Hello,

From the thread The problem with GNS, I was able to extract a single question of worth:

"Heinrich" wrote,

I have to wonder what the value of GNS and the role playing theory on this site is if it remains unequivocally opposed to asking the question, 'what is a game?' It's like a post-holocaust environment in which Mad Max is holding college level courses on aeronautics. Only no one knows what a plane is. So instead, they hold classes on everything you can do in one. You can sit in them, for example. You can be served drinks. On the outside, the plane has two wings and a nose, but those features aren't directly related to what you can do inside the plane. Once you have mastered this, you get your degree.

The above example is actually a good one. Because in the post-holocaust environment there are no physicists around who can calculate force, thrust, vectors, momentum... So out of necessity they dispense with the question 'what makes it go?' Better yet, when someone asks 'what does the plane do?' they get smacked down, and are told, 'Don't ask what it does, just look at the sum of the details. That's all a plane is.'

Ok, I'll try.

When we play, we're flying the freaking plane, so its pretty bog obvious what a plane is. It may take us a while to figure out bernoulli equations and stuff. But then, I'd rather learn to do barrel rolls and loop-de-loops.

GNS theory, then, is more like an experienced pilot, after finally mastering his Immelman turns, sitting down and trying to reverse enginner his plane. Oh yeah, and to figure out those weird hot air balloon folks at the same time.

To be honest, Ron, I don't see much to discuss. The idea that the Forge "smacks down" any talk of "what a plane (i.e. game) does" doesn't seem too serious to me. That's pretty fundamental to what goes on here. How many times have we asked almost that specific questions, "What do you do?" when critiquing a designer or a game? I think this happens a lot (and in terms of theory, gets asked specifically in addressing Creative Agenda).

(Nevermind that I find the analogy really silly, and a not-too-cleverly-veiled insult. Does anyone else just shake their head like I do when alerted to the fact that we're degenerate barbarians and completely barren of astounding minds who know physics? It's just more of heinrich's baiting.)

There has long been an assumption in theories discussed here that what games do is provide fun. I _think_ you have stated yourself that this is the lowest common denominator. If we can't agree that RPGs are "for fun," then we can't begin to discuss other elements like dysfunction (which presumes that the function is FUN), incoherency, GNS modes and many other issues.

This is no small point, because it gets right down to the nitty gritty of some of the "art" issues that have been discussed in recent weeks. Lots of attention lately has been paid to examining aesthetics of games and whether RPGs are art (and whether the game itself is art or the play is art, or both).

I've already gone on record as saying I think RPGs can be art, and that play can also be art. But, while I appreciate the discussion regarding these issues, I'm far less interested in art than I am in fun. I see fun as the necessary component. I do not see art as necessary. This is why I asked in previous threads 1) How do ideas like baseling/vision help design games people can acutally play and 2) is all art necessarily entertainment (that is, fun to at least someone, even if the "fun" is enjoying the illuminating thought the "art" poses)?

Yes, I realize that this does not define RPGs as distinct from Monopoly or roller-blading or stamp collecting or whatever. I really don't care. I think the borders are so blurry, as Ralph has stated elsewhere, that such definitions are nearly impossible. How can one categorize sufficiently games like Universalis and , oh I dunno, basic D&D? Is Univesalis an RPG? What about octaNe?

To paraphase Damon Knight, RPGs are what I point to and say are RPGs. I don't find that illogical or so egregiously fallacious that we can't proceed with discussions as we've done here for literally years now. It is, to me, a non-issue.

Oh yeah, presumably, planes fly. Not provide drinks or chairs.

Greetings Mr. Edwards,

I wasn't planning on commenting on this, but since you ask so nicely...

Ron Edwards wrote: One more point: "Heinrich," if that is the person's name (I have my suspicions), clearly roped most of the people in that thread into his baiting-game. I didn't see the thread until Tuesday morning, so the show was over by the time I read a single post.

Ron Edwards wrote: This thread is specifically about an idea. Ignore the inflammatory bullshit about how the Forge is "unequivocally opposed" to discussing what a game is (multiple threads falsify the claim). Ignore the observation that "Heinrich" only saw fit to present his argument after he'd managed to get people into a defensive tizzy. Do adopt the plane-metaphor he presents, for purposes of discussion. Let's see if it applies.

Hi all,

Ron, I'm not sure exactly what question you want addressed. The excerpt you post seems to be suggesting "What is an RPG?" or "What does an RPG do?" We've bounced that around a lot, so I'll refrain from that, unless you clarify that that is what you want.

While envisioning an rpg as an airplane, with all the knowledge and high tech that backs it up, I had an interesting thought.

Everyone has the RPG plane. If you're human, you have it. It's not a device cobbled together from knowledge gained through a hundred thousand years of technology - it's a gift of evolution.

The plane is a vehicle for reaching group consensus from subjective suggestions - the interplay of human imagination, emotions, filtering beliefs, and the group process. It's used at all levels of human social behavior.

Given that we make games from most of our abilities, it would not surprise me that the social construction of reality was abstracted into a game. It may have started millenia ago, when someone was telling a story and others suggested twists and turns. This is a basic structure we can see reenacted when children respond to a story teller = or when they play Let's Pretend.

The only difference in the past three decades is that the process and the game aspect have been made explicit, based on understandings in simulation, game theory, psychology, etc.

The plane is a vehicle of group imagination inherent to homo sapiens.

Wow - this is a great thread for discussion. I came into it with a specific idea, and Alan's post just changed my thought process tremendously. I think I can integrate the two, though.

