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Topic: Does Module Play Equal Participationism?
Started by: M. J. Young
Started on: 4/29/2003
Board: RPG Theory


On 4/29/2003 at 7:40am, M. J. Young wrote:
Does Module Play Equal Participationism?

Over in the thread, Do prewritten scenarios=Illusionism/Participationism?,

Ron Edwards wrote: M.J., what you describe sounds like straight-head Participation to me. I don't see why or how it's a different category.
He was responding to
what I wrote: The basic assumption of module play is that the referee has (either from his own creation or from a published product) a fairly tight concept of what the players are "supposed to do"; the players, as part of the social contract that supports play, have committed themselves to identifying what their characters are supposed to do and to do that.
Module play in this context is the name I've attached to an approach to gaming that is not railroad, and neither what I understand by Illusionism or Participationism; but apparently there's a definitional problem somewhere, which I'm hoping this thread will clarify.

Illusionism seems to be well defined, and is a mode of play I have experienced. This is when it does not matter what the players do, because the referee's story is going to unfold as he planned regardless of their interventions--but they don't know it. In illusionism, the referee is cleverly working the player's choices and actions into his story, and telling them what happens. It would be perfectly reasonable for an illusionist GM having lunch with a friend who is not part of the game to comment on how the story is going to end, because he's already decided that part.

I don't think there's a disagreement there.

My understanding of Participationism is that this is what might be termed Illusionism by consent. It remains the case that the referee is going to run his story, and that it doesn't matter what the players do because the story is going to happen. They will go where they're supposed to go, even if they start out in the wrong direction; they will save the day in the end; they will feel like they were heroes. Along the way they will make decisions and announce actions which will provide color, but which will have absolutely no effect on the outcome. The sole difference between participationism and illusionism is the players know it. They have agreed up front, implicitly or explicitly, that nothing they do will matter.

I've only seen this once; it was in essence what happened when a great illusionist referee was "found out". Some of the players left the game; others became more involved. To at least a couple of them, it became great fun trying to figure out greater and greater things they could throw at him for him to incorporate into the story without derailing the outcome. For others, they were quite comfortable suspending their sense of the futility of their actions, much as all of us are comfortable worrying about whether the hero of an action movie is going to be killed when we know that's impossible.

I didn't coin the term Participationism; if memory serves, that was Mike. At the time, I was pretty certain this was what he meant by it.

This is distinct from what I suggest as Module Play because in module play, although the referee's story is still the expected outcome, what the players choose matters. They have agreed implicitly or explicitly that they are going to commit themselves to following the program intended by the referee. They will look for the hints, and follow the path, and attempt to complete what is expected of them.

It is also an aspect of this sort of play that it is possible for them to fail. This is where the analogies to competition modules and CRPGs come into play: although there is a pre-programmed sequence of events/tasks/elements, the players can go off the thread and lose the game. The commitment is to attempt to stay on the thread and bring about the referee's outcome; but the possibility of reaching that outcome rests with the players, not the referee.

This is only slightly altered if the referee drops hints to bring the players back on track. It is still up to the players to grasp those hints and return to the story if they've gotten lost. In module play, the players must act affirmatively to reach the referee's desired goal, which must be discovered and identified during play. This is distinct from both Illusionism and Participationism in this regard, as in each of these it is entirely incumbent upon the referee to bring the desired goal to pass.

Have I misunderstood Participationism, or have I failed to state a clear difference?

--M. J. Young

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On 4/29/2003 at 8:04am, Kester Pelagius wrote:
Re: Does Module Play Equal Participationism?

Howdy M. J. Young,

For starters, my gut level knee jerk reaction is. . . I don't see the point.

A module is a module. Just like Monopoly is Monopoly, you know precisely what the goal is supposed to be, but it's in the getting there that the game, and thus fun, is to be found.

Why dissect it? Ah, but why not, eh?

To me a module has always been representative of a set story encompassing well defined goals. Now whether or not one label better applies to what a module is or is not becomes difficult to codify for one main reason: every Game Master will approach that same module differently. Some will be strict, some will play it from the hip.

What a module is, thus, is the sum of the the GM and player inter-relationship.

But the type of module will also change things. I've read modules that were very linear and might require a rather heavy hand to keep players who liked to wander on track, then again I've seen modules that provide a LOT of room to move around in. Goals are set, but whether or not the players actually accomplish them are incidental.

Of course the linear modules that require each section be completed in a set sequence will naturally end when the players cease to follow through on the goal. Which, I always thought, was the point.

Or, to put it another way, a module is a stand alone bit of potential narrative that can be either played with characters generated just for it, integrated into a larger campaign, or. . . well it's really a issue of style isn't it? Every GM runs their game how they run their game.

Most modules can be just about anything you want them to be. However not all modules are created equal. In fact not all modules are even the same, thus they can't all be fit into the pattern you've outlined. Sure many can, but not all.

When I wrote my adventures I provided set goals with multiple ways for the players to get to the goals, but always knew that the players might not follow through or get side-trekked. Thus, in the end, what I had was a dynamic set of possibilities that had to be adjudicated based upon what the characters actually did, not what they were 'supposed' to do.

But that's just one possible approach to running a game.

To sum up: What you're asking is not really a question about the nature of a module, but rather (IMO) a question about GMing style. Or rather GM approach to how they make use of a module, not so much about the module itself. The existance of a module in your example is incidental.

Just my opinion.


Kind Regards,

Kester Pelagius

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On 4/29/2003 at 3:59pm, Mike Holmes wrote:
RE: Does Module Play Equal Participationism?

It is very slightly different, MJ, you've got a point.

The subtle difference is in the fact that you've said that module play allows them to fail. Now, some GMs won't allow that failure, and it becomes participationism if that's obvious, and Illusionism if it's not (I've done the latter a lot; think Fudging die rolls).

But assuming that the GM really allows them to fail, that all is as it is presented, then what you have is non-Forced play for that part. Now, Force was used likely to get the characters to the door. But once there this brand of module play is Open (non-Forced). Note how this is a primary form of Gamist play. The GM selects the "arena", but the players are free to succeed or fail within the arena.

In fact that's a point that Ron made previously himself.

In any case, remember that GMing modes can shift a lot, too. So one moment may actually be Open, and another Forced.

Mike

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On 4/29/2003 at 4:20pm, Jack Spencer Jr wrote:
RE: Re: Does Module Play Equal Participationism?

M. J. Young wrote: Have I misunderstood Participationism, or have I failed to state a clear difference?


I'm not certain. I understand Participation to be where the GM has the "oomph" but the curtain, as it were, was up (using the terms in this thread. The players know the GM's control the story, and they're OK with that. This can translate into all kind of player actions. It could be "the players, as part of the social contract that supports play, have committed themselves to identifying what their characters are supposed to do and to do that" or possibly "To at least a couple of them, it became great fun trying to figure out greater and greater things they could throw at him for him to incorporate into the story without derailing the outcome." The defining feature of Participationism, as I understand it, is that the GM has influence over story-impacting decisions made by the player-characters and the Players know this. From there, it's a matter of how much the GM uses it or not or what the players do to continue to participate in the events of play.

So, what I had jokingly termed "amusmentparkism" in the other thread is a form of participationism. The GM allows for flexibility for the player, but once they hit on one of his plots, they're in for a ride. It is possible for the GM to be felxible in play as far as players actions while it still being Participationism

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On 4/29/2003 at 4:55pm, Ron Edwards wrote:
RE: Does Module Play Equal Participationism?

Hi M.J.,

I'm pretty much in agreement with Jack on this one.

Best,
Ron

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On 4/29/2003 at 4:59pm, Mike Holmes wrote:
RE: Does Module Play Equal Participationism?

Yeah, "amusementparkism" is sorta the opposite of Module play. In that, the player can go wherever they like until they hit a plot, and then the Force comes in. In Module Play, the GM Forces the intro, but then plays open.

I was thinking about it, and most superhero play, at least like we played it, was participationist in it's "plot". That is, the GM says, "Glordo the Beast is attacking the Slatner Building", and off the PCs go to fight it. Basically, the plot is all Forced and rather openly, but the "important" parts of play, the fights, are non-Forced. Sorta like a series of tiny modules.

Note how in many of the cases of the obviously forced stuff (getting to the dungeon, this weeks monster), these things are considered to be unimportant to play. That is, these usually cater to Gamist play where the "plot" is merely the interesting pretext that get's us from arena to arena.

This is as opposed to Sim participationism, where suddenly it's all about the plot, and the players are left only to "act" their parts. Like much of CoC play.

Mike

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On 4/29/2003 at 5:18pm, Jack Spencer Jr wrote:
RE: Does Module Play Equal Participationism?

Mike Holmes wrote: Yeah, "amusementparkism" is sorta the opposite of Module play. In that, the player can go wherever they like until they hit a plot, and then the Force comes in. In Module Play, the GM Forces the intro, but then plays open.

In the interest of keeping there from being multiple terms for essentially the same thing (not that I think "parkism" should be a term added to the vocabulary, but that's not my decision) it can said that in parkism there are areas of freedom of movement and areas where a plot "ride" kicks in. When you go to a park, you first drive there. That's sort of a ride. Or when I went to Disneyworld, they had the handy tram to bring you from their 100 acre parking lot to the front gate. Also a form of ride. Personally, I see no reason to place both parkism and module play under the same umbrella term, whatever the term if it needs one, with the distinguishing features of the plotted "rides" and the areas of free movement within the "box" of the adventure.

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On 4/29/2003 at 5:47pm, Mike Holmes wrote:
RE: Does Module Play Equal Participationism?

See, I see both module play and parkism as simply shifting back and forth between other easy to identify GMing modes. I would only label them phenomenonologically for reference, like you have.

Mike

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On 4/30/2003 at 7:48am, M. J. Young wrote:
RE: Does Module Play Equal Participationism?

First, to Kester: the use of the term "module play" is more a temporary designation for a type of game social contract which can be illustrated by a specific approach to a certain kind of module; it was never intended to mean this is how modules are played, but only that I've noticed this style which appears to be different from the others mentioned elsewhere, which seems to be a functional sidestepping of "the impossible thing before breakfast". The question raised was whether this is distinct from what Mike labeled Participationism, or merely another way of describing the same thing.

In my attempt to draw the distinction, part of my question was whether I correctly understood Participationism to mean, in essence, "Illusionism with the consent of the players"; and further, taking that to mean that the players had no power over the outcome of the game nor even the track it followed, but only over things that amounted to color which the referee would work into his story. I think that's how Mike originally presented Participationism (as a sort of functional illusionism, because it was agreed in the social contract), and I think he's confirmed that thought here.

I think that what I've tentatively dubbed "module play" (again, for lack of a better name--something like "track agreement" might be closer) is very different from this in an essential point. But, as often is the case, I may have to get to that in a round-about manner.

I own several Dungeons & Dragons Competition Modules. I've never run or played any of them, largely because I'm always running my own material; but the competition modules have always appealed to me as being among the best I've owned. What interests me about these is the way they appear to be set up for play.

