The Forge Archives

Quote from: Mark Woodhouse
In observing the ongoing attempt to map Virtuality and GDS Dramatism into the Big Model, I?ve hit on (what I think is) a revelation. GDS and GNS aren?t talking about the same thing. GDS is a model of decision-making, applied at the individual decision level. GNS is a model of outcome preference, applied at the level of an instance of play. Looked at in this way, GDS classifications more properly belong at the System level of the Big Model

I'll use this essay to give my point of view on this issue, stolen from the "RFGA GDS vs Big Model GNS: Inputs vs Outputs."  Since I touch on some other issues, I've given this post a new thread.  I'm not quite sure what Forge etiquette would call for here, so I may have done the wrong thing, no disrespect to Mark intended.  

First of all, let me clarify a thing or two.  The 'outcome preference' you are referring to above could be restated in question form as 'Why do I sit down at the table to game?'.  In fact, that's just about what Ron says in the intro to the GNS essay.  Contast this with the Threefold's 'Why do I make the choices I do during game play?'  You are claiming that the latter question is what GNS was designed to measure.  

I disagree with this assessment of what GNS is presently about.  

Many who know more about it than I do make the claim that this question is what GNS set out to answer.  If that is indeed the case, then I submit that this agenda has been diverted along the way.  Understandably so, I think -- the project's goals were very ambitious.  So much so, that I find it completely unsurprising that, IMO, they did not succeed.  Finding the Three Big Boxes of Why People Game is a very difficult task because people game for so very many different reasons.  RPGs are a very flexible tool that can be, and are, used toward many different purposes.  These purposes are divergent enough that fitting them into a handful of categories may well be impossible.  As I believe that the history of GNS has shown.  

GNS: The Project

In any event, the starting point of GNS -- the definition of the Narrativist play style* -- makes a poor base for defining the "The Big Three" of 'why do I roleplay?'.  If a useful version of such a 'Big Three' exists, then 'to explore Narrativist premise' is not one of them.  The scope of gaming encompassed by 'to explore Narrativist premise' is simply too narrow.  Ten or twenty such reasons would be necessary to fill a reasonable taxonomy of roleplaying rationales, if all the items were of the same scope as Narrativist Premise.  Hunter Logan's http://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/columns/dream10feb03.html">Big List is an example of what such a list might look like.  Larry Hols' "Element Channels" http://www.carrollsweb.com/crkdface">here is a similar list with more of an attempt to generalize between similar items.  

What this has done is left the model unbalanced.  There's a small, well-defined category (Narrativism), a larger category that's not quite so well defined (Gamism), and then there's the monster that ate Pittsburgh (Simulationism).  I say Gamism is less well defined because I think a clear and rigorous definition of Gamism would require the addition of more categories of 'Why do I sit down at the table to game?'  For example -- the intellectual challenge of solving the mathematical puzzle that is the rules, which changes from situation to situation .  I have known people who play RPGs largely for this element, in a mode that is cooperative or independent rather than competitive.  Surely these people qualify as Gamists, but the current definition excludes them.  As for Simulationism, the pile of differing player motivations left over is far too divergent to permit a reasonable definition of this term.  

This structural imbalance has made the stated goal -- building a Big Three with Narrativist Premise as the cornerstone element --  impossible to attain.  I submit that this difficulty has in fact been recognized here at the Forge and the original vision of the project has been largely abandoned.  As a result the current operational definitions of G,N,S answer the same 'Why' question that GDS does.  The legacy of GNS' founding goal is to be found in the continued interest in analyzing what commonality there is in motivations of the players in the different GNS modes.  

I was spurred to think about this by Mark's post above.  I had always been under the impression that GNS and GDS were measuring the same thing.  So I went back and re-read the core essays and the Glossary and a number of the recent posts, and I couldn't find anything that convinced me that I had misread in the first place.  "GNS and Other Matters" is a good place to start looking.

The Definitions in "GNS and Other Matters"

Each of these definitions deserves some degree of examination.    

Quote
Gamism is expressed by competition among participants (the real people); it includes victory and loss conditions for characters, both short-term and long-term, that reflect on the people's actual play strategies. The listed elements provide an arena for the competition.

This one does reflect back on the question 'Why do I sit down at the table to game?', and I believe it presents the strongest case for the GNS/GDS distinction Mark presents above.  If the other two were like it, the case would stronger.  However, the operational definition of Gamism does not in fact reflect this concern (more about this in just a minute).

