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Hi there,

Walt Freitag and I were kicking around some ideas through private messages, and then it seemed to evolve into something of general interest.

Walt wrote (the first internal quote is from a post of mine in the original thread[Code of Unaris] Don't miss this one):

Quote

QuoteI suggest that hacking is what really goes on at the role-playing table, face-to-face, a great deal of the time.

Ron, this could tie right into the idea I've been putting forward recently that the crux of Creative Agenda is "what I want from the other players that I wouldn't have thought of myself (and therefore didn't expect)." Or in other words, "hacking" in whatever form it actually takes at the table.

An unexpected strategy, an unlikely stroke of luck or unluck, seeing a connection that may or may not have existed until seen, a major resource expenditure, a creative expression of color, a player willingly raising the stakes or introducing a complication... these things can all be equivalent to "hacks" in their effects on subsequent play, right? Am I correctly surmising that that's what you were getting at in the sentence I quoted above?

Of course, I might be reading too much into this because it's so consistent with my own preferred play style. I've described my favorite no-myth technique as always having a plan in mind for what's going to happen, but allowing that plan to change just about any time another player says or does something. (More specifically, something unexpected, but I usually play with people for whom that goes without saying.) Unaris' hacking mechanism appears to be an unusually explicit realization of that process (or a very similar one).

I replied:

Quote

QuoteAn unexpected strategy, an unlikely stroke of luck or unluck, seeing a connection that may or may not have existed until seen, a major resource expenditure, a creative expression of color, a player willingly raising the stakes or introducing a complication... these things can all be equivalent to "hacks" in their effects on subsequent play, right?

All those count if they change something that was just proposed. The phenomenon I'm thinking of is any time someone says "It's a this!" or "It's like that!" and someone else just says something else, it hits everyone as better, and they proceed as if the first person had said the second thing. I see it all the time, and have seen it all the time, with absolutely no perception among anyone that it's a challenge to "authority" or anything similar.

It can happen during IIEE, during scene-setting, during dialogue, or whatever. As I see it, hacking (yay! a new Ephemera term) is defined by one person saying X and another replacing it with Y.

So your list isn't quite right - because what you listed can happen and not change anything that was just proposed. If they occur without changing what was just proposed, then they are merely additions to play.

To be absolutely clear about how I look at this, such additions to play may or may not be "No Myth." They are not No Myth if they are compatible modifications to existing elements, and they are No Myth if they are identifying a vacuum of content and filling it.

Walt replied:

QuoteOkay, fair enough. I can accept a definition of hacking that requires a change in something that was explicitly proposed. I'm just saying that this is very similar in nature to transactions in which a participant's contribution changes something that was expected but not explicitly stated as a proposition. So similar, I suggest, that I probably wouldn't bother to make any general distinction between them, except in the context of specific systems and applications such as Unaris' hacking rule.

"I pull the gorgon's head out of the bag and turn them all to stone!" says a player, and if this proposition is accepted, suddenly the expectation of an extended tactical combat is overturned. No one ever stated outright that an extended tactical combat would occur in the first place, but the PCs armed for bear striding into the villain's court as the villain's henchmen and bodyguards move into position certainly offered the prospect of such a combat (just short of being able to call it a proposed combat).

(Note: in one sense this is a poor example because the PC's action would not really be unexpected by anyone with half a brain who knew that the PC had a gorgon's head. You have to pretend that exchange took place in a universe in which the Perseus legend had never been written before.)

My theory is that such actions on whatever scale of signficance, that either overturn overt propositions, contradict expectations, or introduce new extrapolations not directly derivable from what has entered the SIS before ("Then you see a catbus approaching!") are exclusively where the participants express CA.

QuoteTo be absolutely clear about how I look at this, such additions to play may or may not be "No Myth." They are not No Myth if they are compatible modifications to existing elements, and they are No Myth if they are identifying a vacuum of content and filling it.

