needs revision. I think the “inviolable package” concept applies to the outcomes of situations, not to the posed situations themselves. That’s what makes them especially tricky, if the System in question isn’t robust and if the “social mandate” (Jesse’s term) isn’t either.

A lot of what you say about Situation, pretty much that whole first paragraph,  is definitional, for any mode of play with any Creative Agenda. Your use is correct, by the way, because the term Situation in the model is actually referring to any given Situation (what you’re thinking of as “smaller”) during the course of play. By using it in the singular in the model, I do not mean that only one situation actually occurs during play.

In your second paragraph, the one with parentheses and blue text, it’s all good and strong stuff. However, it is not necessary for the players actually to be saying those phrases, or even knowing that this is what they’re doing. If you ask them, they’ll say they are “just” playing their characters, or “just” making a story, or whatever.

Also, since System is such a phenomenally diverse concept, two different groups who do represent what you describe in this paragraph may be utterly different from one another in the details of what gets tweaked or challenged, and what is held as a given. I bring this up because when queried, each group might point to the other as “those crazies” who play in a funky way. Your reaction to Dead of Night might be a good example of this. That reaction is based on your comfort zone regarding authority during play, as well as Stance, and I think you might be missing that playing Dead of Night would fit what you’re talking about just as well as (say) Pendragon, despite the phenomenal procedural difference in how each player relates to the SIS.

I also think you might be overlooking the sheer joy that occurs when the System proves robust, and therefore one’s full Right is now freed to be exerted upon the SIS, with everyone else excited to see what you’ll do. So it’s not just a series of endless poking; we should perhaps focus a bit more on what is done with the robust SIS, rather than the potential breakpoints. Particularly because it relates to the basic issue of the thread title, which is to say, the Right.

Best, Ron

using their characters to perform actions ("I try to form the cult!") that create the kind of Situation ("Let's find out what happens!") that pressures the System ("Geez, will we be able to find out what happens?") used for keeping the "inviolable package" safe ("Yep, we were able to find out!

Ron,

Let me start with the parts of your last post that I do understand, just to confirm and move on:

1) Player awareness of the process in my big paragraph with all the blue.  The process is vital, the awareness of it is not.  Callan, I hear you too on this.  (However, your "overcoming adversity" characterization doesn't match with what's in my mind; I see more of a "find out what happens" with a little suspense thrown in, as per Ron's "Can we play the A-Team with decidedly non-clean-cut heroes?".  As for how much I really like Sim, hopefully I'll have a better handle on that by the end of this thread.)

2) Diversity of System.  Yep, all sorts of different-looking play styles utilize the process I referred to in my big blue paragraph.  That even includes Dead of Night.  (That game doesn't seem like my kind of game because its package doesn't seem like my kind of package. Plus, yes, I do have my authority and stance preferences.)

3) "Free to contribute creatively to the SIS" = "fun."  ("We can play the A-Team with decidedly non-clean-cut heroes!  It's cool, even if it never occurred to us to doubt that we could do it!")  I am clear on how this is true of Exploration in general, and I am making progress in this thread toward seeing how this is especially (differently?) true in the case of Simulationism.  I'll get back to this as soon as I can clear a few things up.

Okay, now the parts I don't understand:

Which parts of my post with all the blue apply to what (all roleplaying, all Sim, some Sim)?  How could my use of Situation in my first paragraph be true of all roleplaying when my point was about how Situation creation relates to Sim's "package"?  How could the post have any friggin' value at all if the "package" is not about Situation creation, but rather about Situation resolution?

See, the "lightbulb" I alluded to was the idea that the "package" is not passive reference material, but rather something of a mission statement.  That's a huge shift from the way I've been viewing Simulationism to date.

I understood this mission statement as an expectation of what the player characters do, in terms of general types of behavior; so Wolverine-clone just doesn't gut Cyclops-clone.  Wolverine doesn't gut teammates in X-Men, so it's unacceptable in a Sim game with an X-Men package.

As I understand your last post, however, you're saying that the mission statement is an expectation of what'll happen, in terms of general types of outcomes.  Wolverine-clone isn't allowed to gut Cyclops-clone because in X-Men, teammates don't wind up dead at each other's hands.

This is a huge difference! 