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Simulationism is expressed by enhancing one or more of the listed elements in Set 1 above; in other words, Simulationism heightens and focuses Exploration as the priority of play. The players may be greatly concerned with the internal logic and experiential consistency of that Exploration.

This is not at all reflecting on 'Why do I sit down at the table to game?' but is completely concerned with the GDS question 'Why do I make the choices I do during game play?'  A GNS-aware Sim player would be very likely to answer 'Why do I make the choices I do during game play?' with 'because the internal logic dictates the answers.'  'To heighten and focus Exploration as a priority of play' is no better; it only makes sense as a description of how to play.  

Quote
Narrativism is expressed by the creation, via role-playing, of a story with a recognizable theme. The characters are formal protagonists in the classic Lit 101 sense, and the players are often considered co-authors. The listed elements provide the material for narrative conflict (again, in the specialized sense of literary analysis).

In the context of what GNS says about Narrative Premise, this can only be taken as an answer to 'Why do I make the choices I do during game play?'  A GNS-aware Nar player might well answer 'Why do I make the choices I do during game play?' with 'to create a story about a character who is torn by moral question X.'  The question 'Why do I sit down at the table to game?' should be answered with something like 'to examine the moral dimensions of question X.'  The story is only a means to his end -- to examine the moral question.  Largely, I think this is a matter of how the definition is stated here.  In practice, I think the definition of Narrativism is the only one of the three operational definitions which does in fact address the GNS-why question.  

Part of the difficulty of separating out these issues is that, at some level, the question 'Why do I sit down at the table to game?' can be answered with the same answers one would provide to the question 'Why do I make the choices I do during game play?'  


The Concept of Tells

Practically, GNS determines mode by looking at 'Tells'.  Tells are based on the evidence of how one chooses to make his decisions when faced with a tradeoff between two different modes.  There are certain categories of 'how' that are assigned to each mode -- if one if addressing challenge, it is because one enjoys the interplayer competition in tacking that challenge, and one is playing in the Gamist mode.  These 'hows' are measuring the same sort of thing that the GDS categories are measuring (ie, 'Why do I make the choices I do during game play?').  I will call them GDS-whys.  

The idea that player motivations can be ascertained by looking at GDS-whys depends on there being an isomorphism between the GNS categories of player motivation and some sets of GDS-whys.  That is, there must be sets of GDS-whys such that use of GDS-whys from Set A implies that 'to explore Human Questions' is why the player sat down to game; use of GDS-whys from Set B implies that interplayer competition is why the player sat down to game, and similarly for Sim.  

As near as I can tell, the existence of this isomorphism has been largely taken for granted.  No forum search I could devise found any discussion about that topic.  

I won't challenge that this works for Narrativism.  In fact, I submit that, as defined operationally, Narrativism is the only one of G,N,S that answers the GNS-why question and not the GDS-why question.  

Tells and Gamism

Lets look at Gamism.  In this case, the GDS-why that indicates mode is Challenge.  For Challenge to be a Tell that indicates Gamism, all players who orient their games toward Challenge must do it for interplayer competition.  But in matter of fact, there are a number of players who enjoy Challenge for other reasons.  Many of them enjoy the Challenge of solving a good, crunchy rules system as an exercise in game theory.  Most of the gamists that I have actually enjoyed playing with are not very competitive.  In fact, my enjoyment of a Challenge-based game is inversely proportional to the element of competition among the players.  Enjoying a Challenge-based game is not at all an indication that interplayer competition is a player goal.  

I submit that this has long been implicitly recognized here at the forge, and the operation definition of Gamism has been reduced to any play that focuses on Challenge.  Let's look at one of Caldis' recent posts:  

QuoteAs an example consider a game based on gladiatorial combat. The metagame decision is made that all players will be gladiators and that they either dont want to or cant escape. Play will focus on combat sessions in the arena where due to a ranking system gladiators will usually fight against someone of the same skill level. Players are free to do what they chose but . . .  most situations that develop outside the arena floor will not be played out. Once play starts internal cause is king and whatever happens happens. Meets the standards of virtuality as presented here but the game is going to provide the 'step on up' that a gamist is looking for and not the 'right to dream' of GNS simulationism.

