Topic: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
Started by: Jack Spencer Jr
Started on: 11/14/2003
Board: GNS Model Discussion
On 11/14/2003 at 12:59am, Jack Spencer Jr wrote:
I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
In another thread, the sentence "I'd love to see an expansion of "address." " came up as in what does it mean to address a premise.
So, what does it mean to address a premise?
On 11/14/2003 at 4:56am, Ron Edwards wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
Hello,
The short answer is, "See the Narrativism essay."
Answer + query: "It's not written yet! When will it appear?"
Me: "Maybe January 1. Or so."
Best I can do for you now is to say, "address" concerns specificl and actual play, not "results of play" or "retroactively apparent" or "somehow embedded in the prep for play" or anything else. It's the "Now" part of Story Now. Combine that with Premise and see where you get, I suppose ...
And I guess that means I have to clarify that by "play," I do not, for one moment, mean "what the characters did." I mean what the people do when they play, which happens to include, but is not limited to, creating what the characters do.
Best,
Ron
On 11/14/2003 at 5:44am, Marco wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
While I don't expect a response here, I do want to say that the disclaimers about results of play and the like don't make anything clearer to me.
This is gonna be a whopper of a post--please read it carefully--with any luck it'll explain a lot of my questions (which boil down to: I'm unable to analyze play from a GNS perspective save in what I think are extreme edge cases and then, only in *instants*--over a given period of time, I find I can hang whatever mode I choose to on anyone's play and make an equally strong case for it).
Here are some specific questions I have (perhaps this can be used to help illuminate the final essay):
1. Since the "address of Premise" need not be conscious in the minds of the participants, the act of addressing is only relevant to an observer. So my questions are:
a. If the game takes place on IRC, can there be such a thing as address of Premise or can any determination be made as to Creative Agenda (assuming the shared game-space only exists in the in-game channel)? Or does "address" only happen in person-to-person interaction? Given that *only* in game actions are available to any observer. Is pure IRC play GNS-modeless (since while there's assumed to be a Creative Agenda, a given, named mode is an observational statement).
b. When the action of game-play resembles a story there will always be theme and address of action/situation. How does one tell the difference between someone really interested in Exploration of a dramatic situation vs. address of premise since, essentially, both will always be happening. In other words, I see no instant of supposed Narrativist play that does not equal exploration of situation. I see no way to tell one from the other, save for empowerment.
2. Is player-empowerment important and implied in "address" (i.e. you will say the player must be empowered in order to address the premise)? If that's the case then:
a. What's the cut-off point? There's a spectrum from the-GM-watches-while-the-player-tells-his-whole-story to the-game's-on-rails-so-strong-only-the-GM-ever-speaks. If empowerment *is* an issue then presumably there's a cut-off somewhere along that spectrum. I've never seen that expressed in any way that's useful to me as someone trying to determine if play is empowered. Where does the definition draw the line?
b. Someone recently asked "how do the players overrule the GM?" in a Narrativist play discussion. Is that an important question? Should that be asked/answered for a discussion of Narrativist play?
3. Since it seems that the Narrativist description of play only says "the play was observed to [address premise]" what is the purported value of that analysis? Is the implicit assumption made that if the play didn't end in a fire-storm argument that the audience enjoyed narrativist play? Is the assumption made that the players are Narrativists?
What is the value? Especially since:
a. MJ notes that it's quite possible for a person to evidence a given type of play--but if it isn't their preferred form, they may do all kinds of things that, say, appear Gamist--but the observer must somehow correctly suss out that these are not "what really matters to them." (this seems to be the kind of intent-reading that the theory really tries to stay away from).
b. Someone (Vincent I think) notes that in many situations people may play in a vigorous, lively matter that is not their preferred one.
4. If I play a game and I know I am agonizing over moral choices and otherwise acting in a way that addresses a thematic question but the play for some reason "doesn't appear Narrativist to the observer" then what's going on? Is it correct to say that the play (let's assume it's a 1-GM-with-1-player game) is judged to be Gamist is it:
a. More likely that the observer is in error if I, as a player, can point to a string of actions that everyone agrees *did* address the premise but which I seemed a bit reserved about?
b. More likely that I am playing Step-on-Up since I didn't *exhibit* the necessary threshold of excitement/engagement when making moral choices but seemed tense ('excited') when overcoming challenges?
c. Clear that I am playing Gamist because that's what the observer saw and the label only applies to observed phenomena?
5. People associated V:tM's talk of Story with the promise of Narrativist play. The slogan for Narrativist play is Story Now. Considering that Story is, at best, a misleading term, why do this? Is it that:
a. Narrativist play is suppsed to present a "better" story for the participants (however they judge that?)
b. That the Story Now slogan means that the play offers some immediate delivery of narrative that doesn't exist in, say, Sim exloration of Situation? If so, is this delivery observable or assumed to be implicit in the minds of the players (i.e. because they are playing Narrativist they are appreciating the events as-a-story in some way rather than, say, as-an-RPG? or maybe the Narrativist player see the Sim player as precieving the game as-a-series-of-events (rather than a story?) If so, how can anyone know any of this is happening from an observation?
c. In Narrativist play every piece of the game is meant to be a story meaning there will be no NOW scenes that are non-story?
d. Something else (I assume?)
6. Several listed examples of Narrativist play deal with player empowerment (Raven's movement-rules-make-my-character-suck example) rather than with theme or premise. How far does address Premise go in:
a. Ensuring that PC's are treated as "cool" or "allowed to do their cool moves."
b. Ensuring that PC's don't suffer un-expected, unwanted, anti-climactic, defeat?
This is a hell of an essay right there. I'd be a fool to expect you to answer it (I'm not payin' after all)--but hopefully it explains that the credo of Story Now doesn't explain/mean much to me--or rather, it always seems to mean something else when ever I get close to questioning anyone on it.
-Marco
On 11/14/2003 at 3:12pm, Ron Edwards wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
Hello,
Now everyone knows what my Inbox looks like. Marco, thanks for putting all that out in the open; we've been batting it around for ages.
From my end, these questions resemble the blind men and the elephant ... with the provisos that the men are only closing their eyes, and the elephant is not mysterious, or symbolic of some ineffable "wholeness," but rather a fairly ordinary elephant. The different "answers" you get are in my view an artifact of asking a number of different and, to my eyes, equally wonky questions throughout your time at the Forge.
I know you may disagree on this point: I don't think your level/type of inquiry about Narrativism is a widespread or consistent issue. Yes, it takes a little learning, for self-identified role-players (not for new players). Most of the role-players get there quite quickly.
I am now convinced that I, personally, will never be able to answer your questions the way you want them answered. My essay will say what it will say, and be as clear or opaque as it is for any particular reader - in other words, this is a disclaimer that says, "The Narrativism essay will not open the heavens to release shower of understanding."
I'll do my best, Marco, but the reality is, if it comes down to explaining it quite well to the vast majority of readers and inadequately for you, I'm probably going to have to stop there.
My hope is that the new presentation of the big model will make this unfortunate hypothetical outcome unlikely.
Best,
Ron
On 11/14/2003 at 3:30pm, Marco wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
Ron Edwards wrote: Hello,
I'll do my best, Marco, but the reality is, if it comes down to explaining it quite well to the vast majority of readers and inadequately for you, I'm probably going to have to stop there.
Best,
Ron
I fully recognize that's your right--but consider this: I'm telling you when I look closely I see inconsistencies in what you're saying--and you're telling me I'm not just blind--I'm (willfully?) closing my eyes.
Whoever coined Story Now as a Narrativist credo certainly knew that Story was a weak term--but it got done anway. Why?
The use of the word Agenda (Creative Agenda) for what gets defended over and over as a purely observational phenomena is at least a bit misleading.
The focus on play-at-the-table gets very questionable over, say IRC. Will the theory date-itself as the world moves to a more online position? I wouldn't think a riggorous one would--but the rejection of in-game context for analysis of creative agenda is, I think, somewhat telling.
For someone who (and not incorrectly) takes games to task for saying things like "The GM is the author and the players are characters of a story" I would think that you'd a) at least consider that what is seen as sufficient for the vast majority of the people to whom you wish to communicate is very possibly quite inadequate (and maybe even damaging) to communication with a broad audience on a number of levels.
I realize I posted an entire essay. As I said, I'm not paying for the answers so your best-effort is certainly all I could expect. But my inbox suggests I'm not the only person with these questions. I'm just one of the relatively few here who keeps asking them.
Edited to note: I don't expect/demand a response from Ron--but I'd sure like to see other people's answers to Jack's (or my) question(s). I'm not sure if he doesn't see the elephant either or if it was just asked for my sake. After all, Jan 1st is a month or so away.
-Marco
On 11/14/2003 at 4:29pm, Ron Edwards wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
Hi there,
The inadequacy is mine. I do not mean "willfully" closing your eyes, by the way. Just having them closed - again, as I see it.
I turn to the community of people who specifically disagreed or differed with me on this exact issue, when they first began dialogues with me at the Gaming Outpost or here at the Forge.
Vincent Baker, Ralph Mazza, Joshua Neff, Jesse Burneko, Seth Ben-Ezra, M.J. Young, Christopher Kubasik, and Mike Holmes.
Maybe you can provide a decent explanation where I have so far failed. This is the place to do it. Anyone else who sees himself or herself in this role, feel free as well.
However, this is not the place for people who say, "Um, I think this is it ... do I get it?" to post.
Best,
Ron
On 11/14/2003 at 8:38pm, Ian Charvill wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
Marco
You did post an essay, and this is the beginnings of an answer. Each of your questions could be a thread by itself. These are the answers I can give without going into 'somebody tell me I'm right' mode.
1a. The address of premise needs to be observable not observed. If people are gaming in a locked, lead-lined room, no we can't observe how they're playing - but they are still playing with a creative agenda. Likewise, IRC makes it difficult to observe what's going on, but doesn't mean that it's not going on. If you had realtime video feeds of all of the players and a live IRC transcript, you could do the observing.
1b. The difference between Exploration of a dramatic situation vs. address of premise. Address of premise literally requires the players to be engaged - on a conscious or subconscious level - with an ethical or moral concern that could be phrased as a question. Sim, exploration of (dramatic) situation requires the players to be engaged with some element of the situation itself.
Egs
Is faith sufficient to defeat evil? vs Who will win, St George or the Dragon?
Will friendship overcome all hardships? vs What perils will we face climbing Mount Doom?
Now, in terms of the imagined game events clearly there could be strong parallels within each pair. The question is, do the players care more about the underlying energy or the surface energy?
One thing you have to accept, or this will all just drive you mad, is that there will be times as an observer when you will not be able to tell the two apart. There are some bands I like more than others, as evidenced by the length of time I spend listening to them, the money I spend on their albums, going to see them live, and so on. But if you watched a video tape of one time I listened to one album by one band vs one time I listened to one album by another band you wouldn't necessarily be able to tell which one I like best. Now does that mean I like them both the same?
Other times it will be damn obvious, of course.
2. Player empowerment is important in all creative agendas. If you're not free to step on up, no Gamism; if you're not free to dream, no Simulationism; and if your not free to get hip deep in the moral issues, no Narrativism.
a. The cut-off point? There can be no answer to this question. The cut-off point will be different for every play group, in every instance of play. And the drawing of the lines is equally important to all modes of play. Which leads to...
b. 'How do the players overrule the GM?" It's a Social Contract issue, not a Creative Agenda issue.
3. What's the value of analysis: it tells you why this particular group of people are sitting down and enjoying (or not) gaming together. That play was observed to address premise means simply that the players were seen to enjoy addressing premise. If the only value of GNS is to increase enjoyment - and decrease the absence of enjoyment (what gets called dysfunction) - then is that a bad thing?
3a & b. I like bananas. I like eggs. I like bananas more than I like eggs. I still like eggs. If you saw me an hour ago eating eggs with some gusto - which had you been over here in England, and in my house specifically, you would have been in a position to - you might have gained a pretty good idea that if you were cooking tea for me, then you could cook me eggs and I'd enjoy eating them. I still like bananas more, and I'd still, all else being equal, prefer to eat a banana to an egg. But that doesn't mean there's no value to observing that I like eating eggs.
4. The observer is fallible but... sooner or later a crunch moment will come along. You have a choice between addressing the premise or stepping on up. There's an hour left of play and you can either get involved in a big old fight or have a scene with your dying father. The big old fight addresses the theme of "is one man courage enough to stop a culture destroying itself?" The scene with your dying father allows you to gamble your compassion points in an attempt to stage a reconcilliation. Which do you do?
If you address premise at this point, you're playing narrativist, in this instance of play. If you step on up to the reconcilliation gamble, you're playing gamist, in this instance of play. What you intended to do is neither here or there - what you did does matter.
And it is observable, whether or not a putative observer spotted it or not.
5. The Story Now slogan, I'm leaving up to Ron and the Narrativism essay - although I suspect a close reading of the relevant section of Sorceror & Sword would also help.
6. The Raven example is at the level of technique (or possibly ephemera, I'm not familiar enough with the example) so cannot be held to correspond absolutely with any one GNS mode. In other words:
a. Ensuring that PC's are treated as "cool" or "allowed to do their cool moves."
b. Ensuring that PC's don't suffer un-expected, unwanted, anti-climactic, defeat?
Can be issues in certain kinds of Narrativist and Simulationist and Gamist play - and not in others.
HTH
On 11/14/2003 at 9:11pm, Matt Snyder wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
An introduction: Marco, this is my attempt to answer your questions. It took a while to compose, and I had to do it in several segments. Please bear that in mind if I'm repetitive or reference something out of place. I think I fixed that stuff, but then again who knows.
Also, I see as I'm posting this that Ian Charvill posted a very good response. Mostly, I'm thinking, "Yeah, what he said. And he said it so much more succintly than I. Alas!"
Here goes:
1. Since the "address of Premise" need not be conscious in the minds of the participants, the act of addressing is only relevant to an observer. So my questions are:
a. If the game takes place on IRC, can there be such a thing as address of Premise or can any determination be made as to Creative Agenda (assuming the shared game-space only exists in the in-game channel)? Or does "address" only happen in person-to-person interaction? Given that *only* in game actions are available to any observer. Is pure IRC play GNS-modeless (since while there's assumed to be a Creative Agenda, a given, named mode is an observational statement).
b. When the action of game-play resembles a story there will always be theme and address of action/situation. How does one tell the difference between someone really interested in Exploration of a dramatic situation vs. address of premise since, essentially, both will always be happening. In other words, I see no instant of supposed Narrativist play that does not equal exploration of situation. I see no way to tell one from the other, save for empowerment.
I really don't get the whole IRC thing. How is this really relevant? It's like stubbing one's little toe and deciding the whole body needs chemotherapy. I don't see the problem. There are still observations to be made in IRC, I guess it's just problematic in that there are likely to be fewer observations. It doesn't demolish the model; I don't think it warrants real concern for modification. Yes, of course "addressing" is going on in IRC narrativist games. How is this different from the notion of playing, say, over the phone. It's still real people talking to real people, albeit over a different medium.
By the way, who is this "observer"? It seems to me a bit of a mistake to create this "neutral observer, fly-on-the-wall type" for the sake of discussion. Yes, it's possible that some non-player could be sitting in the corner, taking theory notes on what he observes. So what? That's the exception to the rule. The rule is that the players are also the observers. You cannot really sanitize the observer and say that he's neutral to what's going on. The rule (not the exception) is that everyone is observing while participating in role-playing. We aren't collecting data, we're talking and interacting with people in a fun and entertaining way, and trying to make that more fun all the time. (And, as should be obvious, I'm not suggesting you thought otherwise, I'm trying to make a point against "the observer.")
The difference between someone really interested in Exploration of a dramatic situation and addressing a Narrativist premise is subtle. It's a valid question. The answer is that in Narrativism you're crafting an "answer." In Simulationism, you're exploring the situation, and not particulary emphasizing the judgment or answer of any meaningful/moral question. The Simulationist makes choices, perhaps informed by a number of things, including what other players say out loud or do via their characters. They do not prioritize the answer to a moral question.
With respect, Marco, I see you ask questions like this all the time and have trouble distinguishing because you can see it both ways. That's cool. But you can't have it both ways in a given instance.
