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Here's an attempt to break apart and clarify this newfangled "fidelity" word.

Characters, Settings, Systems, and probably the other two have integrity.  Integrity is something you either uphold or compromise in play.  If you don't make your character do something she wouldn't, you've upheld her integrity as a character; if you have something happen in your game world that wouldn't happen in your game world, you've compromised its integrity; like that.

(Each has its own integrity because sometimes they're incompatible, as you can probably see.  Sometimes you have to choose whether to sacrifice character integrity to uphold system integrity, for instance; examples are easy to come up with.)

Anyhow taken together, they have fidelity to some referent, as Emily Care says.

You can compromise integrity to uphold fidelity, and vice versa.  Like in the proverbial Star Wars game: "Dude a Jedi wouldn't do that." "Yeah but my Jedi character would."  If the former prevails, you've compromised character integrity for the sake of fidelity to Star Wars, and if the latter does, you've compromised fidelity to Star Wars for the sake of character integrity.

Thus they're two different, sometimes compatible sometimes incompatible concerns.  I think they oughta be separated for discussion.

-Vincent

Hey Vincent,

So basically you're saying that Fidelity is made up of various levels of integrity among the elements of Exploration? The realm of integrity would be where compatibility issues amongst players arise on the Fidelity axis? Sounds good so far.

Quote from: lumpleyYou can compromise integrity to uphold fidelity, and vice versa. Like in the proverbial Star Wars game: "Dude a Jedi wouldn't do that." "Yeah but my Jedi character would." If the former prevails, you've compromised character integrity for the sake of fidelity to Star Wars, and if the latter does, you've compromised fidelity to Star Wars for the sake of character integrity.

Wouldn't that be compromising character integrity for the sake of setting integrity and vice versa? The heirarchy of the the elements, which element takes precedence in an integrity conflict, would form the overall Fidelity matrix. This is where Sim play incompatibilities stem from. One person may be assigning higher importance to character integrity instead of setting integrity, or whatever.

My problem with Emily's statement is that what the the referent should be is unclear to me. That is in this statement,

Quote from: Emily CareI'd say that fidelity in a system may be expressed through the 5 elements of exploration.

I have no idea what she means by 'system' with a little 's'. Is the referent similar to the 'genre' in the sense of a mixture of setting (that galaxy far, far, away) and the dramatic elements (the Star Wars movie feel) associated with that setting?

-Chris

Quote from: lumpleyCharacters, Settings, Systems, and probably the other two have integrity.  Integrity is something you either uphold or compromise in play.  If you don't make your character do something she wouldn't, you've upheld her integrity as a character; if you have something happen in your game world that wouldn't happen in your game world, you've compromised its integrity; like that.  

I would be wary of this, because I think that consciously being false to character is pretty rare.  More often, you have people who simply make a mental model of their character loose enough that it can encompass many possible results.  They then choose the result which works best with the story.  I don't think it is fair to say that this is "compromising integrity" per se, because you haven't violated anything that was previously defined.  

At the most extreme, this can be someone whose only handle on character is what has been demonstrated in play.  For example, when asked "What is your family like?"  The player hadn't previously decided what the PCs family is.  So she then decides to make up an answer which works well with the story.  Again, this is not being false to character.  Once established in-play, that is inviolable for continuity.  However, if the player comes up with a good reason why the PC might have lied about his family, then later on they might find out that the PCs real family is different.  

The opposite to this is someone who prioritizes making a very strong mental model of the character, such that asking "What would your character do?" always has a definite answer.  This is usually where I am as a player: I am strongly Design-At-Start, and tend to hold to character over meta-game concerns.

Quote from: lumpleyYou can compromise integrity to uphold fidelity, and vice versa.  Like in the proverbial Star Wars game: "Dude a Jedi wouldn't do that." "Yeah but my Jedi character would."  If the former prevails, you've compromised character integrity for the sake of fidelity to Star Wars, and if the latter does, you've compromised fidelity to Star Wars for the sake of character integrity.

Hmmm...I'm not seeing the distinction either.  Fidelity and Integrity seem like different words for the same concept.  Each obviously brings its own connotations into the idea, but as far as the square horseshoe model is concerned I think it's the same.  It seems the same (as Chris pointed out) to say:

Quote from: Iyou've compromised character integrity for the sake of color integrity, and if the latter does, you've compromised color integrity for the sake of character integrity.