If the plane is nothing more than group imagination - a beautiful metaphor, by the way, Alan - then RPGs have to be something. In this case, they facilitate the use of imagination in a structured environment. Now, I realize we've moved Heinrich's metaphor a bit from "plane = RPG" to "plane = what happens when we play an RPG." Bear with me, though.

The RPG is everything that gets that plane in flight. It's the ground controllers telling it where to take-off and land, the dials that tell the pilot how the flying's going, the environment he's flying over, and anything else that affects the flight. Looking at it this way, the metaphor moves from "plane = what happens when we play an RPG" to "flight = what happens when we play an RPG."

Yep, I'm going in circles. Still, bear with me. When we fly, we use some sort of take-off and landing area, and we use some sort of flying machine. It might be a Cessna, or a 747, or a hangglider, or an ultra-light. This flying machine (and the sum of its facilitators) is the RPG. (See? I told you I'd get back to something close to "plane = RPG" metaphor.)

Why do we not examine what the flying machine is? I say we do. I say this site explores what the flying machine is better than any other. We've found that there's lots of different flying machines, and not all of them work the same way. There's similarities, and people who enjoy flying are interested in the various types of flying machines, but it remains that they are not all the same, and operate differently, and are flown for different reasons.

In that, we don't ask what a RPG is, because we know two statements to be true:
a) It's a blanket term that covers many different and separate things, much like "flyer" covers many things. Asking "what is a flyer" only results in "something that can fly," i.e. a way to express group imagination in a structured environment.
b) The individual flyers are more interesting, and we are examining them every day.

Hi folks,

I think the key point of heinrich's concern is "What is the value of GNS in the face of folks who can't even fly?"...to which, of course, using Alan and Clinton's input, is that folks are flying all the time, they just don't know how or why it works.

This, of course, makes perfect sense. Some folks have a feel for aerodynamics, and they can pilot very well, others do not(hence, the attitude, "All that matters is that you have a good GM/pilot"). GNS is the study of different machines and manuevers and the aerodynamics and figuring out what works well together. Type A plane does these manuevers well, under these conditions. "If you try to pull a barrel roll in a 747, you're going to have a hard time of it..."

So what does GNS do? Simple, as a pilot(roleplayer), I know I enjoy certain manuevers. GNS is simply a general theory as to what planes best work for what manuevers, and what sorts of manuevers can be pulled off together in formation without folks crashing into each other.

Chris

What I inferred from H's question was something like the old "I can't define pornography, but I know what it is" thing. Do we use GNS to define what an RPG is?

Do we? Maybe that is a good question.

My thought is that GNS doesn't attempt to explain what an airplane is. Instead, it's more like a tactics manual for people who already know how to fly. It makes some assumptions that there is in fact a shared opinion of what an RPG is, but it inludes a category that's more like "anything that allows a person to fly," rather than simple airplanes. Donjon is a biplane, Sorcerer is a helicopter, Universalis is a hot-air-balloon. and so on.

So really it's not so important to know how an airfoil creates lift, so much as knowing that some flying machines make it easier to do barrel rolls.

What kind of flying do you like to do? That's GNS to me.

Greetings Chris,

Bankuei wrote: I think the key point of heinrich's concern is "What is the value of GNS in the face of folks who can't even fly?"...to which, of course, using Alan and Clinton's input, is that folks are flying all the time, they just don't know how or why it works.

I have to wonder what the value of GNS and the role playing theory on this site is if it remains unequivocally opposed to asking the question, 'what is a game?'

Bankuei wrote: So what does GNS do? Simple, as a pilot(roleplayer), I know I enjoy certain manuevers. GNS is simply a general theory as to what planes best work for what manuevers, and what sorts of manuevers can be pulled off together in formation without folks crashing into each other.

Ron, I'm not certain what idea you want discussed here; is it how is RPG/GNS like a plane, or can theory be discussed without defining its practical application? It seems that the current discussion is following the former, when I had assumed the latter. Maybe you can clarify.

Here are my thoughts. Aerodynamics as a descipline can and has been studied without reference to the plane. Classical theories of aerodynamics existed well before powered flight. The plane is a result of those theories or rather an example of the theories in application. This is the primary reason why the analogy doesn't work for me. In addition, I oppose the post-holocaust setting which implies we've forgotten what a game is. To turn it around, what is a plane? An object that utilizes the principles of lift, thrust, and control to achieve flight? A method of transport? A terrorist weapon? A silvery bird in the sky? Superman? I think you run into the same problem talking about planes as you would talking about games. As an occassional flyer, I'm much more concerned about the length of time for security and checkin, the accuracy of flight schedules, the size of my carryon, and who will be sitting in the neighboring seat than coming up with a definition of a plane that the pilot, crew, ground support, and all the passengers would agree on. Defining a plane becomes immaterial when you're already accustomed to using it.

More to the point, the plane analogy implies that the "passangers" are not fully utilizing the plane, which is not the case with the theoretical (and practical) discussions at the Forge. We're not sitting earthbound with no interest in flight. Quite the opposite. Game play is achieved and improved through the discussions here.

Julie

Kester,

Did your post have a point besides to derail the discussion? Ron started this thread, not Heinrich. He asked a specific question, and the text from Heinrich he quoted was very obvious about using planes as a metaphor for RPGs.

I saw no answers in your post, just an attempt to muddy the waters of discussion.