In each case, at the beginning of the module the players are told, this is who you are, this is where you are, and this is the basic idea of what you have to accomplish. This is the starting point. I suppose one could claim that setting the players at the starting point is "railroading"; but I don't see how you could avoid that at some level. As the characters are placed at the starting point, the referee in essence cuts them loose. He will not cause anything to happen at all; he will only unfold what is happening in response to the players' actions.

However, the players have agreed up front that they are determined to discover and accomplish whatever it is that is in the pages of that module. If the task is to find where the ancient mage Ischabuble hid his incants to undo the spell, they will get directions to Ischabuble's tower, figure out how to get in, and search for those incants. There might be a million other things they might do, but they've agreed that they want to do what the module wants them to do.

At no time during play does the referee intervene outside the parameters of what the module allows. That is, there might be "edges of the map" warnings to tell the players they're off track. But the referee does not have the task of making the events happen or bringing about the desired outcome. In fact, it might be that the player characters will fail utterly in their quest, that some or all of them will be killed, that they'll never find what they seek. What won't happen is they won't decide that they're not going to look for these things because they don't think these are important. They have committed themselves up front to accepting that doing what the module says to do is important.

I compared it also to the typical CRPG. I'm not terribly versed in these, having given them up when my Commodore 64 became unreliable. However, I recall playing a text-based version of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I particularly remember trying to get the Babel Fish out of the vending machine and into my ear. There is only one way to do it in the game; you either do it that way or you fail. In fact, you absolutely must have the Babel Fish in your ear for the story to continue, so if you fail you're killed in a few minutes. But it's not participationism in the sense I understand the word. The game won't put that fish in my ear or let me get by without it or have Ford Prefect come over to help me with it if I can't figure out how to do it. The game will end, and I will lose. The fact is, when I inserted the disk into my floppy drive to play this game, I was implicitly agreeing that I was going to try to figure out what the game wanted me to do and do that. The fact that I could think of a dozen other ways to get that fish into my ear that ought to work was irrelevant; I had to do what the game required in order to continue.

That's this "module play" I'm describing.

It should be noted that this is presented as a viable and common approach to escaping The Impossible Thing. In this approach, it is the referee's story; he creates it. It is also quite true that the players have complete control over their characters. What makes it work is that the players have agreed (under the social contract) that their characters will pursue the referee's story by whatever means they can manage, and in so doing the players have committed themselves to figuring out what that story is and making it happen.

Again, rather than building a track and keeping the players on it, the referee blazes a trail (that is, he puts markers out along the way for them to find) and hopes the players will be able to follow it.

That might be a good name for it, actually: Trailblazing. The referee has created the story he wants to see played and placed the clues out there for the players to follow; the players, completely uncoerced by anything the referee does or says, commit themselves to finding and following those clues to reach the end of his story.

This becomes dysfunctional either if the players expect the referee to take them where they're supposed to go (participationist players with a trailblazing referee) or conversely if they refuse to follow the clues but would rather create their own stories.

Is that any clearer?

--M. J. Young

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On 4/30/2003 at 1:11pm, Le Joueur wrote:
Use the Force (or Not), M. J.

This underscores something I noticed elsewhere, but I think I can put it into simpler terms here. Illusionism and Participationism (per the new definition) depend on the use of Force (the "influence the GM has influence over story-impacting decisions made by the player-characters") to make them happen. From the numerous descriptions of what you term 'module play,' this isn't happening. The players are pretty much left to their own devices with the stated goal of 'following the module.'

Or, the gamemaster isn't expected to 'do it for them.'

Does that help?

Fang Langford

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On 4/30/2003 at 4:26pm, Jack Spencer Jr wrote:
RE: Does Module Play Equal Participationism?

M. J. Young wrote: That might be a good name for it, actually: Trailblazing. The referee has created the story he wants to see played and placed the clues out there for the players to follow; the players, completely uncoerced by anything the referee does or says, commit themselves to finding and following those clues to reach the end of his story.

This becomes dysfunctional either if the players expect the referee to take them where they're supposed to go (participationist players with a trailblazing referee) or conversely if they refuse to follow the clues but would rather create their own stories.

Is that any clearer?

In the second quoted paragraph, I can certainly see it becoming dysfunctional when the players refuse to follow the clues. Using your comparason to text adventures. It would be like trying to make up you own plots in a computer game. It just won't work. But I do not see how participationist players would make this disfunctional because I still see this as just a form of participation. What you have described is a form in which the GM uses a low-level or subtile amount of Force. As I understand it, Participationism means two things: The GM has control of the story and the players do whatever is needed to play along with this. This is how I understand it.

See, Illusionism, as I understand it, is that the GM has control of the story and the players do not know this. Participationism is that they do. Bundled into this concept of the GM controlling the story is the concept of Force which the GM can use to keep things on track.

Way I see it, it boild down to choices. Let me see if I can illustrate it.

Take a group that is playing Illusionism. Suddenly one day, the players realise that they are playing Illusionism. They now have a choice, to stop going along with the GM's plots which will require a complete shift in playing style and may lead to dysfunction if the GM does not wish to budge or they can continue to participate in the GM's plots and, thus, start playing Participationism.

The GM also has certain choices. If the group is playing Participationism but for whatever reason, the group does not follow the plot (either they didn't like it or they diddn't figure it out or whatever) the GM could either allow the players to run off on their tangent and rework his plots accordingly, he could decide to exert Force to bring them back to the plot (depending on how skillfully he does this will determine how well the players take it) or he could allow the play style to shift to something other than Participationism.

These decisions of play style happen all the time, probably in every game session. We're just slapping labels on stuff.

So I do not think Participation requires the players expect the referee to take them where they're supposed to go, as you had said. Participationism merely requires that the players goes along with what the GM has, which can be a fairly fixed plot or can be multiple plots to shame any Choose-You-Own-Adventure book.
It is also quite true that the players have complete control over their characters. What makes it work is that the players have agreed (under the social contract) that their characters will pursue the referee's story by whatever means they can manage, and in so doing the players have committed themselves to figuring out what that story is and making it happen.

This rather interesting. One might translate this into "You can do whatever you want so long as you do this." But, if you must do this with your complete control, is it really complete control? I believe that so long as everyone plays along with this, it is a form of Participationism.

When it goes awry, there are choices that will be made. When the players go "off the map," as you said, the GM could use Force to bring them back or use Force to take them to another module-- discarding the previous one, or he could drift play to some other style.

This is what I see.

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On 4/30/2003 at 4:37pm, Jack Spencer Jr wrote:
Re: Use the Force (or Not), M. J.

Le Joueur wrote: ...Illusionism and Participationism (per the new definition) depend on the use of Force (the "influence the GM has influence over story-impacting decisions made by the player-characters") to make them happen. From the numerous descriptions of what you term 'module play,' this isn't happening. The players are pretty much left to their own devices with the stated goal of 'following the module.'

Obviously, I disagree. I think it relies on the *possibility* of the GM using Force. When everthing is running smoothly, the GM won't need to use Force at all. It's when the players stray from the plot that you can tell better. If the GM uses force, then definately, but the GM might be just trying to more artfully use the force so the players do not recognize it as such.

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On 4/30/2003 at 5:28pm, Kester Pelagius wrote:
RE: Does Module Play Equal Participationism?

Greetings M. J. Young,

M. J. Young wrote: First, to Kester: the use of the term "module play" is more a temporary designation for a type of game social contract which can be illustrated by a specific approach to a certain kind of module<...>

<...>

In my attempt to draw the distinction, part of my question was whether I correctly understood Participationism to mean, in essence, "Illusionism with the consent of the players"; and further, taking that to mean that the players had no power over the outcome of the game nor even the track it followed, but only over things that amounted to color which the referee would work into his story.


Even so I have to reiterate: what is the point?

All games can be classified as "illusionist" in that they provide a specific pre-defined set-up, be it a board or map, in which the players are expected to play.

What is it you are trying to figure out, really, how much 'free will' illusionary characters are allowed in the context of a game?

The answer is: exactly how much room the game allows them to move in.

Or, to put it another way: Why is this question important to know?


M. J. Young wrote: I own several Dungeons & Dragons Competition Modules. I've never run or played any of them, largely because I'm always running my own material; but the competition modules have always appealed to me as being among the best I've owned. What interests me about these is the way they appear to be set up for play.


Right here there's a problem. You've named a very specific type of module, a type of module intended to be played in a very specific fashion. Such modules have time limits, scoring, and are usually meant to be played by hardcore gamers at conventions.

A better example, IMO, would have been Ravenloft. I think its basic premises fit well with your arguement. Or even Curse of the Azure Bonds, since it has been both CRPG and Module.

Of course these aren't tournament/competition modules.


M. J. Young wrote: In each case, at the beginning of the module the players are told, this is who you are, this is where you are, and this is the basic idea of what you have to accomplish. This is the starting point. I suppose one could claim that setting the players at the starting point is "railroading"; but I don't see how you could avoid that at some level. As the characters are placed at the starting point, the referee in essence cuts them loose. He will not cause anything to happen at all; he will only unfold what is happening in response to the players' actions.


First: "background" is not necessarily railroading. That is the setup which establishes the premise for the adventure/game module.

Railroading is the GM ignoring anything that the players want to do that doesn't fit with their design. Railroading is a *not so subtle* use of encounters by the GM to get the players to a goal.

For instance: You mention the edge of the map. One way to keep players from wandering toward it is to start throwing encounters at them in increasing levels of difficulty to dissuade them from wanting to go in that direction. But that's not railroading, that's working with the module. Conversely, the GM deciding they don't want to deal with anything but the players going straight from point A to point B and thus, as they walk along the road, finding reasons to tell the players their characters can't camp, search, explore, or do anything but move from point A to point B is railroading.

Every game requires the illusion of character free will. But it takes a good GM to maintain this illusion. And that means working with the players and the module.


M. J. Young wrote: However, the players have agreed up front that they are determined to discover and accomplish whatever it is that is in the pages of that module. If the task is to find where the ancient mage Ischabuble hid his incants to undo the spell, they will get directions to Ischabuble's tower, figure out how to get in, and search for those incants. There might be a million other things they might do, but they've agreed that they want to do what the module wants them to do.

At no time during play does the referee intervene outside the parameters of what the module allows. That is, there might be "edges of the map" warnings to tell the players they're off track. But the referee does not have the task of making the events happen or bringing about the desired outcome.


Actually this is incorrect.

It is very much the GMs job, in a tournament type game, to keep the players on track. Same applies in convention modules, which are less formal tournament modules. However, in your dorm, garage, basement, or back room of the gaming store game how a module will be run is very different. Mainly because there are no contraints on how the GM should, can, or could run one.

There are three types of basic encounters that a GM has to arbitrate: Random Encounters, Set Encounters, and (for lack of a better term) "On the Fly" encounters. These are really just random encounters that the GM is free to place anywhere in the game that they would like. Not every module makes use of them, but some do. They are a good GM tool and aide to keep things on track, throw a extra clue in the characters path, or. . . well there's really lots of uses for them.