If you mean something like:

Fidelity = Total Exploration Faithfulness
Integrity = Individual Exploration Element Faithfulnes

...I'm not sure we need that distinction.  Fidelity would be too wishy-washy  (that's a technical term, btw) because the integrity of the individual elements that comprise it would be undefined.  The Integrity of the individual elements seems like the important factor, because Fidelity could conflict with itself (as per your Star Wars example) - which would be defined by the Exploration priority.  If we say Hi-Fi|Theme|Char that pretty much conveys what the most relevant element is on the Fidelity axis.

...Or, maybe, I've entirely missed the point.

Quote from: Chris, youWouldn't that ["Dude a Jedi wouldn't do that." "Yeah but my Jedi character would."] be compromising character integrity for the sake of setting integrity and vice versa? The heirarchy of the the elements, which element takes precedence in an integrity conflict, would form the overall Fidelity matrix. This is where Sim play incompatibilities stem from. One person may be assigning higher importance to character integrity instead of setting integrity, or whatever.

That definitely happens.

But I do actually mean something different by fidelity.  Your setting might keep its integrity even as it moves away from fidelity to its referent.

I'll see if I can come up with an example.  Say, um.  Say we're playing A New Hope.  The PCs are rebel spies who've infiltrated the Death Star.  They're there at the same time as Luke and the rest, there's this cool scene where they divert a bunch of stormtroopers so Luke and the rest can make it back to the Millenium Falcon, they watch the Millenium Falcon fly away, and then they go back to their mission which is to plant an experimental homing device in the Death Star's exhaust system.  It turns out later that several x- and y-wings are equipped with experimental-homing-device-seeking photon torpedos, most notably Luke's, and that's why Luke's torpedos went in, nothing to do with the Force at all.

The setting's fine, as far as its integrity goes: nowhere did we violate its cause and effect, nobody ever did anything that couldn't have happened.  But by the end, it's not really Star Wars, is it?  Star Wars has this integral Force trumps technology thing, and if our game reverses it we're not being faithful.

Make sense?  GURPS superheroes is another example: what would happen if there really were superpowers? has its own integrity, but its fidelity is split between the reality source material and the superhero comic source material.  (It's a bigamist!  Haw!)

Quote from: John, youI would be wary of this, because I think that consciously being false to character is pretty rare. More often, you have people who simply make a mental model of their character loose enough that it can encompass many possible results. They then choose the result which works best with the story. I don't think it is fair to say that this is "compromising integrity" per se, because you haven't violated anything that was previously defined.

I agree.  Compromising character integrity is hard, and it sucks, and nobody likes to do it, that's my experience.  When character integrity comes into conflict with another concern, character integrity usually wins.

Most conflicts over character integrity are your character integrity vs. my setting or system integrity or whatever concern.  But that's another topic, I think.  What's your take on integrity vs. fidelity as separate concerns?

-Vincent

This should help. Fidelity is not adhering to anything, so much as the attempt to adhere. This is really important. Both of the examples are Fidelity based because they both have that attempt.

Now, they'll fall low on some player's plots, true. But that indicates that the players are miscommunicating about the Exploration, the "what is this game about". This is where incoherence in Fidelity slips in from design. The players either agree that the game is about making individuals, or about making "Jedi" by some canon, or they aren't going to agree when something has Fidelity or not.

So for the player making the deccision, there is almost always some rationale of Fidelity (It's what my character would do, is an example). But it's precisely that other players percieve the character's action as being lower because of a misunderstanding of what is to be explored, that the problem occurs.

Mike

Hey Mike,

Just to make sure I understand, a player attempting to adhere to his own personal vision of Fidelity (some arrangement of importance for the 5 elements of Exploration, I like calling it the Fidelity matrix because it sounds cool) at a decision point is most likely registering on the upper end of the Fidelity axis regardless of if the other players perceive his attempt as incompatible with their own vision of Fidelity?

-Chris

Quote from: lumpley

Quote from: John, youI think that consciously being false to character is pretty rare. More often, you have people who simply make a mental model of their character loose enough that it can encompass many possible results. They then choose the result which works best with the story. I don't think it is fair to say that this is "compromising integrity" per se, because you haven't violated anything that was previously defined.  

I agree.  Compromising character integrity is hard, and it sucks, and nobody likes to do it, that's my experience.  When character integrity comes into conflict with another concern, character integrity usually wins.

Most conflicts over character integrity are your character integrity vs. my setting or system integrity or whatever concern.  But that's another topic, I think.  What's your take on integrity vs. fidelity as separate concerns?  