There is no attempt at all to investigate whether or not the other players will be the slightest bit competitive, or whether or not there will even be any other players; the game is categorized as Gamist solely on the basis of Challenge.  This is not an unusual use of the term, either -- it's quite standard.  Look at Mike Holmes' recent "New 3D Model" thread.  The most telling quote is from MJ Young, but the whole thread shows the same sensibility:  

Quote
The creation of theme, the overcoming of challenge, the satisfaction of curiosity--these are, I think, objectives sought through play. They define the "Creative Agenda" we recognize. There is a sense in which these things are what you want, what you do, why you do it, all wrapped into one.

When someone states that a given game has plenty of opportunity for Step On Up, what they most often really mean is that the game caters well to Challenge, not that the game caters well to competition.  

The operational definition of Gamism used is in fact based on Challenge (a GDS-why), not Competition (a GNS-why).  

The Case of Simulationism

The very definition of Sim is an answer to the GDS question 'Why do I make the choices I do during game play?'  Look at it:  

Quote
Simulationism is expressed by enhancing one or more of the listed elements in Set 1 above; in other words, Simulationism heightens and focuses Exploration as the priority of play. The players may be greatly concerned with the internal logic and experiential consistency of that Exploration.

There's nothing at all here that addresses the GNS-why question; it's all about the GDS-why.  The "Right to Dream" essay doesn't touch much on the GNS-why, either.  I think that's because there are many divergent GNS-whys that fit into the Sim box as presently defined by GNS.  

Summing Up

In matter of fact, GNS is more about GDS-whys than GNS-whys.  Classification of play is done by looking at the answers to GDS-why questions, without much concern to link the GDS-whys and the GNS-whys they are surrogates for.  What this means in practice is that what GNS measures is 'Why do I make the choices I do during game play?', and what GNS speculates about is 'Why do I sit down at the table to game?' and the connections between the answers to these two questions.  

This shift in operational definition is a good thing, because it better suits the model's purposes.  The model's purpose is to diagnose CA conflicts in play.  The best way to do that is by categorizing the GDS-whys.  I think it would be best to formalize this covert shift, and come out and recognize that GDS-whys are what GNS has been measuring for some length of time. An overt recognition of the shift and a conscious moving of the goal posts would ease the task of coherently defining Sim, I think.  

----------------
*I am working off of second-hand information here; please let me know if I am wrong.

I have a couple of quibbles.

Firstly, I reject the claim that gamism is about about interplayer competition, regardless of that piece of text you quoted and to which I directed you.  Disputes over the relevance of the term 'competition' has already been much discussed and the sim essay describing step on up was a response to that angle.  IMO, we (western people) default to the term 'competition' too easily and for essentially ideological reasons and it is not an accurate term.  Challenge and step on up are better.  Does this make it similar to GDS-G?

I agree that the GNS tells, specifically, are a lot like the GDS why's.  I just respond with a shrug and a 'so what'.   We discuss the tells a lot because, frankly, people have a hard time with the nebulous "instant of play".  But the tells are only indications; they are NOT expressions of "why do I sit down to play", they are rather "what did I do at this moment".  I don't really understand why you claim that analysis of the tells supercedes the noted intent and the model itself.  It would be rather like describing a disease only by its symptoms - its relevant to diagnosis but not necessarily to treatment.

On Sim, while I agree that the passage you cite is written from a certain distance, as it were, it still seems to me to point to a GNS- rather than GDS-why: although it does describe an action, in the heightening of exploration, it is easily read IMO as descibing this action to convey intent.  That seems an easy enough interpolation to make given the stated purpose of the document.

Really, I am not seeing a problem here.  I agree that GNS only really sepculates about the intent, in that it does not particularly provide argumentation for why these three intents exist, and measures "GDS-why's", which is only to restate "actual behaviour" as it appears in the model, but do not see this as a problem - the model has always maintained that the three intents are drawn from observed decisions.  If you would like to more discussion on whether the claimed intents actually exist, and why they are what they are, I'd be happy to engage with it.  

Lastly, why should I care about or want a reconciliation between GNS and GDS at all in the first place?  Now I'm aware that your argument is more about the form of analysis than necerssarily the content fo the GDS model, but as above I'm not convinced the case holds.  But secondly, I find the D category worryingly vague to the point that I am not happy with it and so would not support simply asking GDS-D-why, that would seem to have too many feasable answers.

I'm not sure that GDS vs. GNS really break down to "why vs. what" or anything like that--on some basic levels, maybe--but on a functional level ... I don't think so.