M. J. Young wrote: In fact, it might be that the player characters will fail utterly in their quest, that some or all of them will be killed, that they'll never find what they seek. What won't happen is they won't decide that they're not going to look for these things because they don't think these are important. They have committed themselves up front to accepting that doing what the module says to do is important.


Marginally incorrect.

The players, by mutual consensus, can decide to cease seeking the goal of a module at any point.

The consequences, however, will depend on the type of module being played. If it's a tournament module, they will effectively have forfeited their score. If a convention module, they will have forfeited their seat at the table. If being played at home, depending on whether this module was being integrated into a larger campaign, it could merely end the evenings gaming session or force the GM to rework the remainder of the adventure based on the consequences of the characters taking on a task then abandoning it.



M. J. Young wrote: I compared it also to the typical CRPG. I'm not terribly versed in these, having given them up when my Commodore 64 became unreliable. However, I recall playing a text-based version of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.


I'm going to stop right here. The text based games were limited because of what could be coded into them, which limited what you could do in them. A few better C64 examples for CRPG type games would be: Phantasy, Legend of Black Silver, Wasteland. . . Ah, Wasteland.

*Kester sits mesmerized by memories of Wasteland*

Yeah, Wasteland or Mars Saga (?) would be perfect examples. They did let you roam the game map, but many times you had to first find a object or have an encounter to be able to find or encounter something else.



M. J. Young wrote: It should be noted that this is presented as a viable and common approach to escaping The Impossible Thing. In this approach, it is the referee's story; he creates it.


Problem is a module really is not "the referee's story".

A Game Master, given this example, is more properly filling the role of rules arbiter. Which is all a Referee is.

But I think I see what you're tying to say here. Problem is this is a quandry that will largely depend upon the situation, type of module/play involved, and GM style.


M. J. Young wrote: It is also quite true that the players have complete control over their characters. What makes it work is that the players have agreed (under the social contract) that their characters will pursue the referee's story by whatever means they can manage, and in so doing the players have committed themselves to figuring out what that story is and making it happen.


Again, it's not really the Referee's story. A module is totally prefab.

But, yes, you're right. The players have to agree to play through the module, at least in principle when they first sit down to roll up characters or choose the ones provided. In this regard a module is much like any board game. The players agree to sit down and play according to the rules, be those rules for chess, checkers, backgammon, ludo, or whatever.



M. J. Young wrote: Again, rather than building a track and keeping the players on it, the referee blazes a trail (that is, he puts markers out along the way for them to find) and hopes the players will be able to follow it.


Yes, that is possible. But that is not strictly what a GM does, nor should it be thought to be all that a GM is there for.


M. J. Young wrote: That might be a good name for it, actually: Trailblazing. The referee has created the story he wants to see played and placed the clues out there for the players to follow; the players, completely uncoerced by anything the referee does or says, commit themselves to finding and following those clues to reach the end of his story.


Ok I'm confused, this is the third time you've referenced the referee as creator of the story. This is something entirely different from "module play", unless you are talking about a GM created module?

Just be aware there are other methods. For instance I have, sitting in a spiral bound folder, somewhere, probably yellowing from age, the first two months of possible play for a old game world of mine. Yet while it is written up there is a lot of latitude allowed the characters. I used rumor mills and supplied multiple starts. I could do this because it was my creation, but for a static module I, as a GM, am limited in what I can do based upon what that module allows.

For instance Ravenloft has address the "edge of the map" issue rather nicely. So much so that it eventually evolved into its own campaign setting. Whereas Curse of the Azure Bonds can be called "railroading" since it has a set up that ensnares the players into its premise. But in reality its just another way of keeping the players on track and away from those edges of the map.

M. J. Young wrote: Is that any clearer?


Yes and no.

I still would like to know why the question is important to you as I feel there is some larger issue you are working out here that eludes me.


Kind Regards,

Kester Pelagius

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On 5/1/2003 at 4:04am, M. J. Young wrote:
Just for Kester, Sort-of

I feel like I have to take a step back, and maybe a couple more.

The tag "module play" seems to have confused the issue entirely, as it has brought into this discussion a lot of ideas about how modules are played, and what is meant by a module, and stuff that really has nothing to do with this. The only thing this has to do with modules is that some people use modules this way. Hence I shall refer to it as Trailblazing.

I call it "the referee's story" because it doesn't matter where the story originates. It might be purchased in some supplement, or downloaded off some web site, or pre-written in great detail by the referee, or hard coded into the software of a CRPG, or created as a mere sketch of events by the referee. What matters in terms of role playing game play is that there is a story of some sort in the referee's mind as he sits down to run the game.

I see this as a commonality between Illusionism, Participationism, and Trailblazing. I see the differences in how that story impacts play.

Quite some time back the term Illusionism was presented as a form of play that was regarded as probably dysfunctional and probably railroading. The basic concept of Illusionism is that the referee has a story that is going to play out, and as the game unfolds his story plays out--and nothing the players can do will impact that one way or another, but they are given the feeling that their actions matter. Here are some illusionist techniques that may help illustrate how this works:

• The party comes to a fork in the corridors. They stop and examine both routes as well as they can, and then decide to take the left turning. In fact, it doesn't matter which one they take. One of those corridors leads to the troll encounter which is the next event in the referee's plan, and whichever one they take, it will be that one and not the other that goes there.• There is a big boss behind the little villains, and the game is supposed to have the players fight a lot of little villains first and later get to the big boss. The players, however, figure out that the little villains don't matter, and they capture one and interrogate him in a way which gives them the information they need to go around all the intervening little guys and get right to the problem. They go for the big boss, and they attack--but since it's too soon, either this turns out not really to be the big boss, or it is the big boss and he has an escape route of which they were completely unaware which enables him to slip from their clutches. It is impossible for them to reach the big boss without going through the intervening steps, but it will always seem as if they failed to consider something the referee had already prepared.• The players are supposed to feel the threat of their situation. Thus the referee throws at them a contingent of some sort of enemy that hits them hard and keeps coming. Combat continues through several rounds, but just as the players are starting to reach critical levels of hit points and other resources, several of the opponents are killed and most of the rest flee--because the referee has been monitoring not the condition of his antagonists but those of the protagonists, whom he has determined will be reduced to a specific level of danger before they move forward.

You can see that in this approach to play, the players might feel like they're in control, but they actually control nothing beyond color. They can describe what they're doing, and make choices which seem to have meaning, but all significant events and outcomes are predetermined, and nothing will alter this. When its time to face the final encounter of the game, wherever they go, that's where it will be. If they never suspect, they should come away exhilarated, feeling as if they snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, that they won by mere inches, that in fact they did it, when they actually did nothing. Illusionism can be a very compelling gaming style, as long as the players don't see through the veil and discover that all they're doing is listening to a story. Somewhere I compared it to sitting on grandad's knee as he tells a story:

"There was a prince."

"The prince's name was Kester, Grandad."

"That's right! He had the same name as you."


It doesn't matter to Grandad that the prince's name was Kester; you added something to the color of the story, but you didn't change the story. That's illusionism.

Now, Participationism was originally defined something very like "Illusionism by consent". It seems that the gist of this particular thread is what that means. I have taken it to mean that everything just said about Illusionism is true, except for one point: the players know that nothing they do will matter, that they're just adding color to the story, and they've accepted this. They're still like the kid who tells Grandad what name to use for the prince, but they understand that this is not a significant element in the story. They're going to go through the motions and pretend to be doing things, and let the referee bring about the end the way an Illusionist referee does, and enjoy the ride. Tell me a story, and let me throw a bit of color into it from time to time, because you tell good stories and I like listening to them. To me, this is what is meant by "Illusionism by consent". I think that Mike (who coined the term and provided the initial definition) agrees with that, but his post was not completely clear on that point.

Jack, however, disagrees. To Jack, Participationism means only that everyone knows the referee has a story he wants to tell and that they're willing to go along with that. Whether or not they have control of it makes no difference.

I see this as a much broader definition of Participationism than was suggested, and probably a broader definition than is really useful. It starts to sound like "the players know that the current adventure involves the relationship of certain facts fixed within the world to each other"--and while in some games the players could know with certainty that this is not true in one way or another (e.g., games in which facts about the world are going to be created as the game progresses, or altered to meet player actions or expectations), it seems much to broad a definition for the purpose of defining a referee style--which is what it's supposed to be. If Participationism means that the referee is going to have total control of the events and outcome of the game, but it's O.K. for the players to be aware of this as long as they're willing to continue under the understanding that their actions are for color only, that describes a functional form of play. If it means something as broad as The World Exists In Fixed Form, that doesn't seem to me to describe anything useful.

In the midst of discussing dysfunctional play styles versus ways in which The Impossible Thing was resolved, John Kim made a comment about players accepting certain obligations at the beginning of play--that is, we say that the player has complete control over the actions of his character, but if in some D&D style fantasy game the player announces that the character is an elven thief, he has committed himself to playing within the parameters of the elven thief. At the beginning of the game, certain limits are agreed by the group, such as the system of rules, the nature of the world, and the types of character actions which can be performed. John said something about an agreement to play the module, to stay within the confines of the adventure as intended.

It struck me from that that this was a functional play style which was a distinct and at that point unmentioned resolution of The Impossible Thing: that the referee would bring his story (again, where he gets the story doesn't matter) to the table, and the players would begin at the established starting point, and from that point forward the players had complete control of their characters--they could do whatever they wanted; yet the referee's story would still be played out, if all went well, because the players had committed themselves to discovering and playing out the referee's story. The referee would do nothing to bring the story to pass; if it failed to come to pass, it was because the players couldn't follow the trail he had presented, missed important clues, misunderstood certain hints. Just as there was in Illusionism and Participationism, there was a chain of events which had been laid out before play began which the referee expected would, more or less, happen as preplanned. Unlike Illusionism or Participationism, the referee would do nothing to cause those events to happen beyond provide the clues pointing in the right direction. The players would bring it all to pass, or it would not happen.

I once ran a module, a slightly enhanced version of The Keep on the Borderlands. My computer had crashed, and taken my prepared materials with it rather abruptly, so I needed something to which to divert the player group rather quickly. I installed a simple hook: the prince of the local city informed the cavalier that monsters of the type that had killed the cavalier's liege (before the game began) had been seen again in the area where his liege had fallen, and good people were needed to drive them back. The group immediately rallied behind this character, and headed out to the location in question, and started searching for the monsters. They did what the module expected them to do. Now, they didn't have to do that. They could have returned to the area of the underground complex they had been exploring, and forced me to improvise with what I had. They could have stayed in the city and carried the adventures into an urban campaign. I had other places they might have gone instead, which were mapped. But I believe a sort of social contract aspect kicked in: they accepted that this was what their characters should do, that it was their job in this particular mode of play to attempt to find and follow the plot, and they did that. I never once forced an outcome or an event after introducing the hook.