It seems to me that the flight is the basic idea of play, rather than game. Play has several strong features which seem to fundamental parts of RPGs. In particular: exploration, social practice, and general learning. The plane itself, in that context is a game, it's the context in which play is facilitated. It does this through constraints, (It's not unreasonable to call games just constrained play, or constraints on play. In fact that definition seems to include quite a few popular definitions for game, including Wittgenstinian language games.)

To carry the metaphor further, I would say that constraints facilitate play, but also necessarilly restrict it. The analogy is to an aircraft wing, it provides life (if oriented correctly and designed appropriately) but also provides drag. Those two features are inseparable.

In the interest of pulling the analogy to a stretching point:

The GM could be said to resemble an engine. Hence designing a GM-less game is a-kin to glider design.

While there may exist good models for play and the effectiveness of a given game, as there could be for a given aircraft, both require an actual test to verify. The details simply become too complex to rely upon models for complete assurance.

Still trying to decide what Ligher than Air and VTOL's are ...

-Mendel S.

People,

Julie had a good point above: the metaphor is useful for discussing if we actually examine what a RPG is, and if we do, how we do it. The metaphor itself is not the point.

I may have started this when I attempted to deconstruct the metaphor to show how it operates off a fallacy. If so, I apologize.

Hi Kester,

My basic view of heinrich's post was that it was more of an attack rather than an opening for discussion, hence why I avoided the initial thread. Here, we're talking about the idea of whether GNS serves "a purpose" when most people don't get it(at least that's what I'm reading from heinrich, perhaps he or someone else can clarify if i'm off here).

So, what is roleplaying, what is a game? These questions really don't need to be defined anymore than "What is music? What is art?" because these questions have been asked over and over, and very little has come from exploring them. Folks who play games don't need to know "what it is" anymore than a muscian sits around wondering "what is music?" as opposed to simply making it.

Why are some people stuck in that "post-apocalyptic" world, with no education? Rather simple- conditioning. Dysfunctional behavior, and dysfunctional play is a matter of conditioning. "I'm not having fun, but I won't say anything, instead I'll be an ass about the rules". "You're not doing what the 'story' is about, so I'll injure your character", etc.

You have a bunch of folks who aren't willing to openly say what's going on in a game that is based on communication. Then you also have the general consensus that its not only not cool to talk about what's really going on, its also not cool to recognize it, so you become conditioned to turning your head.

The basic theory and understanding of "What is roleplaying about?" is obvious to anyone who observes without letting the conditioning take over. When you sit down, and think about actual play, or play and be observant, the stuff in GNS becomes terribly clear.

Instead of using observation and trying to figure out how flying works, people take it as an attack on their personal piloting skills. And rather than talk about the issues where there are accidents and crashes, folks would rather not admit those things happen. Roleplaying is a social game, and unfortunately it brings all those ego issues that come with any social activity.

So is this a case of the blind leading the blind? Well, I can attest from personal experience that GNS has led to more functional play for me, but unfortunately, for most people, like the Matrix, you're just better off showing them than trying to explain it. For people who've never had very functional play, they can't possibly imagine the difference in what it means. It's about the same as me trying to explain the taste of a great cheesecake over the internet to someone who's never tasted it.

And most of the controversy over GNS comes from a bunch of people who aren't willing to bake the damn cheesecake for themselves to taste it(learn it for themselves), and then declare anything from, "Cheesecakes don't exist!", "They must taste like crap, because not everbody's eating them!", or "It's really just like chocalate cake, but with a different name!"

Sorry to throw in another analogy there, but really it defines the sort of behavior I see regarding attitudes about GNS.

Chris

Most of the replies have dealt with the plane analogy. They address the pertinence of a definition of game and role-playing to any theory about games.

But, Ron, would you like to see us address the pertinence of a theory of games to GNS theory, or would you like us to attempt a definition of what games are?

OK, if I understand the airplane analogy, it seems to be saying that "aeronautics" in the future has more to do with serving drinks than with flying, because no one knows what a plane is for. Thus, their study of planes is inherently wrong because they don't understand a plane the way we do. I think Mad Max is a bad example, because they had planes, and would at least understand what one was... perhaps this is part of why everyone has a different understanding of it. Or maybe I'm misunderstanding.

Can we discuss something we don't understand? Of course we can - people do it every day. People discussed and theorized about the stars even when they still thought stars were holes poked in a big sheet. We certainly see them as being wrong today - will people feel the same way about the Forge in 100 years?

Perhaps.

But I think the concept of game is sufficiently defined by the English language so that the Forge doesn't need a specific definition. Is it an incorrect definition, like the post-apocalyptic students' definition of airplane?

Perhaps.

But I'm pretty happy with Webster's dictionary. I think the burden of proof lies on the person who wants to redefine it, and I'll certainly listen with great interest if anyone wants to try.

Ron,

I'm not sure I can parse out Heinrich's point through the use of this analogy. However, one of the possible meanings I get when I think about his analogy is this: How does GNS help me design a better game?

If the act of flying is roleplaying, and the plane is the RPG, and all of the ancillary stuff needed to fly a plane (like Air Traffic control towers et.al.) are various types of social contract issues, then to me, GNS seems like it's striving to be one part of a possible theory about why planes fly.

That is to say, that GNS attempts to diagnose problems with keeping a given plane flying, by beginning to address the principals that keep the plane in the air. In this analogy, keeping the plane in the air is synonomous with the lowest common denominator of RPG's: "Having Fun".

