Hey, is there a reason to have Director Stance instead of talking about Actor / Author / Pawn Stance with regard to? When I do Director Stance, I do it as an Actor or an Author or a (um) Pawner, adopting the stance relative to whatever I'm doing, instead of to my character. Right?

Most of us are GMs. Is it not true that when we GM, we just wander from stance to stance and from object-of-stance to object-of-stance? "It starts raining," I say, and doesn't that mean I'm Actoring, Authoring or Pawning the weather?

-lumpley

I'm not sure, but I think some of your confusion arises from the use of the word "author". Taken out of a gaming context, the concept of author implies total control over whatever story is being authored, which is much more significant than the control a director has over a play or film. In the context of GNS, however, the words mean something very different.

My understanding of Author Stance (and I'm sure I'm screwing this up), is that it is always in regard to your character, only in a non-actor or immersive way (for instance, doing things that make good story-sense but do not necessarily jive with your character's goals and/or motivations). It requires a sort of reverse thinking, in which you ask yourself "what would be cool here?" and then retrofitting it - contriving coincidences or circumstances to make it plausible if needed - to your character. Director's Stance is more powerful, allowing players to engineer the game world to their own satisfaction, in ways that are often totally disconnected from their character.

- Scott


[ This Message was edited by: hardcoremoose on 2001-10-17 14:23 ]

No, I know. I think that saying that Author Stance is only in regard to your character might probably be bogus. What if you have two characters?

When a game gives its players Directorial Power, doesn't it do so by allowing them to Act, Author, or treat as Pawns elements of the game-world other than their characters?

-lumpley

I think what your doing is breaking the definition of what a Stance is.

If Stance where simply a decision making process relative to the object of that decision, you'd be completely correct.

However, Stance is DEFINED as being relative to the character in question.

It's like saying 1 + 1 = 2 but couldn't we say that it equal zeros if + meant subtraction?

Jesse

So wait.

Jesse, I think that what you're saying implies that we have these stances:

Actor;

Author;

Pawn;

Director where you base your decisions about (say) the weather only on in-game factors;

Director where you base your decisions about (say) the weather on what would be cool, and then retrofit an explanation in terms of (or otherwise mitigate your decision by) in-game factors; and

Director where you base your decisions about (say) the weather on what would be cool, and who cares whether it's in character for the weather.

Is there a reason to define the stances this way? I think it makes more sense to apply Actor, Author, and Pawn stances to things other than characters than to have redundant Actor-type Director, Author-type Director, and Pawn-type Director stances.

Seriously, what if you have two characters? Which is "the character in question"? You first Author one, and then Actor the other, and then Author the second, and then treat the first as a Pawn, and then on and on as suits you and the game, right? You don't choose one of them to Author, Actor, and Pawn, and the other to only Director, right? (How would you even go about making a character the object of your Director Stance?) Why should the weather be different?

(The advantage of what I'm suggesting is that it makes it clear that GMs and non-GMs do the exact same things. They just do them to different elements of the game, in different proportions, at different times.)

-lumpley



[ This Message was edited by: lumpley on 2001-10-17 15:52 ]

[ This Message was edited by: lumpley on 2001-10-17 15:54 ]

In the case of two characters, you are in actor stance when you make a decision for one of the characters based on what that charcter would do. You are in Author stance if you are making either character do something based on what you as the player want to happen (which may, and probably does, coincide with what the character wants). You are in director stance if you are making up something that is not directly related to either character.

Does that work? I don't know how you got from what Jesse said to what you have above. He's just saying that he thinks that you aren't using the definition of Stance that we are.

Mike

Hey Vincent,

It also helps to consider the basic example of Director Stance in plain old me-and-my-character role-playing. Here's an example from the game that brought it front-and-center during play.

I'm playing Extreme Vengeance, and my character, Bert Tootie, is facing off against Ugly Pig Bob, the scarred and evil lieutenant of the villain. It's late in the movie and Bertie is pretty pissed off. (His dog! His wife! His trailer! His country! All [sob] dead!)

Well, they're on a loading dock. Bert just got clocked badly by Bob and has, like, awful penalties and stuff for his next move. But wait! On my sheet, there's a Coincidence score. I scratch off a point and roll Coincidence, to see if the huge crate of bat guano, suspended above Bob, snaps off its hook and squashes him!