I don't know a name for describing "how decisions get made by the GM to aim for a Narrativist game" but I do know that if the GM, at every turn, holds the player's desire for premise in high regard (as well as holding off on the Force) that Narrativist play should reliably ensue. The best term I can think of for requesting that is "Narrativist GMing."

While the big theory works okay for that (and possibly for a request for "Gamist GMing") I think it falls apart when someone tries to request "Simist GMing."

At very least, were we to make that request of each other, we'd both come away with very, very different ideas of what was being requested.

This doesn't requre GDS be "integrated" (GDS Dramatist play is, I agree, too vague as a request--but the concept of GDS Sim (or Virtuality) doesn't exist comfortably under the GNS taxonomy either). There needs to be some modification (either along the lines of Mike's or Ralph's model)

-Marco

Quote from: contracycleI have a couple of quibbles.

Firstly, I reject the claim that gamism is about about interplayer competition, regardless of that piece of text you quoted and to which I directed you.  Disputes over the relevance of the term 'competition' has already been much discussed and the sim essay describing step on up was a response to that angle.  IMO, we (western people) default to the term 'competition' too easily and for essentially ideological reasons and it is not an accurate term.  Challenge and step on up are better.  Does this make it similar to GDS-G?

I think it does make it similar to GDS-G; right off the top of my head I can't think of any way to distinguish the two.  More importantly for the issue at hand, it is now measuring the same thing that GDS-G is measuring.  

The updated defn in the new Gamism essay is exactly the sort of definitional change I'm referring to.  I referred to the defn out of "GNS and other matters" because it still gets a lot of lip service.    I think making a concious effort to stay away from that defn would improve clarity.  

Quote
I agree that the GNS tells, specifically, are a lot like the GDS why's.  I just respond with a shrug and a 'so what'.   We discuss the tells a lot because, frankly, people have a hard time with the nebulous "instant of play".  But the tells are only indications; they are NOT expressions of "why do I sit down to play", they are rather "what did I do at this moment".  I don't really understand why you claim that analysis of the tells supercedes the noted intent and the model itself.  It would be rather like describing a disease only by its symptoms - its relevant to diagnosis but not necessarily to treatment.

I'm not sure what to say here, as it seems below that you largely agree with my primary premise:  that GNS is measuring GDS-whys.  I think that that is the real indication of what GNS is about.

Quote
On Sim, while I agree that the passage you cite is written from a certain distance, as it were, it still seems to me to point to a GNS- rather than GDS-why: although it does describe an action, in the heightening of exploration, it is easily read IMO as descibing this action to convey intent.  

I'll agree it is easily read as describing that action to convey intent, but it makes no effort at describing what that intent is.  And you must have this in order to make it a GNS-why rather than a GDS-why.  

Quote
Really, I am not seeing a problem here.  I agree that GNS only really speculates about the intent, in that it does not particularly provide argumentation for why these three intents exist, and measures "GDS-why's", which is only to restate "actual behaviour" as it appears in the model, but do not see this as a problem - the model has always maintained that the three intents are drawn from observed decisions.  If you would like to more discussion on whether the claimed intents actually exist, and why they are what they are, I'd be happy to engage with it.  

I don't dispute at all that the claimed intents exist, or why they are what they are.  What I dispute is that the given sets of observed decisions have an isomorphic mapping to these intents.  I think it's evident that this has not been established.  I also think it's evident that precisely because this has not been established, the GNS theory has changed to move away from depending on it.  But that move has been incomplete and haphazard.  I think that GNS would be more consistent if it were consciously addressed.  As it is, I think that N largely measures something different than G and S do.  I think things like Mike Holmes' "New 3D Model" are attempts to address this incongruence (in addition to other goals).  

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Lastly, why should I care about or want a reconciliation between GNS and GDS at all in the first place?  Now I'm aware that your argument is more about the form of analysis than necerssarily the content fo the GDS model, but as above I'm not convinced the case holds.

I'm not at all convinced that a reconciliation between GNS and GDS is necessary to place all 3 arms of GNS on the same footing, but it would be one way to do it.  

Quote
But secondly, I find the D category worryingly vague to the point that I am not happy with it and so would not support simply asking GDS-D-why, that would seem to have too many feasable answers.