However, where GNS breaks down for me, the plane designer, is that GNS doesn't help me directly and specifically with plane design. It only provides me with a heavily subjective, unwieldly diagnostic device to see why my planes keep crashing.

(bearing in mind that it's the only diagnostic device I've come across that's of any value - like Democracy being the worst form of government save for all other forms of government)

GNS, in my opinion, could be improved by providing some degree of concrete design advice for building the plane.

Breaking out of the analogy, my frustration with this is compounded by things like Ron's recent statements in his Actual Play review of PACE. After playing the game, he said he'd probably classify that game as Sim:Color. I've not played the game yet - but it seemed a lot more Narrativist to me reading through it.

Take another example: TRoS - where pretty much everyone thinks its a functional hybrid of Sim:Nar (the Nar part being the SA's), but both in reading the game and in playing the game, it comes out strongly, coherently, and unequivocally Sim for me - with no houserules or modifications to the system in any way, just playing it as written.

So in terms of usefulness to the plane designer - to step back into the analogy - it seems like GNS is the only theoretical tool we have to build planes - but that a lot of planes have to crash and burn before we can design one that flies consistently and as intended.

So, even though it won't help my popularity, I agree with "Heinrich" about GNS having some major holes in it. I wouldn't go so far as to call it a broken theory - and it's the only one I've seen that's even remotely functional when applied to addressing roleplaying dysfunction - but it's definitely not complete and not overly useful in a direct and immediate way to the game designer.

Note: When I'm talking about GNS here - I'm referring to the GNS article proper, System Does Matter, and the Simulationist essay - as well as several discussions on the forums that I had with the Forge community about just this issue - i.e. what kind of rubrics can we come up with to determine what makes a given game G, N, or S facilitating.

Cheers,


Jason

deadpanbob wrote: Ron,

I'm not sure I can parse out Heinrich's point through the use of this analogy. However, one of the possible meanings I get when I think about his analogy is this: How does GNS help me design a better game?

If the act of flying is roleplaying, and the plane is the RPG, and all of the ancillary stuff needed to fly a plane (like Air Traffic control towers et.al.) are various types of social contract issues, then to me, GNS seems like it's striving to be one part of a possible theory about why planes fly.

...

However, where GNS breaks down for me, the plane designer, is that GNS doesn't help me directly and specifically with plane design. It only provides me with a heavily subjective, unwieldly diagnostic device to see why my planes keep crashing.

Ron Edwards wrote:
1) When a person creates something (film, novel, RPG) that shares interest with another, it's because the content "speaks" to the second person. What jazzes you, jazzes me. Or, in some cases, what jazzed you in way X, jazzes me too in way Y.

2) The personal commitment and personal spin brought to the creative work - the extent to which it jazzes and satisfies its own creator - is precisely what the audience member (or user, in the case of a musical instrument or an RPG) is responding to.

Which is to say, the more a work expresses a personal vision, the more likely it is to appeal to its audience.

3) People do indeed like fantasy, horror, humor, sex, biography, historical, adventure, and surreal fiction. Some like one, some like them all, but in the main, people like these things a lot. Enough of them like any particular spin on one or more of them that a product with potential fo r#2 above has a pretty good chance of getting a customer base, if it can get the attention of those people.
...
I am attempting to break the apparently very-deeply-embedded misconception that in order to appeal to a viable target market, the product must not express a personal vision and must instead be based on some other thing - usually a cobbled-together imitation of some thing that's been successful in the past. I am attempting to say instead that personal-vision role-playing games have a real audience awaiting them, in which they stand or fall based on their merits.
...
Instead: say what you want to say with your game. Have it play the way you want to play it. Make sure that it speaks to you, not to some group you want to please.

GNS is a method of categorizing RPG play behaviors based on observation of play and study of texts.

To even walk into the neighborhood of comparing GNS theory to, say, physics, is pretty silly. It's a whole different animal - GNS and role-playing theory in general is a socialogical study, not a hard science.

Heinrich's analogy is not valid.

Clinton R. Nixon wrote:

In order to build a plane that facilitates X, you have to be excited about X, find a way to express X in a game that jazzes you, and write it. That's really all, and trying to use GNS to build a game differs little from trying to use market research or some ineffable idea of "cool" to build a game: you build for an artificial ideal that does not exist.

To bring it back to the analogy:

To find out how to keep a plane from crashing, use GNS.
To build a plane that works in a certain way, build a plane that works that way for you specifically.

Matt Wilson wrote: What I inferred from H's question was something like the old "I can't define pornography, but I know what it is" thing. Do we use GNS to define what an RPG is?

I agree with Clinton that GNS is limited in how he describes it. Does that mean that we have no theory on how to design games primarily? No, that does not. I mean, outside of all the other theory we have brought up here that has nothing to do with GNS (and that's a lot if you look at it), there's this thing that people keep overlooking called Game Theory.

I don't know why I have to mention this all the time, but Game Theory predates RPGs, and contrary to the opinion of some people that don't think it applies, is all about, you guessed it, Games. It just happens to have more widely applicable function than just games, so people think it's soley about economics (when it's used just as often in biology, for example).

Now, the problem with Game Theory is that it's a mathematical model, and extraordinarily complex. See the 1200 page The Theory of Games and Economic Behaviorby John Von Neumann that introduced it to the world. Yes, that's the same guy who invented the modern computer and various other important advances. So I can understand people's reticence to get into it as a discipline per se.