It's not the best example, because of course Borderland is a very simple module that lends itself to non-linear play; but I think it does demonstrate that there is a significant difference in play style between a group in which everyone knows that the referee is going to bring about the story he's brought to the table incorporating them as color within it and a group in which everyone accepts that there is a plotline they're supposed to uncover and follow which the referee has marked but will do nothing about if they miss it.

Jack claims that both are Participationism. I say that Participationism is the considerably more narrow approach of players who let the referee tell them the story while they drop in bits of color, and that this is sharply different from that to the point that if both are Participationism then Participationism does not define or describe "a style of or approach to gaming". I think it makes a tremendous amount of difference whether everything in the story depends on the referee or the players.

Thus I suggest Trailblazing as a referee style, which can frequently be seen in module play, CRPGs, and a few other classic gaming situations.

Does this clarify the point?

Thanks for your patience.

--M. J. Young

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On 5/1/2003 at 6:03am, Jack Spencer Jr wrote:
RE: Does Module Play Equal Participationism?

M. J. Young wrote: Jack, however, disagrees. To Jack, Participationism means only that everyone knows the referee has a story he wants to tell and that they're willing to go along with that. Whether or not they have control of it makes no difference.


Well, let's step back a bit. These are things and behaviors that are and we are just slapping labels on them. It's sort of like sorting apples by roundness and squareness. Rare indeed is the apple that is perfectly round or square.

What I took from this thread were the concepts of Force, Overtness, and Flexibility. This strikes me as a more useful way of viewing these things that to coin yet another -ism. In fact, I would be happy if Illusionism, Participationism, and The Impossible Thing all fell out of use, but that's just me talking at this particular moment when I am especially bitter about something. :)

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On 5/1/2003 at 4:13pm, Mike Holmes wrote:
RE: Does Module Play Equal Participationism?

If people want to create different labels I'm cool with it. It's just that I think that the sort of play described here can be broken down into constituent parts that are described by other terms.

Thus, as I see it, "trailblazing"* is Participationism in a small way to the module "front entrance", and then Open play for the rest of the module to play out in. We can speak of the social contract that allows for the GM to use the overt Force that gets the player there. So, yes, we can talk about the mode in these terms.

But that doesn't mean that there's no use to talking about it as an aggregate phenomenon as well. In fact, I see El Dorado as shifting between Sim and Narr play (and all sorts of stuff regarding Illusionism and No Myth play as well). I could describe it that way, but using El Dorado, for those who know, is an easy shortcut.

So if people find value in Rollercoasterism, or Trailblazing, I can't see a downside. I mean, sure, we can worry about everyone coming up with their own terms for their composites of styles they play, or have noted. But to the extent that they are actually useful, they'll be retained. To the extent that they're not they won't.

As long as we know what the term is about. If one thinks that it's really a new GMing mode, that is, say, mutually exclusive of the terms being used, well then that's a subject for debate. But if it's just a descriptive composite, it seems cool to me.

So the question is, is Trailblazing mutually exclusive from, say Participationism and Open Play? Or is it just a description of a composite?

Mike

*I agree with MJ that too much was being made of the fact that the description of Module Play only pertained to a subset of the sorts of actual play that occurs in the presence of modules. The new term does make that clear, however.

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On 5/1/2003 at 4:47pm, Kester Pelagius wrote:
RE: Does Module Play Equal Participationism?

Greetings All,

Jack Spencer Jr wrote: Well, let's step back a bit. These are things and behaviors that are and we are just slapping labels on them. It's sort of like sorting apples by roundness and squareness. Rare indeed is the apple that is perfectly round or square.

What I took from this thread were the concepts of Force, Overtness, and Flexibility. This strikes me as a more useful way of viewing these things that to coin yet another -ism.



Mike Holmes wrote: As long as we know what the term is about. If one thinks that it's really a new GMing mode, that is, say, mutually exclusive of the terms being used, well then that's a subject for debate. But if it's just a descriptive composite, it seems cool to me.



I think Jack and Mike's comments pretty much sum it up. On the one hand we really do not need new "-isms" to be coined, then again for everyone having a near revelatory epiphany about a aspect of gaming that leads to a new insight there does need to be common terms to describe the insight in such a way that everyone can understand it.

To an extent I think that this is what M. J. Young is in the process of doing, putting down in words an attempt to set terms to a insight about the nature of gaming. Which is well and good, unless one starts to use terms that others know under a different applied meaning. Thus leading us back to the phenomenon of the "-ism".

True, there are often extant terms out there for many of the concepts being discussed here. Yet much of the discussion and debate here is about ideas, theory, and possible ideas and potential theories.

Problem is such ideas come from observation of our individual groups, and are thus based on a dynamic with which we are familiar. For instance much has been made about the use of the term "module" here, thus the term has been replaced with 'Trailblazing'. A word with conotations that may or not be best suited for MJ's concept.

But that's a matter of opinion and...

Mike Holmes wrote: If people want to create different labels I'm cool with it. It's just that I think that the sort of play described here can be broken down into constituent parts that are described by other terms.


...so long as the person trying to coin a term can make us of it, define it in context, and keep their usage consistent then...

M. J. Young wrote: It doesn't matter to Grandad that the prince's name was Kester; you added something to the color of the story, but you didn't change the story.


The terminology doesn't really matter, just the explanation (read: the story) behind the terminology.


Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll wrote: Alice laughed. 'There's no use trying, she said: 'one CAN'T believe impossible things.'

'I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.'


It's not the willingness, nor even the ability, to accept the impossible as possible; rather it's the ability to imagine and envision something beyond what our preconceptions tell us is possible. In that I look forward to seeing where M. J. Young takes this theory. For with each new imagining of what gaming is, IMO, we learn something new. Even if that is just that something old has been rediscovered and polished off.


Kind Regards,

Kester Pelagius

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On 5/1/2003 at 4:53pm, cruciel wrote:
RE: Does Module Play Equal Participationism?

I still take Trailblazing to be a composite.

Interacting with the predefined plot is not forced, just searched for. This makes me think of it very similar to Open Play (Plotless Background-Based, Pinball, Whatever-Ya-Call-It). The plot is actually just another piece of the environment to explore. Gamist to be sure, if the point is the challenge of locating the plot. It's just like searching for the holy-wand-of-bad-guy-smackdown in a dungeon.

Why it is a composite is because, a Transition to Participationism is made at specific points (when plot elements are encountered). I suppose you could start with Trailblazing and define styles around it, but I don't think Pinball or Participationism could be included in that model. Do you like CMYK or RGB? I can make purple out of either.

Huh, I suppose all I've done here is repeat myself, repeat Jack, and repeat Mike...in various fashions.

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On 5/1/2003 at 7:21pm, Tim C Koppang wrote:
RE: Does Module Play Equal Participationism?

I would argue that Trailblazing (a technique that seems very familar to me) is really just a way for the players to get back some of the "coolness" they felt when Illusionism was happening. The players want to think that they have power, but are convinced that the GM is the one who should be telling the story. So they tell themselves that they can alter the GM's plot, but in reality they spend their time adhering to it. If they do make use of their power, then in my expirience the GM just ends up integrating those changes, for the most part, into his pre-mapped plot. So in reality, nothing really changes. Thus, Trailblazing is a specific type of Participationism.

This is of course only observed from my expriences in play.

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On 5/2/2003 at 5:25am, M. J. Young wrote:
RE: Does Module Play Equal Participationism?

Kester Pelagius wrote: To an extent I think that this is what M. J. Young is in the process of doing, putting down in words an attempt to set terms to a insight about the nature of gaming....

For instance much has been made about the use of the term "module" here, thus the term has been replaced with 'Trailblazing'. A word with conotations that may or not be best suited for MJ's concept.

It's not the willingness, nor even the ability, to accept the impossible as possible; rather it's the ability to imagine and envision something beyond what our preconceptions tell us is possible. In that I look forward to seeing where M. J. Young takes this theory. For with each new imagining of what gaming is, IMO, we learn something new. Even if that is just that something old has been rediscovered and polished off.

I suppose I should be interested in where I'm going with this as well.

Periodically here at The Forge, someone reads about The Impossible Thing Before Breakfast, and comes onto the forums claiming that it is not impossible, because, from their perspective, they have done it. Then the argument arises that they could not have done it because it is inherently impossible: it cannot be true both that the referee has complete control over the story but the players have complete control over the actions of their characters. Thus we wind up reading a lot of words about how each individual believes the matter is resolved, and try to show once again that this is a valid way of resolving the problem, but it is not consistent with the actual words of certain texts--that is, at some point, this person has made an interpretive gloss on the text that causes them to believe that what they are doing is consistent with what the text says, resulting in functional play.

We've attempted at times to recognize various forms of functional play. One of those is the bass player and band analogy Ron uses, in which the referee sets things up and cuts them loose, and lets the players create pretty much everything else within the framework of the baseline. That resolves TITBB by having the referee cede control of the story to the players, leaving him control of the world and background characters and creating an interaction between them.

Illusionism is another resolution to TITBB which we tend to regard as dysfunctional. In Illusionism, the referee surreptitiously siezes power, such that the players feel as if they are in control of their characters but they actually control nothing that matters to the story. One of them will carry the ring to Mount Doom, whether that's what they planned or not--it will somehow be forced upon them in a way that persuades them it was what they chose. There is a sense in which Illusionism is perfectly functional as long as it is not discovered (my objection a year or so ago to someone's attempt at developing an illusionist game--the players will find out, and then it's all over). The players believe they control their characters, and in a sense they do--but the referee still has complete control over everything that matters.

Participationism is a more functional resolution to TITBB which, I think, amounts to the players ceding complete control to the referee of everything that matters. They have accepted that the referee is going to tell the story and bring them to the places they are supposed to be, and that all they can do--all they are supposed to do--is make their characters interesting in the process. Participationism has been described as Illusionism By Consent, and that in itself is suggestive of this analysis, that the players have ceded power over the plot to the referee.

I'm suggesting that Trailblazing is a very common and functional resolution to TITBB which manages to blend the referee's control over the story with the players' control over their individual characters through a normally unrecognized compact at the social level: that the players are committed to discovering and playing out the referee's story, and the referee is committed to not interfering with their efforts to do so.


As an aside, I commented at one point that you might call the starting point "railroading", and I think this was taken out of context as well. At least one person objected that establishing the starting point of the game is not railroading (which was what I meant), and at least one other person has derived from that that Trailblazing includes periods of railroading. I do not mean that there is any use of referee force within the game. I mentioned it in connection with the starting point, because it occurs to me that someone has to say, "this is where the game starts, this is why you're here, this is the information you have". Even if you began with "your character is born today; what do you want to become?" at some point the description of the world into which he is born is establishing starting parameters for the game. It is solely those starting parameters that are in any way "forced" in this type of play, as the referee might say "you meet in a bar in Freeport" or "your liege sent you here to investigate this rumor" or "you wake up apparently in a cargo hold of some ship; the last thing you remember was a drink with a lady". You can't start the game without the referee saying, "you are here"; if someone wanted to characterize that as force, I couldn't answer that. I do not believe it to be force; I also do not mean it to be part of ongoing play, but merely the starting point for play.