Well, I think that if you want to find only 3 boxes in which to place all of roleplaying, and you want these 3 boxes on an equal footing, then I don't think you've got any choice but to have some pretty vague boxes.  If you want the boxes more narrow in scope, I think you got to have more than 3.  If you haven't yet, take a look at the link above for Larry Hols' "Element Channels".  I think paints a good picture of what such a taxonomy might look like.

Quote from: Lee Short
I'm not at all convinced that a reconciliation between GNS and GDS is necessary to place all 3 arms of GNS on the same footing, but it would be one way to do it.  

Apart from the fact that human find symmetry attractive, why SHOULD they all be on the same footing?

Is there any essential reason to think that if there are three relevant CA's they necessarily exhibit the same depth, or the same features, or any form of similar internal structure?

If so, what is this reason?  I have asked this question before and nobody has given a response.  Do we have some reason to think the theory is broken unless the three elements are equalised?  Why?

Aesop told a fable about two men taking a donkey to market, who were influenced to change their means of travel by every criticism they received along the way. In the end, the donkey fell in the river and drowned. The moral was that you can't please everyone.

I imagine that that's a problem here.

Caveat: the following history may be flawed, as I am relying on memory of events some of which were only known to me second-hand.

When System Does Matter appeared in 1998, it was presented in part as Ron's view of what GDS/Threefold was trying to do. He did not at any point in that article suggest that this was something new and different in competition with the earlier model, but rather that it was his understanding of that model.

Subsequently, he received a lot of criticism from some of those involved in rec.games.frp.advocacy. Narrativism, he was told, completely misrepresented Dramatism. Simulationism wasn't what he said at all. Only his original exposition of Gamism was not attacked as being different.

So he abandoned the notion that his GNS and the original Threefold were trying to do the same thing, and accepted the assertions that they were unrelated. In publishing the Step On Up essay, he allowed Gamism to diverge from that version that had been accepted as substantially the same as the GDS version, suggesting (my paraphrase) that players in gamist play are after glory, wanting to demonstrate their skills to each other.

I don't know who was involved in the GDS discussions, nor who criticized the GNS model. The only name I knew from that was John Kim (whose fame precedes him, I suppose). John has consistently maintained here that there are serious differences between GNS and Threefold which make them disconnected (if not perhaps unrelated) theories.

Lee now says that GNS is looking at the same data GDS was examining, and attempting to do the same thing with it. The surprise isn't that it might be doing that, but that this was what the theory said initially that was so soundly rejected by others in the Threefold camp.

I've said before that I don't completely understand GDS. I do see that those who do understand it can't agree as to how it relates to GNS. Probably I should invest the time in delving into the old discussions and documents to see whether I can grasp the concepts; at the moment, though, I'm a bit backed up on other things.

Perhaps, Lee, I'm not understanding your critique of GNS primarily because you're relating it to GDS, which I don't understand. If there's something here that is about inherent problems in GNS, can it be explained without reference to the other model? At least until we can agree as to whether GDS is an earlier version of the same model or an unrelated and different model which inspired this one, it's going to be difficult to grasp criticisms based on that.

--M. J. Young

Quote from: contracycle

Quote from: Lee Short
I'm not at all convinced that a reconciliation between GNS and GDS is necessary to place all 3 arms of GNS on the same footing, but it would be one way to do it.  

Apart from the fact that human find symmetry attractive, why SHOULD they all be on the same footing?

Is there any essential reason to think that if there are three relevant CA's they necessarily exhibit the same depth, or the same features, or any form of similar internal structure?

If so, what is this reason?  I have asked this question before and nobody has given a response.  Do we have some reason to think the theory is broken unless the three elements are equalised?  Why?

Because in any form of hierarchal organization where one is putting elements into tiers you need two things.  You need the defining thing that illustrates why a given element belongs in one level of the hierarchy and not another.  And you need a consistant scale for each tier so that elements in 1 tier are not overlapping elements of the other.  That's basic hierarchal organization.

In The Big Model we have a number of tiers.  One of those is the Creative Agenda and another is Techniques.  For the longest time we haven't had a clear and concise definition of what a CA is.  Its been assumed by precedent and understood through context but very hard to pin down an actual defining feature of what makes a CA a CA and not a Technique.  As proof of this lack of clarity witness the number of times that Illusionism is discussed as if its actually a CA, while other times it is discussed as if its a technique.