Hmm, not a big issue, I think. No Myth to me has nothing to do with what propositions are made; it has everything to do with how propositions are evaluated for acceptance or rejection (including, importantly, self-filtering of GM statements, when the GM has the buck). "Evaluating all propositions with no reference or comparison to any information not already accepted in the SIS" equals No Myth. Hacking in Unaris appears to qualify in all cases, because no recourse is offered the GM to reject a hack based on its compatibility with outside-the-SIS data (such as his or anyone's "plans"). In fact, I wonder about the possibility of hacks that actually cause a contradiction IN the SIS (e.g. "hack FOREST to DESERT" in just one recent statement, when several minutes' worth of forest action has already taken place).

I replied:

Quote

QuoteMy theory is that such actions on whatever scale of signficance, that either overturn overt propositions, contradict expectations, or introduce new extrapolations not directly derivable from what has entered the SIS before ("Then you see a catbus approaching!") are exclusively where the participants express CA.

Exclusively? I'm not sure about that. I'd say "identifiably," maybe, as in those moments, the CA is more exposed or more "tells" are available. Maybe this is a matter of disciplinary preferences though.

QuoteNo Myth to me has nothing to do with what propositions are made; it has everything to do with how propositions are evaluated for acceptance or rejection (including, importantly, self-filtering of GM statements, when the GM has the buck). "Evaluating all propositions with no reference or comparison to any information not already accepted in the SIS" equals No Myth.

Interesting. I think everyone has created a personalized version of what No Myth means, in large part because Fang was determined to present anything he said as an isolated and unique phenomenon. My take on it is almost entirely setting-specific in the larger sense of "setting."

But I do recognize the concept you're using the term for, and I agree, Unaris certainly focuses attention squarely on that concept.

QuoteI wonder about the possibility of hacks that actually cause a contradiction in the SIS (e.g. "hack FOREST to DESERT" in just one recent statement, when several minutes' worth of forest action has already taken place).

Damn good question. New medium, new techniques, new concepts, etc. My first way to answer this question is, how does one deal with this issue in plain old face-to-face?

Oh, and also, most setting names cannot be hacked in Unaris, e.g. "the Tower" in the 4th age. You can't hack your way out of being in the Tower.

So join in, folks! I think there's a lot of ground for useful discussion here. I'm quite sold on adding hacking, as Walt and I hashed it out above, to the lexicon as a new and important Ephemera term.

Best,
Ron

Would it still be hacking if I had to expend a resource to replace what another player had stated?  If so, isn't Universalis ultilizing this mechanic?

Cheers
Jonathan

Jonathan, the primordial example of hacking (Code of Unaris) has a whole resource devoted entirely to hacking.

In games (such as Unaris) where the number of hacks any player has is limited, I'd expect to see brinksmanship around using them, similar to how Dr. Lucky avoids his fate in Kill Dr. Lucky.

For example, I'd expect to see:

GM:  "Suddenly, a meteor plummets from the sky and kills you all."

Players: Wait wait wait...until

Player A:  "SCARES!  It scares us all, not kills us all."  Player A decrements the number of hacks he has left available.


I'd be interested to see whether this sort of hack-hoarding shows up in Actual Play.

If it doesn't, it may indicate that the limit on the number of hacks is not really meaningful.




Cheers,
Roger

Hi Roger,

I'm not sure I buy that connection you're drawing; it seems to rely on an adversarial tug-of-war over resources and game input between GM and players. Based on my experiences with "story input" mechanics (Story Poiints in Story Engine, e.g.) and highly significant dice-outcome modifiers (Karma in The Whispering Vault and Marvel Super Heroes, Hero Points in HeroQuest, e.g.) based on resources, I suggest that the available pools and how to replenish them instead become a source of positive interaction among the participants.

Fanmail, in Primetime Adventures, represents the clear heir to these kinds of mechanics - simply overt, among-player rewards which directly become extra dice. Given an aesthetic focus on Premise (i.e. Narrativist play), these mechanics are not tugged over between individuals so much as exploited by the group as a whole.