In Trailblazing, the referee will have created signposts, pointers, clues, ways for the players to discover what the story is. The referee has actually ceded all control over the unfolding of events to the players, but in doing so has trusted them to honor the social contract that says they are going to make every effort to tell him his story. If they got lost, that would be part of functional play. If they refused to follow the clues, that would be a violation of the social contract which underpins this particular style of play, and thus dysfunctional.

The other point I would draw out of this is that my experience suggests it to be rather common. I think that most of the games in which I played, prior to meeting the great Illusionist referee who really broadened my horizons on the possibilities for how to run games, were run this way. It is not exactly my most common approach as referee--I tend to create places in which people can have adventures, and cut them loose--but the other referees for whom I played tended to run prepared modules. Within those, we always made the decisions; but we always made the decision to do what seemed like the next thing we were supposed to do. We would complete part of the adventure, and there would be a reason for us to go to the next place, so we would go there. The referee never tricked us into anything, never played games with the reality, never caused things to come about. We made everything happen. We had complete control over our characters and through them the direction of the story. Sometimes we changed the story in critical ways. But always we were dedicated to discovering what the next step was supposed to be, and doing that.

I've read other functional approaches to play described in these forums; I haven't seen this described coherently, but I expect it's a much more common resolution of TITBB than people realize.

I think that's where I'm going with it.

Thanks for asking.

Oh--I'm curious as to why "Trailblazing" has inappropriate connotations. My great uncle used to blaze trails. The concept is rather simple: you take a knife or hatchet, and as you move through the woods you strip patches of bark off trees at intervals, creating a "blaze" of exposed wood which can be followed by you or someone else later. Thus I suggest that in the Trailblazing technique, the referee marks the path he wants the players to follow, and they look for those blazes and try to follow them. Success in part depends on whether the blazes are clear without being blatant, and whether the players are able to identify and follow them. It is agreed up front that the players are looking to follow the trail that has been blazed for them.

How is this inappropriate? Or does the word suggest something to people unaware of the simple meaning that confounds this understanding?

Thanks.

--M. J. Young

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On 5/2/2003 at 6:57am, John Kim wrote:
RE: Does Module Play Equal Participationism?

M. J. Young wrote: Participationism is a more functional resolution to TITBB which, I think, amounts to the players ceding complete control to the referee of everything that matters. They have accepted that the referee is going to tell the story and bring them to the places they are supposed to be, and that all they can do--all they are supposed to do--is make their characters interesting in the process. Participationism has been described as Illusionism By Consent, and that in itself is suggestive of this analysis, that the players have ceded power over the plot to the referee.

Hmmm. You alternately refer to the GM's power as being over "everything that matters" and "the plot" -- as if they were the same thing. My common impression is that a Participationist GM only seeks power over the overall plot -- i.e. aspects like characterization and others may be in the players' power. Many people seem to feel that non-plot aspects do matter, and indeed are important enough to play out for their own sake. There was an interesting recent thread on Necessary Risk which discusses this.

M. J. Young wrote: I'm suggesting that Trailblazing is a very common and functional resolution to TITBB which manages to blend the referee's control over the story with the players' control over their individual characters through a normally unrecognized compact at the social level: that the players are committed to discovering and playing out the referee's story, and the referee is committed to not interfering with their efforts to do so.
...
We always made the decisions; but we always made the decision to do what seemed like the next thing we were supposed to do. We would complete part of the adventure, and there would be a reason for us to go to the next place, so we would go there. The referee never tricked us into anything, never played games with the reality, never caused things to come about. We made everything happen. We had complete control over our characters and through them the direction of the story. Sometimes we changed the story in critical ways. But always we were dedicated to discovering what the next step was supposed to be, and doing that.

OK, Participationism and Trailblazing seem pretty similar to me, but let me check here. In both cases, the GM has a pre-prepared plotline of things which are supposed to happen. In both cases, the players are commited to going along with that. So in practice these will look very similar, at least on the surface. I guess where the difference is noticeable is that if the players mess up -- say misinterpret some clue, and fail to recognize the next place they should go. In this case, the Trailblazing GM will simply let them wander about aimlessly. If they didn't catch his pre-written clue, then he won't improvise another one and the session may simply end with them not finding anything interesting. A Participationist GM, on the other hand, will improvise a new clue if the players are stuck.

Since by the definition the players want to follow the predefined story, that seems to be the only problem case. As long as the players don't get lost, Participationism and Trailblazing appear identical, right?

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On 5/2/2003 at 11:31am, cruciel wrote:
RE: Does Module Play Equal Participationism?

Having a thought...

This relates to two other running threads:
The switches and dials formerly known as Illusionism
Relationships Between GMing Styles

Wasn't sure which thread to put it in, but for some reason this seems the best place. Not because this discussion is about Illusionism, but because it includes it.

To me, Illusionism seems less and less like something you can pin down and define in any other way than 'Force relating to something done Covertly'. Covert Participationism would be one form of Illusionism, Covert No Myth would be another, Covert Open Play yet another, and so on. Since Covert and Illusionism seem synonymous, and nothing else can be clearly defined for Illusionism, what's the point in having both Illusionism and Covert as terms (other than that's how things happened to develop). This seems to very strongly support Jack's PoV in the switches and dials thread.

Covert Trailblazing seems impossible; making it obviously not Illusionism. Trying to make it Covert would make it play just like Covert Participationism; making it Overt again would make it Participationism. I know this is like running a sentence through a translator a few times...it's not supposed to be a proof, just a different angle.

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On 5/2/2003 at 2:23pm, Tim C Koppang wrote:
RE: Does Module Play Equal Participationism?

MJ,

Riffing off of what John was saying: what do you think "everything that matters" is? This may be the source of my hang-up.

As I see it now, I still place Trailblazing in the Participationism camp. Let me explain. If players can "leave" the GM's pre-designed plot and wander off on their own, but they are expected to (via social contract) “find” the GM's plot eventually, then how much control do they actually have? I mean can they really have control over their character's development if there is only one way for the plot to unravel?

For example, let's say that my character, Bob, decides that he will go off and do his own thing because he just had a major realization that defines him as a person. This little personal discovery quest was in no way part of the GM's plan. So, does the GM humor me and improvise Bob's quest, or does he just try to lead him back to the "real" plot of the game. Moreover, simply by instigating a personal discovery quest wouldn't I be violating the social contract once I find out that the GM never planned for this? I'd say yes. So I indeed have lost control of my character by nature of the social contract.

Perhaps I can develop my character along the way, insomuch as I adhere to the GM's story, but that's a very limited amount of leeway.

I’d restate John’s question: In your vision of Trailblazing, would or should the GM give up his pre-defined story if the players don’t want to follow his clues?

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On 5/2/2003 at 4:12pm, Jack Spencer Jr wrote:
RE: Does Module Play Equal Participationism?

John Kim wrote: Since by the definition the players want to follow the predefined story, that seems to be the only problem case. As long as the players don't get lost, Participationism and Trailblazing appear identical, right?

Also riffing off of what John said. I was going to quote the entire section where he compares the differences between Participationism and Tailblazing, but just scroll up :)

In Illusionism: a new look and a new approach there are definitions for "gm oomph" or Force, overt/covert, which in this case applies specifically to the Force, which is either overt or covert, and flexibility. If this is the main difference between Trailblazing and Participationism, then Trailblazing is just a form of Participationism with low flexibility.
#3 (Flexibility)
= how flexible the outcome is permitted to be. The GM in question might be the kind who'll do anything up to actually picking up your dice for you in order for you to talk to "that guy," or he might be the kind who's happy to let the characters miss the clue, either 'porting it to another character or letting its absence go ahead and affect the outcome.

...he might be the kind who's happy to let the characters miss the clue, ... letting its absence go ahead and affect the outcome.

Isn't this what John had just determined?

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On 5/2/2003 at 4:39pm, Kester Pelagius wrote:
RE: Does Module Play Equal Participationism?

Greetings,

I hope this missive finds you well and in good health.

M. J. Young wrote: I suppose I should be interested in where I'm going with this as well.


Well if you aren't sure step back, take a breath, and decide if this is really something you want to sped time with. Theories, I've heard it told, are a lot like lovers. They need coddling and caressing. . . or something.




M. J. Young wrote: Illusionism is another resolution to TITBB which we tend to regard as dysfunctional. In Illusionism, the referee surreptitiously siezes power, such that the players feel as if they are in control of their characters but they actually control nothing that matters to the story. One of them will carry the ring to Mount Doom, whether that's what they planned or not--it will somehow be forced upon them in a way that persuades them it was what they chose.


Ah, but the entire point is in the how, not the why.

The story that develops is about how the ring gets to Mt. Doom, not why poor Frodo felt like he was forced to take it. And, really, in this example Frodo wasn't forced to do anything by the heavy hand of the evil GM Gandalf. Sure, that's what Gandalf likely wanted, but Frodo could have refused. Then what would you have had? Nothing. No story. Nada.

Then again Bilbo didn't want to leave his comfortable Hobbit hole either, yet he did, and because he did this set Frodo up to have to take the ring. Ah, but then the ring was supposed to have a malignent sense of direction in and of itself, as had its master Sauron. Sauron, whose goal was to rule or see the world destroyed if he couldn't reign over it. Which is exactly what the destruction of the ring brings, the destruction of the world that was up until that time.

So who railroaded who here?


M. J. Young wrote: The players believe they control their characters, and in a sense they do--but the referee still has complete control over everything that matters.


Before I offer comment I would like to know why you feel this way?


M. J. Young wrote: Participationism is a more functional resolution to TITBB which, I think, amounts to the players ceding complete control to the referee of everything that matters. They have accepted that the referee is going to tell the story and bring them to the places they are supposed to be, and that all they can do--all they are supposed to do--is make their characters interesting in the process.


That's not the role that I played when I DM/GM the campaigns I ran. Properlly a GM is a referee. A Referee's sole function is, in the traditional RPG, a arbiter of rules. It's not my job to dictate a story to anyone. The story should resolve itself from the actions of the characters as guided by their players.

That said I feel you have a specific game in mind (and perhaps a specific style of GMing) that you are referencing here. Yet I felt that you wielding your brush in broad, bold, strokes painting a landscape about the generic phenomenon of gaming. Or am I misreading you?



M. J. Young wrote: In Trailblazing, the referee will have created signposts, pointers, clues, ways for the players to discover what the story is.


I'm going to step outside the bounds of this theory for a moment.

This is called (amongst other things) foreshadowing. Droping hints and clues about the direction in which the flow of a story goes is intrinsic to creating a good story.


M. J. Young wrote: The referee has actually ceded all control over the unfolding of events to the players, but in doing so has trusted them to honor the social contract that says they are going to make every effort to tell him his story.