OTOH, it's really very intuitve stuff. That is, we all have an intuitive idea of what a Zero Sum game is, even if we've never read the above paper where the concept was introduced. In any case, we all use it in game design all the time. We're just not aware that there's a theory that supports what we're doing.

However, some people do Game Theory better than others. And even a cursory reading of the concepts can be helpful. And I'm talking getting beyond just the famous Prisoner's Dilemma and other such "examples", too. One needs to get to the point that one has at least a preliminary idea of how to do Game Theory analysis on their own. In practice it's not hard if you understand the basic principles.

I lament that we've not employed it in any measure so far in an explicit way. I've tried to introduce it's use on occasion, but I feel that I get met with the electronic equivalent of a blank stare. So it's been very little.

Now, I'm not expert in the field. I just have that passing knowledge which I think is important, and should really know more myself. So though I'd really like to teach the theory here, I'd probably do a bad job. Here's a link to a page from a course that can get you started that I just Googled up: http://william-king.www.drexel.edu/top/eco/game/game.html
A poor substitute for teaching, I know, but there you have it.

If anyone knows of better resources, or wants to discuss the concept with someone who has my limited knowledge, I'd really like to get into it. Anhd for God's sake, if you happen to know Game Theory well, please, please, start some threads and get some real information out to the people on it.

There's your Aerodynamics and Physics. GNS is just why the timing on the transmission just gets off sometimes (and in terms of design, how to make sure that doesn't happen). Al least that's always been my perspective.

Mike

I offer the perhaps surprising suggestion that the object of the GNS model is not, specifically, role playing games. Hence, the failure of the GNS model to generate (or even to buy into) any specific definition of "game" or "role playing game" is irrelevant.

The GNS model addresses recreational Exploration (in the specific sense defined by the model) of the elements of character, situation, setting, system, and color.

Role playing games just happen to be what we're most interested in applying the GNS model to.

I believe it's that simple. If a case were to come under discussion that was consensually regarded as a role playing game, but did not have Exploration as its central element, then there would be something to debate about. (Some might decide that it wasn't a role playing game because it didn't share a characterisic that GNS declares is a characteristic of all role playing games; others might believe that the case was a priori a role playing game and therefore GNS must be incomplete.) In actual discussion this has not occurred.

By the way, Ron wrote: I'm very tempted to isolate about seven posts from that thread and show you all what you did to feed his ego instead of stick with the points.

Greetings Mr. Nixon,

Clinton R. Nixon wrote: Kester,

Did your post have a point besides to derail the discussion?

Ron started this thread, not Heinrich. He asked a specific question, and the text from Heinrich he quoted was very obvious about using planes as a metaphor for RPGs.

I saw no answers in your post, just an attempt to muddy the waters of discussion.

One needent understand the intricacies of Tibeten straw-in-the-brain mysticism or Catholic liturgy to examine the reasoning behind why people devise religions.

(or something like this)

-jeffrey-

Greetings,

epweissengruber wrote: Most of the replies have dealt with the plane analogy. They address the pertinence of a definition of game and role-playing to any theory about games.

I have to wonder what the value of GNS and the role playing theory on this site is if it remains unequivocally opposed to asking the question, 'what is a game?' It's like a post-holocaust environment in which Mad Max is holding college level courses on aeronautics. Only no one knows what a plane is. So instead, they hold classes on everything you can do in one. You can sit in them, for example. You can be served drinks. On the outside, the plane has two wings and a nose, but those features aren't directly related to what you can do inside the plane. Once you have mastered this, you get your degree.

I'm not real happy with that. I'm very tempted to isolate about seven posts from that thread and show you all what you did to feed his ego instead of stick with the points.

To follow up on EP's post, I think that what GNS adds to Game Theory is that people want different "currencies" than just "Gamist" currencies. Though I happen to know that this has been adressed in Game Theory already in more general terms. Still GNS is a very good application of Game Theory on a simple level, and cold be restated something like:

Given players desiring differing currencies, a game may become "broken". The more different the currencies, the more likely the breakdown.

Mike

Wormwood wrote: It seems to me that the flight is the basic idea of play, rather than game. Play has several strong features which seem to fundamental parts of RPGs. In particular: exploration, social practice, and general learning. The plane itself, in that context is a game, it's the context in which play is facilitated. It does this through constraints, (It's not unreasonable to call games just constrained play, or constraints on play. In fact that definition seems to include quite a few popular definitions for game, including Wittgenstinian language games.)

Bankuei wrote: And most of the controversy over GNS comes from a bunch of people who aren't willing to bake the damn cheesecake for themselves to taste it(learn it for themselves), and then declare anything from, "Cheesecakes don't exist!", "They must taste like crap, because not everbody's eating them!", or "It's really just like chocalate cake, but with a different name!"

Uh... I asked Mike for a rec on beginner's Game Theory before rereading his post. Sorry. ;)

Jeffrey Miller wrote: I would love to see a thread (here, or over on RPG.net) titled "Why I Hate GNS" and see if any reasonable responses get generated, or whether people are just against it to be against something. "Acknowledge my distain, dammit!"

Jeffrey Miller wrote: Uh... I asked Mike for a rec on beginner's Game Theory before rereading his post. Sorry. ;)

Sorry for the confusion.

I typed in my response to the question itself. I was a little unclear. I didn't even see yours. I did not try to rip on you at all. Sorry for the misunderstanding. But I think my post was put right after yours -- in a freakish coincidence.