Take these similar examples of specific Creative Agendas. Imagine an "evil campaign" -- one in which players agree they want to portray the bad guys, but for very different reasons.
The Simulationist agenda might be: "What's it like to be an evil overlord in the world?"
The Narrativist agenda could then be: "Is there a place for evil overlords in the world?"
The Simulationist explores what it's like to the position of an evil ruler. The Narrativst answers whether or not there is a place for evil rulers.
(IMPORTANT: The answer to the moral question is not "Moral" in the real-world "Ethical" sense. Of course there are no good damn reasons for tyrants and dictators. They're assholes, and I hope they rot in hell. The answer is obvious. But what fun is that? Is it also not interesting / entertaining to answer the question such that we might show how overlords could do some good, if indirectly?)
It seems like you're looking to the extremes of human behavior as your "signs" of priortizaion. You're looking for "get's excited" or "vigorous and lively" or "agonizing over choices" behavior in the human beings playing (for real or hypothetically) etc. Such extreme behaviors aren't as common around the tables I've played at. Sure, they happen, but I'm more than happy to analyze "what happens" in play, whether exciting or mild, and draw from those events reasoned, well-considered judgments about what's going on at the table. Why do we need blaring warning signs to obviate priortization? This isn't going to happen very often. I get the sense that you're practically looking for the obvious Eureka! event to finally say, "AHA! I get it. Obviously, that was Narrativism." It's just not going to happen that way. You have to just use your own good sense and judgment, observe people interactive with people (including yourself!), and feel equipped to comment on those things. Discuss them with your group. Discuss them on the Forge. You'll be wrong. You're group members will be wrong. The Forge members will be wrong. Over time, you'll correct those observations, and then you'll have a much, much better sense of what's going on at the table, and so will your group, and so will the Forge. But, please, don't discuss their non-existence ad nauseum in a search for neon sign for addressing a premise.
2. Is player-empowerment important and implied in "address" (i.e. you will say the player must be empowered in order to address the premise)? If that's the case then:
a. What's the cut-off point? There's a spectrum from the-GM-watches-while-the-player-tells-his-whole-story to the-game's-on-rails-so-strong-only-the-GM-ever-speaks. If empowerment *is* an issue then presumably there's a cut-off somewhere along that spectrum. I've never seen that expressed in any way that's useful to me as someone trying to determine if play is empowered. Where does the definition draw the line?
I think you're making mountains of molehills, here. The issue is not empowerment. Or, rather, empowerment isn't uniquely important in Narrativism. Players need not be "empowered" to participate in addressing a narrativist premise.
I think the issue is probably that we're defining "empowerment" as "granting players powers often granted to the GM in 'traditional' games." I think our assumptions about what "traditional" games are is a damn fuzzy prospect. Many "traditional" games empowered players in astounding ways, and absurdly limited players in others. New games do, too.
The cut off point, therefore, is not one of empowerment. The cut off point is when, where, how, and why all participating players may make decisions that "answer," however minutely, the Narrativist premise, right this minute (see also my reply to question 6, below). In other words, the cut off point is how a particular group obeys the Lumpley Principle, whether by codified sytem or years-long social understanding.
b. Someone recently asked "how do the players overrule the GM?" in a Narrativist play discussion. Is that an important question? Should that be asked/answered for a discussion of Narrativist play?
My answer is that (good) system should, most of the time, answer this for the players and GM. Everyone knows when, where, how and why players assert change upon the game because the system says they can do it then and there.
But, even if it does not, I'm not sure it is an important question. Or rather, I don't think it's an important question as it relates to Narrativism only. The question is valid for players prioritizing any Creative Agenda.
3. Since it seems that the Narrativist description of play only says "the play was observed to [address premise]" what is the purported value of that analysis? Is the implicit assumption made that if the play didn't end in a fire-storm argument that the audience enjoyed narrativist play? Is the assumption made that the players are Narrativists? What is the value?
The same as the value of observations for other modes of play. I'm not sure I understand your question, actually. The value, I guess, is that you can observe this "stuff" that happens, then take those observations and turn them into information from which you can make personal judgments to yourself and among your group to make you and them have more fun. If you observe Narrativism, really like what you see to the point you know it can't get better, and everyone agrees, good for you and them. You're happy a peas in a pod and you've done a fine job enjoying your hobby. If, however, you observe these events, and see problem areas, then you can take the model and the language it equips you with, and you can talk to the actual human beings you're playing with a make things better and more fun for all. This is, from my perspective, the key value of this entire model. It assesses just what this social activity role-playing is and equips us with the language and the means to remedy our social interactions for the betterment of all.
Like I said, I'm not sure I understood the question, so I can only hope that helps.
Also, I will say that vigorous and lively does not equal an individual's absolute favorite mode in which to play.
4. If I play a game and I know I am agonizing over moral choices and otherwise acting in a way that addresses a thematic question but the play for some reason "doesn't appear Narrativist to the observer" then what's going on? Is it correct to say that the play (let's assume it's a 1-GM-with-1-player game) is judged to be Gamist is it: (snip)
I'd say you're either playing incoherently, in that other players are prioritizing other Creative Agendas and ignoring your different agenda, or you're simply misinterpreting the stuff that goes on in play. You've likely just missed or misinterpreted the instances of play that matter.
Frankly, I think it's much ado about nothing. If we aren't equipped to evaluate the fairly normal, day-to-day human interaction that goes on as players communicate about in-game events that comprise an "instance of play," then we probably aren’t equipped to be discussing this theory to any degree of seriousness or success.
You're getting hung up on intent, still, I think. There's a difference between thinking you WANT to agonize over moral choices, etc., and actually DOING it. If you DO something, then it's done. It's observable to others. That's what instances of play have been all along.
When you actually do that, then you are creating observable instances of play. Yes, we may frequently misinterpret those. But that's the fault of the observers, not the instances. Marco, I think you're just looking too damn hard, and maybe misinterpreting when you see something worth seeing!
5. People associated V:tM's talk of Story with the promise of Narrativist play. The slogan for Narrativist play is Story Now. Considering that Story is, at best, a misleading term, why do this? Is it that:
I can see why this is confounding, Marco, especially in light of your other questions. But, I think you're spending way too much effort dissembling the term "Story Now" and getting hung up on that. Rather, I think your energy's better spent first understanding and agreeing with what Narrativism, addressing the premise and Story Now are. In effect, "getting" Narrativism. Frankly, I think you're making it far more complicated than it really is.
It is not some arcane art to which only Forge members are privvy. It is purely about game play that emphasizes / addresses / prioritizes choices such that they answer a moral premise or question.
To answer your question, Story Now is short hand for saying the following:
1) Not story later. Story right now, as in simultaneous to actual play. It is observable because play answers right now the moral question that is the premise.
2) Story now, and not other stuff now. If events don't matter to the story (i.e., if they don't address the premise) you should probably forget it and move on. Get right back to story (i.e. get back to addressing the premise), right now.
Story now does not imply "better" story as you inquire. Mainly, this is because no one can define "better" story, I suspect. It is a nearly meaningless term, and will vary from not only group to group but person to person.
Narrativism is not a judgment about the quality of role-playing at large. It simply is a kind of role-playing; it is role-playing a particulary way with other people. Narrativism is, emphatically, not "better" than Simulationism or Gamism because it seems to produce stories that are "better." In fact, it does not or may not produce better stories. A group may produce a better (meaning a more tightly constructed series of events with an outstanding and well-focused theme) while prioritizing Gamism than it would while priortizing Narrativism in a different game. Narrativism does not produce better stories than do other Creative Agendas. Narrativism produces stories in a particular way, not a better way.
To clarify, I'm using story as: A series of events that players observe in a connected, sensible manner, which may contain a recognizeable theme.
6. Several listed examples of Narrativist play deal with player empowerment (Raven's movement-rules-make-my-character-suck example) rather than with theme or premise. How far does address Premise go in:
a. Ensuring that PC's are treated as "cool" or "allowed to do their cool moves."
b. Ensuring that PC's don't suffer un-expected, unwanted, anti-climactic, defeat?
We're back to empowerment. Yet, it seems here you're talking about what folks have called Protagonization, would that be correct?
I'm not sure how, say, "cool moves" are addressing premise. Immediately, I can't imagine cool moves as anything but color. (I may, as ever, be missing something here.) Cool moves are apparently an exploration of color. This happens in Narraitivist play because exploration happens, and because all RPGs include the five elements: color, character, system, situation, and setting. But, in narrativism, the main priority is not exploration.
As for whether characters meet an untimely demise, thereby not addressing the premise to its conclusion, I think you're missing that such an end is one possible answer to the moral question. Character death, as an example, while unexpected may indeed answer the game's premise. That is, while unexpected de-protaganization may occur, that event may actually create, in a surprising way, an answer to that game's premise.
I sense that the problem you're noting here is that somehow there must be a climax or that there must be some clearly distinguishable "final answer" in a narrativist scenario or game or series of sessions. Not so. By definition, Narrativism's "end" remains unknown.
When we say we "answer a moral question" (which is how I'm largely defining "adress a Narrativist premise") it does not mean that we're building toward some ultimate answer in The End. Not at all. Rather, because the game is prioritizing Narrativism, it is addressing the premise at every step of the way (Story Now). That is, there are a string of "answers" all along the way. We are providing "answers" at every turn, at every conflcit, at every "instance of play."
In other words, these events are observable instances of prioritizing Narrativism.
On 11/14/2003 at 9:55pm, Christopher Kubasik wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
Hi All,
Since my name is on the list, I will be taking a crack at this.
I'm going to specifically address Story Now. It'll be its own thread. It'll take me some time to work it up.
At issue: Does narrativism promote better story? I say, "Yes." Without awkwardness or equivication.
Later for more details.
Christopher
On 11/14/2003 at 10:00pm, Valamir wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
When we say we "answer a moral question" (which is how I'm largely defining "adress a Narrativist premise") it does not mean that we're building toward some ultimate answer in The End. Not at all. Rather, because the game is prioritizing Narrativism, it is addressing the premise at every step of the way (Story Now). That is, there are a string of "answers" all along the way. We are providing "answers" at every turn, at every conflcit, at every "instance of play."
In other words, these events are observable instances of prioritizing Narrativism.
I liken it to filling in an oval on a standardized test which will never be graded, and for which there is no answer key. It is the act of filling in that oval...of making the decision, that addresses the premise.
Its choosing Door #3 over the bonus box. What actually is behind the door or in the box is immaterial. Its the choice that matters.
Which reminds of the great Lyric from Rush "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice"
On 11/14/2003 at 10:05pm, Marco wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
Excellently wrought reply Ian. I'm glad to see it. I want to clarify my first question--I'll wait for more answers until I respond to the rest of the meat.
Ian Charvill wrote:
1a. The address of premise needs to be observable not observed. If people are gaming in a locked, lead-lined room, no we can't observe how they're playing - but they are still playing with a creative agenda. Likewise, IRC makes it difficult to observe what's going on, but doesn't mean that it's not going on. If you had realtime video feeds of all of the players and a live IRC transcript, you could do the observing.
This was more of a definitional question than I think it came across as: I completely agree and understand that there could be a player responding to a moral question in an IRC game (that shouldn't have gone in as it did)--but my point was more this:
In a log of a game that ran for years, if you don't have those video feeds (only in-game text: GM: "Make a Spot roll.") and the log is kill the monster, get the treasure, repeat, would you never be able to say it was Gamist play?*
This relates to address of premise because if you couldn't call that game Gamist based only on such a log, then you couldn't describe an IRC game rife with much moral-issue-questions-the-characters-act-on Narrativist and would therefore never be able to say "address of premise had occurred" because that would imply Narrativist play--which you can't be sure of because you don't have group-observable-social behavior.
In other words, a player might be engaged in some way with a moral question--but the labels and analysis are useless. A log of net-hack has an equal claim to be Narrativist as a log of Raven's 3rd Ed Narrativist (as I recall--I might be mistaken) D&D game.
I find that odd.
-Marco
*And if that's a clear enough extreme edge condition then how about a somewhat more complex game that has a lot of combat but some other stuff too--like say, a game that played plot-wise similarly to Lord of the Rings?
On 11/14/2003 at 10:27pm, Marco wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
Hi Matt,
Re: mountains out of molehills/little-toe-chemo-therapy. The text of The Impossible Thing is, IMO, quite a molehill. If I told you that all those pieces of text in games that said "if you don't like the rule, just ignore it" were molehills because most people find them empowering to fun play would you be satisfied with that response?
As for the agendas:
The Simulationist agenda might be: "What's it like to be an evil overlord in the world?"
The Narrativist agenda could then be: "Is there a place for evil overlords in the world?"
The Simulationist explores what it's like to the position of an evil ruler. The Narrativst answers whether or not there is a place for evil rulers.
I know the defintions--but those examples all seem to come from a knowledge of the player's internal monolgoue. Those are not questions I've ever heard a player ask.
To me, the resulting game-play looks the same (expecially true, as I said) if the action resembes something one might find in literature. I don't think you can have it both ways--but I find telling which question someone other than I am asking an exercise in Cold Reading at best and that autistic-assisted-typing thing at worst.
1) Not story later. Story right now, as in simultaneous to actual play. It is observable because play answers right now the moral question that is the premise.
2) Story now, and not other stuff now. If events don't matter to the story (i.e., if they don't address the premise) you should probably forget it and move on. Get right back to story (i.e. get back to addressing the premise), right now.
It is my observation that simulationist play (the play I've described in actual play) generated story at the same time as play (I can't see how it would be any other way). Is story-later based on knowing the mind-set of the simulationist (Fred is a simulationist so he only recognizes the story as story after the session is over?). How could anyone know that?
How could you tell the difference from a simulationst not wanting to play something that isn't relevant to situation (i.e. I've not gamed out using the restroom in simulationst play).
-Marco
Second question removed; it was unnecessary
On 11/14/2003 at 10:33pm, Marco wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
Christopher Kubasik wrote: Hi All,
Since my name is on the list, I will be taking a crack at this.
I'm going to specifically address Story Now. It'll be its own thread. It'll take me some time to work it up.
At issue: Does narrativism promote better story? I say, "Yes." Without awkwardness or equivication.
Later for more details.
Christopher
For any definition of story? Or one specific one? (and is it a self-referential one: better-because-it-was-created-through-story-now)? And do you know why Matt disagreed?
If a non-story now game and a story game were both made into movies would the story-now how/would you expect the story-now game to be better?
-Marco
On 11/14/2003 at 11:23pm, Matt Snyder wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
Re: mountains out of molehills/little-toe-chemo-therapy. The text of The Impossible Thing is, IMO, quite a molehill. If I told you that all those pieces of text in games that said "if you don't like the rule, just ignore it" were molehills because most people find them empowering to fun play would you be satisfied with that response?
Marco, what in the world does the Impossible Thing have to do with criticizing Ron's model because of the obscure and minute limitations IRC imposes on observations of play? To quote my fictional man, Walter Sobchak: "There is no literal connection, Dude."
So you think The Impossible Thing is molehill. Ok, that's fine. Your opinion on the matter is well known to me already. It has precisely nothing to do with the point I raised.
I know the defintions--but those examples all seem to come from a knowledge of the player's internal monolgoue. Those are not questions I've ever heard a player ask.
They do? What player? Whose internal monologue? Marco, is it so incredible to imagine that a group of people would actually say these premises out loud, even though you may not with your group? My group does this, quite vocally. Heck, we did pretty much exactly that simulationist one when we were much younger. "Guys, don't you think it'd be kick ass to see what it's like to have an evil party? Yeah, cool!" It was exploration of situation. Expressed outloud. Premise and everything.
Just because your experience is that of unspoken Creative Agendas does not prove that these examples are unrealistic or hard to grasp. I think those examples are quite palatable.
To me, the resulting game-play looks the same (expecially true, as I said) if the action resembes something one might find in literature. I don't think you can have it both ways--but I find telling which question someone other than I am asking an exercise in Cold Reading at best and that autistic-assisted-typing thing at worst.