That's Director Stance. It's pretty "close the vest," as it's all about Bertie and his fight. It's about the environment, though; Bertie actually does nothing but stare as the crate comes crashing down.

Hope that helps,
Ron

I recently played a D&D game. Not so good. The beginning of the second game took place in a castle bedroom. Fight scene.

I told the GM my character was going to grab the wash basin full of water and throw it at the bad guy. The GM told me there wasn't a wash basin -- but there was a chamber pot. I told him I would throw that -- he said it was too heavy.

I tried to assert some power by adding a perfectly reasonable item to the barely-described environment. It was nixed. That's lame, that's why I stopped playing...that's Director stance and Narrativist play being cut down by the GM...

I know what Director Stance is. I know how you're using it. I know how I've used it, as I've used it, here on the Forge.

My position is that what you're calling Director Stance is, in fact, no more nor less than taking one of the other stances toward something other than your character.

As y'all define it, Director Stance = Making [effective] decisions about something other than your character, right?

Well it seems to me that there are three ways you might make decisions about things other than your character:

1. Relying only on in-game factors. It's raining because raining is what would happen, no matter what the metagame calls for.

2. Relying only on metagame factors. It's raining because raining would be cool.

3. Making your decision based on metagame factors, but taking care to find in-game explanations too. It's raining because raining would be cool, plus it's been cloudy all morning.

These correspond to Actor, Pawn, and Author Stances, as I understand them. Yes? Why not call them Actor, Pawn and Author Stance, With Regard To the weather?

As it is, we have three consistent stances, and one inconsistent one:

Actor Stance is a way of making decisions;
Author Stance is a way of making decisions;
Pawn Stance is a way of making decisions;
Director Stance is what you make decisions about.

I'm not confused. I'm asking why it is this way, since I can't see a reason and maybe there is one, and I'm suggesting a (possibly) better way to do it.

I'm not questioning the validity of sharing Directorial Power. Far from it. That's the good stuff, as far as I'm concerned. I'm suggesting a more complete way of looking at it. And my agenda, just to be upfront, is to eventually be able to talk about the apparent differences between GMs and non-GMs.

-lumpley

Okay, so Ron, it's Director Stance because it's really about Bertie, not about the environment?

Isn't that Pawn Stance Re: the crate of bat guano, and the metagame (which is to say, out-of-character for the crate) concern is Bertie?

-lumpley

H'mmmmm. You are giving me much food for thought. My li'l brain often takes a while to mull, though.

Anyone else want to weigh in on this one? I am finding myself shockingly open-minded regarding Vincent's suggestion. Save me from my folly or push me the rest of the way, I guess.

Best,
Ron

Hey All.

On reflection, if Director Stance is there to contrast not so much with Actor, Author and Pawn, but with GM-power more broadly, I can see the value. As a shorthand term. "Oh no, it's not a co-GMed game," one might say, "it just allows Director Stance."

It's not really a Stance stance then, though.

I'd go so far as to say that when some of you talk about Director Stance, you're talking specifically about Pawn Stance wrt the environment, which -- get this -- is why you have the impression that Director Stance and Simulationism don't mesh well. When Simulationists do Director Stance, in my experience, we tend to do Actor Stance wrt the environment. Deprioritizing metagame concerns, right?

-lumpley / Vincent

(There, Ron, you got me. :smile:)

Somebody stop me.
.
.
.
What Vincent says makes an awful lot of sense.
.
.
.
You could end up with Audience Role, Player Role, and Director Role, each with stances in them.

I'll go back to Actual Play now.

Paul

Let me take a stab at summarizing what you're saying here Lumpley.

Instead of specifically defining each element of a given stance, you're peeling one of the elements (that regarding the "target" of the stance) out of the definition and setting up what amounts to a matrix.

So instead of having Actor defined as player manipulating his character without the influence of metagame, you have Actor defined as player manipulating [X] without the influence of metagame.

[X] then could be Manipulating character, or Manipulating environment, or Manipulating something else. Which if these choices were tabulated would form the afore mentioned Matrix.

I happen to be a big fan of this sort of flexible definition and recombining of factors (Jester used combinations like this alot in his GEN work, and I enjoyed them there).