In the first case, the part of the package that is "inviolable" structures intent, and tells the players, "Initiate these kind of Situations!  You like them!  They're fun!"  In the Werewolf game, this is Matt saying "(1) You all reliably want to help re: the common cause; (2) you all differ greatly in your personal styles and reasons for helping. Add a dose of monstrous bad-assery for spice and the enjoyment of power."  And we players saying, "Sure, we'll play that!"  We then proceed to go on world-saving missions together and argue a lot; when there's nothing fun going on, a player knows that his job is to create a Situation that is about world-saving or arguing.

In the second case, the part of the package that is "inviolable" doesn't tell players what to do in the same sense; rather, it tells them to not do anything that'll produce "bad results".  If Matt had said, "Okay, guys, don't go off and selfishly pursue personal ends, I don't want PCs getting separated.  And don't be monolithic and boring in your motives, I don't want y'all to have easy agreements on what to do," I don't know if we would have said, "Sure."  But let's say we did, cuz we liked the Color or something.  When nothing fun is going on, what's my job as a player?  Do whatever I feel like... but with a sort of vigilant wariness, saying, "Oops, can't do that, it'll lead my character off on his own," or, "Oops, can't say that, that's too compatible with John's character."

I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, I'm just trying to illustrate what needs explication as clearly as I can.

I'm afraid Frank's description of Constructive Denial won't make any sense to me until I have a firm grasp of how the "package" influences player decisions.

-David

Hi David,

I think you’re making it harder than it is. I think that both “ways” you’re describing are probably exerted, in whatever proportion to one another and however often, to reinforce the constructive denial in action.

Remember, as Jim Henley and I discussed in one of the original threads, we are totally talking about process of play, and that process is composed of many, many parts. Some parts involve what sort of scenes arise, some parts involve what sort of decisions are made in the scenes, and some parts involve how the scenes ultimately turn out.

I know I emphasized outcomes in that previous post, and it looks as if it’s thrown you. I did so because I was trying to counterweight your stated emphasis on initiating scenes. Now I realize that my counterweight was a bad discussion choice; instead, I’ll say it this way: “Don’t forget that within-scene stuff and outcome-of-scene stuff are also subject to consideration from the perspective of the constructive denial going on for that group.”

Does that help?

Let’s remember the topic of the thread: the Right to Dream. At the risk of getting into metaphysics and politics simultaneously (geez …), I suggest that rights are always recognized, exerted, and preserved in the context of a set of historical agreements which everyone pretends don’t exist, instead referencing things like “natural” or “inalienable” or “human.”

So let’s look at rights in action: they can be invoked to permit someone to do something without being blocked, to provide force and convincing power to something that is being done at the moment, and to seek redress for someone who tried to do something but was prevented or punished for it. In all cases, in order for the concept of “right” to function in any of these ways, the set of agreements I just wrote about must be operating among the members of the larger society. Otherwise the talk of rights will be squashed, and the actions prevented, disrupted, or punished – the right by itself has no actual power; the agreements within which they operate is where the power is.

As we are talking about Simulationist play, the constructive denial is the context that applies at any stage of dealing with the SIS, in whatever way works for that particular stage. It seems to me as if you’re quite enthused about the “going into what sort of scene” stage, and less enthused about the “coping with tricky material in the midst or aftermath of scene” stage. That’s fine, but I think it’s a personal preference (or perhaps scarring from the past) that doesn’t need to be important in the discussion.

I think that instead of trying to pick apart every sentence in your post and in my reply to it, we can do better to examine this one (as well as the original constructive denial threads, which I just reviewed) and not get tied up in frustration.

Best, Ron

Ron wrote: (as well as the original constructive denial threads, which I just reviewed)

I PMed Ron this:

Okay, cool, I'll try to stay focused on "The Right" in the thread, and not get sidetracked by other Simulationism issues.  I have this idea brewing, though, and I'd like to hear your thoughts on it

Hi David,

The logistics of posting are starting to conflict with real life, so I'll reserve my answer to the last post for later. Here are the links you asked for:

Simulationism aside - This is the parent thread which begins wonderfully, and then demonstrates a whole bunch of people with "Simulationism" written on their dicks, swinging them about. It's pretty much a "state of the art" thread that represents the painful defined-but-not-yet status of the term that persisted from about 2002 through 2006.
Ignoring the subjective - This is the one you linked to already, where the term arose for the first time.
Constructive denial? - This one begins with a terminological question, and then gets into some really great "say it for myself" posts from a lot of different people. It's where the idea really matured. I composed my replies in this thread in the mistaken assumption that you'd read this, which might explain a bit of the confusion so far.