I don't know what else to say, Marco. You're telling me that you see the observable instances of play, and you can't distinguishamong them. I think you're being to hard on yourself, and too limiting. I suspect you see an instance of play, then start wondering about whether Player X intended this or that. Forget about intent! If that's what you're doing, just stop letting your thoughts about intent kill your observations about actual play events. Just don't think about it anymore! Don't get hung up on it. It's unsolvable, and causing you more grief than good.
If you can confidently tell me you know you're a simulationist, then you clearly aren't having a hard time judging your group's instances of play. Is your difficulty of evaluating Narrativism such that you haven't ever played Narrativist games? That you aren't confident saying you did? What? If you aren't confident with identifying that, then how can you be confident saying you're a staunch Simulationist?
Also, what has resembling literature got to do with anything? Therein lies madness. Forget comparing sessions to Tolkien. RPGs are not 1000-page trilogys, or even 30 page short stories or whatever. Games might simulate the genre in pastiche, or recreate the process of addressing a Nar. premise about good an evil. Both look like Tolkein. So what? Forget about that, seriously. It only leads to more confusion, I say.
1. It is my observation that simulationist play (the play I've described in actual play) generated story at the same time as play (I can't see how it would be any other way). Is story-later based on knowing the mind-set of the simulationist (Fred is a simulationist so he only recognizes the story as story after the session is over?). How could anyone know that?
Whoa, I didn't exactly say narrativism was producing "story" and no other modes were. I said narrativism was producing a story that it answered the moral question right now. That answering stuff, as I tried to say above, really isn't complicated or mysterious, either.
Think about playing Riddle of Steel (Premise = "What are you willing to kill for?"). A situation arises. You can think, "Hmm, what would my character do?" make a choice, then act. Chances are you can see this as either Sim. or Nar. Or, you can think "Hmm, is my character willing to KILL in this situation RIGHT NOW?" decide, and act. This is answering the premise. You swing the sword. Snicker-snack. Once we all see the act in play, we can evaluate that. "Wow, that guy's a cold-blooded bastard! Or a hero. Or whatever. Premise answered. Narrativism. Neato!
Also, Marco, how do you know that it wasn't narrativist play you've experienced? Did you or did you not answer / illuminate / resolve a specific moral uncertainty? If so, then it was narrativist. If not, then it was not narrativist. Easy, peasy.
If, however, your simulationist game prioritized some genre fidelity or a particular kind of exploration, yet still produced a "story," then, sure, it was story happening now, but not Story Now (as in capitalized to show what we're priortizing).
I really don't know how else to answer it for you, Marco. You seem to have a terrible time coming to grips with "Narrativism and story now = answering the moral question premise of the game Right Now." That's all there is to it.
2. If a scene gets started and then due to some congruence of events doesn't wind up going anywhere or doesn't pan-out in a narrative enhancing fashion (writiers drop chapters all the time) was that section not Narrativist? And when did it cease to be so? Postmously when the particiants realized that it wasn't enhancing story?
If a scene, due to some congruence of events, doesn't wind up panning out in a gamist fashion, was that section not Gamist? When did it cease to be so? Posthumously, when the participants realized it wasn't a Step On Up proposition?
Does thinking of it in those gamist terms help clarify at all?
The only answer to the question of "does a thing cease to be Narrativist" is: Yes, when the players aren't addressing the premise, the instance is NOT Narrativist. If the players weren't addressing the premise, then they've either wasted each other's time or, perhaps, drifted the game to another agenda for that instance. <shrug>
Let's assume they're all on the same page, they're a coherent group who agreed to sit down and play, say, Sorcerer. Likely, they've wasted each other's time in that they did stuff that went no where. So what? No biggie. Next time, they'll have learned to employ some techniques better. Cut the scene, keep the bangs rolling, etc.
In the end, if they keep doing this, keep playing in a way that "ceases" to be narrativist, then they aren't playing narrativist, are they? They're drifting to something else. <shrug>
How could you tell the difference from a simulationst not wanting to play something that isn't relevant to situation (i.e. I've not gamed out using the restroom in simulationst play).
Marco, please, please stop worrying about the physicality of observation and its medium. You leaving the room and missing some subtle queue does not somehow blur the game from Narrativism to Simulationism. Only one is happening at a time, agreed? If you miss an instance, you'll get the next one. Or the one after that. Or you won't, the game will suffer for it, and you'll still have learned something.
These questions about IRC and leaving the room, etc. are pointless, and they reek of paranoia that missing some instance of play will doom a game. As both Ian and I said, instances are observable, they need NOT be observed. Your, um, unique situations in which you or some IRC player might miss something are bizarre. They aren't really relevant to the bulk of healthy play. They are only about you (or some hypothetical IRC individual) missing something. So what? Over time, you'll (he'll) self-correct and learn more.
For heaven's sake give yourself and players in general more credit about your capacity to observe stuff and to make you own common sense judgments about Creative Agendas. It's not a science, and you will inevitably get it wrong, whether because of your own deficiency, social problems, bad Internet connections, taking a crap or whatever! You have the power to observe; it is not superhuman and infallible. Over time, you'll put it all together into an understandable point, and then you can put into motion some decisions about your hobby.
On 11/15/2003 at 12:39am, greyorm wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
Marco,
My name's not on the list, so no, I'm not answering any specific questions, per se, but providing an observation that you can take as you will, which I hope will help you. This is a little long, so please stick with me.
It looks to me as though you missed the Narrativism bus, and now you're standing on the corner complaining that you're not getting anywhere, so there must be something wrong with the bus, and accusing those people who are getting somewhere on it that they're in some fashion misguided.
"There is no bus."
"I'm on the bus."
"There is no bus. The bus is just a creation of your mind."
"I'm on the bus, real or imagined, but it's really, really taking me somewhere."
"How can an illusory bus take you anywhere?"
I'll return to this example momentarily...
In short, I see this as purely a perceptual problem from your end. There is certainly no shortage of people whom understand Narrativism and in examining a number of your questions above would do much as I'm doing:
Scratching one's head and saying, "Unh, it's OBVIOUS. Why are you even asking?" Especially when one considers that many of these questions have been asked, some in round-about ways or not as directly, by yourself for the past year(?) and more importantly answered clearly.
As an example of this "missing the obvious," the IRC question -- it boggles me. What? No GNS because the participants are not face-to-face? You're basically stating that individuals on IRC cannot be engaged in any sort of interpretable social activity or behaviors, that all interactions and results are somehow negated because the players are not physically located next to one another.
That's just...well, ridiculous. And there isn't any nicer way to put it. The fact that it's ridiculous is just so obvious that the question really can't be responded to, because...where do you start? There's so much more there than just GNS talk.
Discussing why the question is obviously ridiculous would entail dealing with some very odd perceptions about reality on the part of the questioner that may not even be possible to address by almost anyone.
So, you're failing to grasp the ideas and the resultant conversations that would by necessity have to emerge, with specific results, in order for discussion to progress aren't happening because no one really knows where to start.
Hence the whirlpools Ron brought up...around and around, spinning off into other little whirlpools.
Social context happens in IRC, it's unmistakable, limited by the medium to an extent in that certain cues are not available...but the social behaviors are all there. They aren't even crippled by the medium, they're channeled through it -- like radio -- different than an FtF session, but there nonetheless.
The bus example above would be a microcosm of the current situation, particuarly the last line...the speaker can't accept or understand how a fake bus is really, really taking someone somewhere, despite the fact that it is. The attempt to reconcile these is causing communication breakdowns.
This is definitely a real problem; but theory can't account for the variable of someone who just doesn't understand it. This doesn't mean the theory's wrong or incomprehensible, however -- much of physics is just like this to certain laypersons, even explained carefully.
Frex, in one basic physics class I took, there was an individual who simply could not understand that the sound you heard might be produced earlier than you heard it (ie: a jet flying over, the sound of thunder)...no matter how much or how you explained it to them, the person couldn't conceive of a sound not being heard when it was made.
That is, the concept of their not being able to hear sound waves travelling towards them until the sound waves arrived, boggled them.
The problem was not the theory, however, the problem was this person's perception and certain assumptions they were constantly making about how the world worked, assumptions which conflicted with the theory and appeared to create "holes" in the theory where there were none.
Something similar is happening here: you're presuming too much, or ascribing traits to items which those items have not explicitly been given.
The key to reaching understanding is in identifying the sub-context in your own thoughts. That is, rather than asking, "Why does this work this way when?" and not seeing how the answer works you need to ask yourself about the structure and properties of the elements you've created the question from -- so you instead ask, "Why do I think this means this can't do this?"
To put all that more simply: identify and question your most basic assumptions.
In the above example, the individual's problem with not understanding how they could not hear sound waves approaching them was because they made the basic, unconscious assumption that sound waves were objects in a physical sense, rather than...sound waves. And that because they were objects, she should be able to "hear" them coming because they were making noise.
And that's not all that difficult an assumption to understand a layperson making, really.
You're on about someone having Narrativist goals in mind but only seeing a record of "only in-game text: GM: 'Make a Spot roll.' and the log is kill the monster, get the treasure, repeat, would you never be able to say it was Gamist play?*"
So, what's so different about that than an FtF game where all you see and hear are the exact same? I'm sorry, but there is none, that's all you have to go on...and hence why I'm saying it's ridiculous: body movement is not going to reveal Narrativism, a guy reaching for the chips is not going to indicate Gamism, only the actual events of play, statements made (whether spoken or typed...and with or without verbal cues...in IRC, the verbal cues don't matter, and if there is misinterpretation, they're hashed out via text) will over time reveal actual method.
There's social behavior occuring through the medium of text dialogue, and that text dialogue is the only social behavior that can be observed, hence it is the only social behavior occuring. The internal and unobservable states of the participants (including "what they meant when") cannot be assessed except through anything except text, including clarifying text.
That's the social context, the interaction, and that's all there is in that mode of socialization.
As you can see, this is a little whirlpool...now we're discussing group social dynamics via electronic media, one which could easily create other little whirlpools of "what if" and "how about."
Anyways, simply: intent counts for shit. Which you know...yet your question above hinges on the intent and internal dialogue of the players as an important vector. Now, follow this up with spoken intent counting for shit -- unless backed by accordant behaviors. Observable, provable, measurable stuff.
That is, I can say all I want that "My intent is not to hurt anyone," and it doesn't matter if I'm running around cracking people's skulls with a lead pipe...I'm hurting them. Maybe I believe I'm not hurting them but curing them, but that isn't the point, and off we'd go into a whirlpool.
NO. Take it at face value.
But these are all word games, and the word games we end up playing when discussing things are an attempt to force everything to make sense from the established perspective...without examing the established perspective as the incorrect item.
This is much the same problem you and I had while discussing The Impossible Thing Before Breakfast -- the assumption on your part was "Nobody really plays that way, so it doesn't exist. All play based on it is functional play because it has already solved TITBB in order to play," yet such a take clearly missed the point and was wrong, even if it was logical (ie: sound waves are "objects," thus I should be able to hear the noise of their approach).
Now, Marco, I don't want you to take any of this as an insult to your intelligence. I know you are quite intelligent, however, sometimes there's just things that people don't get -- frex, math and chemistry are my weak points, I absolutely sucked at them in college (the "flunking" kind of sucked), but I'm quite intelligent and well-read, particularly in science and logic. Point being, there's nothing wrong with the sciences, but with my learning and understanding of them.
So, for example, your question about the use of "Story" in the term "Story Now" when "Story" has been identified as problematic is another example of missing the obvious and not grasping the actual utilization and function of the terms.
Well, why call it a "floppy" disk? It isn't floppy! There are many terms like this in the computer industry. Non-intuitive terms whose meanings are obscure when examined from the point of the term -- but those terms are shortcuts used to reference ideas, not to describe ideas.
The same exist in all professional industries, but you seem to blow right past this and bring up the use of a non-intuitive term as centrally problematic because of its connotations. But it should be obvious at this point: it's a term, a catchphrase to reference a complex concept...it's technical jargon, not the concept itself.
You're missing the obvious, ascribing ideas and functions and behaviors to things which they do not contain. The problem is perception. The problem is whirlpools and word games.
I know you're trying to understand, but maybe you're looking to the wrong source for understanding. Maybe you're examining things backwards. The bus is going somewhere; if it is going somewhere, it must exist. You must stop trying to figure out how the illusory bus is going somewhere.
On 11/15/2003 at 2:02am, John Kim wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
greyorm wrote: It looks to me as though you missed the Narrativism bus, and now you're standing on the corner complaining that you're not getting anywhere, so there must be something wrong with the bus, and accusing those people who are getting somewhere on it that they're in some fashion misguided.
First of all, I am really pretty shocked at how people are responding to Marco here. My comments on Marco's questions will go in another thread (since I think this one lacks focus), but Marco's questions have been polite and IMO rather probing into points raised in recent threads. The condescension in many of the responses is totally unwarranted.
Matt Snyder wrote: I don't know what else to say, Marco. You're telling me that you see the observable instances of play, and you can't distinguish among them. I think you're being to hard on yourself, and too limiting. I suspect you see an instance of play, then start wondering about whether Player X intended this or that. Forget about intent! If that's what you're doing, just stop letting your thoughts about intent kill your observations about actual play events.
...
How do you know that it wasn't narrativist play you've experienced? Did you or did you not answer / illuminate / resolve a specific moral uncertainty? If so, then it was narrativist. If not, then it was not narrativist. Easy, peasy.
Maybe you just haven't seen the tricky cases? For example, I played a game (a playtest of Shadows in the Fog) with Gordon Landis, who is also a Forge regular -- and afterwards we discussed it here. Basically, we went back and forth on whether it was Narrativist or Simulationist. I brought up a bunch of moral uncertainties which came up during the game and player's responses. Gordon thought that it might be Narrativist, but overall he thought that those moral uncertainties weren't prioritized sufficiently and he thought it was Simulationist.
Maybe someone can cleanly distinguish between the two, but I don't think it's "easy, peasy".
Forge Reference Links:
Topic 7297
On 11/15/2003 at 2:38am, Bob McNamee wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
Edit: cross-posted with John
On observances of GNS decision making...
Remember that the vast majority of RPG decisions will produce similar observed decision for players of G,N,or S... (attack the evil guy or whatever)... but certain decisions are where the 'rubber meets the road' where the decision made will be different depending on what mode the Player favors...that's where the really useful observable event is, even though most of the previous decisions made by the player were made in their usual GNS mode.
Watching their choices when in critical decision points over time is one way to determine what their GNS preference is.
On 11/15/2003 at 4:36am, Christopher Kubasik wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
Hi Marco,
Just so you know, I already planned on answering the questions you posed.
Except for why Matt believes there's no way to distinguish one story being better than another. He and I disagree. But I've never discussed the matter with him and make no claim to know his mind on this matter.
I will, however, address the issue of people believing there's no way to judge one story better than another.
Christopher
On 11/15/2003 at 5:23am, greyorm wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
John Kim wrote: First of all, I am really pretty shocked at how people are responding to Marco here. My comments on Marco's questions will go in another thread (since I think this one lacks focus), but Marco's questions have been polite and IMO rather probing into points raised in recent threads. The condescension in many of the responses is totally unwarranted.
John,
Since my post was specifically targeted as an example, I felt it necessary to respond to the accusation.
I'm sorry, but I don't see it. In fact, I specifically loaded my notations with statements such as: "It looks to me as though..." and "...but maybe..." and stated up-front that this was not an attack on or questioning of Marco's intelligence.
The point of my post was not to explore (again) the questions raised, but to bring to light a possible reason why there is no connection with the answers already given, particularly since I see the answers already given in a number of instances as more than adequate and satisfactory.
This is why I find no company with your assertion that "probing points" have been brought to bear, and perhaps that is where you are seeing the condescension? I see many of the points raised by Marco as rehashes of old conversations already answered, but (as Ron states) unsatisfactorily for Marco for some reason.
If "here's where you're wrong, does this help you understand?" is condescending I fail to see how any useful dialogue or debate could ever be engaged in, as it would appear simply the act of attempting to locate and point out the possible source of the problem is impolite.
Regardless, someone has to be wrong; in being wrong, someone's ideas are going to be "put down" in some fashion...no way around it. Has everyone's skin around here become that thin of a sudden that constructive criticism or even behavioral deconstruction for positive purposes is now called condescension?