The catch is this: Speaking in terms of the Matrix, there would be a cell for each Stance-Target intersection. Question: can each Stance be matched with each Target in a way that makes sense...if so this might work. However, if not (if there would be too many cells labeled N/A) then this would really just be an organizational change without much added utility.

For example one such cell would be Actor Stance targeting an NPC. This would indicate that a player could manipulate the NPC without resorting to Metagame influence. This would obviously be possible as the player would simply be controling the NPC as he would his own character for a time taking care to do only what that NPC would really do. Thus manipulating an NPC isn't "Director Stance" its merely "Actor Stance" (or Pawn or Author) with regards to the NPC.

This could make an awful lot of sense, though it would take some time to shake down all of the implications.

If such a model is found to have more utility than the current line of thinking then, it would also render the Audience as a stance question rather moot.

In the current fashion where Stance is basically a list of definitions I've been debating the utility of having two seperate lists of definitions for what amounts to a set of behaviors. However, using the above model, there would be no debate, because it would be clear that Audience doesn't fit the Matrix, precisely because it has no target.



[ This Message was edited by: Valamir on 2001-10-18 11:35 ]

[ This Message was edited by: Valamir on 2001-10-18 11:42 ]

So, in this model Role refers to what you are affecting (nothing in the case of audience), and Stance is how come to the decision in question? Yep, that would pretty much include my thoughts on the subject.

This sets well with my need for object orientation, too.

It does seem odd, however to say Director Role with Actor stance which would be what I would be doing if I created some weather because it seemed "realistic" that such weather would occur. We'd have to rename the stances something like: Object, Story, Mixed. Wouldn't there also have to be some other stances then, though? Like Challenge stance. Where you make something happen because it increases the challenge of the game while not increasing the value of the story or being realistic particularly. So, if I use director power to create a buncha orcs just because I think that the game is stale and needs a fight, then I'd be in Director Role, and Challenge Stance.

Worms.

There are all sorts of motivations for making a particular decision that may have nothing to do with any of the above. Hate Stance would be where a player makes a decision about something because he does not like it. I shouldn't be arguing against it, because this is exactly where I've been going with all my behavior and motivation stuff. But I think that even Fang might be willing to go with this model (nah, he'd find something about it to pull apart :smile: ).

Mike

Ron Edwards wrote:

Anyone else want to weigh in on this one? I am finding myself shockingly open-minded regarding Vincent's suggestion. Save me from my folly or push me the rest of the way, I guess.

Hey All.

Valamir -- precisely. [X] is any element of the game about which one might make (effective) decisions. Characters are in a lot of ways the most interesting [X]s, of course.

I may be jumping the gun a teeny bit, but since both Paul and Mike mentioned roles, I'll go ahead. When the time comes to talk about Player vs. Director, I hope we can start with what Event Resolution methods are available to whom.

Frinstance, in a conventional game, PC's actions are resolved relatively often by Fortune, and the arbiter / interpreter is another player (specifically, the GM). NPC's actions are resolved relatively often by Drama -- especially when they happen offscreen -- and the arbiter is the player herself (specifically, still the GM).

I think it'll be especially useful to talk about the (rarely explicit) rules for who arbitrates what. The choices as I see them are 1. the player herself, 2. some random or arbitrary other player, 3. a particular other player like a GM, or 4. the whole group. Conventional games use 1. and 3. almost exclusively (as I'm sure you see).

So player mode and director mode, it seems to me, are preset combinations of factors:

Conventional Player mode = Stance relative to only my character + GM arbitration of event resolution + no doubt other things.

Conventional Director mode = Stance relative to everything but players' characters + self arbitration of event resolution + other things too.

But anyway.

-lumpley Vincent

(There, how about if lumpley is an adjective?)

Well, that was a lumpley response, all right.

Fang, Vincent..uh..I don't get it..

Can we try again? Just summaries.

Mike

Fang,

Director Stance is clearly exclusive of the In-Character approach and if we recognize the only difference between it and Author Stance is scope, then it too collapses easily into Out-of-Character terminology.

I know this isn't really on-topic, but...

On 2001-10-17 18:16, Jared A. Sorensen wrote:
I told the GM my character was going to grab the wash basin full of water and throw it at the bad guy. The GM told me there wasn't a wash basin -- but there was a chamber pot. I told him I would throw that -- he said it was too heavy.