Kester Pelagius wrote: Greetings,

epweissengruber wrote: Most of the replies have dealt with the plane analogy. They address the pertinence of a definition of game and role-playing to any theory about games.

I apologize for any perceived 'derailing' of the conversation.

Leaving now, per request.


Kind Regards,

Kind Regards

So this is a little tangential in some ways, but, to pick up on the plane analogy, there are some good reasons to be just as unsure about what a Plane is as what a Game is.

Right now my favorite theory book for my academic work is John Law's Aircraft Stories (Durham and London: Duke UP, 2002), which is not so much an account of the (cancelled) British attempt to build a reconaissance/bomber plane called the TSR 2 in the 1960s, as an incisive analysis of the idea of the plane, and the fatal incoherence of the project. One of the reasons why the plane was cancelled is simply that the designers never seem to have resolved what it was.

Now, your tolerance for this book is probably entirely dependent on your appetite for books with subtitles like "Decentering the Object in Technoscience," but it is a very accesible example of a certain sort of Sociology of Technology and Science. However, as a book explicitly about how to theorize the workings of complex systems--not just the design process, but the interaction of everything and everyone involved (contractors, the military, the ministries of the government, pilots, the public at large, and more)--there are a variety of ways in which it relates directly to analyzing the very strange hybrid beasts we call role-playing games.

Mike makes an excellent point in this thread about the usefulness of Game Theory in designing games. I'd like to suggest that there is an equally useful role for other kinds of theoretical conceptions from Sociology, Philosophy, Literary Studies, etc. Unlike Game Theory, it may not make the process of design easier, but (perhaps like GNS), it may make understanding what we produce simpler.

Your mileage will probably vary wildly.

Piers

Mike Holmes wrote: To follow up on EP's post, I think that what GNS adds to Game Theory is that people want different "currencies" than just "Gamist" currencies. Though I happen to know that this has been adressed in Game Theory already in more general terms. Still GNS is a very good application of Game Theory on a simple level, and cold be restated something like:

Given players desiring differing currencies, a game may become "broken". The more different the currencies, the more likely the breakdown.

Mike

OK, I think we now have a topic on game theory that could be spun off into a new thread soon. Maybe the GNS theory WILL lead to a total revision of Game Theory!

Mike Holmes wrote: , I think that what GNS adds to Game Theory is that people want different "currencies" than just "Gamist" currencies. Though I happen to know that this has been adressed in Game Theory already in more general terms. Still GNS is a very good application of Game Theory on a simple level, and could be restated something like:

Given players desiring differing currencies, a game may become "broken". The more different the currencies, the more likely the breakdown.Mike

Hi everyone,

Maybe my own understanding of game theory isn't what I thought it was, but to me the idea of using game theory to help design recreational games makes no more sense than using biochemistry to invent a pizza recipe or the theory of computation to figure out why your enternal hard drive won't boot. That is to say, it relates to the subject matter at hand, but on entirely the wrong level of abstraction.

Game theory impinges on everyday games at a few (surprisingly few) points. For example, it will tell you what frequency of bluffing in poker for a given hand would most benefit a player in the long term -- or it would, if the calculations weren't far too complex to actually perform. (But take heart, the theory does allow you to prove that such an optimum bluffing frequency must exist!) It won't help you choose the best move in a chess game or figure out how much you should bid on Marvin Gardens in Monopoly. And it certainly won't help you decide whether Monopoly is a more enjoyable game with or without the "Free Parking" house rule.

Game theory has no problem with different players placing different values on different aspects of the outcome. But it requires all that information -- that is, the payoff for every player for every possible combination of individual moves -- to be already known going in. It then says that each player has an optimum strategy for how to allocate their moves to maximize their own value over repeated plays, and if the game is really really simple you might even be able to calculate what that strategy is.

I'm unable to see how this is the slightest help in designing or understanding role playing games. Or has any practical relalationship to GNS theory, which I think this thread should get back to.

- Walt

Thank you, Walt.

I don't know what's happened lately, but The Forge has turned into a pit of off-topic discussion. In this thread alone, I've seen game theory (which I do understand, and which is a mathematical pursuit that has very, very little to do with RPGs), the idea of a "why I hate GNS" thread - which is not happening without a focus, Kester trying to garner sympathy for himself, and all sorts of other off-topic nonsense.

This discussion was very good about two pages ago.

OK, so responding to Ron's post as closely as I can . . . the idea here is that GNS is focused on the details of what happens when playing an RPG, just like these Mad Max folks would focus on the details of what happens when flying a plane?

ASIDE: I can't decipher how the "what does the plane do?" discussion in the analogy is related to the rest of it - the Mad Max folks are entirely focused on what the plane does. It flies, carries them from one place to the next, lets them spy on their enemies, etc. I assume what was meant at that point was something more like "HOW/WHY does the plane do what it does?"

Anyway - the claim is that by focusing on details, the Mad Max folks do NOT (neccessarily, unless someone also takes additional steps) end up understanding the basic and fundamental principles of how a plane interacts with the atmosphere, gravity and etc. Correspondingly, we do NOT end up understanding the basic and fundamental principles of how an RPG interacts with . . . what? Human behavior/experience? (Again, unless someone takes additional steps.)

Well, that's a problem right there - human behavior and experience as a "thing to understand" does not precisely correspond with atmosphere and gravity as things to understand, and in fact discussing human behavior in that way is highly contentious and difficult. There are those who claim we just need the right approach and it's JUST like atmosphere and gravity, those who say it's MOSTLY like atmosphere and gravity, those who'll say it's KINDA like atmosphere and gravity, and those who'll say it is NOT ANYTHING like atmosphere and gravity. And the exact way in which human behavior is just/mostly/kinda/not anything like atmosphere and gravity will vary wildly within each category.