One of my goals with my recent essay was to identify what the concise definition of CA actually is.  I pegged it as "how the player identifies, recognizes, and responds to in game conflict".  This thread isn't for discussing the accuracy or inaccuracy of this definition I offer it as an example of the first thing that is necessary.  Armed with a definition like this it becomes possible to identify whether any given element does or doesn't belong in the tier in question.  It is under this definition that one can decisively say "Illusionism is not a Creative Agenda"


Scale is the second thing that is important.  Say there are two CAs that you've identified (lets just call them A and B).  In A there are aspects that are commonly associated with A play.  We'll call them a1, a2, and a3.  We make a point to define a1, a2, and a3 as Techniques that are often used in conjunction with A but which are neither exclusive to A nor definitional to what A is.  

In B, however, we also have aspects commonly associated with B play.  We'll call them b1, b2, and b3.  However, with B we've not separated these out into techniques but include them as part of the defining features of B play.

This is wrong.  Either the elements 1, 2, and 3 need to be identified as Techniques across the board, or they need to be combined into the CA category across the board.  You cannot have 1 CA that is distilled down to an essential core, whose aspects have been split off elsewhere, and 1 CA that has not been distilled down to its essential core and is still combined with various other aspects.

Why?  Because if you do you have overlapping tiers.  There are parts of the CA tier that belong in the Techniques tier, and/or parts of the Techniques tier that belong in the CA tier.


Another goal of my recent essay was (having recognized that the above situation of overlapping tiers is going on) to strip down Simulationism to its distilled core and relegate the other parts that have been lumped in there to other tiers, thereby making it consistant in that it addresses the same core definition of what a CA is, without overlapping into Techniques or Social Contract issues.

One may certainly disagree with the definition of CA I chose or what the core distilled essence of Sim is that I chose.  But I unequivocably reject any notion that such a definition and such a distillation aren't necessary.


If they are part of the same tier of boxes, they must be addressing the same thing and they must be of a similiar enough scale that they don't overlap other tiers.  That to me is a fundamental fact of useable organization.

Quote from: M. J. Young
Caveat: the following history may be flawed, as I am relying on memory of events some of which were only known to me second-hand.

When System Does Matter appeared in 1998, it was presented in part as Ron's view of what GDS/Threefold was trying to do. He did not at any point in that article suggest that this was something new and different in competition with the earlier model, but rather that it was his understanding of that model.

Subsequently, he received a lot of criticism from some of those involved in rec.games.frp.advocacy. Narrativism, he was told, completely misrepresented Dramatism. Simulationism wasn't what he said at all. Only his original exposition of Gamism was not attacked as being different.

So he abandoned the notion that his GNS and the original Threefold were trying to do the same thing, and accepted the assertions that they were unrelated.

Well, since I wasn't there either, I too can only speculate.  My speculation is this:   Narr was the cornerstone of GNS, and it was -- and still is, IMO -- measuring a different thing than GDS was measuring.  Furthermore, the older definition of Gamism (from "GNS and other matters") also measured this same thing as Narr, separate from what GDS was measuring.   So it makes sense to me that anyone familiar with GDS would point out that GNS and GDS were talking about different phenomena.  Now that Gamism has been redefined in a GDS mode, I think that most of GNS is now measuring what GDS measured.  In other words, the original version of GNS was more different from GDS than the present version is.  

That's one reason.   Another is that, as Valamir notes, Techniques have been bundled with the Narr CA.  That would have stood out to any GDS veteran as a strong indication that Narr was not similar to the GDS categories.  

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Perhaps, Lee, I'm not understanding your critique of GNS primarily because you're relating it to GDS, which I don't understand. If there's something here that is about inherent problems in GNS, can it be explained without reference to the other model?

I tried to do that in this essay.  My point was actually not to compare GDS and GNS; that comparison was simply what got me started.  My bigger point was that the GNS categories are incongruent in that they measure different things.  I used the terms 'GNS-why' and 'GDS-why' simply because the text became very cumbersome and unreadable when I had so many repetitions of 'Why do I sit down at the table to game?' and 'Why do I make the choices I do during game play?'   I think you'll find that if you make these text replacements, there are very few references to GDS in the text, and these are incidental to the thrust of the essay.  Obviously I could have chosen better names to make this clearer.