Is it really the GMs story? Or is it "the" story.

If you are talking about a storyteller system then this works fine, but this may not apply to other systems or styles of play.


M. J. Young wrote: If they got lost, that would be part of functional play. If they refused to follow the clues, that would be a violation of the social contract which underpins this particular style of play, and thus dysfunctional.


*LOL*

Then every group I've had would be dysfunctional.

But it's not. It's human nature. Also it's what the GM is there for, if need be, to provide those illusiory guide posts to lead the characters back in the right direction. But, really, this tends to happen in long drawn out meandering campaigns that last for hours on end.

What it is is not dysfunctional gaming, it's loss of focus. Happens a lot when friends are together and having so much fun they forget all else.



M. J. Young wrote: Within those, we always made the decisions; but we always made the decision to do what seemed like the next thing we were supposed to do. We would complete part of the adventure, and there would be a reason for us to go to the next place, so we would go there.


Yes, there are modules like that.

For those who like a immersive gaming experience such modules will not be suited for their style of role-playing. However, for tabletop play, or those more strategic minded that don't mind the "board game" elements of play such modules tend to be well recieved.

I'd say that establishing the social contract here should also determine what sort of gaming experiance the group wants. Just be aware that certain modules aren't well suited to certain styles of gaming.


M. J. Young wrote: Oh--I'm curious as to why "Trailblazing" has inappropriate connotations. My great uncle used to blaze trails. The concept is rather simple: you take a knife or hatchet, and as you move through the woods you strip patches of bark off trees at intervals, creating a "blaze" of exposed wood which can be followed by you or someone else later.


Mark and note this.


M. J. Young wrote: How is this inappropriate? Or does the word suggest something to people unaware of the simple meaning that confounds this understanding?


Because trailblazing suggests that the natural environment is an obstable that has to be overcome and hacked away. Which means leaving dead branches in your wake. Sure, you can think of it as pioneering. Problem is the Pioneers weren't really, since the Aboriginals/Indians/Picts are already there.

It's a matter of perspective. Nothing against you or your theory, which is interesting. Lots of neat ideas.

But, if you treat the games as an obstacle that needs to be overcome to achieve a goal, then aren't you're locking yourself into certain approach to role-playing, however unconsciously?

Personally I viewed games a canvas and the players the strokes of color and shadow that came together to create the picture. Or, to put it another way, the game was a cold clump of clay and the players each took up bits of it and sculpted the world as they went along.

And that, too, is a approach that creates a environment where certain styles of gaming will flourish over others. I think we need an example to pick apart, hack at, pick nits out of, and otherwise discuss. Guess I volunteer. ;)

# # #

"I probably have a slightly different pespective than most." Kester intone in his best put-on haughty manner, "I had two core gaming groups, once upon a time, but ran through the *same* material for what was essentially the *same* world setting."

In a whispered aside Kester says: It was a City. Only some minor background details were different, and the panetheon of deities were set up slightly differently. One was a HIGH magic world the other a median magic world.

"A world setting that began with yet another earlier group. We took notes. Those notes developed into my campaign world. When the two groups went their own ways something happened. A while later I ran a game for group in which there were players from both former groups present. They got to talking, as players do, and wanted to revisit the old campaign world. (Figuring they must have missed something since they had slightly different experiances.) So I took my notes, put them in a folder, then started a new folder incorporationg various bits and pieces of the old campaigns..." Kester's voice trails off as M. J. Young stuffs cotton into delicate sensitive ears.

Ok, there's the set up.

How did I resolve the fact these were different games in the same yet different world?

Simple, I now decided that I had two parallel worlds. Similar yet different. Thus the players were able to run their old characters. . . sort of. Obviously the new dimension of two parallel worlds altered things slightly.

No, the players didn't know about each other, or their games, until they came together in the later gaming group.

Yes, I decided that this is how this were/would be from that point on.

Given the current theories being discussed how would you classify this?

Why?




Kind Regards,

Kester Pelagius

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On 5/2/2003 at 5:22pm, M. J. Young wrote:
RE: Does Module Play Equal Participationism?

O.K., I keep thinking that the reason I'm not getting through is because there is a disagreement about the definition of Participationism. As I understand Participationism, it is Illusionism By Consent; that requires that we understand the definition of Illusionism.

In The Dancing Princess in Multiverser: The First Book of Worlds, I wrote: Whichever way the character goes will ultimately be toward the city; from this far out, the city can't be seen, so when the character has traveled enough the city should be discovered.
Although I did not know it when I wrote that, this is an illusionist technique. I've since written several articles on integrating illusionist techniques among your refereeing tools--the most notable being Game Ideas Unlimited: Left or Right, and at least one (Game Ideas Unlimited: Ephemeral Illusion) suggesting that you can't build an entire game around such techniques. Yet I have seen games run this way.

I suppose I need to answer
What John Kim wrote: You alternately refer to the GM's power as being over "everything that matters" and "the plot" -- as if they were the same thing. My common impression is that a Participationist GM only seeks power over the overall plot -- i.e. aspects like characterization and others may be in the players' power.
Mea culpa. I have certainly confused that.

I agree that characterization can be a very enjoyable part of play. It may be one of the key aspects that makes Participationism (as I understand it) enjoyable. What I'm after is something a bit more than what I understand by "the plot" and a bit less than "everything that matters", for which I don't have good words. What I means it that in Illusionism, the story is going to unfold exactly as the referee has imagined it, with only color, characterization, and maybe a bit of who-does-what-part subject to definition by the players. That is, if the players come to a closed door that they are supposed to open, it will open for them, whether the fighter kicks it or the thief picks the lock or the wizard uses his knock spell on it, or if it just happens that it swings open when they start to walk away--or if not, then whatever was behind that door that they needed to get to next is actually behind the next door that they do open. I'm currently working on a scenario with an extremely illusionist formula. It takes place in a modern office building. Rather than map out the entire building and placing each encounter location within it, I'm providing a few standard floorplans to define each of the fifty stories and putting the encounters in the order in which they will occur. The player can go in any direction he chooses, but he can't get to the end before he has played through the events in front of it no matter what he does. If the scenario says the first thing he encounters is a lone guard, that is the first thing he will encounter whether he goes in through the front door, the garage, the roof, or one of the windows. His choices are all his--but the order in which things happen cannot be changed by anything he does. He doesn't realize this because no one has told him he can't change the sequence, and he doesn't know what the sequence actually is. To him, if he runs into ten well-armed men, it was his bad luck to have chosen a left instead of a right at that last turning; to the referee, he ran into those ten men because that was the next event on the storyline, and it was just a matter of deciding where it was going to happen. At that point, he will fight them--whether he attacks and they defend, or he flees and they pursue. In many cases of Illusionist play (although not in the one I'm writing), the referee has already decided things like whether he will kill them all or some will escape, how much injury he will suffer in the process, and to what degree this will deplete his resources. At no point in this does the player impact what is going to happen next. He is given the illusion that he has control when he really does not.

Now, Participationism is exactly that with the caveat that the player knows he has no control. I've compared it to watching an action movie. Everyone knows the first time they watch Die Hard or Under Siege that Willis or Segal aren't going to be killed; yet it's exciting to feel like it might happen. Everyone in Participationist play knows that their characters are going to save the day (or, in a different game, be gruesomely killed). The tension comes from watching the story unfold. Just as in illusionist play, they make choices that don't matter. They know these choices don't matter, but they enjoy making them, because it gives them the feeling that they are part of the story. If the next encounter is going to be ten well-armed adversaries, it doesn't matter where they go, that's what they will encounter. The story will happen; they're along for the ride. The players are the audience; they are participants only to the degree that they get to say, "wouldn't it be neat if the fighter broke down the door" or "in this fight I should kill them with my bow and arrows". They watch; the referee makes the story happen.

Trailblazing is exactly opposite to that. In Trailblazing, the referee has no control whatsoever once the game begins. The encounters are probably set; the signs are in place. But at this point, everything depends on the players. They must make the story happen. If they decide that entering the building through a window on the twenty-second floor will give them time to set up before they encounter anyone, and the scenario doesn't happen to have anyone on the twenty-second floor, they don't encounter anyone there. The choices they make matter. The referee might want to have them come in through some other door, and might even have left bread crumbs on that path, but it's not his decision.

I'd like to go back a few years to a problem someone posed on the GO forums. He told of a scenario (similar in some ways to the one I'm designing) in which there was a bomb in the building. The players were "supposed" to go in through a certain entrance and encounter several other enemies, then rescue the person who knew how to disarm the bomb, then find the bomb and disarm it. Instead, the players chose an unexpected direction of entry, reached the bomb almost immediately, and one of them with no skill or knowledge in the subject attempted to disarm it, detonating it immediately.

That's Trailblazing. They missed the path. It would not happen that way in Illusionism or Participationism--either they would not have found the bomb because it wasn't there, or having found it they would not have been able either to disarm it or to detonate it prematurely, and so would have to have found the man who knew what he was doing. The Illusionist or Participationist referee would at this moment prevent the story from going awry; the Trailblazing referee would not.

A couple of other examples of Trailblazing technique and outcome.

I played in the Volturnus modules in a Star Frontiers game. There's a point at which you raid a high-tech pirate base. It proves to be an outpost, and there is information in the computer which points you to the main base. These are the breadcrumbs; the module, and thus the referee, wants you to travel to the main base next, and find a way to bring down the pirates. However, it's two hundred miles as the crow flies, hostile terrain, and thus far you've been walking everywhere. Now, there's this jetcopter there you could fly--but it won't hold all of you plus the neat stuff (a couple of security/combat robots, weapons, supplies) you've just acquired. The module wants you to whittle down what you've got to the essentials.

I won't go into how we did it, but Bob and I proceeded to play out an end run. We got the pirates to bring us another copter, managed to capture one alive and interrogate him, and were then able to load everything we wanted into the now two copters and fly out to the next point in the module. The referee didn't even see it coming--she had no idea what we were up to as we staged our little deception, and was quite surprised that we had managed to get around the limit.

In an illusionist or participationist game it would not have worked. Sorry, you can't work the security codes on the new copter; sorry, they can't send anyone to you now; sorry, one of the copters has malfunctioned and will take weeks to repair. You're stuck with the limit, because you're supposed to be stuck with the limit. In a Trailblazing game, what mattered was that we knew where we were supposed to be next, and we found a way to get there on our terms. The referee pointed; we accomplished.

The other example, which I eluded to before, is the vast majority of CRPGs. I used a text-based game when I discussed this earlier, because I stopped playing CRPGs before they had gotten much beyond text-based games, and probably partly for this reason. Yet it seems to be true of at least the bulk of the successful Nintendo and Sega games.

If you play one of the Final Fantasy games, there is a sequence of events you have to accomplish. Sometimes it's a flexible sequence; sometimes there are substitutions built into it. By and large, though you have to go through the steps the game requires, or you've lost the game.