I agree that there is a distinction you seem to be making -- but I think the labels are a bit obscure.  I would describe (1) as "integrity to world" or perhaps "integrity to simulation".  That is, the player or GM has a pre-existing mental model for what an in-game element should be.  They then want to remain true to that.  I would describe (2) as "fidelity to source material" or "fidelity to genre".  The latter are what I would call genre story conventions ( from my Genre in RPGs essay at http://www.darkshire.org/~jhkim/rpg/theory/genre/definition.html )

The problem of clashing integrity seems like what I call "assumption clash".  i.e. A player has a character who is a Teutonic knight, while the GM has other Teutonic knights as NPCs.  They are likely to have subtlely different (or even not-so-subtlely) pictures of what the background is -- i.e. history, vows, codes of behavior, social structure, etc.  If one of these differences becomes important to the game, you have "assumption clash".

First, just as a commentary on the words, "integrity" to me seems passive and "fidelity" active. Integrity is something that is had, a quality possessed; fidelity something gained, a quality sought or acquired.

In Multiverser's design, we put a lot of thought into something we called "integrity". The entire bias system is, at its foundation, a balancing act between the priorities of integrity between different elements. If you drop a character who is a wizard into a setting which is science fiction, you've got a conflict of integrity--the wizard "expects" quite reasonably that he can use his magic to his advantage here; the indigs in that world similarly quite reasonably "expect" that there's no such thing as magic. Bias says that both sets of expectations are limited by each other, such that the wizard can do some magic in this world, but is severely limited by the world itself and can't really overrun the world with his power.

Now, is that what Vincent is after with Integrity, this idea that character must have internal consistency with itself that is expressed within the context of the game, and the world must also have internal consistency with itself so expressed?

Then what is fidelity? From Mike's description, it sounds like it's the effort on the part of those involved in the game to maintain the integrity of each element, to in essence do the balancing act Multiverser gives to bias, only in more subtle methods and situations.

I'll wait for response.

--M. J. Young

That makes sense MJ.

Chris, different people may register a particular decision differently. If a player makes a character decision that adheres to his view of the character, to him it has Fidelity. But if that character decision seems to be problematic with, say, certain setting requirments, then others might see that same decision as having less Fidelity, assuming that they feel that this was supposed to be prioritized.

These are always subjective calls. The problem occurs when there's no clear agreement on what play is "about" (five elements). This causes players to disagree on whether a particular decision has Fidelity. It's precisely this dichotomy that causes a large part of Fidelity Incoherency in play. That is, when players all agree that a certain level of Fidelity is sought, then problems occur when a player isn't seen to be adhering to what the other individuals see as the Explorative priority of the game.

Let's call that Fidelity Incoherence B. Fidelity Incoherence A simply being the case where decisions diverge because there has been no agreement before play on what the minimum level of Fidelity is.

Recap:
Fidelity Incoherence A: player makes a decision that's seen by another player as impropper because it does not have the level of Fidelty that he feels was agreed to.
Fidelity Incoherence B: player makes a decision that's seen by another as impropper because of an unforseen disagreement about what the game intends to explore.


Note that I want to get back to a very important concept that seems to keep getting lost in the shuffle. To some extent, Fidelity has to do with making decisions seem like they're not "out of game". That's why No Myth has limited support for some people. Fidelity is not just that Internal Consistency that provides a common minimum for most play. It has to go beyond that. I haven't decided if there are other methods to go higher fidelity, but the one that seems to be important is to stay in-game. That is, higher fidelity requires that a player make decisions as though the character were a real entity in a real world, and based on that world's logic. He can put his own metagame agendas into it (and indeed must), but the decision has to at least seem to be one that's internal to the world.

This is the hardest part of Fidelity to describe, but the most important. There must be something happening beyond that least common denominator. Without it, all play could be described as striving for High Fidelity (and since that sounds right, that's why I've said that Fidelity could be a misleading term). All play has Fidelity, only certain play is High Fidelity for purposes of the discussion.

Do people get the point I'm making?

Mike

Hi Mike,

Is there any merit in distinguishing between "active" and "passive" fidelity? A player in a standard dungeon crawl, for instance, doesn't have any choice about fidelity to setting. It's not as if he can decide that a wall isn't there. Whereas a Donjon player with narration rights might be expected to decide whether or not a wall exists, but can exhibit fidelity by introducing a scurrying rat instead of a pink Energizer bunny into the scene. Both are exploring setting, both are exhibiting fidelity to setting, but in the latter case it's an active decision while in the former it's the passive (and mandatory) acceptance of externally imposed information. In the classic dunegon crawl case, can we really say that fidelity to setting is a metagame player priority, when the player isn't empowered to make any decisions about it (beyond the initial choice of what game to play in)?

This appears to be a case (and point to many many analogous cases) where exploration of an element as a metagame player priority does not translate into fidelity of that element as an (active right-now) metagame player priority.