The Forge (as oppposed, for the moment, to GNS) actually has tackled that issue from time to time, and it often becomes . . . contentious and difficult. So in some ways, I think GNS intentionally focuses on the details of what's happening rather than the theories/facts behind the environment, because there's unlikely to be an agreement on those theories/facts. That said . . .

GNS (I think) actually IS embedded within a full understanding of its' environment. It does expressly avoid developing that too much, because in practical terms it doesn't really matter and can distract the discussion into completely unresolvable areas of personal perspective. But it is there, I think.

That full understanding of the environment, however, is not grounded in "games", but in an even broader category I've been calling human behavior. This means that it is possible to jump right from human behavior to Dreaming or Story Now without even bringing "games" into it, unless you want to - and, it's worth noting, many people do. A full understanding of the environment/atmosphere/physics of "games" can be useful to all of GNS, and especially (duh) to Step On Up, but the fact is: the "thing that's bigger than GNS that we don't focus on" - the blind spot that corresponds to the atmosphere and gravity for our Mad Max plane-using folks - isn't, IMO, "games," and it's not really a blind spot - people are aware of it.

But sure, maybe sometimes we don't focus there (both "games" and the real big human behavior picture) as often as we should, and maybe there's something of value to find in doing so. Threads addressing some specific example would, I'm sure, be quite welcome.

That's about as much as I can think to say on the subject,

Gordon

Zowie - Gordon nails it again, in my view. This post plus Julie's, especially, really help me a lot.

This thread spawned a lot of secondary topics well worth pursuing. I can see the Game Theory stuff, especially, going places as long as people think carefully about what's a subset of what. Best done in other threads, though, I think.

Best,
Ron

Oh, all right. I'll bite -- I always do, don't I? And you won't like it.

Heinrich wrote: I have to wonder what the value of GNS and the role playing theory on this site is if it remains unequivocally opposed to asking the question, 'what is a game?' It's like a post-holocaust environment in which Mad Max is holding college level courses on aeronautics. Only no one knows what a plane is. So instead, they hold classes on everything you can do in one. You can sit in them, for example. You can be served drinks. On the outside, the plane has two wings and a nose, but those features aren't directly related to what you can do inside the plane. Once you have mastered this, you get your degree. ... The above example is actually a good one. Because in the post-holocaust environment there are no physicists around who can calculate force, thrust, vectors, momentum... So out of necessity they dispense with the question 'what makes it go?' Better yet, when someone asks 'what does the plane do?' they get smacked down, and are told, 'Don't ask what it does, just look at the sum of the details. That's all a plane is.'

Now Ron wrote: I'd like people to address this question here in detail.

"Heinrich" seems to be arguing closer that it matters understanding "what is a religion" when attempting to compare 2 religions, but this too is a false assumption in dependancies. One needn't understand the intricacies of Tibeten straw-in-the-brain mysticism or Catholic liturgy to examine the reasoning behind why people devise religions.

This thread is specifically about an idea. Ignore the inflammatory bullshit about how the Forge is "unequivocally opposed" to discussing what a game is (multiple threads falsify the claim). Ignore the observation that "Heinrich" only saw fit to present his argument after he'd managed to get people into a defensive tizzy. Do adopt the plane-metaphor he presents, for purposes of discussion. Let's see if it applies.

Hi there,

H'm, I guess it wouldn't help to point out that above, I agree with Julie and Gordon? And hence, I think with you as well?

After smacking us indirectly and backhandedly for rising to Heinrich's bait, you've either risen to it yourself or are casting new bait.

Clinton R. Nixon wrote: ...the idea of a "why I hate GNS" thread - which is not happening without a focus...

Well, I x-posted with Ron, and have pm'ed him, but this whole question is really bugging me.

To evaluate function, ... some performance variable has to be agreed upon. In flying a plane, it's whether we get from here to there in one piece. However, at the Forge and in specific reference to GNS, what do we have as our touchstone that the function is occurring? In my view, it's the Actual Play forum, and the constant testimonials we get about fun and creativity.

I really wanted to know, however, whether I was committing a tautology with this view, to myself. I wanted to know what merits might be found in applying the details-about-nothing argument to the model, as critique.

I have to wonder what the value of GNS and the role playing theory on this site is if it remains unequivocally opposed to asking the question, 'what is a game?'

I was reading and reading and reading and reading through this thread, and wondering why it seemed so unfocused, as if no one had any clue what the question really was; and then right at the end, people got it. By that time, I'd formulated some thoughts of my own.

The question:

Ron Edwards wrote: "Heinrich" wrote,

I have to wonder what the value of GNS and the role playing theory on this site is if it remains unequivocally opposed to asking the question, 'what is a game?'

what Heinrich wrote: It's like a post-holocaust environment in which Mad Max is holding college level courses on aeronautics. Only no one knows what a plane is. So instead, they hold classes on everything you can do in one. You can sit in them, for example. You can be served drinks. On the outside, the plane has two wings and a nose, but those features aren't directly related to what you can do inside the plane. Once you have mastered this, you get your degree.

The above example is actually a good one. Because in the post-holocaust environment there are no physicists around who can calculate force, thrust, vectors, momentum... So out of necessity they dispense with the question 'what makes it go?' Better yet, when someone asks 'what does the plane do?' they get smacked down, and are told, 'Don't ask what it does, just look at the sum of the details. That's all a plane is.'