Best,
Ron

I got lost after the first two quotes (so the following may have already been said), but:

QuoteAs I see it, hacking (yay! a new Ephemera term) is defined by one person saying X and another replacing it with Y.

Isn't it more about only part of X being replaced with Y? Thus you get Z, which is not purely the creation of either player, being submitted to the SIS?

You sort of see this in traditional play...but it takes a lot longer for the melding of ideas to happen as overt changes aren't typical. Ie, if the GM introduces a mysterious stranger, a player traditionally can't instantly declare it is an old lover of his. However, over extended traditional play the player might try to charm the mysterious stranger and the GM gets the vibe that this could be good, goes with it. Thus the ideas merge but in a much slower and perhaps more clumsy way (ie, failed charm rolls could kill this intermingling).

Hiya,

Actually, Callan, my observation is that the immediate hacking does occur in face-to-face play far, far more often than most people remember.

The GM: "As the stranger comes in, you're sitting on the left ..."

Player: "No, I'm over by the fireplace, I would have been warming my cold butt after that slog through the snow."

GM: "Right! Makes sense. OK, from over at the fireplace ..."

And that's an example that's hyper-overt. I see covert versions of this go on all the time, and my whole point is that no one seems to notice. If you ask them later, they say, "Yeah, the GM introduces and describes everything."

Best,
Ron

While I agree entirely with the idea that Hacking, of a sort, happens all the time in regular face to face games one could also see the same thing in all manner of games, where there is some sort of consensus needs to be reached on rules issues (eg, a boardgame with fixed movement rates; someone moves too many hexes by mistake, noticed a few turns later, and the game changed to account for this error or agreement reached that for some reason that unit, in this circustance, did move further than it could. Because role playing is far vaguer and more implicit in terms of what is being agreed on, it happens all the time.

Looking at mechanisms where it is explicit in the game, I notice that the Narrative Cage Match (Pantheon) has not been mentioned - the sentence bidding thing is a sort of competitive hacking - sentences rather than words.  Baron Munchausen could also be included with its 'objection' mechanic.

I think the real issue is that the concept does not work so-easily-that-you do-not-notiice-it in text games, because the words are there in black and white pixels and cannot be edited so easily as in a conversation (PBeM, IRC) and the only way around this problem is to make the bug a feature.
I have never played Puppetland but the idea that everything one said was what was said seemed to me to make it either impossibly intense or not very good because the pressure to say the right thing was too great. In effect, a text game without the luxury of time to think.

Not sure of this post advances discussions much but Pantheon, Munchausen and possibly other games need to be considered.

Keith

Hello,

Welcome to the Forge, Keith! I think those are some good points.

I agree about Pantheon and Baron Munchausen being potential hacking-based examples. I'm trying to remember whether in either (I've played the former, not the latter), if one actually changes someone's input while they're giving it, or merely takes over the narration from a fixed point. I think BM is just taking over, whereas P has several "interference" options. Anyone remember?

Much to my surprise, I found that Puppetland works very well; it's one of the games which led me to suggest that "speaking" mechanics are functional when they conform to an imposed structure of some kind. In fact, I think it works better than the other two games.

I am not sure that I agree with your point about board games, though. I see a certain difference ... let's see if I can articulate it, using only role-playing as a reference.

a) "Oh wait a minute, I rolled a 7, not a 17," referring to an action about ten minutes ago, real time. "I missed!"

The usual solution in role-playing, I think, is to say, to hell with it, we'll all call it a 17 and move on. The reason for this is that (a) too much has happened since that relied on that 17, which would now have to be scrubbed clean; and (b) no one has any objection to the 17 having occurred in the first place.

If not too much has happened, then (a) can be overcome, and if the 17 was terribly (and unsatisfactorily) consequential, then (b) can be overcome. In this case, it's a "do-over" and the group basically rewinds the last ten minutes of real time.

I don't see this as hacking so much as a group recognition that procedure wasn't followed. Calling attention to the "error," I think, reinforces the Social Contract ("we will follow procedure") even if it temporarily destabilizes the Shared Imagined Space.

