With Ron's recent statements in the Clarifying Simulationism thread, I actually think we're damn close to defining roleplaying, at least according to GNS and the general theory precepts that most of us share.

Roleplaying = Social Contract + Shared Imaginative Space + Exploration + Creative Agenda ("Step on Up," "Story Now," and/or "the Dream")

The only really controversial part, I think, is whether at least one Creative Agenda is required for it to really be roleplaying. Ralph, I think, is trying to argue that Exploration without a Creative Agenda (passive, like an audience) is still roleplaying. Honestly, I would tend to agree with him.

Imagine there's a game going on where some people are not players, btu are still in the room listening. They're taking part in the Shared Imagined Space & Exploration just like everyone else. Or say there's that point in the game (as in all games), where not all the players are actively engaged. Maybe several characters are asleep or dead or off in a distant land. They may not have any Creative Agenda in the current scene, but they're still engaged and participating in Shared Space & Exploration.

However, what may be important is that SOMEONE has to be exerting a Creative Agenda in order for roleplaying to happen. If everyone were to be passive Explorers, there would be nothing new to explore. So having one or more Creative Agenda's is still critical to roleplaying, but everyone involved in roleplaying doesn't necessarily need their own Creative Agenda. It can be enough that someone else has one and you're watching the results of that.

Furthermore, I think it can be said that Shared Imagined Space and Exploration are basically the same concept. The important part is "Exploration of Shared Imagined Space" and both existing terms are really just shortened ways of saying that. Imagining the shared space is Exploration, according to the definition of that term. Likewise, Exploration doesn't exist without the Shared Space within which to work (though I suppose you could explore your own personal imagined space, if you wanted).

So perhaps a modified way of saying this would be:

Roleplaying = Social Contract + Exploration of Shared Imagined Space + 1 or more people with 1 or more Creative Agendas

How's that sound?

I'd add + Techniques.

IMO its the Techniques that transform collaborative story writing into role playing. I think a bunch of folks sitting around attempting to write a novel collectively can exhibit GNS. There's certainly Step on Up present in the shear social dynamic of whose ideas stick. Clearly since Narrativist ideas of Premise stem from Egri who was using the term relative to writing theater scripts there is the possibility of "Story Now" in the writing exercise.

What distinguishes this activity from something we'd label "role playing" then seems to be the techniques. The various processes and system and such that provide structure to the activity.

Ralph,

How are your "Techniques" different from the Social Contract? In my mind, the Social Contract IS "the various processes and system and such that provide structure to the activity." Are you talking about something different?

Hmmm, well I don't know maybe Techniques isn't the right term (I was trying to stick to what was on the Venn diagram). Where does System come in in your definition? System is not entirely contained within Social Contract.

Hello,

No, it's "Techniques" all right. These are, simply, the procedures of conducting play at all, in action.

Stuff like "GM narrates outcomes" is a Technique. Stuff like, well, all of IIEE, is a Technique.

Stances, for instance, are sub-sets of Technique.

One might say, "Ron, isn't that System?" and I'd say, "System is higher-level in the Venn diagram, so you can think of Techniques as specific applications of System, in much smaller time-units and interaction-units."

So I agree with Ralph, add Techniques.

Otherwise, it reads to me (sorry, again) like someone working out what I'm saying, and have been saying, in words of their own. Which is a grand thing.

Best,
Ron

Johnathan wrote: Ralph, I think, is trying to argue that Exploration without a Creative Agenda (passive, like an audience) is still roleplaying. Honestly, I would tend to agree with him.

Okay, for my purposes, I don't find it very helpful to seperate Social Contract into parts like System and Techniques, but I see how one might do that. It just seems to make the Contract a bunch of rules when it's really just an arbitrary, changable collection of norms. It looks harder to change when you have all the component parts out in front of you and get to pick which ones to keep or ditch. Or maybe I just like things simpler. I seem to recall Ron's model of:

[Social Contract [System [Techniques] ] ]

Which, to me, just seems easier to think of as Social Contract, since I've been stuck in the ghetto of thinking about System for FAR too long. But if you want to substitute that for the "Social Contract" part of the equation, by all means go for it.

But Ron, you don't have issues with the "only one player needs to have a Creative Agenda for all the players to be roleplaying" statement? I thought that would be a bit controversial, considering what you were saying in the other thread.