"Just answer my questions, don't analyze their source," is not remotely workable as a basis for discussion, especially in cases such as this, where just answering the questions has gotten neither side closer to understanding the other.
A religious fundamentalist walks into an evolutionary biology class and starts asking questions: "this doesn't work because" "that doesn't work because" "this doesn't make sense because" and so forth. Yes, you're going to question his motives, especially when he discounts existing, proven theory based on ideas that have no place in the theory.
Why? Because he's starting with completely different premises and trying to fit those into the theory (ex: God made the world in a literal seven days) resulting in what-ifs and whirlpools.
The only way for the fundamentalist to come to an understanding of evolutionary theory is for him to re-examine the base ideas upon which his questions and difficulties stand and how/why those are causing problems with understanding the problem at hand.
Is Marco a fundamentalist? No.
Is the same sort of disconnect going on? I think so.
Thus, I'll leave it to Marco to decide for himself whether he finds my post condescending or helpful, even if it appears "judgemental."
On 11/15/2003 at 4:34pm, Marco wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
John: Thanks. I look forward to seeing your answers.
Matt: The reason I care about the medium is this:
When you describe a game as Narrativist you are not talking about the events in play--you can't be. You must be describing the totality of the experience with the focus on the actual reactions/engagement of the players.
Why? Because if I describe a series of in-game events (as I do in my write-ups here on actual play) no one can say if they're Narrativst or not, right? The last one I did where we, as players, had to make an agonizing decision as to what we were willing to risk in order to live in a rational world was described by Valamir as "being like Myst where we walked around and looked at pretty pictures but didn't interact with much."
So clearly that sort of description wasn't enough to determine, amongst other things, levels of player engagement--player interaction--and in-game decision making.
This happens over and over (see John's Water Uphill game).
The panacea for that, on these fora, is either to say "I'd have to be there to see the players and play" or "I'd have to ask a lot more questions to know what the players and the group were doing socially at the time those in-game events occurred."
But what if there's no *there* there? What if the shared imaginary experience exists only as an IRC log between two people: GM and player. Then how do you make that determination? Maybe you can't. Maybe you need the video feed?
But that's important.
It's important because the very definition of Narrativist play doesn't deal with intent but rather observable behavior as it pertains to social reinforcement amongst the group.
I'm going to say it again, because that's the key point and if I don't, I'm afraid it'll be missed:
The very definition of Narrativist play doesn't deal with intent but rather observable behavior as it pertains to social reinforcement amongst the group.
Because it doesn't deal with intent or internal state of the player, you can't ask him: what'd you prioritize? To stick a Narrativist label on the actual play you have to know who was reinforcing what.
And if you can't then you could have a vast amount of actual play that any reader can see deals almost solely with the address moral questions and such but you can never say it's Narrativiist--because the in-game actions and in-game context and in-game events aren't relevant.
Note that in Ron's most recent example he says the play is simulationist if the group agrees that all Gunnar will ever be is X. Over IRC with no meta-channel, how could you possibly know that?
And that's the *definition.*
I think you're assuming that a Narrativist game is one where the play answers a moral question and that's an easy answer--and it's, as I've discovered, quite wrong. But yes, if that were the case, then it would be "easy peasy."
If none of the above made sense, then look at your own post: you said if the observer judged game-play gamist but I could point to a series of address-of-moral-question decisions then I might be "playing incoherently" in that we aren't all doing the same thing.
That implies that I think I am, and can, point to a series of premise-addressing things--but because the totality of the play, other players, it really would be 'Gamist.' (I specified 1-on-1 in my quote and you missed that--even as you quoted it). Also note that this is essentially (AFAIK) the invention of a term--incoherent has applied to game rules before. Dysfunctional has applied to play--but incoherence hasn't (again, AFAIK).
In an instance of "incoherent play" (where everyone is functionally prioritizing different modes) how do GNS lables (which must apply to the totality of play with reinforcement amongst the particiapnts) work?
-Marco
On 11/15/2003 at 4:44pm, Marco wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
Matt Snyder wrote:I know the defintions--but those examples all seem to come from a knowledge of the player's internal monolgoue. Those are not questions I've ever heard a player ask.
They do? What player? Whose internal monologue? Marco, is it so incredible to imagine that a group of people would actually say these premises out loud, even though you may not with your group? My group does this, quite vocally. Heck, we did pretty much exactly that simulationist one when we were much younger. "Guys, don't you think it'd be kick ass to see what it's like to have an evil party? Yeah, cool!" It was exploration of situation. Expressed outloud. Premise and everything.
Just because your experience is that of unspoken Creative Agendas does not prove that these examples are unrealistic or hard to grasp. I think those examples are quite palatable.
To me, the resulting game-play looks the same (expecially true, as I said) if the action resembes something one might find in literature. I don't think you can have it both ways--but I find telling which question someone other than I am asking an exercise in Cold Reading at best and that autistic-assisted-typing thing at worst.
It's not that I don't think people wouldn't say that--it's that, and you can ask Raven and Contra about this, it doesn't matter what they say--it matters what they do. Both in-game and at-the-table. Sure, their comments might be in line with the rest of the social-enforcement and observed prioritization--but they might not--those comments have almost no weight.
See, if there was a score-card that said "comments like this are key" I'd be down with that--but I'm told repeated that no such score-card will ever exist. All the important signs are ephermial (vaguely described reinforcement). It's all in the eye of the beholder.
If no one says what their agenda is, how do you tell exploration of situation from Narrativist play when the situation is strongly focused on a player decision on a moral issue?
-Marco
On 11/15/2003 at 5:11pm, Marco wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
Matt Snyder wrote:
If you can confidently tell me you know you're a simulationist, then you clearly aren't having a hard time judging your group's instances of play. Is your difficulty of evaluating Narrativism such that you haven't ever played Narrativist games? That you aren't confident saying you did? What? If you aren't confident with identifying that, then how can you be confident saying you're a staunch Simulationist?
I've no idea. I think I like play where there's some challenge, where there are interesting worlds/events/situations to explore, and where there are important moral questions I get to answer during play.
But, you know, I get a pretty clear signal here that I must be a Simulationist.
My most enjoyable play has taken place with strongly and (I'm told) coherently designed Sim-game systems. Using Valamir's (and most of the board seems to agree with him) right-tool-for-the-right-job test that seems imply that I'm a simulationist.
The fact that the Narrativist designs seem tightly constraining to me (they don't seem to address other aspects of play I like) speaks to a Sim-priority, yes?
That my descriptions of play I enjoyed (I'm told) are rail-roady sim-games (I've gotten PM's very explicit on this) seems to indicate that I find myself happiest in Illusionist play (which is a form Sim).
It's not that I'm sure of anything--it's that everyone else that seems to be (which is reflective of how I see GNS analysis).
Whoa, I didn't exactly say narrativism was producing "story" and no other modes were. I said narrativism was producing a story that it answered the moral question right now. That answering stuff, as I tried to say above, really isn't complicated or mysterious, either.
Even the most morally thematic novels involve some set up--during that there is no answer of a moral question. But the story that's being created does answer it. This is identical to Exploration of Situation where the situation resembles one that you might find in a story.
The game's I've written up here, as far as I was concerned, built on their plot at every instant of play. I, as a player, wasn't always sure how the scene was going to turn out in terms of consciously addressng a moral question (does the fact that I was okay with that uncertainty make me a Sim player? Your description of the credo Story Now seems to speak to that--but I doubt it).
Maybe it's that you don't think about Sim exploration of situation much: in that mode of play (IME AFAIK) the players will not often be doing things irrelevant to the situation (unless, you know, they're roleplaying their character's non-plot moving reaction to the situation--something I would think Narrativist players would applaud). To an observer (me anyway) it will look like the plot is moving towards a morally themed climax at every moment.
So would Sim Exploration of Situation be Story Now too? Sounds like it to me. Maybe you can be clearer about the differences (I'm sure it has to do with what the group is reinforcing along the way--but, again, in an IRC scenario, how would you--a qualified GNS judge--make that determination as a fellow player getting nothing but the in-game log?)
-----------------------------
As to the mountains and molehills: my point was that what you consider a molehill, I consider a mountain and vice-versa: I was pointing out that it's all a matter of perspective.
If I told you "Matt, don't worry about all that in-game fluff text: any group that really wants to play will figure that stuff out--there are clearly more ways to read it right than wrong" you wouldn't go "oh, I was making a mountain out of a molehill" you'd go "hey, it caused me problems and therefore *I* think it's important."
If I kept repeatedly telling you that you were making something out of nothing, would you, you know, become more receptive to hearing that over time? No. And rightly so.
-Marco
On 11/15/2003 at 5:18pm, Marco wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
Bob McNamee wrote: Edit: cross-posted with John
On observances of GNS decision making...
Remember that the vast majority of RPG decisions will produce similar observed decision for players of G,N,or S... (attack the evil guy or whatever)... but certain decisions are where the 'rubber meets the road' where the decision made will be different depending on what mode the Player favors...that's where the really useful observable event is, even though most of the previous decisions made by the player were made in their usual GNS mode.
Watching their choices when in critical decision points over time is one way to determine what their GNS preference is.
So I know a decision is important because I know what GNS mode the player favors?
And I know what GNS mode the player favors because I've been able to determine this by knowing which decisions are important?
That seems circular to me.
Is there a measure of a critical decision? That'd be a definite statement. How do I, as an observer, identify a critical juncture--
and most importantly could I do that with just an IRC log of a game? Or would I need web-cams on the players in order to do so (to, I guess, observe body language, since they aren't capalbe of "reinforcing" each other's social agenda outside of that channel they're communicating with).
-Marco
On 11/15/2003 at 5:33pm, Marco wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
greyorm wrote: Marco,
My name's not on the list, so no, I'm not answering any specific questions, per se, but providing an observation that you can take as you will, which I hope will help you. This is a little long, so please stick with me.
--snipage--
As I can tell, following you:
a) you think I'm telling people they aren't getting anywhere. I don't get that. Maybe you can be specific where you see I'm doing that?
b) You think I accused you of something. I'm not sure what. I didn't see how your (text-book?) Narrativist-requirement-in-game example pertained to address of moral question in anyway--but maybe you could elaborate on that?
c) You are essentially saying "you don't get it so ... you don't get it and maybe you should give up?"
I didn't start this thread (and I do think my questions are on topic for it).
Ask yourself: Why did Ron limit the list of respondees? Why does John (who's nobody's dummy) find the questions interesting and you don't?
And why did Jack Spencer start the thread? Why have a Narrativist essay at all? Even Ron has suggested I wait for it. I found the Gamist one enlightening and ground breaking.
But you run an IRC Narrativist game (IIRC) so there's something I'd like to ask you about it: if I looked at your trasnscript how would I judge that it was Narrativist? What points would show me that vs., say, Exploration of situation? Could you provide examples? They'd be in black and white then.
And, I presume, as unambiguous as you feel the issue is.
-Marco
On 11/15/2003 at 5:41pm, Ron Edwards wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
Hello,
I did not limit the list of respondees. Anyone who feels qualified is welcome to participate. I named some people who would be good candidates, off the top of my head, only because they had to rearrange their outlooks in some fashion along the course of our interaction.
This thread is becoming a beast pit, largely because you've planted yourself in it and set yourself up to go bat-bat-bat against all comers. Frankly, that is a lousy goal.
People should contribute, and you can take or leave whatever you want from their contributions. This isn't an attempt to "take you down" or an arena for you to defend yourself in.
Do you or do you not want to learn something? That's the point. Either what's provided works for that purpose, or it won't. But I'm past feeling any need to convince anybody about (e.g.) Narrativism, and feel no obligation to explain any aspect of my thinking about role-playing unless the person wants to know.
Do you want to know? Then enjoy the vast range of responses, and, as I say, pick and choose what works for you. If you don't, then there's no reason to read any of it.
That is the only behavior I'm going to tolerate on this thread. Everyone who's posted, if you were grading into beast-pit mode, stop posting. Your contribution is on record; be done. Everyone else, post if you'd like, or don't; no pressure.
Best,
Ron
On 11/15/2003 at 6:27pm, Ian Charvill wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
Marco wrote: and most importantly could I do that with just an IRC log of a game? Or would I need web-cams on the players in order to do so (to, I guess, observe body language, since they aren't capalbe of "reinforcing" each other's social agenda outside of that channel they're communicating with).
I may have overemphasised the need for video footage - though that certainly would help for a complete picture.
With just the IRC log you could take cues from, amongst other things:
The amount of time players spent on various scenes.
Overt textual cues - I'm guessing there's nothing to prevent players on IRC typing "Cool!" or similar.
Players (including the GM's) selection of scenes.
The tendency of players to kibbutz on other people's scenes.
In all of the cases you would be looking for patterns.
While it's true that GNS can only be assessed by social reinforcement and engagement, all roleplaying is social all of the time. The line "I smash the ork scuzzball with my axe" contains both game information and social information about the level of player engagement with the act.
HTH
On 11/15/2003 at 7:25pm, Marco wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
Ron Edwards wrote: Hello,
This thread is becoming a beast pit, largely because you've planted yourself in it and set yourself up to go bat-bat-bat against all comers. Frankly, that is a lousy goal.
Best,
Ron
Ron,
If you thought I was out of line with a response to an answer, let me know where. I, for the most part, have been very happy with some of the content of the answers here--some of them have brought up points I'm thinking on. Some of them have confirmed that my points were relevant to begin with.
My choice of phrase of "limited the respondees" was a poor one, taken from Raven's statement that he wouldn't respond based on not being on the list. I saw his post saying "these answers are obvious and mostly pointless"--I know from PM that other people don't agree that it's all as clear as he says.
I don't see this thread as especially beastly.
-Marco
On 11/15/2003 at 7:47pm, Marco wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
Ian Charvill wrote:Marco wrote: and most importantly could I do that with just an IRC log of a game? Or would I need web-cams on the players in order to do so (to, I guess, observe body language, since they aren't capalbe of "reinforcing" each other's social agenda outside of that channel they're communicating with).
I may have overemphasised the need for video footage - though that certainly would help for a complete picture.
With just the IRC log you could take cues from, amongst other things:
The amount of time players spent on various scenes.
Overt textual cues - I'm guessing there's nothing to prevent players on IRC typing "Cool!" or similar.
Players (including the GM's) selection of scenes.
The tendency of players to kibbutz on other people's scenes.
In all of the cases you would be looking for patterns.
While it's true that GNS can only be assessed by social reinforcement and engagement, all roleplaying is social all of the time. The line "I smash the ork scuzzball with my axe" contains both game information and social information about the level of player engagement with the act.
HTH
Ian,
I very much like reading your posts. I think your statements are clear. Let me get back to something you touched on:
You had an analogy with two bands--I can see you listen to both--but I need a large sample size and lots of data to tell which you like more, right? That's a good analogy--and it makes a good point. A large enough data-sample will show a preference over time.
That's the whole idea of "I'd have to be there at the table," I think.
But here's where I run into trouble with that.
As I said, what I see as Exploration of Situation--when the situation resembles a story*--also looks to me identical to address of premise. The "story" has themes. The players take action. Something happens. Usually what an observer might call the climax addresses the moral choice and resolves situation at the same time.
In your analogy you deal with one band or the other. In the actual gaming situation, I'm saying I'm always dealing with both. And I don't see any way to tell the difference unless I'm the person making the decisions and then it's crystal clear to me--but useless in terms of the theory.
Does that make my point of question clearer--I need to distinguish "which band you're" listening to before I can start telling "which one you like more."
Now looking at the IRC-log example (and, I'm glad, discarding the video cameras):
When someone types "Cool,", how do I know what Creative Agenda they are reinforcing? I want to stay away from hypotheticals--so I'll just say this: measuring the game type by the number of "cools" (or say number of seconds spent in a scene, or whatever) and then using that to score the game would require:
a) firstly categorizing the in-channel-actions into one of the three modes ("I weep for the princess"== Sim Exploration of character). Then giving it a player-engagment "point" for the "Cool's" received. This, it is said, isn't possible.
b) You would need to know what the more ambiguous measures meant by way of being encouraging or discouraging.