Sorry to throw all that Forgey jargon at ya all of a sudden. Moving on ...

b) "The zombie gets up, all slow and icky, but remorseless; why, it's Petey, your old school chum ..." "My brother!" "... it's Chad, your brother, and it goes hsssss, reaching out for you ..."

I should also clarify that hacking, as I see it, is not merely adding input ("the zombie is my brother!"). It's changing someone else's input - it would be hacking if the zombie were declared by one person to be your old school chum, and if you or someone else changed it to "brother."

Does that illustrate some difference about the two? I see (a) as retroactive negotiation over procedure and its outcome, whereas (b) is in and of itself part of procedure at the time.

Also, Callan's point that only part of X is being changed is a good one. I'm also clarifying that it's not "X + Y" either.

Best,
Ron

Thanks for the welcome.

Ron wrote:

QuoteDoes that illustrate some difference about the two? I see (a) as retroactive negotiation over procedure and its outcome, whereas (b) is in and of itself part of procedure at the time.

I think I picked a poor example and I can see you point here, but I remain unconvinced that the difference is clear cut, especially if the procedure can be said to include the method of sharing the perception of what is happening. The difference between "you rolled a six" and "I said you were sat on the left", if these statements are both understood to help us imagine a SIS, is not that great. If we said "You rolled a six..and that cannot be changed", or "I said you were sat on the left..and that cannot be changed" then we would be ruling out hacking. I think the example of Petey and Chad could be interpreted as a GM error in describing what was not the coolest thing, and correcting his 'error' based on player input. Still a social contract thing, "we agree to have this sort of fun".

In BM, the mechanic is someone interrupts the storyteller in two ways: With a 'I'll wager that ..." and introduces some story element that the storyteller may or may not build into his story - not a hack, as the *story* not the supposed events of the story hasn't happened yet.  Or with a "But Baron,.." then describes why their story cannot be true because of some introduced 'fact'. The storyteller can then change his story to include, to explain, the new fact.  This seems to me to be a hack.

In Pantheon, the structure is a turn based sentence at a time, with 'challenges' when a sentence is objected to, then there is the dice rolling, bidding, bead dealing mechanics the end result of which is that the winner changes the sentence, or cancels it entirely. This seems to me to be competitive hacking. "the new sentence must feature the PC or PCs mentioned in the original sentence, and at least one other noun or verb that appeared in that sentence."

I have a feeling that the way some PBeM chronicles get put together is some sort of editing 'hack' but cannot quite explain or put my finger on why I think this is relevant.

Keith

Love the concept, hate the example...

QuoteThe GM: "As the stranger comes in, you're sitting on the left ..."

Player: "No, I'm over by the fireplace, I would have been warming my cold butt after that slog through the snow."

GM: "Right! Makes sense. OK, from over at the fireplace ..."

This could be interpreted merely as a GM transgressing conventional authority lines (by narrating the movements or positioning of a player-character) and being slapped down. Nothing there that necessarily challenges the conventional picture of how authority is distributed between player and GM in conventional play.

Consider this example for comparison:

The GM: "As the stranger comes in, he sees you sitting on the left..."

Player: "Really? With the bright sun on the snow outside, it would look pretty dark in here at first. I should be able to get a good look at him, and maybe a chance to move, before he sees me."

The GM: "Okay, fair enough. [Or: <rolls dice>] He slams the door and steps past you into the room, stomping the snow off his boots, blinking and peering around. He's wearing..."

What's different about Unaris hacking compared to Challenges in Universalis and at least some of the other mechanics mentioned (I'm not familiar with all of them) is the absence in Unaris of any GM (or other-player) recourse to overrule or outbid any legal hack. That to me is more notable than its overtness.