It's not a lot more, but it's helpful to see it all in context, and that last thread is pretty important, I think.

Here are some applications of the term in the Actual Play forum, in chronological order, not including threads you started:

[Transhuman Space] First attempts at Sim play
[Middle Earth - home-brew] - A first, another group with the same play style!
[D&D-like system] Analyzing play styles
[Vampire 2E Sabbat] Of evil and of Simulationism
Play prep and NPCs
The players' role in Participatory play

I'll be back when I can.

Best, Ron

Take as much time as you need, it won't blunt my enthusiasm.  I could probably stand to do more reading and less writing for a bit anyway.  (Plus less time overall staring at the goddamn computer.)

David wrote: P.S. It would also make sense to me to take "Right to Dream" + "the 'inviolable package' statement of purpose" and talk about them jointly as an individual game's Creative Agenda.  This would then render Simulationism a type of CA; there would be as many distinct Simulationist CAs as there would be "packages".  Just throwin' it out there; clearly, my understanding of CA in pure abstraction is fuzzy.

Hi David,

Caldis is right.

All of this means you're simply catching up to the existing state of the art. In 2000-2001, I argued very strongly that any CA can only be discussed meaningfully in the context of a given group playing a given game; you can see that in my big GNS and Other Matters essay. A bit later, we arrived at the notion that no CA can be exemplified in its full range by a given instance of play, and indeed, the conformation of Social Contract, organization of the starting SIS, and Techniques gives rise to as many "they're not like us" comparisons within a given CA as among CAs. The robustness of CA as a concept even in the face of this internal diversity (and often separatism) has impressed everyone involved in the discussions, just as you say, because "The Right to Dream" (for instance) does remain consistent among its range. I strongly recommend checking out the "diversity within CA" sections in each of my three specific-CA essays. A lot of this was further nailed down at the community-dialogue level in the Infamous Five threads, the ones conducted in Actual Play (links in the Site Discussion sticky).

Looking over the thread, we've dealt with three topics, actually. Each led nicely into the next, which is why I recommended staying with it for each shift, but this last transition has caused one problem for me. My post about the rights (bottom of the first page) was pretty hard core and intended to be meaty enough for a reflective break. You haven't provided any acknowledgment of those points and whether they answered your concerns, which at the time seemed pretty urgent. You asked for links and got them, and you asked new questions. So now I think it's a really good time to examine both that post and this last bit about diversity within CA, and to take some time - probably a lot of time - for digesting them.

Best, Ron

Ron wrote: I suggest that rights are always recognized, exerted, and preserved in the context of a set of historical agreements which everyone pretends don’t exist, instead referencing things like “natural” or “inalienable” or “human.”

So let’s look at rights in action: they can be invoked to permit someone to do something without being blocked, to provide force and convincing power to something that is being done at the moment, and to seek redress for someone who tried to do something but was prevented or punished for it. In all cases, in order for the concept of “right” to function in any of these ways, the set of agreements I just wrote about must be operating among the members of the larger society. Otherwise the talk of rights will be squashed, and the actions prevented, disrupted, or punished – the right by itself has no actual power; the agreements within which they operate is where the power is.

As we are talking about Simulationist play, the constructive denial is the context that applies at any stage of dealing with the SIS, in whatever way works for that particular stage.

Damn it!  I've been trying to whittle out for myself something that Ron already stated here. 

Okay, after reading all the threads inked above, plus others, there are tons of issues I'm still not clear on.  But I feel pretty good about my understanding of the identity of the Right in "The Right to Dream".  (Means?  Function in context?  Not so much.  That'll follow in another post.)

Before I give my take on "the Right", I'd like to clear up some dangling issues:

Ron wrote: I hope you can see that your Werewolf game was already unable to be played as safely as you describe.

Ron wrote: What you're really talking about is the Black Curtain as I've defined it, with the interesting twist that the GM told you that her decision was not as fraught with risk as he wanted her to believe.

Ron wrote: I was trying to counterweight your stated emphasis on initiating scenes . . . I’ll say it this way: “Don’t forget that within-scene stuff and outcome-of-scene stuff are also subject to consideration from the perspective of the constructive denial going on for that group.”