I can't imagine one being "too heavy" unless your character is, like, 12 inches high.

I think that because of excessive theft, the castle administration had been forced to bolt the remaining chamber pots to large stone blocks.

;)

Mike,

Uh oh. Do you mean a summary of my actual point, or a summary of the post where I like go off and play with my toys all by myself, but you can watch?

I think you got my actual point, that instead of Director Stance what you really do is adopt one of the other stances toward something other than your character. Your comment "Worms" seemed right on the money.

As to the latter, the jumping the gun post, all I really mean is that one of the biggest differences between being a GM and being a non-GM is who decides how your characters' actions turn out. (Specifically, whether another player decides or you decide yourself.) My goal, again, is to talk about players and GMs, and what the real differences between them are (if there are any).

-lumpley Vincent

Mike said,

Wouldn't there also have to be some other stances then, though? ... Worms.

There's a lot in this thread that just leaves me sitting in the mud watching the horses gallop by :smile: Here's what I think was Lumpley's thesis. If I'm on or off the mark, let me know.

Why would the Director stance be classified as a stance if it is not really a distinct way for a person to determine how the character in question is going to act? The Director stance relies on the same determining factor (their own personal, non-character priorities) as Author/Pawn. The only difference is that the player is manipulating the gaming environment in some way, adding in people/places/things that allow them to achieve their meta-game goal rather than them using their character directly as the tool for achievement?

IIUC the key to the Stances is the character. Director may be an outgrowth of AUthor stance, but the reason they are two separate stances is how they relate to the PC.

Author Stance:

Player: "I look at the ceiling. Is there a chandlier?"

GM: "Yes, there is."

Player: "I jump and swing from the chandlier."



Director Stance:

Player: "I jump and swing from the chandlier."


In the second instance the player in author mode has decided that it would be cool to swing from the chandlier, regardless of what the character wants but they didn't not want it so we can set aside the Pawn mode for the purpose of this discussion. The difference between the first instance and the second is the player was able to put a chandlier in the room without consulting the GM. It's there because the player says so because he wants his character to swing from it. If the GM had said there was no chandlier, the player would have to rethink his action. But in director stance, this is an unnecessary step. He can create the chandlier out of thin air and necessity.

On the surface, it looks like director stance is more effecient. It probably is in some instances but it probably isn't in other instances so that it balances out.

BTW, I'll die of shock if I spelled "chandlier" correctly. I should use my unabridged dictionary, shouldn't I?

On 2001-10-18 15:59, Paul Czege wrote:
I can't imagine one being "too heavy" unless your character is, like, 12 inches high.

I think that because of excessive theft, the castle administration had been forced to bolt the remaining chamber pots to large stone blocks.

:wink:

Paul

On 2001-10-18 17:04, pblock wrote:

Author Stance:
Player: "I look at the ceiling. Is there a chandlier?"

GM: "Yes, there is."

Player: "I jump and swing from the chandlier."

Director Stance:

Player: "I jump and swing from the chandlier."

Lumpley wrote:

Fang wrote:

Director Stance is clearly exclusive of the In-Character approach and if we recognize the only difference between it and Author Stance is scope, then it too collapses easily into Out-of-Character terminology.

I think that you can play the weather in character. I'm not certain, but I think you can. I can play a dog in character, for sure. I can probably play an organization or a mob in character. I admit that the weather is a little iffier.

I mean, if you are playing the weather or the mob, as a character, aren’t you doing something kinda unconventional for a role-playing game?

pblock wrote:

IIUC the key to the Stances is the character. Director may be an outgrowth of Author Stance, but the reason they are two separate stances is how they relate to the PC.

Author Stance:

Player: "I look at the ceiling. Is there a chandelier?"

GM: "Yes, there is."

Player: "I jump and swing from the chandelier."



Director Stance:

Player: "I jump and swing from the chandelier."

In the second instance the player in author mode has decided that it would be cool to swing from the chandelier, regardless of what the character wants but they didn't not want it so we can set aside the Pawn mode for the purpose of this discussion. The difference between the first instance and the second is the player was able to put a chandelier in the room without consulting the GM.

It's there because the player says so because he wants his character to swing from it. If the GM had said there was no chandelier, the player would have to rethink his action. But in director stance, this is an unnecessary step. He can create the chandelier out of thin air and necessity.