If I see the players spending a lot of time going through a haunted house are they being gamist-cautious, sim-setting-explorationist, or nar-bored but don't want to lose their characters to a trap.
For the first two longer times are bonus. For third, longer times could mean the player is kicking around hoping something interesting will happen or at least waiting for the scene to move on (unless you want to say "for narratiivist play, they'll *move* the scene themsleves" in which case it's a strong vote for empowerment as a key issue--which two posters agreed it wasn't especially).
But that's backwards. When the player says "Cool" after an ork goes down and the attacker posts he might be praising the winning of the fight, the flowerly description used, or the fact that he finds the fight really interesting in context of when and where it occurred in the game.
As I see it, it could be any one of those three or more (and Cool is different from a player kibitzing in another player's scene which could indicate bordeom and a wish to move the game along or interest and a this-is-so-cool-I-need-to-get-into-it) mentality.
-Marco
* When I say "the situation resembles a story" I mean that the start conditions and resultant play produces a string of events that if written up would reasonably make a book about something. And I even mean "a fairly decent book about something."
Decent is certainly a matter of perspective--since literature's value is judged against cannon and critics (which do not exist to judge RPG stories--so I agree with Matt that it's hard to judge one story better than another as created in an RPG). But an argument about that would go elsewhere.
On 11/15/2003 at 8:10pm, Matt Snyder wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
Marco, I'd take Ron's advice to say my bit and let you sort it out. Except, I already decided to do that. If you have further questions about my positions, rather than further defenses of yours, let me know here or by Private Message. I stand by what I said; I see no need to carry on the beast pit exchange. Enjoy!
On 11/15/2003 at 9:34pm, Valamir wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
But, you know, I get a pretty clear signal here that I must be a Simulationist.
My most enjoyable play has taken place with strongly and (I'm told) coherently designed Sim-game systems. Using Valamir's (and most of the board seems to agree with him) right-tool-for-the-right-job test that seems imply that I'm a simulationist.
Actually Marco, I think you are making this alot more difficult than it needs to be.
Quite frankly, I think you spend alot of your play making Narrativist decisions and if you'd acknowledge that most of your objections would go away.
Instead, you are convinced that you are a tried and true, pure blooded Simulationist so every time you see someone say "narrativism is X" you say "wait, I do that all the time, but I'm a Simulationist...so that CAN'T be all there is to Narrativism". And then you spend alot of time and effort trying to figure something out, that pretty much you've already figured out.
There's a line in Ron's Sim essay that says "Shit, I'm playing Narrativist". It goes on to say:
Many people mistake low time-scale techniques like Director stance, shared narration, etc, for Narrativism, although they are not defining elements for any GNS mode. Misunderstanding this key issue has led to many people falsely identifying themselves as playing Simulationist with a strong Character emphasis, when they were instead playing quite straightforward Narrativist without funky techniques.
It has long been put forth here that Narrativism has been around as long as gaming has. Ron points at alot of old gaming texts and sees evidence of Narrativist play. Some of those texts are pretty darn "old school" and don't remotely resemble the "funky" stuff like one finds in MLwM et.al. So what does it matter what games you've playing to do so.
The idea that you've been playing games designed to deliver Sim and using them for narrativist play is hardly new, unique, or Earth Shattering.
You're a card carrying member of the Vanilla Nar brigade, Marco. I really don't know why you spend so much time fighting that.
On 11/16/2003 at 12:11am, Marco wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
Bob McNamee wrote: Edit: cross-posted with John
On observances of GNS decision making...
Remember that the vast majority of RPG decisions will produce similar observed decision for players of G,N,or S... (attack the evil guy or whatever)... but certain decisions are where the 'rubber meets the road' where the decision made will be different depending on what mode the Player favors...that's where the really useful observable event is, even though most of the previous decisions made by the player were made in their usual GNS mode.
Watching their choices when in critical decision points over time is one way to determine what their GNS preference is.
I want to take another look at this--since I think I may have missread you on my first pass.
This seems to stipulate that at some point during actual play there will be an in-game decision where decision a) will show the player to be Sim while choice b) shows the player to be Gam--is that right? Is that what's meant by "the decision made will be different?"
This means the telling decisions will be those where there is a clear case where a decision to "Step on up" is notedly different from one to "address premise" or "explore X."
If this were true then it seems one *could* determine GNS mode of play simply by looking at a transcript of what the characters did (what decisions they made).
This would be very interesting. I have a couple of observations.
If my understanding of what you are saying is correct then the GNS analysis would be simple and clear: it would based on those critical decision points--what other information would you need? Other people have said repeatedly there needs to be more information--what is that?
Looking at the text of these other responses, it is clear that there is a body of information that is contained in an understanding of the social interaction of the group:
What is the critical minimal sub-set of additional information? That, as I see it, is where GNS analysis becomes riggorously clear.
But if I do have you right and there are identifiable rubber-meets-the-road decsions then I have another question: doesn't this require that the analysist and the decision maker see the choices and their implications as well as the range of possible decisions in the same way. That is, that I think a choice to take action X will be a choice to address premise where as a choice to take action Y will be a decision to explore situation. I have to be certain you see the situation the same way.
And I'm not sure that's a reasonable expectation, unless I am both the observer and the person making the decision.
By way of example: I watch someone make a decision to lose a fight against an inferior when personal honor is on the line. To me this seems like address of premise. If the person doing it is exploring their character then the determination of GNS mode seems to be completely subjective to the analyist. And I certainly haven't learned their preferred mode.
-Marco
On 11/16/2003 at 12:30am, C. Edwards wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
Hey Marco,
But what if there's no *there* there? What if the shared imaginary experience exists only as an IRC log between two people: GM and player. Then how do you make that determination? Maybe you can't. Maybe you need the video feed?
It's important because the very definition of Narrativist play doesn't deal with intent but rather observable behavior as it pertains to social reinforcement amongst the group.
You can only observe what is made accessible for you to observe. For instance, when we play over irc in Indie-Netgaming we use two channels, an Out Of Character channel and a Narration channel. All the standard player banter and discussion of mechanics and whatnot takes place in the OOC channel. A lot of social reinforcement takes place in that OOC channel. If a participant is "quiet" and doesn't type much in the OOC channel that in itself has connotations that concern the social reinforcement.
So, what I'm saying is that the irc gaming environment is only short one major thing when compared to the face-to-face gaming environment -- body language. Which, while important, isn't the end all be all of observing player behaviour. And you might be surprised how much emoting goes on in that OOC channel in response to play and the other players behaviour.
-Chris
On 11/16/2003 at 1:28am, John Kim wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
C. Edwards wrote: You can only observe what is made accessible for you to observe. For instance, when we play over irc in Indie-Netgaming we use two channels, an Out Of Character channel and a Narration channel. All the standard player banter and discussion of mechanics and whatnot takes place in the OOC channel. A lot of social reinforcement takes place in that OOC channel. If a participant is "quiet" and doesn't type much in the OOC channel that in itself has connotations that concern the social reinforcement.
So, what I'm saying is that the irc gaming environment is only short one major thing when compared to the face-to-face gaming environment -- body language. Which, while important, isn't the end all be all of observing player behaviour. And you might be surprised how much emoting goes on in that OOC channel in response to play and the other players behaviour.
OK, so what does not using the OOC channel connote? That seems to be the case which Marco is getting at. I agree that OOC can be used for clearly non-in-game social cues. But let's consider the case of an online game which has no OOC chat. Whereas face-to-face table-top play always has OOC body language and cues, in IRC it is at least possible for there to be no "there there", as Marco puts it. For example, in MUD play I almost never used OOC channel. Does this say something GNS-wise?
So assuming you have a game where the players don't have OOC chat but instead only post in-game descriptions, what does this imply for GNS? Is it possible to determine the GNS mode? As a related case, one could also consider live-action play where everyone stays in-character.
Personally, I am skeptical of the huge importance placed on OOC cues. If I am analyzing a game, the combination of in-game play and player/GM intent are of prime importance to me. Social cues are definitely important as well, mind, but I'd look at them after the other two (although that is partly because they're a little harder to get after-the-fact or for someone who wasn't there).
On 11/16/2003 at 11:10am, Marco wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
John is on target with my question.
And to go even further: If a player says in meta-game "I really liked that last scene!"
How do you know from which perspective (G or N or S) the player appreciated it?
Can you tell just by looking at the in-character channel and the guy's actions in the scene?
If so, then why do you need to know he liked it. It was an ... S scene--so if we had 6 of those and 3 G scenes then, hey, by a 2:1 ratio the game is rated S (no matter if the audience on the other side of the cloud was bored silly by the S scenes--the rating is correct).
-Marco
On 11/16/2003 at 6:04pm, greyorm wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
Marco wrote: a) you think I'm telling people they aren't getting anywhere. I don't get that. Maybe you can be specific where you see I'm doing that?
It's an analogy. The "not getting anywhere" is a substitute for certain of your statements which appear to underlie the attitude that "this doesn't work because" or "this is incorrect because" in regards to certain points of Narrativist theory.
It is much as with your past grievances towards the utility and even existance of TITBB, which basically discounted its utility or even its status as a revelation of the source of previous problems for a good number of regulars on this board.
To wit, you call it a molehill, when for many it is nonetheless provably a mountain. By analogy, you call the bus illusory when people are in fact riding it somewhere. Hence the source of the problem.
I'm hoping that's clear enough this time, since I won't be repeating myself.
b) You think I accused you of something. I'm not sure what. I didn't see how your (text-book?) Narrativist-requirement-in-game example pertained to address of moral question in anyway--but maybe you could elaborate on that?
Actually, I'm going to ask you to elaborate -- what are you referring to?
I've examined my post and see nothing that indicates I believe you to have accused me of anything. This, to me, is simply another example of what I brought up in my previous message: ascription of ideas to elements which those elements do not contain.
c) You are essentially saying "you don't get it so ... you don't get it and maybe you should give up?"
While that is a choice you could make, that was not my suggestion. My suggestion to help your understanding was as printed above: identify the truth or fiction of the source of your beliefs which bring these questions forth, rather than seeking to have the questions answered and finding such unsatisfactory when they prove adequate (or more than) for most others.
Hence my use of allegory in regards to the physics student and the sound waves.
I didn't start this thread (and I do think my questions are on topic for it).
Sorry about that. My bad. But I still feel the questions are, in most cases, ridiculous in their obviousness...particularly your continued focus upon the IRC medium and its supposed contextual lack. But as I have already covered that in my previous post, I see no need to rehash it again.
Ask yourself: Why did Ron limit the list of respondees? Why does John (who's nobody's dummy) find the questions interesting and you don't?
He didn't, but that was covered. I can't speak for John, but I can make a guess: John and you have typically found many of the same stumbling blocks in your reviews of points of the theory, and he thus finds the questions interesting for the same reasons you do. And I don't think either you or John are dummies, as indicated, so intelligence isn't a factor or an issue in any of this and you can drop all reference to it now because it's a red herring.
And why did Jack Spencer start the thread? Why have a Narrativist essay at all? Even Ron has suggested I wait for it. I found the Gamist one enlightening and ground breaking.
I suggest you wait for it to; but I certainly hope my advice can help you identify the source of some of your confusions, since (thus far) the straightforward approach of simply answering the questions has failed.
Given that, we can either accept the answers are wrong -- which I think has been suitably shown as unlikely given the ratio of individuals who understand it as opposed to question it -- or we can accept that the questioner's own mental constructs of the situation contain unintended elements which are causing them to stumble. As above regarding my statements about the bus, sound waves, et al.
In regards to the need for an essay if so many understand it, the answer is that the essay will help provide ease of informational dissemination for newcomers. Sure, most of the regulars understand the theory competently, but that is because they have been discussing it for years. The essays will provide an excellent overview for the newcomer for whom the GNS essay itself is inadequate in its explanations of the nuances of the theory, being more comprehensive (and more up-to-date) than the essay itself.
But you run an IRC Narrativist game (IIRC) so there's something I'd like to ask you about it: if I looked at your trasnscript how would I judge that it was Narrativist? What points would show me that vs., say, Exploration of situation? Could you provide examples? They'd be in black and white then.
I could, but then I would have to provide you with the logs of the games for the past few years. I cannot point to specific instances which declare the game to be Narrativist beyond all doubt, though I can point to instances of situations in which the choices can be construed most likely as Narrativist. Taken over time, these choices made and situations in which they arose indicate the game to be Narrativist.
In fact, you might note my second post in No-Death and Trollbabe, where I briefly reference an Exploration of Situation game I used to run prior to my current game.
For me and my players, there are very clear and distinct differences between the mainly Narrativist game I'm running now and the EoS games I used to run -- even though none of them are up on Forge theory in any way.
From player behavior and approaches to play to my attitude and choices while GMing the game, there is so much so of a difference that there is no possibility of confusing the two games as similar in style and play, no more than I could confuse red and white.
I know you very much want concrete examples, but I am deliberately avoiding them for the same reasons I am against the elephant's ear in my next post (should be up shortly). As well, overviews of events and reactions/choices/behaviors in my game can be found in the threads about my 3E game posted here to Actual Play, so I see no need to retype all of it.
Forge Reference Links:
Topic 90659
On 11/16/2003 at 6:09pm, greyorm wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
John Kim wrote: Whereas face-to-face table-top play always has OOC body language and cues, in IRC it is at least possible for there to be no "there there", as Marco puts it. For example, in MUD play I almost never used OOC channel. Does this say something GNS-wise?
First off, you and Marco are mangling the environment of the IRC medium so badly that I just want to scream. How are you doing so?
You unfortunately (and unintentionally) cloud the issue, John, by comparing IRC and MUDs. IRC is not a MUD, however; they are dissimilar envrionments with dissimilar expectations of play, player relation to the environment, and even engines. IRC is simply an electronic table; a MUD, however, is a virtual environment, more akin to a computer game or MMORPG than an actual table-top RPG.
Thus, while there may be no OOC chatting in an IRC game, the chances of such occuring are so remote and slim as to be nonexistant -- I would, in fact, have a much better chance to win the lottery than for such to occur.
All IRC games I have ever participated in have contained OOC chatting as part of the "coversation" in the regular channel, which otherwise included IC comments, actions, dice rolls and so forth. Indie-netgaming is the first such game I have been involved in on-line in over ten years of on-line play where there was explicitly an OOC channel seperate from the game channel.
The very context of MUD play is, in itself, a telling point of play. MUDs are immersive, social-acting activities. Those who enjoy such activities stick around, those who don't
In fact, you may as well ask yourself the same question of LARPs as you have of IRC, for the former HAVE NO SOCIAL/OOC CHAT because you are to remain in character. Does GNS now not apply or become obscured? No. Remaining in-character is part of the implicit/explicit social contract of such venues of play.
So let's please drop all this "Well, what if?" crap...it's providing nothing more than strawmen to bat around, and thus producing no useful dialogue or understanding -- why? We're not talking about real situations, which is all the model can deal with; it isn't designed to handle created situations.
As was stated previously by (I forget who), just because you can ask, "Well, what if I dropped this coin and it just hung there in mid-air?" doesn't mean you've found a problem with the theory of gravity.
Marco wrote: And to go even further: If a player says in meta-game "I really liked that last scene!" How do you know from which perspective (G or N or S) the player appreciated it? Can you tell just by looking at the in-character channel and the guy's actions in the scene?
Precisely. And if you can't, then you just don't have enough information. Wait for more scenes and decision points. Eventually a pattern will emerge. You can't tell what an elephant looks like by examining its ear, even if the ear is right there, right then, and it's the thing. Blind men and elephants...I see where Ron's coming from with that.
If so, then why do you need to know he liked it. It was an ... S scene--so if we had 6 of those and 3 G scenes then, hey, by a 2:1 ratio the game is rated S (no matter if the audience on the other side of the cloud was bored silly by the S scenes--the rating is correct).
Talk about over-analyzation! And yet more "what if monkeys flew out of my butt?"...I'm sorry to be so derogative, but hurling strawmen around just won't get us anywhere, because it never has, and I think I've made myself quite clear on what I think of the use of such as a tool for discussion.