The game will make no effort to coerce you into success; if you fail, you fail. It will not allow you to change the objectives. It provides the clues you need to move from point to point, but leaves it entirely up to you to get there. When you put the game into the console, you've committed yourself to attempting to achieve the goals established by the game. This is not Participationism; in Participationism, you wouldn't be able to go off the course established by the program, nor, in a sense, lose the game. The game would tell you what was happening to you, and you would respond with all kinds of color- and character-enhancing details, but the story would happen no matter what you did.

Thus, with a lot of role playing game play, the referee has created a story, but whether or not that story gets told is entirely in the hands of the players. Illusionism and Participationism say that the players cannot prevent the story from being told; the referee will tell the story, no matter what they do. Trailblazing says that the story will only be told if the players pursue telling it and are successful, but that they have committed themselves to undertaking that.

I think that Jack is using a definition of Participationism that is, too my mind, too broad--it seems to him to mean that the referee contributes a central story idea and then by some means it is played out. Since Participationism was introduced initially as a refereeing style, juxtaposed to Illusionism solely on the question of whether the players knew that they had no control over the outcome, I don't see how it can be broadened to mean "either the referee is controlling the outcome or he isn't" and still be a style of refereeing. I say if the referee controls the flow of events, it's Participationism as Mike originally defined it; but if the referee merely lays out a path and leaves it entirely within the power of the players to follow it or fail, that's Trailblazing.

Why isn't that distinction clear?

--M. J. Young

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On 5/2/2003 at 5:49pm, Jack Spencer Jr wrote:
RE: Does Module Play Equal Participationism?

M. J. Young wrote: I think that Jack is using a definition of Participationism that is, too my mind, too broad--it seems to him to mean that the referee contributes a central story idea and then by some means it is played out. Since Participationism was introduced initially as a refereeing style, juxtaposed to Illusionism solely on the question of whether the players knew that they had no control over the outcome, I don't see how it can be broadened to mean "either the referee is controlling the outcome or he isn't" and still be a style of refereeing. I say if the referee controls the flow of events, it's Participationism as Mike originally defined it; but if the referee merely lays out a path and leaves it entirely within the power of the players to follow it or fail, that's Trailblazing.

Why isn't that distinction clear?

Possibly because the definitions of these terms, like pretty much all of the terms coined here are the subject for debate. And the term as Mike originally defined it seems to differ from the term as Mike is currently using it (or so it seems to me. Mike will set me straight if I am wrong). We also seem to be talking past each other here because I am looking at the variables that make up Illusionism and the other terms and I am finding it more useful to look at them as a series of switches and dials that can be adjusted during play vs identifying the distinctive styles.

Consider a GM running a trailblazing game, which as you had defined above "the referee merely lays out a path and leaves it entirely within the power of the players to follow it or fail." Let's assume that the last session fizzled because the player failed indeed to find the path or anything else of interest. So this time it's a new game, new characters, new path and once again the players are stumbling. Not wishing to have two failed sessions in a row, the GM exerts a little Force to help bring the characters on the right track (exactly what or how much is irrelavant).

Now, there a a couple ways of looking at this. It is possible to see this as drifting, if only for a moment, from Trailblazing into Particiaptionism and then back again. But I simply see it as turning up the flexibility for a moment to help the players find this path they seem to have trouble with and then turning it back down with the path already in place. In either case, this is simply what happened and we're labeling stuff to try to understand it.

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On 5/2/2003 at 5:52pm, deadpanbob wrote:
RE: Does Module Play Equal Participationism?

M.J.,

I've been following this thread - and everything you've said is perfectly clear to me in terms of your distinction between Participationism and Trailblazing. Just so you don't think you're going psychotic.

Still, from a functional standpoint, do you think that Trailblazing has variability in terms of the Overt/Covert and/or Consensual/Non-Consensual scales discussed in this other thread: Illusionism: a new look and a new approach?

I think that if you're saying, in you're definition, that Trailblazing can have variability along these lines (that is to say that it can functionaly be placed in multiple places along the Covert/Overt and Consensual/Non-Consensual scales) - then I agree with you that it seems to be yet another discrete style of GMing to add to the taxonomic mix.

Cheers,



Jason

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On 5/2/2003 at 6:08pm, Tim C Koppang wrote:
RE: Does Module Play Equal Participationism?

To use your example: Let's say that the players decide not to enter the building at all, not to disarm or even hunt after the bomb. Let's say they go visit the circus instead. This would be Trailblazing, but dysfunctional Trailblazing, right? -- because the players are breaking a stipulation of the social contract that says that the GM's general plot must be followed. Is this correct?

In other words, there is no plot outside the GM's?

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On 5/2/2003 at 8:21pm, John Kim wrote:
RE: Does Module Play Equal Participationism?

Kester Pelagius wrote:
M. J. Young wrote: Participationism is a more functional resolution to TITBB which, I think, amounts to the players ceding complete control to the referee of everything that matters. They have accepted that the referee is going to tell the story and bring them to the places they are supposed to be, and that all they can do--all they are supposed to do--is make their characters interesting in the process.

That's not the role that I played when I DM/GM the campaigns I ran. Properlly a GM is a referee. A Referee's sole function is, in the traditional RPG, a arbiter of rules. It's not my job to dictate a story to anyone.

Hold on. If your GM is purely a rules referee and doesn't determine story, then the simple answer is that your style has not been "Participationist". M.J. is not advocating Participationism here as the one true answer -- he is simply describing a style which some people play in.

It seems to me that it is much more common for GMs to be more than a rules arbiter. Most traditional RPGs suggest that the GM work before the game itself to design or adapt "adventures" which the PCs go through -- though the meaning of what a prepared adventure is varies. The D&D3 DMG has a decent treatment of the traditional two approaches: adventures based on a single location, and adventures which involve a sequence of locations (i.e. a mission or quest). More on this later...

Kester Pelagius wrote:
M. J. Young wrote: In Trailblazing, the referee will have created signposts, pointers, clues, ways for the players to discover what the story is.


I'm going to step outside the bounds of this theory for a moment. This is called (amongst other things) foreshadowing. Droping hints and clues about the direction in which the flow of a story goes is intrinsic to creating a good story.

OK -- I am guessing based on the positive tone here that you do foreshadowing. However, this involves being more than just an arbiter of the rules. In order to foreshadow, you have to have some idea about where the story is going to go, don't you?

One of the faults of calling styles "-isms" is that it suggests really strongly adhering to a style in a religious manner, when really there is a range. For example, you might as GM have pretty strong control over where the story goes, but still not dictatorially control all the nuances (as is implied by the description of Participationism).

Kester Pelagius wrote:
M. J. Young wrote: If they got lost, that would be part of functional play. If they refused to follow the clues, that would be a violation of the social contract which underpins this particular style of play, and thus dysfunctional.


Then every group I've had would be dysfunctional.

But it's not. It's human nature. Also it's what the GM is there for, if need be, to provide those illusiory guide posts to lead the characters back in the right direction. But, really, this tends to happen in long drawn out meandering campaigns that last for hours on end.

First of all, I think that M.J.'s phrasing here is poor. I suspect when he says "dysfunctional" that he means "dysfunctional for Participationism" -- i.e. it just indicates that particular style isn't working, but it could actually functional non-Participationist play. Your original statement, at least, suggests that your play isn't in the style M.J. is describing.

One of the points of this discussion is that the GM plays different roles depending on your style. The GM isn't neccessarily there to point out the "right direction". For example, my style in my Vinland game is pretty clearly to not have a "right direction". I will regularly throw in events to spice things up, but more often direction is determined by the PCs.

Kester Pelagius wrote: (game description snipped)
Given the current theories being discussed how would you classify this?

I can't tell from what you have said. I would recommend starting out with some more basic things: what do you do to prepare for a session? What generally happens? What sort of activities do the PCs engage in?

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On 5/4/2003 at 3:07am, M. J. Young wrote:
RE: Does Module Play Equal Participationism?

I want to thank everyone for their posts, and particular those that have come since my last entry here. I do now feel as if it's starting to become clear.

Jack, it might help if we go back to the impetus for deriving the concepts of illusionism and participationism. These sprang from an examination of the problem of how people get around The Impossible Thing. I think, if we define them my way, we've identified at least four distinct approaches (and I've probably overlooked something, and I may not have the name right on the fourth, but this is from my recollection):

The referee controls the bulk of what is happening, including the plot, the survival of the characters, and much more; however, he lets the players provide color in the form of what their characters are doing, none of which really matters. The players do not know that their choices don't make any difference. This has been called Illusionism, and is considered dysfunctional because the players are being railroaded and don't know it. It solves TITBB by taking most of the meaningful power away from the players, but it doesn't let them know this.• Similarly, if the referee controls everything in much the same way that he would in Illusionist play, but the players know this and have (implicitly or explicitly) consented to this, knowing that they can create their characters' personalities and give color to the exciting story the referee is telling, this is a functional solution to TITBB. In essence (again implicitly or explicitly) the players have voluntarily ceded power to the referee to control the story. This is Participationism• The referee has created a story and told the players where it starts. However, once play begins, his place is solely revealing the world and applying the rules to their actions. He has designed things such that there are clues leading the right direction, but will not force the players to follow that direction. However, the players have (implicitly or explicitly) agreed that their task is to find and follow those clues to reach the end of the story. This resolves TITBB in a functional way, in that the referee cedes control over what actually happens to the players, who in turn commit themselves to trying to follow the story he has prepared. This would be Trailblazing.• This last may actually be several different styles which at the moment my mind is failing to distinguish. It includes what Mike earlier called Open Play, so that's what I'm calling it. It certainly includes most of what John describes in his games, Ron's base player in the band analogy, and perhaps Kester's play style. It assumes that the referee has created or presented a world in which "things can happen", but the entire direction is in the hands of the players. I suspect there are differences here between play in which the referee reacts creatively to player choices versus play in which the referee has everything mapped out in advance, but in essence the resolution of TITBB is that the referee has no story and controls nothing but the revelation of the world as the players explore it.

These are, to the best of my recollection, the ways in which TITBB is resolved by various gaming groups.

The value in knowing them and in distinguishing them, it seems to me, is very important to game and scenario design.

For example, in Multiverser we make a distinction between "game worlds" and "story worlds". "Game worlds" are places where the place is interesting and there are things that players can do which will lead to adventures, but the referee really doesn't have anything planned. "Story worlds" are the opposite end of the spectrum, in which the referee doesn't really have much of a world outside the plotted events, and things like hooks and illusion become very important as means of drawing the player into what's happening. Since going to press, through writing other scenarios for the game, I've realized that there's a spectrum between these--that there are worlds in which events are happening which will impact the player, but there's a lot of freedom in what he can do; or in which certain actions will trigger story-like plots that will play out; or in which missing the plot leads to exploring very different adventures within the same world. However, understanding that there are different ways to run worlds can help immensely in designing them; and being overt in the text regarding how certain parts of a world should be run can be very helpful for play.