Up to a certain point, overt rules that allow for hacking that's "balanced" by options for counter-hacking (Uni challenges, token bidding in general, even Hackmaster coupons) can convey the idea that the goal is to manage resources so as to effectively defend one's own version of events against hacking. Unaris hacking blows past that line beyond any chance of misinterpreting. If you're GMing Unaris, you'd better want the players to hack. If you want the players to hack, it's because you recognize that the hacks are creatively valuable.

I believe that appropriate-but-unexpected contributions to the SIS, of which hacks are a particular type, are always valuable in functional play in all systems, in the sort of Creative-Agenda-Meets-The-Hard-Questions way I talked about in the quoted dialog. But that value is so rarely overtly acknowledged.

- Walt

Hi Walt,

I'm with you on all of the above.

What makes examples difficult, especially in this medium, is that we can't convey exactly what's going on socially and creatively. In my fireplace example, what I have in mind is that the character's location wasn't established prior to the dialogue, and that the GM has no particular reason to place the character anywhere but just does, for Color. The player is merely changing the Color and everyone is eagerly accepting the change. The method, however, is hacking because the GM has proposed the specific Color first.

The notion that all input into the game goes through an initial proposal stage is, of course, the Lumpley Principle in action, as well as a whole System Does Matter thing. More jargon ...

I like my zombie example better anyway.

Best,
Ron

Hi all,

The phenomena of statement, followed by someone else's adjustment, followed by tacit acceptance appears in lots of group communication, not just roleplaying.  "Hacking" seems to have just formalized it.  How formal does a phenomenon have to be for us to consider it a distinct Ephemera?

When I look at the Hack examples above, I see two kinds.

First: "You're by the door" "No, I'm by the fire"  This hack might well be the result of both participants having already formed ideas of the imagined space, without having yet shared them with the group.  In other words, the players are negotiating preconceived views of what they _think_ the SIS contains.  The validity of the hack in this case probably depends on the credibility of the speaker over the area affect.  

Second:  "The zombie lurches forward - it's Chad, your roommate!"   "No, it's my brother!"  "Okay, your brother, lurches forward ...."   This hack seems to better demonstrate the sudden inspiration which is accepted by the group.  Rather than "correcting" a misconception of the SIS, this hack improves the appeal of the SIS content.

Both are negotiations of what gets accepted into the SIS - but they have differences.  Is hacking any immediate negotion of the proposed entry in to SIS, or is it restricted to a particular content?  Is it both of the above examples, or only the second one?

Hello,

My current thinking is that only the second example would be hacking, Alan ... but on the other hand, Keith, you're making an excellent point. Yes, all procedure is "negotiation" in the sense that Vincent (lumpley) uses the word, including dice.

I think the distinction might be seen in that one is how to deal with an acknowledged mistake, and the other is how to deal with (as Alan puts it) sudden, propositionally-superior inspiration. Both are, in effect, editing, but they seem to me different in terms of how the group is relating among one another, creatively.

It's a neat and powerful issue. The more people who weigh in on it, the better we'll figure it out.

Best,
Ron

Quote from: Ron EdwardsHiya,

Actually, Callan, my observation is that the immediate hacking does occur in face-to-face play far, far more often than most people remember.

The GM: "As the stranger comes in, you're sitting on the left ..."

Player: "No, I'm over by the fireplace, I would have been warming my cold butt after that slog through the snow."

GM: "Right! Makes sense. OK, from over at the fireplace ..."

And that's an example that's hyper-overt. I see covert versions of this go on all the time, and my whole point is that no one seems to notice. If you ask them later, they say, "Yeah, the GM introduces and describes everything."

Best,
Ron

Oh, I am already starting to see what you mean even in basic areas. What I meant was with larger, more rewarding effects it takes longer to impliment that in play usually. The small fry hacks get casually accepted. But as the hack gets larger, it's more likely (in traditional play) that it will be stopped (if for no reason but tradition). The fireplace wont have much effect, but will be accepted readily. Your zombie example or my mysterious lover example will face more resistance (traditionally, IMO) but has more effect on play. That's where hacking rules become significant, even though hacking is happening all the time at basic levels.