That's a good point Jonathan. But the only purpose in trying to define what role playing is, is to distringuish it as something different from something else. I am aware that your purpose is to define it in a way that is maximally inclusive to demonstrate that various non traditional things are still within the scope of roleplaying. But still the border is somewhere.

Collective story telling has a Social Contract (all social interaction does).
What makes roleplaying different from Collective story telling is that our Social Contract includes an agreement (implied or explicit) to abide by the system and techniques we use to play. This is different from whatever pure social dynamic is at work in collective story telling efforts.

So I would continue to think that difference needs to be explicit in any definition.

Hi Jonathan,

Your presentation of my Venn diagram:

[Social Contract [System [Techniques] ] ]

Ralph (and all),

But - what is the distinction between "Social Contract" and "System"? What kinds of things would live in the Social Contract part of the Venn diagram ONLY? As far as I can tell, Lumpley implies that anything we do together socially can be considered as System.

The best I can come up with is that Social Contract contains implied system while System refers to explicit system (and their seperation line in the Venn diagram is "thick" so as to allow some things to be kinda-sorta both implied and explicit). But that seems pretty weak . . .

Gordon

Hi Gordon,

I've talked about this before. Social Contract contains everything, including the [Exploration [[[]]]], but also stuff like who's sleeping with whom, and what happens because of that, and who's allowed to laugh when someone blows a roll and who isn't, and who rides home together with whom and therefore gets to deconstruct the session afterward, and so on.

All that stuff. The [Exploration [[[]]]] is in there too, among all that stuff. Together, it's all Social Contract.

Best,
Ron

Gordon wrote: But - what is the distinction between "Social Contract" and "System"?

Ron,

Ah, yes, I knew that at one point - the Social Contract stuff is present when the System is in use and impacts it, but isn't really "part" of it.

But - that stuff you're putting in Social Contract and not System hardly qualifies as "what's needed" for collective story telling. I guess what I'm really saying is - Ralph, collective story telling has a System. What were you trying to do, get Gimmick-free Universalis firmly included as "roleplaying?" :-)

A side issue, perhaps. As I understand it, the analysis in this thread does NOT help with the roleplaying vs. collective story telling issue.

Gordon

EDIT - for typos, clarity and to add - yup, Dana, looks right to me.

So how is collective storytelling not roleplaying? Or is that a big contentious issue that's already been well-trampled? I guess I was just assuming that it was, since we talk about freeform as roleplaying, so I didn't think having a pre-defined system was a requirement. And, as per the gimmick-free Universalis comment, by that definition, Fudge isn't roleplaying either, because you have to build it from suggested components.

Collective storytelling obviously has a social contract, stated or unstated. It's not written down in books and published as part of the hobby industry, but it could be. There are several systems for determing consensus that are used by different groups, and you'd just have to write one up for use in storytelling and you'd have a published "game" based on collective storytelling.

But I guess I walk the artificial line between storytelling and roleplaying with games like "Ever-After" anyway, so I guess I'm a bit biased.

But this thread is drifting like crazy. I started it because I was interested in defining roleplaying along GNS lines, focusing on all the recent discussion of Creative Agendas and who has to have them in order for roleplaying to occur. If people want to talk about other issues (system, etc.), you might want to start another thread.

Well, since I'm in the process of starting a new campaign, I'm on the inside of the first stage, establishing the social contract, where I'm the only one who's had any exposure to the "bought in a shop" part of the system (not entirely true, but we'll get to that later).

So, it went that I announced in the meeting of the local game society that I wanted to run HeroQuest this term, a heortling game in the sartarite rebellion period, haven't set a day or venue to run the game. So I've already established parts of the social contract and system, before anyone else is involved. But I'm not sharing imaginative space (except with the authors of HQ, and it's hardly a feedback loop).

Luckily for me, two old friends of mine (I've GM'd for them before) expressed an interest, and we got down to the nuts & bolts of arranging a night in our schedules, and temporarily leaving venue undecided. So more SC, only lightly touching on system, except where we 've not got players and the presumed future presence of characters.

Are we rpg'ing yet? Looking at the definition at the top of the shop:

Roleplaying = Social Contract + Exploration of Shared Imagined Space + 1 or more people with 1 or more Creative Agendas

Jonathan,

Ralph seemed to think that your GNS-defined roleplaying led to collective story telling being excluded. It doesn't look that way to me. That's what seems on-topic for this thread.