Fang,

I mean, if you are playing the weather or the mob, as a character, aren’t you doing something kinda unconventional for a role-playing game?

pblock,

IIUC the key to the Stances is the character. Director may be an outgrowth of AUthor stance, but the reason they are two separate stances is how they relate to the PC.

Mike,

Player: There is a chandelier in the room.

What is that? Just creating something not at all in relation to the character.

Last one, I promise.

What if the chamber occupant were an ogre? One that had relieved himself recently.

GM: The high priest's iron golem took a piss about a week ago in this room's five gallon chamber pot. It's now cooled to a very heavy slag.

Player: Curse you again, gamemaster!

:Þ

Hey All.

I'm going to summarize and restate my position. Bear with me.

As they are currently defined, the stances apply pretty much only to the non-GM players of traditional games. I think that it would be a. profitable and b. extremely easy to expand the definitons so that they apply to every roleplayer.

Here are the old definitions:

Actor Stance - making decisions about your character based only on in-game considerations.

Pawn Stance - making decisions about your character based only on metagame considerations.

Author Stance - making decisions about your character based on metagame considerations, but in such a way that they are justified by in-game considerations.

Director Stance - making decisions about other things in the game world than your character.

All good, so far?

Here are my proposed new definitions:

Actor Stance - making decisions about [X] based only on in-game considerations.

Pawn Stance - making decisions about [X] based only on metagame considerations.

Author Stance - making decisions about [X] based on metagame considerations, but in such a way that they are justified by in-game considerations.

Where [X] is whatever element of the game world you're making decisions about. [X] is usually your character, but it might also be the weather, the thieves' guild, your character's horsie, God, or anything else that exists in the game*.

Expanding the existing definitions in this way makes Director Stance simply disappear. It's covered.

So yes, it's b. easy, but is it a. profitable?

Right now we have a rich, fun, contested, powerful way to talk about what players do in a one-player-one-character limited-power-sharing game. If we adopt my definitions, we'll have a rich, fun, contested, powerful way to talk about what every player does in every game. Sounds good to me.

*(Not that you automatically have the right to make decisions about God or your character's horsie. Who gets to make decisions about what is a different issue.)

-lumpley Vincent

Thanks to Valamir for introducing [X].

[ This Message was edited by: lumpley on 2001-10-18 21:53 ]

Oh and Laurel, I think you've got it, except that it's about making decisions about things, not just creating them. The decision might be that it exists, it might also be that it moves or anything else.

-lumpley Vincent

One day I'll remember to write one post addressing everyone instead of every post addressing one one. Sorry, All.

Hey Vincent,

Actor Stance - making decisions about [X] based only on in-game considerations.

Pawn Stance - making decisions about [X] based only on metagame considerations.

Author Stance - making decisions about [X] based on metagame considerations, but in such a way that they are justified by in-game considerations.

I like these definitions quite a bit. They're lean and clean.

But there's something that was part of my personal understanding of stances that I think I lose with your new definitions. Stances to me were always a resource that the player had for demonstrating character significance. The stances a game permitted to a player were delimiters of what he could do on behalf of his character's significance. So a player, whether game-limited or self-limited to Actor stance, would demonstrate character significance only through in-character considerations. And a player, whether game-limited or self-limited to Actor+Author stances, would demonstrate character significance only through in-character considerations and through out-of-character considerations that could be justified as in-character considerations. And in the context of a Narrativist game, where significance equals protagonism, the player using Director stance has far-ranging power that extends well beyond in-character considerations, but it is still limited. The limit of his Director power is the protagonism of the other player characters. He absolutely cannot kill other player characters, or ruin or deprotagonize them in some way, by killing their significant foils or whatever.

Stances to me were always less about what they allow the player to do than about where they draw the line. And that Director stance limit at margin of other characters' protagonism was way significant to my thinking.

Paul

Paul,

Awesome. That's cool stuff.

I don't think -- that is, I don't think -- that my definitions will cost you that. [X] can specifically include or exclude the other characters' protagonism.

My observations in support of my definitions are almost entirely from GM-shared games. The GM of your game, if you follow me, also limits her directoral power, drawing the line at the characters' protagonism just as the non-GMs do.