Examples:

• My previously referenced quote from the text of one of our published scenarios, in which the player is given the choice of which way to go but will always wind up at the city. Referees unfamiliar with this might think that if the player turns the wrong direction he'll never find the city and so miss the adventure. Making it explicit in the text that this referee technique should be used to bring the player to the beginning of play will make the story work better.• Making it clear in designing an open-play world that the referee should not concern himself with preparing stories because something will happen, but rather should follow the player's lead and let the events unfold, will direct referees away from railroading and into this more open play style.• The previously described scenario in which the events happen in the order specified regardless of player action is a valid way to run a scenario, even though unusual. Recognizing this in the text may help referees understand what they're doing.


By working through the different ways games can be run, we open our own minds to the advantages and disadvantages of each, and can better point referees to techniques that will or won't work as well for what a particular game or scenario is trying to accomplish.

Jason, thank you for pointing me back to that thread. Although I didn't find "consensual" in the first page, I do think that the overt/covert factor could be shifted significantly. My emphasis on the implicit/explicit agreement suggests this--that it might well be that the group sits down and says, let's play this module or this scenario, you run it, and we'll make sure we do our best to stay on story, or that they might never be aware that they're following any scenario at all, as they are conditioned (from years of this style of play) to look for and follow the clues. I believe someone on some thread mentioned an actual play problem in which he had dropped players into a world in which there were a myriad of possibilities, and the players did nothing because they were waiting for some hint of what the referee wanted them to do. That suggests either participationist or trailblazer players with an open play referee. We could agree openly that this is what we're doing, or it could just be that we fall into it naturally and are unaware either that we're doing it or that there would be another possibility.

Tim, it would be dysfunctional play if the referee is trying to run a game by setting up clues for the players to follow and the players are ignoring the clues. As to whether there is anything to do beyond what the referee has set up, this is a more confusing question.

I think that I was probably trailblazing when I hooked my players into traveling the several hundred miles from where their characters were to where I'd established the Keep on the Borderlands would be. I set up a few pointers, and off they went. Now, my world was pretty detailed, and I'm actually a very flexible referee who moves between styles pretty freely. Had they stopped in one of the towns on the map between those two points, things could well have happened there. I might have had a world complex enough that there would be several trails of breadcrumbs leading off in different directions (I actually do have such a world in Multiverser development) and the players could choose which one to follow. At the point that the players stop following the bread crumbs, it ceases to be trailblazing; if the referee is limited to that style, play becomes dysfunctional, as he would be unwilling to force his story--the most he can do is give more blatant clues, and if they're ignoring his clues and he can't shift to another mode of play such as open play, the whole things can't progress.

If you were playing the Volturnus modules in Star Frontiers, and you decided you didn't want to join the Ul-mor and let them take you out of the desert, according to the module you'll die in the desert. That's not really participationism, I think, because it doesn't say that the Ul-mor will attempt to coerce you to follow them or that the referee should try to get the players to go that direction. Rather, it's trailblazing: the referee has provided the clues as to which direction the story goes next, and the players can take it or ignore it, but if they ignore it nothing else happens. The degree to which the referee can accommodate players "off story" may vary, but trailblazing requires that the players are at least attempting to stay on story, or that the referee be adaptable enough to set up a new trail in a different story when it appears that the original story is lost.

John Kim wrote: First of all, I think that M.J.'s phrasing here is poor. I suspect when he says "dysfunctional" that he means "dysfunctional for Participationism" -- i.e. it just indicates that particular style isn't working, but it could actually functional non-Participationist play. Your original statement, at least, suggests that your play isn't in the style M.J. is describing.

One of the points of this discussion is that the GM plays different roles depending on your style. The GM isn't neccessarily there to point out the "right direction". For example, my style in my Vinland game is pretty clearly to not have a "right direction". I will regularly throw in events to spice things up, but more often direction is determined by the PCs.
Spot on.

Why don't people see The Impossible Thing as impossible? Because they've already resolved it one way or another. Illusionism, Participationism, and Open Play are all common resolutions. Trailblazing is yet another. Each of them is about the degree to which the power of one participant trumps the power of another. Trailblazing, at least, is also about the commitments the participants make to each other in exchange for that power.

I almost always run open play games; when I don't, I trailblaze more than anything else. I do use Illusionist techniques at times--mostly for those sections of the story I consider plot exposition, since Multiverser doesn't really allow me to have those moments in which the referee tells the player what happened to him that brought him to this point (and I don't use that in my AD&D games either--the interludes are played out, not spoon-fed). I think that recognizing the different techniques has helped me immensely in my game running and scenario design.

Are we done?

--M. J. Young

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On 5/4/2003 at 1:07pm, cruciel wrote:
RE: Does Module Play Equal Participationism?

M. J. Young wrote: Jason, thank you for pointing me back to that thread. Although I didn't find "consensual" in the first page, I do think that the overt/covert factor could be shifted significantly. My emphasis on the implicit/explicit agreement suggests this--that it might well be that the group sits down and says, let's play this module or this scenario, you run it, and we'll make sure we do our best to stay on story, or that they might never be aware that they're following any scenario at all, as they are conditioned (from years of this style of play) to look for and follow the clues. I believe someone on some thread mentioned an actual play problem in which he had dropped players into a world in which there were a myriad of possibilities, and the players did nothing because they were waiting for some hint of what the referee wanted them to do. That suggests either participationist or trailblazer players with an open play referee. We could agree openly that this is what we're doing, or it could just be that we fall into it naturally and are unaware either that we're doing it or that there would be another possibility.


You're welcome. For better or worse I left concensual/non-concensual/concensual-ness unknown out. Because I consider non-consensual play dysfunctional, or at the very least having to become consensual once the illusion is revealed or be doomed to failure. Which also makes covert/overt a switch that exists in all styles. However, I do realize this doesn't clearly label one of the Impossible Thing solutions (Illusionism).

I agree with the dysfunction arising from a Participationist or Trailblazer player with an Open Play referee. I've seen it happen, and it's rather funny. We've got a player who always searches for the plot, whatever that may be, regardless of his character's desires, always trying to figure out what the GM wants him to do. When the GM presents an Open Play situation where you've got two or more decisions that could all be right (or disasterously wrong) and the GM has no obvious prefence for what you decide he kinda stumbles around in character saying thing like 'uh, if we do this then, but if we do this then, uh, but then, uh'.

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On 5/4/2003 at 4:15pm, Jack Spencer Jr wrote:
RE: Does Module Play Equal Participationism?

M. J. Young wrote: Jack, it might help if we go back to the impetus for deriving the concepts of illusionism and participationism. These sprang from an examination of the problem of how people get around The Impossible Thing. I think, if we define them my way, we've identified at least four distinct approaches (and I've probably overlooked something, and I may not have the name right on the fourth, but this is from my recollection

I agree it can be looked that this way and acknowledge it might even be helpful. But I prefer to look at the distinct varibles that make up these distinct styles of play, which I have done in the The switches and dials formerly known as Illusionism. I personally find this more useful that find many distinct combinations of these variable and the possibility of discussion of sub styles like Trailblazing-lite or particillusionism fills me with a kind of dread.

Forge Reference Links:
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On 5/5/2003 at 10:49pm, Kester Pelagius wrote:
RE: Does Module Play Equal Participationism?

Greetings,

Hope you had a fun in the sun happy week end. Kids well? Wife happy with that thing you finally did she'd been bugging you to do?

Great times!


John Kim wrote: Hold on. If your GM is purely a rules referee and doesn't determine story, then the simple answer is that your style has not been "Participationist". M.J. is not advocating Participationism here as the one true answer -- he is simply describing a style which some people play in.

It seems to me that it is much more common for GMs to be more than a rules arbiter. Most traditional RPGs suggest that the GM work before the game itself to design or adapt "adventures" which the PCs go through...


Yes, key words "which the PCs go through". As GM, whether using a module, random encounter charts, or doing a Tarot reading based on the creases in the seat of my pants ;) I, as a GM, should be arbitrating the rules as based on the characters actions. The game should evolve out of the characters actions thus, if a GM rolls on encounter chart that the characters meet a 10' Tall Green Amazon looking giantess. . . well the story flows from what the characters decide to do, not what the GM would like them to do. Same holds true for modules and fly by the seat of the GMs pants (or skirt) fun. :)


John Kim wrote: OK -- I am guessing based on the positive tone here that you do foreshadowing. However, this involves being more than just an arbiter of the rules. In order to foreshadow, you have to have some idea about where the story is going to go, don't you?


Not Necessarily. If the evening's game is totally impromptu (meaning there was no before hand preparation) one could easily roll up several random encounters and thus "appear" to know what is going on, but all that is really known is the order in which encounters are going to potentially happen. I did this a lot. The players seemed happy, most of the time, and these games were much fun.

Even the one's where the "throw away" enconters snowballed out of all proportion to what I thought would/might happen. Then such is the random joy of players and their characters. :)

Now, back to the "foreshadowing" reference. I really mentioned it only to show that, yes Virginia, there mist already exist useful terms and idealogues that could fit with the theory being developed. But it's not my theory, thus the terminology is not mine to coin. Not that I don't think MJ isn't doing a fine job. Doing quite nicely.


Kester Pelagius wrote: (game description snipped)
Given the current theories being discussed how would you classify this?

I can't tell from what you have said. I would recommend starting out with some more basic things: what do you do to prepare for a session? What generally happens? What sort of activities do the PCs engage in?

Well that largely depends on a number of factors, which really are neither here nor there. (Thus the casual readers are spares a thrity page diatribe that probably would have meandered up hills and down dales into lanes of memory, some dingy and grey, others. . . well, you know. heh)

If you go back and re-read the end bit what I was asking was, based on how the put things together, on the fly, how (if at all) would this mode of GMing fit in the current theories being constructed. Keeping in mind that what I did was essentially fuze together various threads of ideas and established background history for two disparite campaigns to fit a third, thus establishing a "reality" (of sorts) which technically did not exist until I put it all together and told the players "this is how the world is" sort of thing. *pauses to take breath*

Welp, much reading to do, but thought I should answer this first.

Skoal!


Kind Regards,

Kester Pelagius

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On 5/5/2003 at 10:58pm, Kester Pelagius wrote:
RE: Does Module Play Equal Participationism?

Greetings M. J. Young,

Wow, wrote quite a bit there. Sounds like you are winding down on everything though so. . .

M. J. Young wrote: ...and perhaps Kester's play style...


Actually I was referencing my experiances as a Game Master, but some view that as much the same thing. Certainly with certain Idie games role-playing can be a fun experiance for everyone at the table, just like most good board games, if not better.

"But in the ancient of days," old man Kester intones, "when I used to play why things were..."

The sound of old man Kester's aged voice softens as he wanders off, muttering to himself.

M.J. sighs in relief.

;)



M. J. Young wrote: Are we done?


If you feel everything has been said that needs saying then, yep, guess we are done here.

It's been a hoot! Really.


Kind Regards,

Kester Pelagius

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