Gordon

(Are they really different? Damned if I know. That your GNS-definition reasoning fails to solve that one way or another doesn't mean anything, as far as I'm concerned. Many definitions fail to resolve things like that. I do like the notion that we have a GNS-specific definition to look at though . . . )

Well, just because the system is defined in play, rather than in a book, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist at the point of play, which is what I'm looking at.

Even the choice of mechanics to determine mechanics is a social contract issue determining system: a metasystem, if you must, but a system none the less.

Creative writing systems... I don't know them well enough to say, but it may well be that they're doing what I would call RP without knowing.

Most freeform RP I've seen has a system, as in mechanics, setting, etc. etc. The mechanics may be pure drama mechanics, but that's still mechanics.

Freeform rp without mechanics... isn't that lying to people in bars?

Ok, I thought I was pretty clear what I was talking about, but obviously not, which seems to be happening frequently lately.

If you refer to my first comment on this thread you'll see that I was not talking about freeform roleplaying or Universalis style roleplaying or anything of the sort.

Say...take the group of hollywood script writers who get together to collectively bang out an episode of Friends each week. Are they roleplaying. I would say no. They are writing a story collectively.

But they do meet all of the criteria for Jonathan's initial definition.

They certainly have a social contract, they clearly are exploring a shared imaginary space, and they even can have (as I noted in that first post) GNS style creative agendas.

So what are they missing? What does a roleplaying group have that a group of hollywood scriptwriters, or 3 buddies working on fanfic together don't have? Answer: System. They may have Social Contract level rules of precedence for who's ideas get added weight based on who the senior script writer is. Or maybe the one buddy gets to do all of the high tech trekkie stuff 'cuz he's good in science class or something. But there is no actual IIEE going on. There's nothing that is recognizable as roleplaying.

That's why I suggested adding Techniques to the definition.

3 guys sitting around and playing the Star Trek RPG and 3 guys sitting around writing Star Trek FanFic are engaged in two completely different activitied IMO, and the initial definition didn't differentiate that.

Hello,

I'm not being all warm and fulfilled by this thread. Ralph and I have presented, I think, a very strong case for adding Techniques to the definition (or "definition").

I should point out that "exclude collaborative storytelling" is not part of the goals of the theory that includes GNS. So whether it does or doesn't is completely beside point of the thread. The goal was, what's GNS describe role-playing as doing? And we've done that.

So this thread is going once, going twice ...

Best,
Ron

Jonathan Walton wrote: Okay, for my purposes, I don't find it very helpful to seperate Social Contract into parts like System and Techniques, but I see how one might do that.

Jonathan wrote: So perhaps a modified way of saying this would be:

Roleplaying = Social Contract + Exploration of Shared Imagined Space + 1 or more people with 1 or more Creative Agendas

Gordon wrote: But - what is the distinction between "Social Contract" and "System"? What kinds of things would live in the Social Contract part of the Venn diagram ONLY? As far as I can tell, Lumpley implies that anything we do together socially can be considered as System.

Everything in the Social Contract has potential System application. You can't tell the difference between System things and "just" Social Contract things by naming them. You have to figure out how the group is using them; that's where the distinction lies. Where do we put our cups? becomes System if it contributes to our consensual creation of the in-game.

Similarly, whole books full of rules can just like hover in the Social Contract, never invoked into System.

-Vincent

M. J. Young wrote: You see, that suggests that we've got something called Creative Agenda that has been added as an external component to something called Exploration of SIS which has been added to Social Contract.

Hi Jonathan,

I find all of that reasonable, especially allowing for all manner of squishiness regarding consensual storytelling, certain forms of on-line play, and wargaming. In other words, we're not talking about an exclusive definition role-playing; we're talking about its component parts.

Seems everyone's OK with that unless I'm missing something. Time to close the thread? Your call.

Best,
Ron

Yeah, close this baby. I mainly wanted feedback on my restatement of your definition, and I think I have it. Got some more things to talk about, but they need to be other threads, I think (like just how the game designer fits into the Social Contract of a player group, which has been discussed a bit before, but not really tackled).

You're right that the definition is mostly "throw a ball in this direction and you're likely to hit roleplaying" as opposed to something really concrete. But concrete definitions of art are just asking to be broken anyway. I mean, my instinct is to disprove definitions, so I was looking for a definition that I would not approvcingly at, instead of thinking of all the ways I could break it.

So, yeah, this thread's closed (by the pseudo-moderator powers I derive from Ron's post above).