Does that help?

I think your reading of the situation sounds about right David.  I do have a few questions if you dont mind.

What affect did this event have on the game?  Was this a dramatic conclusion to the whole game or did it continue on afterwords?  If the game continued what was Meg's invovlement afterwords?  Did you sense any difference in how her new character reacted to the other characters, or maybe in the type of character she chose?  How about the relationship between Robert and Shimmer, was it affected by these events?

Answering these questions in detail will incline me toward some of the other topics I wanna discuss beyond "The Right".  So for now, I'll just give the short answers:
- The game continued for many more sessions, until Matt's metaplot had been resolved and the PCs had helped save the world from the Main Evil Threat.
- Elantrine came back as a wraith and haunted Shimmer.  This mainly consisted of Meg saying annoying things to John at comedically-timed moments.  Meg had already been wanting to go to sleep earlier, and took Elantrine's new condition as an excuse to be a part-time player.
- Shimmer was distrustful of Robertt for a little while.  I think John sought out some private time between Shimmer and like-minded NPCs, but Matt didn't give him much to work with.  Shimmer got over his distrust when Robert decided the Spiral Dancers actually were evil and had to go.

Hi David,

Well, here's my thinking.

You've nailed down an excellent understanding of Simulationist play and other aspects of the Big Model relative to your experiences. That's a key goal of this forum and I hope it's fun to do.

Your experiences as you've related them are, as I see them, based on a fairly thin and unreliable connection between Social Contract and Creative Agenda, which means the CA itself is fairly feeble. That's not an indictment! (i) One of the reasons that I spend a lot of time working with your threads is that what you report parallels my own experiences 1985-1990.  (ii) You and the others did in fact keep a CA alive for your game, which is a hell of a lot more than a lot of people in your position do or did.

What I'm saying is, I think you (reasonably, based on what you've done and seen) associate CA with the work it took to keep CA alive in a relatively unfavorable environment. I could baldly state that coherent play is, or can be, so effortless that no one would even imagine going through the sort of negotiation of "is it all right? is it all right" that you describe for that crucial scene in the Werewolf game. But why or how could you believe me? There's no point to making such a claim in the sense of an argument, although there is a point to letting you know that it's where I'm coming from.

What is this difficulty that I see in the Social Contract / Creative Agenda connection, in your game? Hell, I saw it every damned week I played during that five-year period I talked about, so it's not hard. It's the idea that "the point" of play is owned by a GM, and that everyone else, "players," are literally incapable of supporting it without constant corralling and supervision. The typical way this is accomplished is for the characters - no matter how much bad-assery they represent - to be unable to affect anything without approval, whether immediate (doing enough damage to kill someone) or scenario/story based (accomplishing a given goal). This leads to a particular non-productive tension between the mechanics, which are often dedicated to affecting things ("effectiveness") and the basic goals of play - which is why that misbegotten Golden Rule exists, stated as it is.

Anyway, I would prefer not to let this post turn into the basis for yet another long screed (I did a couple of those in the last two weeks, while developing a fever, a cold, and pneumonia simultaneously, and I'm tired!). I think I'd like this post to sit on its own and get processed over the very long term, rather than generate new questions at this point.

I really appreciate that you've begun this thread and followed up so beautifully on the discussion of a year ago. It's been a pleasure.

Best, Ron

Hi Ron,

Gack!  Don't fuck around with pneumonia.  I've been unpleasantly surprised by how hard it can be to shake that.  Best of luck!

I think your summary of my play experiences is quite accurate, so abiding by your "no long screed based on this post!" request will be a piece of cake for me.  Letting the implications simmer on the mental back-burner sounds about right.

I do, however, have a few vexing questions (re: terms definitions and design role) that relate to subjects covered earlier in this thread.  Would you prefer that I start new threads to address those?  Or do you think this thread is a fine place, but you'd like to bow out for the time being?

Thanks,
-David

Okay, after sitting on this for a while, I've decided to pursue my related design questions later, after some more revisions and playtests of my Lendrhald game.  As for my terminology confusion, I've started a new thread on constructive denial here.  I hope it'll be short and sweet, but we'll see.

Ron, thanks for your time and insights.  Despite some "I want to understand faster!" frustrations on my end, this thread has been fun for me as well.

Ps,
-David