I'm perfectly willing to talk about actual, real live play, however.
On 11/16/2003 at 6:28pm, C. Edwards wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
Hey Marco/John,
All I can really do is repeat myself. You can only observe what is made accessible for you to observe. Lacking body language, lacking OOC communication, determining a GNS mode is going to pretty damn difficult if not impossible.
Marco, you really seem to want GNS to be something that it is not and, while I sympathize, you're not going to grok it while you're focusing on irrelevancies.
John Kim wrote: Personally, I am skeptical of the huge importance placed on OOC cues. If I am analyzing a game, the combination of in-game play and player/GM intent are of prime importance to me.
If it works for you, John, that's great. But I've got to know, how do you (as in John Kim) determine intent? How do you get down to the very bottom most layer of intent, the deep stuff that is actually relevant to GNS? How do you know if that was REALLY that player's intent?
Granted, there's a tone of sarcasm to those questions, but I really would like to know the process you go through to determine intent.
-Chris
On 11/16/2003 at 7:58pm, John Kim wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
greyorm wrote: First off, you and Marco are mangling the environment of the IRC medium so badly that I just want to scream. How are you doing so?
You unfortunately (and unintentionally) cloud the issue, John, by comparing IRC and MUDs.
Sorry. Marco initially suggested IRC as a case, but I've never actually played over IRC. I have played in a few multi-user (MUD/MUSH) environments. I don't see that I'm clouding the issue, since I don't think the issue is specific to IRC as a protocol. The point is just about cases of roleplaying where there aren't OOC cues. If MUD and LARP play make better examples, then let's discuss those instead.
greyorm wrote: The very context of MUD play is, in itself, a telling point of play. MUDs are immersive, social-acting activities. Those who enjoy such activities stick around, those who don't
In fact, you may as well ask yourself the same question of LARPs as you have of IRC, for the former HAVE NO SOCIAL/OOC CHAT because you are to remain in character. Does GNS now not apply or become obscured? No. Remaining in-character is part of the implicit/explicit social contract of such venues of play.
Right. I brought up exactly the case of LARPs earlier. But you haven't answered the question. So some LARPs have remaining in-character as part of the social contract. What does that say about Creative Agenda? Is this inherently Simulationist? Narrativist? If not, then how can one distinguish between the two if the players stay strictly in-character?
If you want a specific example, I can try to write up some more on say the Tekumel LARP event that I was in at ConQuest a few months ago.
On 11/16/2003 at 8:46pm, John Kim wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
C. Edwards wrote:John Kim wrote: Personally, I am skeptical of the huge importance placed on OOC cues. If I am analyzing a game, the combination of in-game play and player/GM intent are of prime importance to me.
If it works for you, John, that's great. But I've got to know, how do you (as in John Kim) determine intent? How do you get down to the very bottom most layer of intent, the deep stuff that is actually relevant to GNS? How do you know if that was REALLY that player's intent?
Granted, there's a tone of sarcasm to those questions, but I really would like to know the process you go through to determine intent.
Well, first of all, for the case of myself I know my intent pretty well. This is pretty important as far as using GNS for my own techniques and behavior.
For other people, well... I ask. Is this really that tricky? I'm not saying that this is 100% accurate, because people can lie or be confused -- but in most cases it can be very informative. Nothing's perfect. Body language and other cues can be confusing or misread. I'll certainly fold anything else I know about a player when I think about her intent, whether in-game or out-of-game -- and this includes OOC cues during the game. But the important thing is the intent. Suppose a person gives confusing cues during the game but I'm convinced through conversation and outside knowledge that his intent is X. I will act based on my best guess on his intent -- not based solely on OOC cues during the session.
On 11/16/2003 at 9:02pm, Marco wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
greyorm wrote: a substitute for certain of your statements which appear to underlie the attitude that "this doesn't work because" or "this is incorrect because" in regards to certain points of Narrativist theory.
It is much as with your past grievances towards the utility and even existance of TITBB, which basically discounted its utility or even its status as a revelation of the source of previous problems for a good number of regulars on this board.
To wit, you call it a molehill, when for many it is nonetheless provably a mountain. By analogy, you call the bus illusory when people are in fact riding it somewhere. Hence the source of the problem.
I'm hoping that's clear enough this time, since I won't be repeating myself.
You've always been very clear. My mention of TIT was to point out that what you see as a mountain I see as a molehill--it was in direct response to Matt saying "you're making mountains out of molehills."
Your bus analogy is broken (as most analogies are--and if you rely on them it will simply produce more confusion).
I think Narrativist play works just fine--you're imputing things to me I'm not saying. What I don't think works fine is the specific definition there-of.
So long as you keep making statements like "if you're worrying about your character's effectivenss you're playing Gamist," I'm with you. It's when I make them and am told they're wrong that I disagree.
Look at Matt's examples of Nar vs. Sim play. Both start with the player thinking about what he's going to do--and then doing it. They don't refer to group support for it. They imply observably distinguishing behavior, etc.
That's what I question. Not that someone can have a great time addressng moral issues.
Actually, I'm going to ask you to elaborate -- what are you referring to?
I've examined my post and see nothing that indicates I believe you to have accused me of anything. This, to me, is simply another example of what I brought up in my previous message: ascription of ideas to elements which those elements do not contain.
Maybe you thought it was John accusing you. I'm not sure. I thought you felt it was me. That's why I asked for clarification. I had mentioned you specifically in my post as well.
I know you very much want concrete examples, but I am deliberately avoiding them for the same reasons I am against the elephant's ear in my next post (should be up shortly). As well, overviews of events and reactions/choices/behaviors in my game can be found in the threads about my 3E game posted here to Actual Play, so I see no need to retype all of it.
Okay. Not to be snarky but are you certain that you *could* present them? Or that you'd present a lot of stuff that you felt pretty sure was Nar/Sim/Gam but that maybe wouldn't be clear to someone else?
That's what' I'm saying I'd expect.
-Marco
On 11/17/2003 at 1:34am, Matt Snyder wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
Marco wrote: Look at Matt's examples of Nar vs. Sim play. Both start with the player thinking about what he's going to do--and then doing it. They don't refer to group support for it. They imply observably distinguishing behavior, etc.
I see what you're getting at regarding my "What will I kill for?" example, Marco. It could have been worded more carefully on my part. The important part of that example is definitely not the introspective "Hmm, should I kill this guy?" on one player's part. The "rubber meets the road" when, you know, the player's character actually does kill the guy. This isn't some inner monologue! Players roll dice, use mechanics, talk out loud to each other, etc. Stuff actually happens and people interact to make the action happen. This stuff happening is the observable stuff that matters. This stuff answers the premise, not some silent introspection on the player's part. It is an observable instance by all folks at the table. It answers the premise, and is therefore narrativism.
On 11/17/2003 at 2:23am, Christopher Kubasik wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
Hi Matt,
I'd like to go even further with this and note another kind of observable behavior.
In an example of Actual Play from Jesse's terrific Gothic Fantasy game, sometimes one of the folks at the table (the players, the GM) would say, essentially, "My guy does this," and the other folks at the table would do this really please, kind of creeped out - "ooooh." Or even, under the breath, "Oh, that's great." All this in reaction to characters making choices in addressing the premise.
That's another example of social reinforcement. Again, the model is about how the players are interacting with each other, not how the characters are interecting with each other. In the examples from Jesse's game, we were clearly open to expressing pleasure at the disturbing implications of some of the choices we created for our characters.
That's observable. That's reinforcing a Creative Agenda, it's issuing approval around the table for how the Exploration is going. It's a clear example of the model in action.
Best,
Christopher
On 11/17/2003 at 2:37am, Ron Edwards wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
Hello,
I should like to point out that John's example of "intent," both towards himself and others, are exactly the same as my discussion of observable Social Contract reinforcement. And I'm on record, many times, as saying that people are perfectly free to call that "intent" if they want to.
In other words, John just said what I've been saying all along and actually aligned with everything in my model, rather than falsified or contradicted any part of it.
This point, as far as I can tell, eliminates 100% of John's objections/concerns with my model.
Best,
Ron
On 11/17/2003 at 5:43am, John Kim wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
Matt Snyder wrote: The important part of that example is definitely not the introspective "Hmm, should I kill this guy?" on one player's part. The "rubber meets the road" when, you know, the player's character actually does kill the guy. This isn't some inner monologue! Players roll dice, use mechanics, talk out loud to each other, etc. Stuff actually happens and people interact to make the action happen. This stuff happening is the observable stuff that matters. This stuff answers the premise, not some silent introspection on the player's part. It is an observable instance by all folks at the table. It answers the premise, and is therefore narrativism.
Hmmm. This is some sort of disconnect. It seems to me that here you're supporting my (and I think Marco's) perspective -- because you're talking about in-character action as being where GNS determination happens. You suggest that the important thing is whether the PC actually does kill the guy -- not the oohs and aahs of other players when he does so.
The problem I'm having is the idea of OOC feedback being considered more important than in-character action. Thus the test case of online or live-action play with no OOC, for example -- and much other discussion. Suppose you have a game where people always applaud when Nar stuff is done, and sigh or look bored when Sim is done -- but they keep failing to address Premise in their character actions. I don't think this should be considered Nar. Like you say, the important thing to me is when the rubber hits the road. The fictional narrative itself needs to address premise. Saying that it's important or applauding when it happens is secondary.
I'm not quite sure how OOC cues have taken on primary importance. I'd theorize that maybe it has something to do with wanting to promote games where Premise is fairly explicit (like Sorcerer). But to my mind, if play consistently engages the players and the actions of the characters reflect on moral issues -- then that ought to be Narrativism, regardless of what mechanics they are using or what the OOC cues are (or if there are any).
Ron Edwards wrote: I should like to point out that John's example of "intent," both towards himself and others, are exactly the same as my discussion of observable Social Contract reinforcement. And I'm on record, many times, as saying that people are perfectly free to call that "intent" if they want to.
In other words, John just said what I've been saying all along and actually aligned with everything in my model, rather than falsified or contradicted any part of it.
This point, as far as I can tell, eliminates 100% of John's objections/concerns with my model.
This could be. Note that my point is that the reinforcement is secondary, and that the primary thing is what the cues are supposed to reinforce: i.e. in-game action. (I have some other concerns, but that'll be on other threads.) It seems to me that some people have been pretty strident at times about the primacy of OOC-cues. This may be an outgrowth of discussion more than your essays per se. But it seems to me to be an important distinction.
On 11/17/2003 at 7:03am, Christopher Kubasik wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
John,
Now its getting kind of wierd. You and Marco are coming up with "test" cases that, as far as I can tell, actually never occurr in on-line gaming.
Now you offer a hypothetical game where no one is addressing Premise, but "always applaud when Nar stuff is done, and sigh or look bored when Sim is done." John, you can't applaud Nar stuff if the players aren't addressing Premise -- because Nar stuff *is* addressing Premise.
These hypotheticals and not-of-this-world "test cases" are failing the biggest point of the model... Real world play with real world people.
I mean, I could say, "Imagine an alien race that liked travelling to different worlds and crafting massive bones to leave under layers earth. What would *that* to do the theory of evolution?" But it'd sort of pointless.
In the same way, to keep *imagining* the situations that have no basis in reality (and I mean, simply, basis in reality -- ie, they actually don't exist in reality and are only hypothetical), is simply dragging all this round and round.
Why not talk about your actual games? Using all the data that the model asks for and we'll see what happens?
Best,
Christopher
On 11/17/2003 at 7:54am, John Kim wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
Christopher Kubasik wrote: Now you offer a hypothetical game where no one is addressing Premise, but "always applaud when Nar stuff is done, and sigh or look bored when Sim is done." John, you can't applaud Nar stuff if the players aren't addressing Premise -- because Nar stuff *is* addressing Premise.
Chris, you are applying absolute black-and-white criteria which IMO never occur in real-world games. You are suggesting that the game is either (1) perfectly 100% Narrativist and Premise is always addressed, or (2) Premise is never addressed and thus players never have a chance to applaud. That's a castle-in-the-sky criteria, IMO.
There are plenty of games, I think, which have rare Narrativist moments. I hear stories like this all the time... There was a cool dramatic bit in one session of the campaign, and everyone loved it and applauded. However, stuff like that didn't keep happening. Instead they kept having kind of dull undramatic adventures, but despite the fact that everyone was discontented, nothing changed. They either didn't know how or weren't willing to generate compelling material, even though they enjoyed it. I'm sure this sounds familiar to many people.
If you want a specific example, I'd point to the GURPS Space game that I played in during college. Everyone loved the dramatic arc which my PC Cain went through, when he confronted his self-hatred as a cold-blooded assassin and went through horribly destructive means to save his artificial brothers / sisters. However, the other players never generated such material on their own. None of the other PCs had much life, IMO. My impression was that after I left, it turned into a fairly cut-and-dried fight against the agency.
Christopher Kubasik wrote: Why not talk about your actual games? Using all the data that the model asks for and we'll see what happens?
With all due respect, I have talked about my actual games -- like my Shadows-in-the-Fog playtest, for example. But despite having cited it in this thread, everyone seems to keep picking on the hypothetical examples and not saying a single word about the real example. At the time of my report, Mike Holmes was the only person to comment, other than me and Gordon who were participants.
Forge Reference Links:
Topic 7297
On 11/17/2003 at 12:50pm, Marco wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
Chirstopher, and Raven,
The reason the IRC with no meta-channel is brought up is illustrated in this thread perfectly:
C. Edwards says: 'If that's all you've got, you may not be able to tell what mode play was in.'
Christopher in the other thread says: "You may be below the threshold of information necessary to tell."
Ian says: "Well, I think there's enough data to determine mode from stuff like selection of scenes or time spent."
John (at least) thinks that Matt implies: "Yes, there's enough because stuff actually happens (dice get rolled)"--but doesn't either in his original example or his clarification discuss the social-reinforcement that he thinks will be clear.
I say again for emphasis:
On this thread there isn't agreement as to whether the pure-IC-Channel-Game or always-in-character-larp contains enough data to make the distinction.
That's my question. Definitionally does it or does it not?
Also note Matt's example:
Think about playing Riddle of Steel (Premise = "What are you willing to kill for?"). A situation arises. You can think, "Hmm, what would my character do?" make a choice, then act. Chances are you can see this as either Sim. or Nar. Or, you can think "Hmm, is my character willing to KILL in this situation RIGHT NOW?" decide, and act. This is answering the premise. You swing the sword. Snicker-snack. Once we all see the act in play, we can evaluate that. "Wow, that guy's a cold-blooded bastard! Or a hero. Or whatever. Premise answered. Narrativism. Neato!
He says this gets cleared up when the player does it: when the rubber meets the road and dice get rolled:
This isn't some inner monologue! Players roll dice, use mechanics, talk out loud to each other, etc. Stuff actually happens and people interact to make the action happen. This stuff happening is the observable stuff that matters. This stuff answers the premise, not some silent introspection on the player's part. It is an observable instance by all folks at the table. It answers the premise, and is therefore narrativism.
Okay, I'm still listening: what is this stuff? How do I determine the Sim case from the Nar case by this stuff? If the answer is the player says "I'm addressing the question of Would My Character Kill for Glory?" then, well, maybe that's enough to be narrativist--maybe (I think Raven would disagree--if he sees Gamist behavior the statement doesn't stand)--but if all you have is a statement of in-character action, is that enought?
For example:
"I kill him." == Sim.
"My character, tears in his eyes at the act he's committing, slices his throat. == Nar.
I see no reason to think the above is the case--but, if all you have is in-character action statements (and statements of rule-calls "I roll a 6, that hits.") then is a long, on-going, string of such actions enough to determine mode?
I'd say the answer is no. But as I said, this has not clearly been stated yet. In fact, some of the posts seem to imply the opposite.
That's why saying I'm mutilating IRC is missing the point, Raven. The point is to use the extreme example to prevent lots of stuff that's not pertinent to the question from being brought up.
-Marco
[Also note: from Ron's recent post, Matt's example seems broken in GNS terms. Ron says he will never understand a statement "But my character would ... " and Matt's example begins with "Would my character ..." (which seems to be answered with: "my character would.")