My definitions don't automatically include that limit, no, and if Stance needs to, then they fail. But they include a place for that limit and a way to talk about it, and recognize that that limit may not be universal across roleplaying.

Again, the issue of who actually gets to make decisions about what -- which [X]s are available to which players -- is a separate one. The next one in line, I hope. My goal with this thread is to establish a framework for talking about how Getting To Make Decisions gets shared out and exercised from game to game.

-lumpley Vincent


[ This Message was edited by: lumpley on 2001-10-19 06:58 ]

lumpley wrote:

Fang wrote:

I mean, if you are playing the weather or the mob, as a character, aren’t you doing something kinda unconventional for a role-playing game?

Not if you're the GM.

I think Fang, that you may be right in a way. This is why I want to move to something like roles or behaviors. What I think everyone wants is a model that looks at all sorts of things that go on in RPGs. For example I can identify the following behaviors.

Audience - observing, but otherwise not-participating
Actor - making decisions for any character, IC.
Author - making decisions for any character, OOC.
Director - creating or motivating things other than characters.

The thing is that, as Vincent points out, there are actually two things going on. What is being affected and the perspective that it is being affected from. This should be specified.

Also, There is no particular reason to fight with the Stance model. We'll call these "Behaviors" and change the terms for clarity.

So:

Audience* Behavior - soley observing, not making in-game changes.
Character Behavior - making decisions regarding any character.
Object Behavior - making decisions regarding anything other than a character.

Then there is the Perspective from which the Behavior is occuing.

Audience Behavior has no special Perspectives as it is passive.

Character Behavior can have IC or OOC or Non-Charater (Pawn) Perspective.

Object Behavior can have OOC or Non-Character Perspective.

Howzat? This should cover traditional GM behaviors as well.

BTW, then Power is defined by this model as mechanics or metagame that empower a player (including GMs) to employ a particular behavior from a certain perspective.

Mike

*Since there is no Audience Stance as stance is defined, we can use it for this purpose.

[ This Message was edited by: Mike Holmes on 2001-10-19 10:39 ]

Fang,

Ah. You're saying that there are only two things on which you can base your decisions about things in a game: 1. your identification with the thing as a character, or 2. metagame concerns. Right? If you don't identify with something, you can't make decisions about it based on only in-game considerations?

I think I agree with you, when it comes to it. That's certainly how I talk about it casually with my friends. But -- let me think a little.

-lumpley Vincent

To simplify:

Mike Holmes wrote:

I want to move to something like roles or behaviors.

Audience Behavior, Character Behavior, Object Behavior...can have IC or OOC or Non-Character Perspective.

On 2001-10-19 10:37, Mike Holmes wrote:

The thing is that, as Vincent points out, there are actually two things going on. What is being affected and the perspective that it is being affected from. This should be specified.

pblock,
The current definitions do work, as I said, when you're describing the player side of a conventional one-player-one-character limited-power-sharing game. That's what they were invented to describe. That's cool. That's not the kind of game we all play. Expanding the definitions gives them much broader power for relatively little effort(*).

Non-player characters are part of the environment and are subject to control in Director Stance.

lumpley wrote: I'm proposing that "Director Stance" isn't a stance at all. It doesn't say what basis you use to make decisions. It describes what you make decisions about, unlike the three other stances. I think it would be better to make that explicit, rather than leaving it invisible in an illusory stance.

I don't exactly disagree, Lumpley, but I'm curious about this. Why do all stances have to be "what you make decisions about?" to qualify as stances? Until you establish this (and maybe you already did and I missed it), your argument doesn't hang together.

If I pre-heat the stove, chop up food, place food in the pan, and then put the pan-with-food in the oven, someone could say "well, it doesn't make sense to say all those things are cooking, because they all involve handling food except for pre-heating. QED, pre-heating is not a part of cooking."

Even if I do agree with you that all distinctions between stances must be distinctions in "what basis is used to make decisions," that doesn't leave you with a clear case. You keep on calling "Pawn" and "author" separate stances, but there is no difference in "what basis" is used to make these decisions - only in how the decision, which has an identical basis in pawn and author, is justified. This contradicts your claim that the only valid stances are those distinguished by "what basis."

And nice to see you again, Vince. :wink:

Amp

Hey Barry! Good to see you too!