Quote from: Valamir
Because in any form of hierarchal organization where one is putting elements into tiers you need two things.  You need the defining thing that illustrates why a given element belongs in one level of the hierarchy and not another.  And you need a consistant scale for each tier so that elements in 1 tier are not overlapping elements of the other.  That's basic hierarchal organization.

Fine.  Why are we putting GNS in a heirarchical structure then?  As I recall, Ron has resisted such models to the extent of being hostile to diagramatic representation of GNS.  I see no particular reason to think that building a tiered structure is useful.  What purpose would you expect it to serve.

QuoteThis is wrong. Either the elements 1, 2, and 3 need to be identified as Techniques across the board, or they need to be combined into the CA category across the board. You cannot have 1 CA that is distilled down to an essential core, whose aspects have been split off elsewhere, and 1 CA that has not been distilled down to its essential core and is still combined with various other aspects.

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Can you be more specific?  Where is it you see techniques and CA's being smudged?

Quote from: contracycleFine.  Why are we putting GNS in a heirarchical structure then?  As I recall, Ron has resisted such models to the extent of being hostile to diagramatic representation of GNS.  I see no particular reason to think that building a tiered structure is useful.  What purpose would you expect it to serve.  

I believe that Ralph is referring to the nested boxes or layers diagram which has been a part of Ron's model since at least last year.  In the introduction to http://indie-rpgs.com/_articles/glossary.html">The Provisional Glossary, Ron provides a http://indie-rpgs.com/_articles/bigmodelpic.pdf">Big Model picture (pdf).  As Ron defines the Big Model:

QuoteA description of role-playing procedures as embedded in the social interactions and creative priorities of the participants. Each internal "box," "layer," or "skin" of the model is considered to be an expression of the box(es) containing it.

Maybe you are thinking of a hierarchy as something different?

I'm asking if the specifics of that diagram require the same degree of heirarchical quality.  I don't recall the name of the diagrams that we used to use for designing programme logic flow, but while they did have criteria to identify which elements appeared where, there was not a requirement as I recall that all elements in a tier be similar.  They had to share a certain specific quality, not be inherently alike.  I don't see any problem for example saying that all CA's appear on a tier, and do not see any implication that becuase they all appear on this tier they must share the same properties.  They must only share one property - being a CA.

QuoteI don't see any problem for example saying that all CA's appear on a tier, and do not see any implication that becuase they all appear on this tier they must share the same properties. They must only share one property - being a CA.

Thats tautological.

What is that one property they must share?

I have pegged it as the player's response to ingame conflict.  If you agree with that then we are in accord on that property.  If not, then you need to provide what you think that property actually is, preferably in as clear and concise a manner as I have done.


Then you have the Techniques layer, which also must have a property they must share to be techniques.  I think the Provisional Glossary provides a serviceable definition of what this property is:  "Specific procedures of play which, when employed together, are sufficient to introduce fictional characters, places, or events into the Shared Imagined Space."


So where does that leave us? With a property that determines what a CAs and a property that determines what Techniques are.  Which is exactly what I said above.  So what exactly are you disagreeing with?

Quote from: Valamir
Then you have the Techniques layer, which also must have a property they must share to be techniques.  I think the Provisional Glossary provides a serviceable definition of what this property is:  "Specific procedures of play which, when employed together, are sufficient to introduce fictional characters, places, or events into the Shared Imagined Space."

Interesting...

If I'm reading this right, what the Glossary defines as techniques can be arguably placed under System as defined by the lumpey Principle.  Of course, I may be mistaken on this.

Cheers
Jonathan

Quote from: Valamir
What is that one property they must share?.. If not, then you need to provide what you think that property actually is, preferably in as clear and concise a manner as I have done.

Being a creative agenda.  Or droive or passion or inspirationj or any suitable term.  But there is no need for each CA to then contain conflict in a certain way, is what I was getting at above.  Certainly not one that necessareily arises from their location on a particular tier.

What you have given for techniqe is a suitable description of technique, but what you arer claiming for CA is that description of CA is not adequate: that by implication, all CA's must be expressions of conflict.  Thatr does not seem to follow.

Ralph,

Summarizing CA as "player response to in-game conflict" helps me understand your other thread a bit better - thanks.  My thought, though, is adding "in-game conflict" is a mistake.  CA's are about player response to . . . everything.  Playing the game.  Being in the social environment of the game.  In-game conflict is a key driver of the response, but it is not the sole or unique source of it.  At least, it doesn't look like it is to me.

Gordon