Ron seems to put sub-text in his posts that I miss. Looking hard, I assume the 'But' in his example means the player is playing Sorceror and is trying to overr-ride the GM by saying "But *my* character wouldn't make a humanity roll now." This is pure guesswork. Maybe he finds Matt's example nonsensical.
To me, Ron's statement is taken in the form of:
GM: "Marco, you wanna see this guy dead?"
Marco: "But my character wouldn't--he's done stuff like that before so he'd understand it."
Seems like pure Sim-exp-character to me. If Ron doesn't understand the above statement that says some things about the model too, IMO]
On 11/17/2003 at 2:16pm, Ron Edwards wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
Hello,
State of the art: John, you're now arguing the other side of the case, or rather, the side of the case which has been presented by me and others for some time. Its key features are (1) Creative Agenda is indeed potentially fluid, and it's certainly negotiated, as it's constructed by real humans; and (2) social and interactive cues establish and reinforce Creative Agenda. Put "GNS" for Creative Agenda, and that's what I've been saying for years.
I don't see any reason to debate against my own argument. John, if you can see any basis for continuing to debate, it'd be good to know how your position is different from mine. As it is, your points aren't backing Marco up at all, as I see it.
Regarding your actual play accounts - they also illustrate my point perfectly. We (the audience for your posts) know nothing about how many people are in your group, how often they meet, who's related to whom, who's romantically involved with whom, who drives whom where, or any such thing. To me, this means we haven't received actual play accounts from you. I've read ... echoes of actual play, that's all.
I often ask about these things from people who post about their games. When Eric (Eric J.) presented an aggrieved call for help, including an elaborate account of what happened to the characters in play, it never occurred to him to point out that the group included his brother and that they were all under 16 years old. That turned out to be key (duh). And it's similarly key when the point is a more casual intellectual analysis rather than a cry for help.
Marco, I maintain my original position so far. But with one change: I thought of one thing that I can say that might make sense about your points.
It's this: all of your objections regarding Narrativism necessarily apply absolutely equally, and in every detail, to my take on Gamism. The social reinforcements are the same. The relationship of "personal agenda" to the imagined events is the same. Even many of the Techniques are the same. If that structure in Gamist play didn't raise your ire and doubt - and I recall that the Gamism essay drew great praise from you, in a thread you started just to say so - then why does it do so for Narrativist play? They are socially, emotionally, and procedurally being described in near-identical terms.
I now regret, very much, that I did not stick to my original guns that people are simply not ready to discuss the details of any GNS category or combination until they demonstrate full understanding of the model itself. I haven't seen that from you, your editorial suggesions notwithstanding. That's why this thread has been a humpbacked mess.
I suggest a new thread to discuss the model, per se. Narrativism, along with any other Creative Agenda imaginable, stands or falls with it.
Best,
Ron
On 11/17/2003 at 3:32pm, Christopher Kubasik wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
John,
With all due respect in turn, I am not suggesting a game is 100% Nar or the Premise is never addressed. In your example, you wrote the group "keeps failing to address premise." I read that as they *don't* address the premise -- since they keep failing to do it. You might have meant something less severe than that, but in my book, if I keep failing to do something, I'm not actually doing it. I'm sorry if I misunderstood your intent.
As for your Shadow and Fog example. You're right, you did mention it. I apologize for making it sound like you hadn't. I had read the thread, and in my response for the big Story Now piece I was working on I referenced it several times... so I was responding to it... But in my head (!) My mistake.
I'll say this about that, though... With the limited information you've offered, everyone was on record as saying it was Sim... You wanted to argue otherwise, but for reasons everyone already argued, your concerns just don't hold water.
Second, I'm with Ron about needing to know a lot more about the group: the Social Contract, the Creative Agenda and so on. Marco can quote all he wants people who disagree with me about being able to name GNS matters with a *character's* single example of action.... But I think that's wrong. That doesn't mean the model is wrong. It just means that some folks are still working on grokking the model. The truth is, that information is vital.
I can only offer, John, that *more* information about more Actual Play, and more information about the Actual Play would be swell.
And now, thanks. I've gained a lot from these discussions. But I'll have to be passing for a while. If there are any questions to me haning in any of these numerous thread, please forgive my not getting back to them. Got some other stuff to take care of.
Best,
Christopher
On 11/17/2003 at 6:08pm, contracycle wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
Marco wrote:
That's my question. Definitionally does it or does it not?
I'll bite. Yes it does.
If that, for all intents and purposes, is the entirety of the game as it exist(ed), then there it must be.
Lets take a step back, though, and consider the infamous "instance of play". This deliberate ambiguity is highly relevent, and for the purposes of this discussin I'd like to address two issues:
1] The instance as "moment", instant. The singular events that catch the participants up in the excitement of play.
2] Instance as a period of observation of play, the duration of observation required to come to a more-than-ill-informed opinion.
The first of these is often used in example, and I think they often are indicative. That is, the second form of "instance", the long term observation, will be looking for these events, as well as what is going on in betwen them.
I'm going to speculate on some numbers I would require for my own satisfaction, themselves of course my own opinion, for the duration of observation. I'd say, sucking my thumb vigorously, for table top play I'd want 100 hours of observation before I'd be in a position to articulate a first opinion. At that point I'd be willing to openly discuss a "first impression", but I'd still leave a lot of room for doubt.
Looking back on the players I have played with longest, I'd guess I have a few thousand hours at least with some of them, conservatively. Of these, I have pretty firm opinions as to their style.
It should be noted that I also consider the possibility that players may have a prefferred subordinate mode, and that players might migrate between modes over time. If data arises which contradicts my expectations, I just try to incorporate it.
How much data would I need from an IRC log?
First let me say I think such a log has to be considered a viable sample. If thats the entirety of the game as conducted, thats what it was, and if CA was addressed it should be visible. If there is an OOC channel, that must also be considered to be a component of the game record and be considered alongside the IC channel.
I'm not sure how much data to ask for, not being familiar with IRC play. I'd still expect the rate of information exchange between participants to be pretty low, so I might look for 5 or maybe 10 times as much temporal duration as with FTF play, something in the region from several hundred to a thousand hours. Methodologically, I would like to experiment with sorting statements by colour coding the participants, an then read through it several times paying attention to each particpant, that might prove interesting. If there is an OOC channel, I'd want to do this with that displayed alongside and with both chanels time-stamped every five minutes. Then every statment can be arranged in a table so that the sequencing is apparent.
It would be interesting to see such an array. Do you get patterns of peaks and furries of activity, or short flurries? Do all participants contribute equally, or to what proportion? Do the size of the individual submisions and sequences of exchange show any patterns? We should be able to detect the usual forms of play behaviours, asusming this sort of play actually works. A dungeon crawl should be identifiable as such, with long patches of exchanges detailing mechanical resolution of set piece encounters. GNS matters should be identifiable with their own characteristics: whether a players appears to engage with a particular form of play. We should be able to detect type one instances of play in the quantity of text, the evident effort invested in its construction, and the degree to which the various participants seem concerned with he current subject matter. I'd leave those more familiar with the medium to actually construct guidelines to go by. What do you think, in the medium, would indicate "engagement"?
Obviously, as always, no estimate based on an observation, live or recorded, is anything but an opinion. But if you can identify momens of engagement, and try to track what sorts of things appear to be engaging which players when and to what degree, hopefully this will at least be an informed opinion. Ideally, you want to have a second opinion. Possibly, the player can themselves provide one.
Lets assume I've been paranoically conservative at wanting a hundred hours. Lets say I'd be willing to make a guess after an afternoons play, if I had to, assuming about 6 hours of play. I'd still want something like 30-60 hours of text play given the limitations of the medium, as I see them, maybe someone could comment on a multiplier. If you had such an organised log, I reckon you should be be able to observe something useful about the players styles, but it would be quite an exercise in text trawling. It would probably be quite tiresome.
For most purposes, your own participation should be enough for you, I think, to make an informed opinion. Can you not make out any differences between the quanitty and qwuality of the players individual engagement with the game from moment to moment?
On 11/17/2003 at 6:49pm, Paganini wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
Marco wrote: Chirstopher, and Raven,
The reason the IRC with no meta-channel is brought up is illustrated in this thread perfectly:
C. Edwards says: 'If that's all you've got, you may not be able to tell what mode play was in.'
Christopher in the other thread says: "You may be below the threshold of information necessary to tell."
Ian says: "Well, I think there's enough data to determine mode from stuff like selection of scenes or time spent."
John (at least) thinks that Matt implies: "Yes, there's enough because stuff actually happens (dice get rolled)"--but doesn't either in his original example or his clarification discuss the social-reinforcement that he thinks will be clear.
I say again for emphasis:
On this thread there isn't agreement as to whether the pure-IC-Channel-Game or always-in-character-larp contains enough data to make the distinction.
That's my question. Definitionally does it or does it not?
Hey Marco, I answered your question in this thread:
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=8699
Maybe you didn't see it? Maybe you disagree with my conclusion, but it'd be nice to have some acknowledgement, discussion, and so on.
EDIT: My post is at the very bottom of page 1, so I thought maybe it was overlooked.
Forge Reference Links:
Topic 8699
On 11/18/2003 at 1:44am, greyorm wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
Marco wrote: Your bus analogy is broken (as most analogies are--and if you rely on them it will simply produce more confusion). I think Narrativist play works just fine--you're imputing things to me I'm not saying. What I don't think works fine is the specific definition there-of.
No, I'm afraid that's not what the analogy was referring to (Narrativist play being 'broken') I fully recognize that you recognize that Narrativist play does work. But I won't pursue that analogy further since it's getting us nowhere.
Okay. Not to be snarky but are you certain that you *could* present them? Or that you'd present a lot of stuff that you felt pretty sure was Nar/Sim/Gam but that maybe wouldn't be clear to someone else?
That's what' I'm saying I'd expect.
Could I? Yes. Have I? Yes. In the threads about my Narrativist game.
Could someone interpret them differently? I suppose it is possible...but I've been mistaken for a Native American before because I have long, black hair...if you get what I'm saying?
Something I thought might bear mentioning, and others may or may not agree with this, but using GNS is an art, not a science.
Here, help me out with this Ex.Sit vs. Nar. thing, please? Give me two different groups, one playing Ex.Sit, one playing Nar. What are they doing, how are they doing it, etc. Now show me where the confusion comes in.
but if all you have is a statement of in-character action, is that enought?
The statement alone is not enough, no. There must be behavior to back that up. I would think that would have been foundational to a discussion of this subject, so why is it even being asked?
We KNOW the model functions on behavior, not intent -- it isn't even a question, it's an absolute standard -- so why is this being rehashed?
On 11/18/2003 at 3:51am, Marco wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
greyorm wrote:
but if all you have is a statement of in-character action, is that enought?
The statement alone is not enough, no. There must be behavior to back that up. I would think that would have been foundational to a discussion of this subject, so why is it even being asked?
We KNOW the model functions on behavior, not intent -- it isn't even a question, it's an absolute standard -- so why is this being rehashed?
Contra Wrote of my quote:
[concerning] the pure-IC-Channel-Game or always-in-character-larp contains enough data to make the distinction.
I'll bite. Yes it does.
If that, for all intents and purposes, is the entirety of the game as it exist(ed), then there it must be.
(and he wants a lot of data--but remember, this is definitional)
I'm not sure you and Gareth are addressing the same thing. But you seem to disagree to me. And it looks like the disagreement is on a very basic level.
-Marco
On 11/18/2003 at 9:16am, contracycle wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
We are addressing the same thing, and we do not disagree. No one statement of character action can ever be enough.
I argue that with a big enough sample, of in play behaviour whatever way that behaviour is constituted, play decisions as we understand them should emerge.
In this particular eddy of the whirlpool, the error has arisen from conflating "a statement of in character action" with "the entire observation over a significant period of time". That is precisely why I went to the trouble of outlining some firm numbers for what I would consider an acceptable period of observation.
On 11/18/2003 at 12:24pm, Marco wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
Okay, cool--the statement looks like "with enought singularly-unidentifiable points of data a pattern will emerge." That does go with Raven's statement that it was more art then science.
-Marco
On 11/18/2003 at 1:07pm, Ian Charvill wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
I was going to post on this at more length, but I think the exchange you just had with Gareth settles it. My four of five points of the kind of thing you would look for in a pure in-character IRC game all assume a number of datapoints. Creative Agenda is all about tendencies and you can't spot a trend from a single point on a graph.
Each data point has value but at the same time, they're pretty meaningless from a GNS point of view. Imagine a picture on a PC. Having information about the colour value and position of one pixel is going to tell you next to nothing about what it's a picture of. Given enough of them though, you can start to tell what it's a picture of. How quickly you can tell will depend on you an an observer but also at what pixels you have access to and what it's a picture of*. The IRC-only thought experiment is like having a mask over part of the picture. Whether you can still tell what it's a picture of just relies on how much of the picture it happens to occlude. Given that it is a thought experiment you're going to get wildly different 'can you tell what it is yet?' responses, because no one can tell how big a mask it is.
HTH
* to complete your analogy your sim exploration of situation vs narrativism example consititutes to similar but by no means identical pictures, so it becomes harder to spot the difference with more limted information.
On 11/19/2003 at 5:07am, M. J. Young wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
Ron wrote: Vincent Baker, Ralph Mazza, Joshua Neff, Jesse Burneko, Seth Ben-Ezra, M.J. Young, Christopher Kubasik, and Mike Holmes.
I made the short list.
I apologize for not coming to this sooner; I got in from UNY-con yesterday morning after driving eleven hours (not solid--stopped for gas and food, then gas again, then supper, then just to keep myself from falling asleep with an hour or so to go) at five, got the kids off to school, and collapsed for the day, then cleared out four days worth of e-mail and now am trying to catch up five days worth of forums (with a promise to my wife that I'll quit at one if I'm not done). Had I been here sooner, maybe this would all be clearer to me, as there would be fewer posts to resolve.
Marco, it is not necessarily the case that you "are a simulationist" or anything else for that matter. It is entirely possible that you're among those of us who drift. I'm narrativist when I play Alyria, and sometimes when I play in certain Multiverser settings; I'm often gamist in D&D (although I'm a conservative survival gamist--victory is living, in my view) and other Multiverser scenarios; I play a fair amount of simulationism as well. Some people always prioritize the same thing. I think of it, though, like trying to decide whether to watch a movie or play a game--both are enjoyable activities, but they are different kinds of enjoyable activities which I enjoy for different reasons. So, too, different creative agendae appeal to me on different levels. I enjoy winning. I enjoy exploring and debating and examining complicated issues. I enjoy learning and discovering (I actually like going to school; I just have to ignore the tests and grades aspect sometimes--and I also enjoy watching educational television, even when it isn't very good). You might be finding it difficult to pigeonhole yourself because you can't be pigeonholed. You might even have a group like that, which makes for wonderfully flexible play but is dratted difficult to categorize.
You're also running into the problem of congruence--situations in which any two (or all three) modes might lead to the same action. Of course if the setup presented is, "the world is going to be destroyed unless you save it", sim, nar, and gam players are all going to say, "then let's get started". I once proposed a game concept of being a member of a military unit in the jungles of Viet Nam, suggesting that in the field all gam, sim, and nar decisions are going to be terribly close in appearance. That's congruence; when it happens, it muddies the distinctions. Even there, sometimes there's divergence, and it can eventually lead to dysfunction through incoherence (and I believe I, at least, have referred to incoherent play before, meaning conflicts between players on GNS grounds).
That's a targeted response to something you wrote in a later post; I've got your first questions here and will get to them last, hopefully in something of an orderly fashion.
Marco wrote: 1. Since the "address of Premise" need not be conscious in the minds of the participants, the act of addressing is only relevant to an observer. So my questions are:
a. If the game takes place on IRC, can there be such a thing as address of Premise or can any determination be made as to Creative Agenda (assuming the shared game-space only exists in the in-game channel)? Or does "address" only happen in person-to-person interaction? Given that *only* in game actions are available to any observer. Is pure IRC play GNS-modeless (since while there's assumed to be a Creative Agenda, a given, named mode is an observational statement).