I'm just using Ron's definitions here. I'm not particularly invested in them, they just seem to be the going rate.

As to Pawn Stance, I think that it more accurately describes Ron's relationship with the crate of bat guano back on the first page of this thread than Author Stance does. Some people see Pawn Stance as Author Stance gone terribly awry; I think it's kind of funny to think of Author Stance as Pawn Stance in its sunday best. Either way you have a good point.

In any case, Director Stance is a different kind than the others in Ron's essay, and there really is no need for it if you can use the other stances on things other than your character. How a gaming group or game designer decides who gets to make decisions, about what, is really the question that interests me.

-lumpley Vincent

Hey,

I have a couple of clarifications about the way that I've approached stances and some points that have been made on this thread. Just little things, though.

THING ONE
I consider Pawn to BE a brand of Author stance (or vice versa). The only difference is that Author requires the player or someone to "in-world-justify" the stated action, AFTER reaching the decision as to what it will be.

Sam announces that Sebastian will take the left turn in the sewers. Sam (the player) is perfectly aware that Bartholemew's unconscious body is slowly being pulled deeper into the sewers by the intelligent rats. Sebastian (the character) knows no such thing. So Sam announces the action, in full acknowledgment that he is merely getting Sebastian into a position where he can save Bartholemew. He ALSO provides some reason, perhaps a very plausible but perhaps a very amusing one, whichever, that Sebastian "uses" to make his in-world decision to turn left. (Note: in my favored style of play, all of this is above-board. Other groups may prefer that it be covert.)

In Pawn stance, Sam would not have provided that retroactive justification; in some games, this is perfectly appropriate and avoids the time and effort spent on "coloring in" what the characters are doing. Therefore the two stances are functionally identical, differing only in "coloring in" as a second step.

THING TWO
In reference to the Extreme Vengeance situation I described earlier, and in reference to one of Vincent's posts that referred to IT ... (all caught up? Good, I confused my own self there)

Bertie (the character) has just benefited from having a crate of bat guano crash down on Ugly Pig Bob. In game mechanics terms, this was the famous Coincidence roll of the Extreme Vengeance system.

I believe there is some confusion around as the origin of the crate of bat guano. Here's how it goes.

a) Say the GM had already established the crate's presence. Thus Bertie's player exercised Director stance in making the cable snap.
b) Alternately, say it was Bertie's player who brought the crate into existence by announcing it as the subject of the Coincidence roll.

Both of these are Director stance, the second one being more extreme than the first. Someone seemed to have the idea that (b) was not possible or involved, and I want to clarify that, in my example, either (a) or (b) could be going on, and that it does not matter very much which (for purposes of defining this stance).

Best,
Ron

Thanks, Ron. I'm right there.

In another thread I was reading yesterday, you said something that made me think: is it part of Director Stance that the things you're doing directly impact the character? In other words, could you have used Director Stance to announce that at that moment, in an airplane somewhere over New Jersey, the president of the Teamsters Union pinches the bridge of his nose and orders a martini, even though what he really wants is a bloody mary? (Set aside that it'd be a waste of the Coincidence Point, would it be Director Stance?)

-lumpley Vincent

pblock wrote:

We can have a definition for the term and then use that term regardless of the symmetry of the terms. The alternative is to have clunky terms

pblock wrote:
We can have a definition for the term and then use that term regardless of the symmetry of the terms. The alternative is to have clunky terms

Vincent,

It seems to me that all Stances involve active agents in play, who for the most part are characters (I can see a case for various other agents, so I guess I'm inventing a new jargon term, aren't I?). The announcement of the president's martini is, as far as I can tell, Exploring Color and would not even impact the story. But who knows? It's an interesting point.

For example, in the Mystery Meat game we played last week, my zombie-dude character forwent his chance to escape the situation and went to help a babe-zombie who'd showed some niceness to him previously. She gets riddled by bullets and expires (for good) in his arms as they stand there. Fine so far. Now, I made a big deal during play - insisting on what was essentially an MoV - to have the out-of-control helicopter (previously itself riddled by bullets by yet another zombie) do a 360 around and above the two standing, tragic, in-love, doomed zombies.

Director Stance? Yes. It was ABOUT the character, even if it didn't affect or harm or help him. The same might go if a player announces that clouds stream past in the sky behind a character in a scary fashion during a climactic battle scene.