Let me toss one more tear gas grenade into this Tora Bora of a topic: Fidelity and interactivity (real decision-making power, or in GNS terms, authorship) are fundamentally incompatible. That's because meaningful decision-making power must include the power to make decisions that break Fidelity. (If someone else can overrule the decision on Fidelity grounds, or even if your own commitment to Fidelity is so complete that you would never decide otherwise, then you didn't really have real decision-making power to begin with.) This is the crux of the Interactive Storytelling Problem. In fact, it's a problem whose mythic roots belong to a certain fruit tree in the Garden of Eden.

- Walt

Let's skip the words for a minute.  I want it to be clear that I see two utterly separate, independent concerns.

I own, I'll confess, the Chaosium Elfquest RPG.

If you'd never read Elfquest, you might look at the game and think it's just fine.  You can make characters and they aren't like broken or anything, it's set in the land of two moons with flora and fauna intact, you can have your characters run around and do things and there isn't anything really wrong with the mechanics.  You could successfully play the game, and if you were a Chaosium-friendly Simulationist you might even dig it.

But it ain't Elfquest.  It's Chaosium RPG in Elfquest-land.  If you were a different kind of Simulationist -- the genre sim kind, trying to recreate Elfquest -- you'd hate it with a fearsome hate.

It's the first question you ask about the Buffy game.  "Sure it may be a perfectly good game, but is it Buffy?"

So, two concerns. They're both Exploratory concerns.  First is, does the cause and effect of character, setting, situation, color, system break down internally?  As M. J. said: "character must have internal consistency with itself that is expressed within the context of the game, and the world must also have internal consistency with itself so expressed."  Second is, internal consistency aside, does the game match its source material?

Both internal consistency and fidelity to source material are desirable, but you can trade them off independently with other metagame priorities.

"Here's a chance to make a Nar decision!  I'll take it even though it messes up the game's Elfquest-ness, because it doesn't mess up my guy's internal character consistency!"

or

"Dude!  I know you like to make Gamist decisions, and I don't care if it's what your character woulda done or not, but try not to screw up the Star Wars-ness like that!"

So names aside, are we agreed that there are two separate concerns?

-Vincent

Quote from: lumpleyLet's skip the words for a minute.  I want it to be clear that I see two utterly separate, independent concerns.
...
So, two concerns. They're both Exploratory concerns.  First is, does the cause and effect of character, setting, situation, color, system break down internally?  As M. J. said: "character must have internal consistency with itself that is expressed within the context of the game, and the world must also have internal consistency with itself so expressed."  Second is, internal consistency aside, does the game match its source material?

Both internal consistency and fidelity to source material are desirable, but you can trade them off independently with other metagame priorities.

I'd certainly agree with the distinction.  I think a more precise way of phrasing the latter is: "Does the game produce play which is similar to the source material (i.e. in theme, story conventions, pacing, etc.)?"  The former ("internal consistency") is matching the source material in one sense, while the latter ("fidelity to genre/story") is matching the source material in another sense.  

However, I don't agree that they are always desireable.  I think original series Star Trek provides some hopefully-familiar example.  There are a lot of ways one can approach this as a game.
1) A certain type of Star Trek fan would approach this by compiling notes on all of the episodes.  He then carefully constructs a detailed background which matches up with this.  This is not necessarily desireable, though.  Some people would throw up their hands at this and say "Oh, who cares what the rank structure of Star Fleet is for god's sake?!?"  This is high on internal consistency.

2) Another type of fan would try to emulate the campiness of the original.  He runs a game where almost any details are up for grabs.  For example, a player might whip out a technobabble solution ("Let's reverse the polarity of the tractor beams") at any time.  As long as there are sexy alien women, rousing fist-fights, and pompous speeches -- he figures he is doing well.  However, someone who wants to play a detailed character might find this offputting (i.e. "What's my rank?").  This is high on fidelity to genre/story.  

3) Yet someone else might decide to try an interesting reversal on #2.  He decides to run a cinematic TV show about the adventures of a Klingon battlecruiser ("Battlecruiser Vengeance!").  He approaches this much as in #2: there are regularly sexy slave girls, and violent-but-epic fights, and so forth.  This is low on internal-consistency, and also low on fidelity to source material.  However, it also could be a cool campaign IMO.

My Star Trek campaigns had a little of all three of these.  I was pretty obsessive about the details, and I certainly violated trueness to the spirit of the stories in some cases.  For example, I had explicit internal Federation politics -- and had that the Prime Directive was a political expedient first, and not universally agreed on as a moral imperative.  This often clashed with the spirit of the stories.