I was going to say that this is like the old question of whether a tree that falls in the forest makes noise if no one hears it; but it isn't entirely. After all, if you define "noise" as vibrations of air, it does, and if you define it as interpreted in the mind it does not. In the case of creative agenda, it exists even if it is not observed or identified.
Sometimes you can't tell what's happening in IRC; that's not surprising--sometimes you can't tell by watching a group at a table. Sometimes what's happening in either place will be so blatantly evident (e.g., munchkin style gamism) that you need about five minutes to recognize it and again as much time to confirm your suspicions (although in such a short segment it is still possible that play drifted to this for a brief time).
The point is that creative agenda is involved even when the observer can't identify it. As to the minimum amount of evidence required, that can't really be quantified. Gareth has suggested a certain number of hours, and he might be right--but there's no guarantee that you would actually have sufficient information in that time if the group wasn't terribly focused, and it's entirely possible that you would see the trend clearly long before that.
Next he wrote: b. When the action of game-play resembles a story there will always be theme and address of action/situation. How does one tell the difference between someone really interested in Exploration of a dramatic situation vs. address of premise since, essentially, both will always be happening. In other words, I see no instant of supposed Narrativist play that does not equal exploration of situation. I see no way to tell one from the other, save for empowerment.
Well, more on this in a moment, but for this moment I'll try to get some of it answered.
EoSit is generally about "what happens". We don't sit in judgment over what happens at all--we observe. It is in many ways experimental, and the results are always "interesting" in that way that is intellectually engaging but not challenging to our values. Nar is about testing our values, either by making the choices we would make or making the choices we wouldn't make, watching what happens precisely because we want to understand the consequences of moral choices. In a sense, the evil thing that a character does in EoSit isn't "evil"; it's "what he chose to do"--its moral value is incidental. In Nar, the moral value is key, never incidental.
Next he wrote: 2. Is player-empowerment important and implied in "address" (i.e. you will say the player must be empowered in order to address the premise)? If that's the case then:
a. What's the cut-off point? There's a spectrum from the-GM-watches-while-the-player-tells-his-whole-story to the-game's-on-rails-so-strong-only-the-GM-ever-speaks. If empowerment *is* an issue then presumably there's a cut-off somewhere along that spectrum. I've never seen that expressed in any way that's useful to me as someone trying to determine if play is empowered. Where does the definition draw the line?
b. Someone recently asked "how do the players overrule the GM?" in a Narrativist play discussion. Is that an important question? Should that be asked/answered for a discussion of Narrativist play?
The issue here actually is not how much empowerment the players or referee need to play narrativist, but at what point do they cease to be players at all?
I've dealt Bridge hands, and played them out, in all seriousness, alone; picking up each hand, evaluating what I can from it, making my bid, writing it down, taking the next hand, trying to clear my mind of what I know and work solely from what I can deduce, make the next bid, continue until the contract is settled and then do play--with each hand, doing my best either to make or to defeat the contract. I've got solidly gamist principles at work there, despite the lack of social context (I'm trying to impress and inform myself). I see no reason why a referee can't all by himself play a narrativist game in which the players are strictly observers--it's just that in that case only the referee is playing.
That's rather an extreme idea, but look at it from another perspective. Were we to have six people in the room, four of whom were playing a game run by the fifth, the presence of that sixth person in the room strictly as an observer would not alter the mode of play of the other five. If we reduced it to one player, one referee, and four observers, this would not change. When we get down to one player who is the referee, it still might be narrativist, as he uses the story he is creating to address the premise in his mind--it's just that the other five people in the room, whether or not they have characters, are no longer involved as players. They aren't playing narrativist because ultimately they're not playing.
They become players in a narrativist game when they've been allowed enough credibility in defining the shared space that they can make a difference in forming the answer to the moral question. That's what "address the premise" means: make a difference in forming the answer to the moral/ethical/personal question(s) raised by the game.
He then wrote: 3. Since it seems that the Narrativist description of play only says "the play was observed to [address premise]" what is the purported value of that analysis? Is the implicit assumption made that if the play didn't end in a fire-storm argument that the audience enjoyed narrativist play? Is the assumption made that the players are Narrativists?
What is the value? Especially since:
a. MJ notes that it's quite possible for a person to evidence a given type of play--but if it isn't their preferred form, they may do all kinds of things that, say, appear Gamist--but the observer must somehow correctly suss out that these are not "what really matters to them." (this seems to be the kind of intent-reading that the theory really tries to stay away from).
b. Someone (Vincent I think) notes that in many situations people may play in a vigorous, lively matter that is not their preferred one.
I'll concede that when people play in a non-preferred mode it's difficult to tell that this isn't what matters to them. You see this frequently in groups with diverse preferences coming together through compromise--we'll all play gamist for a while, narrativist for a while, simulationist for a while, as long as we all get a chance to do what we love part of the time. You'll see it in games in which the structure of the "adventure" has been defined but the players are creating scenes outside that which address what they love. An example might be a dungeon crawl game with strong gamist setups in the dungeon, but players start to create character interactions and relationships and issues back at the inn which bring narrativist issues into the game--but still they are back in gamist mode when they go back to the dungeon to line their pockets with the money that funds their extravagant lifestyles and enables them to have those other opportunities. It's entirely likely that a group of narrativist players in this situation would play gamist during the dungeon crawl and then build interesting stories back in town on what the referee or module designer thought was their down time.
Still, in that situation you can see what the players are prioritizing. When they're following the preplanned scenario, they're gamist because that's what the scenario demands of them; when they get outside of that, they leap to narrativism. Why? They do so because that's what they really want out of the game. They do the other because they don't realize that they don't have to, or because it fits with their perceptions of who their characters are, or because it fills the gaps.
I don't think it's necessarily as difficult as you suggest to identify when players are doing what matters to them.
Next he wrote: 4. If I play a game and I know I am agonizing over moral choices and otherwise acting in a way that addresses a thematic question but the play for some reason "doesn't appear Narrativist to the observer" then what's going on? Is it correct to say that the play (let's assume it's a 1-GM-with-1-player game) is judged to be Gamist is it:
a. More likely that the observer is in error if I, as a player, can point to a string of actions that everyone agrees *did* address the premise but which I seemed a bit reserved about?
b. More likely that I am playing Step-on-Up since I didn't *exhibit* the necessary threshold of excitement/engagement when making moral choices but seemed tense ('excited') when overcoming challenges?
c. Clear that I am playing Gamist because that's what the observer saw and the label only applies to observed phenomena?
First let me cop that this is insufficient information; then let me rise to it anyway.
It is possible that you are playing narrativist by preference and gamist when the narrativist possibilities don't present themselves (as suggested). It could be that your observer has confused your annoyance and upset with the possibility that the challenges raised in the game are going to derail the interesting story you're pursuing with excitement at the challenge itself.
You do get to the problem of intent eventually; this relates to that.
He next wrote: 5. People associated V:tM's talk of Story with the promise of Narrativist play. The slogan for Narrativist play is Story Now. Considering that Story is, at best, a misleading term, why do this? Is it that:
I don't want to quote the entire post, so I'll clip the choices and just attempt to answer.
The choice of "Story Now" as the banner for Narrativism confuses me, too, because I've come to accept that Story is such a loaded and misleading term (and already there have been threads here in which newcomers have assumed they knew what that meant and badly mangled narrativism based on that misunderstanding); however, hopefully the Narrativism essay will clarify it--then at least we'll understand why such a loaded term was used.
Let me address what it's supposed to convey.
It is easy in gamist and simulationist play to look back and see that a story was created, and even sometimes that it was a good story possibly having interesting moral themes.
You correctly observe that from an outside observational position you can't easily tell whether such as story "happened" incidentally or was the intent of the players. However, that is a critical difference. The narrativist is actively attempting to address the theme (and so create the story) while he's playing.
Looked at another way, the gamist is focused on overcoming the challenge. The watercooler stories he's going to tell about his game are going to be the ones in which they beat the orcs or the dragon, or solved the puzzle, or persuaded the king to fund their expedition, or something in which their prowess as players comes into play.
Here's an example that may be just wild enough to make the point. Years ago, Jan was running Star Frontiers (Volturnus modules) for Bob and me. At one point we attacked a pirate outpost, killed all the pirates, tapped into their computer, learned a lot of stuff including that there was a main pirate base two hundred miles away. We also learned that we had just captured a jetcopter capable of carrying 500 kg and six passengers. There were five of us, more than that much stuff, and two combat robots we had just gained--we didn't want to leave anything behind, and we wanted more information. We got on their communications system, called the main base, pretended we were the pirates. We told them that we had been attacked by the native monkeymen, our tech and doctor and chief all badly injured, and we needed help fast. Then we cut communications, opened the hanger, boobytrapped it, and waited. A few hours later, help arrived--a jetcopter with four pirates. We killed three in ambush, managed to gas the fourth and then question him at length--and then loaded everyone and everything into our two jetcopters, much to Janet's surprise and chagrin, for the journey to the pirate base. We bragged on that--well, twenty some years later, I'm still proud of that moment. That was gamism. I tell that story because we pulled a fast one--without a word to each other, we fell into the same plan and did an end-run around what was supposed to be a limitation built in to the module.
The point is, the fact that we tell that story says we were playing gamist, because we got excited about beating the situation to the point that we repeated what happened.
In the same way, simulationists are going to talk about the wonders of what they found, or discovered, or learned; and narrativists are going to talk about the moral and personal conflicts and issues with which they wrestled. Those are out-of-game cues to in-game creative agendae; but they illustrate the point: players will let you know what it is that really excited them about a game, if you let them.
Sure, sometimes it's hard to tell. It's still there.
It's narrativist because from moment to moment they were creating the story; they weren't much distracted from that by other things. Intent is involved (and before you jump on that, we'll get to it). It's the difference between whether players suddenly discover that they created a story and whether players were trying to do that all along.
Is that observable? It is; it isn't always clearly so. Congruence particularly makes it difficult. Yet you can sometimes see that players are trying to wrestle with issues through their in-play choices, as opposed to merely moving through the scenario the way they think it should go.
Finally he wrote: 6. Several listed examples of Narrativist play deal with player empowerment (Raven's movement-rules-make-my-character-suck example) rather than with theme or premise. How far does address Premise go in:
a. Ensuring that PC's are treated as "cool" or "allowed to do their cool moves."
b. Ensuring that PC's don't suffer un-expected, unwanted, anti-climactic, defeat?
As someone has said, these are non-issues to a large degree. In all three modes players must be empowered to do what matters to them in that mode. Games that empower gamist choices and not narrativist choices can be frustrating to narrativists, but the reverse is equally true. A bunch of gamists playing Legends of Alyria discover quite quickly that there's nothing they can do to power up their characters--every strength is its own equivalent weakness, every weakness a potential strength, and no character is really stronger than any other. You need to give players the tools to do what they need to do to achieve their goals. That means player empowerment in the right vein. It's not really the degree of empowerment, but the nature thereof.
Somewhere in this I missed the part where you observed that "intent" was emphatically not part of the model. This probably requires a bit of historic review.
The original designation of the creative agendae was "GNS goals"; goals inherently meant that toward which the players were working, and that implied motivation and intent: why do we play, and what are we trying to accomplish by playing? The problem that arose was that words like "goal", "intent", and "motivation" were easily warped out of all context into something completely useless. For some, such things had to be specific and express to have any meaning at all; for others, it was easy to say that the intent or motivation was something completely different--more specific, or more general, or unrelated--to the ideas of the theory. "My motivation for play is that I want to sleep with Jessica" doesn't fit the GNS theory at all, yet people would insist that this is what motivation means.
Ron says you can't observe or demonstrate a motivation or an intent; you can only observe a conduct. Therefore, GNS is derived from the observation of conduct. He's biologist. I'm a theologian and a lawyer; I say that you can demonstrate motive and intent--that all of that observed conduct means nothing except that it demonstrates motive and intent (and I've got hundreds of years of criminal convictions "beyond a reasonable doubt" to show that ordinary people believed the intention of the defendant was proved beyond dispute). I don't mean specific intent; I mean general intent: the players intend to address a moral question, or explore a situation, or defeat a problem; they are motivated to play by the desire to do these things.
Now, you can ask players what their intent or motivation or goal is in play, and surprisingly they often don't know--or they "know" in some sense that isn't terribly helpful ("we're going to rescue the princess"--yes, but why?). Few have ever really reflected on the question, and when they do it often becomes muddled and confusing. Any theologian will tell you (if he's worth his salt) that what people do reflects what they really believe and really want--what they say only reflects how they perceive themselves, not who they really are. Even knowing our own motives and intents can be difficult at times. So (and Ron has somewhere agreed) GNS really is about what motivates a person to play, what his intentions are, what goals he seeks, what rewards he hopes to get from play--and about the means he uses to realize those things; but the best way to get to that is usually to watch what he actually does, and over time extrapolate why (most likely) he does those things. That's his creative agenda. It is an intent, a goal, a motivation--but it's most likely one somewhere below the level of consciousness that is easier to plumb by observing conduct than by asking questions.
I hope this helps; I'm running out of time for other posts, so I'm eager to know that this has made a difference.
--M. J. Young
On 11/19/2003 at 2:57pm, Matt Snyder wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
That's what "address the premise" means: make a difference in forming the answer to the moral/ethical/personal question(s) raised by the game.
Hello, M.J. I just wanted to laud you for this excellent phrasing. I wish I had thought of that! It's succinct and imminently understandable. Oh yeah, and I happen to agree with it, of course. Thanks!
Also, as I posted on another thread, I was having doubts about the "intent" issue. You've handled it beautifully, and helped me, at least, come to a better understanding of where it fits in the model. Thanks again.
On 11/19/2003 at 3:24pm, Ron Edwards wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
Hello,
In my view, M.J. has provided anything and everything possible to answer Jack's initial query.
Jack, are you good with it? Let me know.
Best,
Ron
On 11/19/2003 at 3:46pm, Marco wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
MJ,
An excellent post both in logic and tone. It may come as no surprise that I agree with your statements about intent and raised some of my points to clarify that.
When there is an assumption of intent on the part of the players, the model works for me: play can be G/N/S even if it's not presently clear (i.e. after 100 hours of playing on IRC, I can say, well, hell, it looks like people are consistently playing "to win" so I'll call it Gamist and go with that).
When one takes the internal state of the players out of the model then it becomes "I'm making a difference in the moral question asked by the game" but because Joe the observer didn't get that, the play, by definition, wasn't Narrativist because it wasn't observed to be such. Which is goofy.
Since I believe one can infer internal state (i.e. assault with intent to kill) then that's fine.
But hinging the definition of a mode of play on what Joe, sitting next to me thinks, seems real subjective and unuseful.
So I agree.
Your take on Story Now is good (asking "What does that mean?" and being told it means "Story right now! wasn't enlightening.) The 'Now' bit is still misleading ("No set-up! There must be an answer to premise every second!") but I see what you're saying.
Despite having a long post, your comments were both insightful and easier to read than the vast majority of what came before.
It would be nice if that set the standard.
-Marco
On 11/19/2003 at 4:16pm, Ron Edwards wrote:
RE: I'd love to see an expansion of "address."
That's a failed courtesy roll, Marco.
1. M.J.'s points about intent correspond with mine. When you agree with him, you're agreeing with what I've posted multiple times. I wouldn't mind seeing that: "Ron, I agree with you regarding intent and Creative Agenda." That's part of discourse, placing your point in context with everything that's been said, not merely to the most recent reply (or to the one that didn't hurt your feelngs, etc).
2. Points made by others in the thread have tried very hard to explain concepts for you. Since no one can do X in exactly the way another person wants them to, they've had to deal with quite a bit of defensiveness and quick-fire retorts from you. I suggest that M.J.'s post accords perfectly with points made by Raven (greyorm), Gareth (contracycle), Matt, and Ralph (Valamir). When you acknowledge his post, you acknowledge theirs - and should say so.
None of this is ego. It's what we do at this place, in order to keep ideas forefront. The Social Contract of discussing role-playing.
I strongly recommend going to Site Discussion, looking up threads based my thread "The Forge as a community" there. You were absent from those discussions, now known as the Infamous Five, and it shows.
Best,
Ron