Hello,

I urge everyone to recognize that pacing of internet discussions is a serious social problem. Time your input relative to the needs of the person you're addressing. It may seem perfectly all right to you to hammer in your brilliant point upon reading the post that prompts it ... but it's not. Not if the person who posted it hasn't replied yet to the three responses he's received already. You're joining a discourse - not a bear-baiting session.

We used to be really good about this at the Forge, but gradually and steadily, it's become a problem. You-all know exactly what I'm talking about, and this sort of cacophony would never be tolerated in spoken conversation. Don't do it here.

I'm starting a new thread for two reasons.

1. John (Sindyr) has acknowledged the impossibility of the Impossible Thing. This is a good opportunity to explain to Forge newcomers and relative newcomers that we conduct argument a little differently here from other internet discussion boards. Here, when someone (in this case, me) successfully defends or presses a point, the listener is obliged to acknowledge it. John did so, which I appreciate.

However, so that the exchange will not become a boxing match or bear-pit, such an acknowledgement closes the thread. A new topic or nuance should get its own thread. John clearly understands the difference between these:

Bob: Hence, topic X would seem to be resolved by my points 3 and 4.
Bill: Oh yeah? Then what about Y? You haven't addressed Y at all. C'mon.

or,

Bob: Hence, topic X would seem to be resolved by my points 3 and 4.
Bill: I see that - especially in the way that 3 relates to (some nuance of not-X). [Then Bill starts a new thread about topic Y, preferably with a link back to the topic X thread.]

2. John, I have some serious concerns with your call for textual examples of the Impossible Thing, specifically that you state that some texts will not be considered good enough. This renders the whole project impossible. I am to scour my library of games, finding examples, in full knowledge that you can reject them - not on the basis of their content, but the status of the game they come from? When such status is wholly yours to judge? Yoicks.

Maybe this will be OK instead. (a) If the text illustrates the Impossible Thing, then it's a data point. No "oh, but that's some piddly game, it doesn't count." I do acknowledge that the resulting data points can then be subjected to a qualitative analysis of their "importance," later. (b) That this endeavor is considered introductory - I don't plan to conduct an exhaustive search of every game out there, collate them all up, and deliver them. I'll provide a few examples and let everyone join in, or take up the endeavor privately.

Can we agree on those points? I have a batch of examples to provide, but if the above isn't the way to do it, then jeez ....

Here are two examples, too, to clarify a bit of my standards for the texts I'll be looking at.

(I used this example previously in the thread El Dorado: terms clarification)

Undiscovered (2001, Eilfin Publishing, authors are Adam D. Theriault, Antonio DeRosa, Philip Theriault):

Let the players control their own fate. Although it is your story, you must follow the whims of the characters. It is, after all, their lives they are playing out. The characters must have the freedom to choose their own fates, not just do what the AG [Adventure Guide] tells them to do. It is your job, however, to guide the characters through the story you have created.

The Gamemaster sets up the overall plot of each story, also called an adventure. This includes creating the background, developing the characters who make up the supporting cast and villains, planning key events that propel the story forward, and establishing the opening scene that gets the action moving.
...
However, the Gamemaster doesn't dictate everything that happens. Unlike the characters in a novel or a movie, the players' heroes don't just do what an author decides they do. The players take an active role, describing how their heroes react to the events going on around them.

When players, characters, plots, rules, and imaginations get together, the resulting swirl of interaction and participation is called roleplaying. Through roleplaying, the group tells a story that's started by the Gamemaster and expanded on by the players - a group story.

Fuck! I posted this initially to the end of the The Impossible Thing thread, by accident! Even with the whole "new thread" lecture in it!

Sorry guys. Hope I caught it in time to avoid replies to it cropping up on that thread.

Best,
Ron

This originally appeared in the 'The Impossible Thing' thread at the time Sindyr was getting swamped. I'm repeating it here because it's a better home for it. These are all excerpts from Call of Cthulhu 5th edition (1992). For those unfamiliar with the system: Investigator = PC; Keeper = GM.

p9, subsection headed Players: "A player has a duty to roleplay an investigator within the limits of the investigator's personality and abilities. That is the point of roleplaying.... Try to develop the investigator's personality well enough that the other players can imagine what he or she would do in a specific situation. "Good old Al," they'll say, "we knew he'd do that.""

From the chapter About Investigators: p18 "Always create characters who you can enthusiastically roleplay"; p23 "It goes without saying that your [investigator] could be very different from what's written here" p25 "What schools were attended?" Who are the investigator's family? What is the investigator like?"

p.74, from the box-out headed Scenerio Structure: "1 A mystery or crisis is posed.... 2 The investigators become linked to the problem.... 3 The investigators attempt to define the mystery.... 4 The investigators use the evidence to confront the danger"

p. 160 from the Scenerios chapter "Having played these adventures, new keepers can plan their own creations."

p.161, The Edge of Darkness: "The investigators are all friends, relatives, past students or former collegues of the man. The exact relationship of each investigator must be decided ahead of time by the keeper and should involve some close personal bond and reason for trust."

from various parts of the scenerio chapter: p.163 "Investigators may do as they wish but certainly one of them will want to read Rupert's journal"; p174 "Suspecting Mythos activity, the investigators decide to drive to Vermont and inspect the situation"; "the Packard and Joey Larson always get away. Encourage pursuing investigators to return to the Blue Heaven and see what's happened."; p182 "No matter how quickly the investigators figure this out, Leroy Turner always beats them to the cemetary."