Walt, I see your point, but I don't buy it. To reduce your comments to their essence (I trust this does not misrepresent them),

Quote from: Walt FreitagA player in a standard dungeon crawl, for instance, doesn't have any choice about fidelity to setting. It's not as if he can decide that a wall isn't there....Fidelity and interactivity (real decision-making power, or in GNS terms, authorship) are fundamentally incompatible. That's because meaningful decision-making power must include the power to make decisions that break Fidelity.

I don't see it.

Tackling the second thing first, I might decide to go to the store this afternoon. There is a story close enough to walk--about a mile or so, I wouldn't want to carry groceries, but I could walk there. We've got a couple bicycles, so I could go by bike. There are two working vehicles in the drive, and I've got keys and a valid license, so I could drive. Dick Rutan has designed personal aircraft that can take off and land in parking lots, so I could fly one of those, or if I were Superman I could fly there without such assistance. The fact is that I can't fly there; I don't have a Dick Rutan homemade aircraft or any other flying machine, and I've never actually seen anyone levitate (thus find myself doubting the possibility in reality as I've experienced it). That doesn't mean I don't have meaningful decision-making power in my life. It only means that I can't break the integrity of this world by flying to the store.

As to your dungeon crawlers, Joe could suddenly say, "My character Jim is so pleased and excited that he turns and gives Bob's character Bill a big sloppy wet kiss right on the lips," at which point Bob, if he's anything like the Bob with whom we played, is likely to get up and leave the building. To Bob, that would be breaking the integrity of the characters--they're not like that, in his mind, and he neither expects nor wishes to go there. Joe has, from Bob's viewpoint, failed to maintain fidelity to the dungeon crawl they've agreed to play. He didn't have to make walls vanish to do that; he just had to make a decision which the other players thought was outside the parameters of the game.

Now, in some games someone other than Joe might have the power to say, "Jim didn't do that" (probably the referee, possibly the group); in other games they'd have to persuade Joe to withdraw the move, and in still other games it would stand as having been done despite the violation of the expectations of the other players. But if the move is withdrawn, it's because of a challenge to its fidelity, and if it isn't it's still a violation of the integrity of the world, or at least of the other characters (unless of course Bob counters by saying Bill immediately runs Jim through with his sword).

Vincent, I agree that there is a distinction between fidelity to the integrity of the world itself and fidelity to the source materials; in a sense, this is perhaps more a game design matter (not a bad thing). Does the game try to achieve fidelity to any source material, and if it does how successful is it in doing so? That's not the same thing as conflicts between players, although it can inspire such concepts if one thinks the group should be playing the game as written and another thinks they should be emulating the source material.

Since I have never played a game based on a licensed product, I'm not sure how that usually works; I have created Multiverser worlds based on books and movies, but generally I'm trying to achieve the feel and flavor of the original in the conversion, and as it's my work I'm the last person to be able to say how well I do that.

--M. J. Young

Hi M. J.,

You might have perceived more connection between the different points of my last post than I intended to convey. (Not that I'm saying your perceptions are wrong.)

The dungeon crawlers example was supposed to be a specific example of a special case. It applies only to players (not the GM, though I wasn't clear on that) and only to fidelity to setting. I certainly didn't mean that the players had no choice about fidelity to character or other elements, nor did I mean that the GM had no choice about fidelity to setting. The question is, the players (specifically, not the GM) are exploring both character and setting, and for the first they have the opportunity to break fidelity (as in your Joe and Bob example) and for the second they don't. Does this mean there's a difference in how we evaluate their metagame priorities with regard to fidelity of setting vs. fidelity of character? I think there is, which might relate to the last paragraph below.

Regarding your example of fidelity in real-world choices, in one of my first discussions here (about the Impossible Thing), I asked whether giving players decision-making authority over their characters equivalent to the decision-making powers of a free-willed real person in the real world was sufficient to establish player authorship of character. I was assured, by many voices and with great certainty, that it was not. Having been persuaded to that view, I have to argue that your real-world example demonstrates that real world free will falls short of authorship of one's own self. On the flip side, authorship can't have the expressive power it does without also having the transgressive power to break expectations, whether those are expectations of who does and doesn't own a Rutan prototype or expectations of "that's not like Jim."

However, you're correct that decision-making power to break expectations doesn't have to be absolute and unbounded to be meaningful. Only that it's not meaningful decision-making power if it can never break expectations.

I believe that a creative agenda is only fully in play when it is in jeopardy. If you can't lose (or at least perform poorly against) a challenge, then it's not really a challenge. If you don't have the authorial power to totally screw up a Premise, you don't have the authorial power to address that Premise. If you don't have the ability to break Fidelity, then how can play be "all about" Fidelity as we expect Simulationist play to be?

- Walt