Ron wrote: Do adopt the plane-metaphor he presents, for purposes of discussion. Let's see if it applies.

Heinrich wrote: I have to wonder what the value of GNS and the role playing theory on this site is if it remains unequivocally opposed to asking the question, 'what is a game?' It's like a post-holocaust environment in which Mad Max is holding college level courses on aeronautics. Only no one knows what a plane is. So instead, they hold classes on everything you can do in one. You can sit in them, for example. You can be served drinks. On the outside, the plane has two wings and a nose, but those features aren't directly related to what you can do inside the plane. Once you have mastered this, you get your degree.

The above example is actually a good one. Because in the post-holocaust environment there are no physicists around who can calculate force, thrust, vectors, momentum... So out of necessity they dispense with the question 'what makes it go?' Better yet, when someone asks 'what does the plane do?' they get smacked down, and are told, 'Don't ask what it does, just look at the sum of the details. That's all a plane is.'

MJ, Thanks for that summary. I was having trouble finding the parallels in the analogy he was going for.

Heinrich's airplane analogy amounts to an argument against the value of inductive reasoning. He's saying you can't take your experiences and observations and create a useful theoretical model, that instead you need to start from atomic truths and build your theoretical model up, deductively. Of course that's ridiculous. Effective reasoning combines both induction and deduction. But by couching the whole thing as an analogy, he enables us to confuse poor use of induction, and not having enough information, for a fundamental flaw with the inductive method. It works, in part, because the "culture looking back" aspect of the analogy evokes for us other archeological inductive failures. What the hell is that crystal skull anyway? But ultimately it's a specious association. We aren't a culture looking back. We're a culture examining itself. And since we can readily test our hypotheses through actual play, why the hell would we ignore the wings of the plane?

More interesting, perhaps, is the question of why an argument against the use of play experiences as the foundation of a theory is so often found agreeable to folks in online discussions. Chris Chinn and I had a conversation about it last night. His observation is that most often when you ask a roleplayer to examine a concept in the light of actual play, they mentally pull up hypothetical or idealized instances of play. And that totally clicked for me. I've had those conversations. It's almost as if the experience of actual play isn't wholly there for the other person to draw upon...like it has been retroactively edited or something. Is it possible the foundation of GNS in the examination of play experiences is actually at odds with the psychology of getting enjoyment from play? Is the mental record actually incomplete?

Paul

Hi Paul,

Thanks for bringing that up, I've been trying to figure out a way to introduce the topic, and you've bridged it rather nicely. My point was that for many people there is a mental disjunction in making it from Actual Play to Observation to Theory. The heart of this inability to recognize what's going on seems to stem from dysfunction...

Anyone who's dealt with dysfunction, in games, or in life in general will recognize these behaviors:

1) Don't talk about it("Don't say you're bored")
2) Because you can't acknowledge it, you need to work around it("I'm mad at you because you were rude so I'll be an ass about the rules!")
3) Deny its existance as part of a coping mechanism("Of course I'm having fun, I just hate this, that, that, and that about it")

Because GNS grew out of observation of dysfunctional play, and dysfunctional behavior conditions folks to NOT recognize it, it doesn't take long to see how hard it is to point out what is going on to folks who are defensively maintaining their mental illusion. This would seem to me to be the cause of folks constantly shifting over to hypothetical situations as opposed to concrete experiences.

Bringing this back to the plane analogy, again, this is folks not willing to admit that crashes do happen, and because of that, being unable to analyze why and how, in order to prevent crashes in the future.

Chris

That is quite possible Paul. I am sure we've all seen movies we do not rememeber very well. They simply didn't impress us so they did not make a memory. Why shouldn't RPGs be the same way. But then, anyone see the episode of Red Dwarf when Rimmer was telling the story of the best game of Risk he'd ever played and bored the others to tears?

Hi there,

Chris (clehrich) wrote,

Why toss up this analogy as bait in the first place? I mean, you say that "It's not the specific airplane-as-physical-object metaphor that interests me, so much as the details-vs.-function contrast," but that means you have already chosen what you consider the correct answer for yourself, and are (unconsciously, I think) to some degree looking for others to find it as well, validating your reading. Doesn't this worryingly support some of what Heinrich is accusing us of?

Hey Jack,

I am sure we've all seen movies we do not rememeber very well. They simply didn't impress us so they did not make a memory. Why shouldn't RPGs be the same way.

I think we're talking here about something specific to RPGs, something other than just forgetting the boring parts of a movie. You don't have to forget parts of movies in order to enjoy them. The question is whether idealized recollections of actual play are the result of the effort of enjoying roleplaying in particular, and how that impacts the wider acceptance of a theory based on the examination of actual play.

Paul

Hi Jack,

To clarify a bit better with Paul's point, you may forget parts of the movie, but generally you can identify whether you liked the movie, was unimpressed, or disliked the movie. Within gaming, you have a mental divorce on the part of some people as to their personal experience with the game, as well as the divorce from "what is happening" around the table as opposed to "in game".

Chris

Hi there,

Please take the questions raised by Paul's post to a new thread. I can't split them off easily because his post contains two paragraphs, one of which belongs right here, and the other of which prompted this new discussion.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: The next question is whether that purpose has been realized yet. Given M.J.'s post in particular, I think it has. Anyone feel any need to keep this going?