Ron Edwards wrote: Hello,

I urge everyone to recognize that pacing of internet discussions is a serious social problem. Time your input relative to the needs of the person you're addressing. It may seem perfectly all right to you to hammer in your brilliant point upon reading the post that prompts it ... but it's not. Not if the person who posted it hasn't replied yet to the three responses he's received already. You're joining a discourse - not a bear-baiting session.

We used to be really good about this at the Forge, but gradually and steadily, it's become a problem. You-all know exactly what I'm talking about, and this sort of cacophony would never be tolerated in spoken conversation. Don't do it here.

This is taken from the "What is Roleplaying" section of GURPS, 3rd Edition (1993 at the latest). Copmpare and contrast.

page 8 wrote: Depending on the situation the GM may determine what happens arbitrarily (for the best possible story), or by referring to specific game rules (to decide what is realistically possible), or by rolling dice (to give an interesting random result).

later on the same page wrote: While the GM is the chief storyteller, the players are responsible for creating their own characters. And if they want something to happen in the story, they make it happen, because they're in the story.

Yeah, GURPS with the universal claim may be one of the original culprits.

Mike

Though I wonder, Ian, whether the first GURPS quote maps better to mechanics - i.e., Drama-Karma-Fortune - than to a call for the Impossible Thing. Only the first clause - which sounds like an example of using Drama to resolve a conflict point - evokes TITBB, and I submit that games can employ Drama mechanics without automatically invoking the Impossible Thing.

Best,

Blake

Blake, your right about the initial quote possibly mapping to DKF. Howebver, in general GURPS GMing advice is about as illusionist as it's possible to be. To quote the chapter on "Writing Your Own Adventures" (p.198, 3rd Ed)...

The more flexible you are, the more you avoid the appearance of manipulating your players. And appearance is more important than reality!

Thanks, Ian. For what it's worth, I didn't doubt that conclusion at all, merely wondered about the particular quote. I'll dig out my old copy and peruse p. 198.

Best,

Blake

The more flexible you are, the more you avoid the appearance of manipulating your players. And appearance is more important than reality!

Mike, that's a beautiful post. I haven't a quibble to quibble about.

One thing I think needs to be clarified in general for this discussion, though, is the reading of the key words "author" and "direct" and similar.

When a text says, "GM authors story," or "provides story," that carries a lot of weight in my reading - much more than "frames," "sets up," or "provides raw material" or anything similar.

I think a lot of people are "editing-down" what they read into a functional brand of play (i.e. relative to players' input), and failing to see what's textually on the page. Or, conversely, they are editing-down the part about "players directing the characters' actions" into "players providing Color and raw material," which again, results in functional play, but isn't what the text is saying.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: I think a lot of people are "editing-down" what they read into a functional brand of play (i.e. relative to players' input), and failing to see what's textually on the page. Or, conversely, they are editing-down the part about "players directing the characters' actions" into "players providing Color and raw material," which again, results in functional play, but isn't what the text is saying.

Best,
Ron

Hi Ralph,

My problem was two fold (and you're more or less right):

1. I don't see a conflicting set of instructions, just poorly written or poorly thought out text which is driven by a foundation of a bad metaphor.

2. While some how-to-game-text may be worse than others, the simply, clearly, and firmly stated 'Impossible Thing' wasn't contradictory at all (to me) and was therefore badly miss-named.

Finally, (and most importantly) reading too much into these texts is pretty de-constructionist. GURPS isn't a mathematical proof. There's a section in 3rd Ed that ascribes a magnificent dexterity to stage magicians ... a reader who sits around scratching his head that David Copperfield should be Martin Riggs is, IMO, missing the point.

I think of those sorts of things as the philosophical equivalent of a typo. I realize there is an intent to be *riggorous* in the analysis of the game-text ... and that's fine if you want to do that--interesting, even--that's also why I haven't been posting here. I don't see a riggourous analysis as being all that valuable.

-Marco

Hi Marco,

Your and Ralph's responses to my above post produced a moment of clarity for me. Many thanks to you both.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: I think a lot of people are "editing-down" what they read into a functional brand of play (i.e. relative to players' input), and failing to see what's textually on the page. Or, conversely, they are editing-down the part about "players directing the characters' actions" into "players providing Color and raw material," which again, results in functional play, but isn't what the text is saying.

Valamir wrote: My problem with that is that the editing down into what the designer must obviously have meant, actually means, editing down into something that resembles the way my group plays.

Mike Holmes wrote: At the time we were all working through these things as "GMing issues". That is to say that it was still pretty much unthinkable to most GMs that the players be given any power over plot at all. The theory at the time was about how as a GM to make a plot, while not completely ignoring the player's decisions.