But the president's martini doesn't do much - it might be seen as Director Stance, I suppose, but only in the sense that an ill-placed shot in a movie happens to get past the editing. Shall we call it, "Director Stance, sub-set stupid?"

I suggest a better solution - Stances be considered, as I state in the essay, to be ABOUT the agents in the story. When a "president's martini" announcement is made - and with the proviso that the act is NOT significant in ANY way - it is arguably not even an act of role-playing.

Best,
Ron

Hey All.

Well, I think I'm content with this. Distinguishing between active agents in the game on one hand and mere setting on the other is cool with me, especially if we can say that active agents aren't always characters. Director Stance is for controlling the mere setting around your active agent, which may or may not be the same thing as making the mere setting around your active agent temporarily and in a limited way into an active agent, but who cares if it is. Either way it's just mere setting.

Can you take Director Stance toward another player's character (taking into account, of course, Paul's thing about respecting that character's protagonism)? Ron, if you had introduced the helicopter into someone else's tragic climactic scene, for example, would that have been Director Stance toward the other character?

If yes, I suggest that GMs do an awful lot of just that. If no, I suggest that GMs do an awful lot of something that looks pretty much exactly like just that, and maybe we should name it.

Anyway, I think that if I start talking about GMs taking Stances, people mostly won't ask me what the hell. I hope. Anybody?

-lumpley Vincent

Vincent asked,

"Can you take Director Stance toward another player's character (taking into account, of course, Paul's thing about respecting that character's protagonism)? Ron, if you had introduced the helicopter into someone else's tragic climactic scene, for example, would that have been Director Stance toward the other character?"

My answer is yes, of course, for ANY stance. If you squint at the definitions, you'll see that I never say "your character" or "one's character" or introduce any element of proprietorship at all. Co-Authoring, Co-Directing, and Co-Acting are certainly all possible. I imagine that the latter is likely to be most rare or problematic, but I can also think of some instances in which it has occurred.

This is a very important point, because it permits taking a Stance EVEN WHEN ONE'S CHARACTER IS NOT PRESENT - you may take a Stance toward a character who IS present, hopping into co-pilot seat with the other player.

In my Hero Wars game, this happens a lot, although we have essentially a "final cut" privilege established for the owner of the PC (owner = player) or the NPC (owner = GM).

Best,
Ron

Ron,

Nice.

In fact now that you mention it I've co-actored characters. Usually minor ones, but still.

-lumpley Vincent

I think what we're finding as we shake this out is that director stance has a plethora of subvarients that can be distinct and readily identified, unlike actor and author, which are somehow less varied.

I don't think we are served by simply lumping this things together into the broad category of director stance and simply calling it that. As games come out that acknowledge directoral power and place unique strictures on it for whatever effect, it behooves us to be able to recognise the various strictures that can be applied to directoral power and coining a term to identify a particular set that is truely unique. Otherwise, saying a game that uses director stance becomes as meaningless as saying a game uses dice. What sort of dice? and how many?

Using this same sort of logic used to lump these subsets together simply as "director stance" can be used to make actor stance a part of author stance.

Actor stance is defined as "a person determines a character’s decisions and actions using only knowledge and perceptions that the character would have. "

Author stance is "a person determines a character’s decisions and actions based on the real person’s priorities, then retroactively “motivates” the character to perform them."

If the real person's priorities are to use only knowledge and perceptions that the character would have, then it can be seen that actor stance is merely a part of director stance.

This is thin, damned thin. You can see right through it. But so it is with the subsets of director stance lumped together.

This is an awful lot like biology. The illustrations in a textbook made the organs of the frog or fetal pig look deceptively distinct. When it can time to disect the buggers, it looked like a big ol' mess. Everything is connected. From one angle it looks distinct, but from the other end it just kind of blends into the rest of it. (Didn't help that I got the last pig in the bucket, either. I think it was a tad underdeveloped) All of this stuff is part of the larger creature called a role-playing game and we're just naming the parts. This is an important thing to always keep in mind.

Hi Jack

I disagree, mainly because I see both Author and Actor Stances as being highly nuanced as well, independently.

I also suggest we start a new thread to discuss it, because this one has served its purpose of dealing with Vincent's question.

Best,
Ron