On 3-4-05, anon. wrote:

If I may offer an alternate diagram...

Alt Diagram

The intent here is one circle each for Thematic, Competitive, and (for want of a better term) Stylistic. Each is split into the middle segment ("with player empowerment") and the outer ("without"). I didn't bother labeling the circles; each can be any. This shows just how complicated the middle could be if we assume we could be Empowered in just one, any two, or all three.

But, IMO, the important thing here is the fact that there are overlaps, not the tiny intersections of the XYZ chart. This was what completely threw me for a loop earlier. SIM and NAR don't barely touch one another (or, they do in theory, but NOT in practice -- it's an old joke now to say that in theory there is no difference between theory and practice and in practice there's no relationship between theory and practice). I think I now understand what Vincent is trying to do. He's trying to define the area in the SIM circle that isn't in either other circle WITHOUT saying "it's play that lacks conflict and theme".

Which means the idea that what I've call "genre-loyal play" is down there is true, but it's misleading. Most genre loyal play is informed with NAR or GAM or both. What is in the pure-SIM area is much more unique. It's things like the improv games shown on "Whose Line"... Characters lack names or perhaps there aren't even characters, there's just a rule for how you must talk/act. Down here, what matters is STRUCTURE. Genre is a structure. So is Setting. So are character Archtypes. Heck, so are the rules of poetic form, the "must sing all dialog" rules of pure Opera, the traditions of No, etc., etc.

So, I'm back to the SimCity model. That game provides a structure, a set of items with behaviors you can create, assemble, and observe. If you like, you can create NAR or GAM objectives to color this, but at hear it's pure SIM. And that's what a pure-SIM game is. It's a big-ass box of LEGO that you dump out and play with, linking and creating and destroying. You don't try to build a house or a car or something, that'd be drifting toward NAR. You don't try to out-build someone else, that GAM. You just build for the joy of building.

A pure SIM RPG? Well, I think the episodic TV model holds. Rocky and Bullwinkle are always themselves, every new story, and those stories always circle back to where they started. Ranma and Akane will tease the audience and each other that this time it'll finally work out, but in the end it's always right back to square one. Paranoia Clones (in ZAP style and pretty much in Classic, too) are pretty much "crunch all you want, we'll make more", differentiated barely at all. In pure SIM, we want that fixed archetype or faceless replacability, because we don't want NAR to intrude more than just a little. We want our pieces to bounce off each other for a while, as we observe their interactions, then we put them away (or, in the faceless case, throw them away), to be pulled out (or recreated) for the next time. We don't want a big carefully-planned mystery with hurdles and problems to solve (too GAM), just a situation we can explore and interact with.

Yeah... I've run and played a LOT of TFoS that fits fairly well into that niche. It's not the main style of gaming I do (though it was for one summer when I ran TFoS almost every weekend and a friend ran Paranoia when I wanted a break. It was fun. It wasn't the same style of gaming we'd learned with D&D, T&T, and V&V (this was maybe 1985, so there weren't THAT many games around), the pursuit of character-building was replaced with the goal of just having fun now, even if that meant making a new character for the next session.

And have I "grown out" of that now that I have more sophisticated games to play? Not a chance. Heck, I'm scheduled to run a TFoS/Amber cross-over at AmberCon in just hours under four weeks. If it's anything like the last time I ran this idea, it'll be a blast.

So there's the "pure SIM" world, IMO. Games with neither over-arching competition or theme, just the interaction of roles in a setting. Yes, it develops mini-stories and mini-competitions here and there, but it's never about those things. It's about being your role in a given setting with presented other roles to interact with. All the rest is happenstance.

Yes, I understand what you were going for with the "reverence" issue earlier... I still disagree. The issue isn't that you can't change the setting for human reasons because the setting is sacred, it's that you don't need or want to, because doing so violates the nature of the structure. The players don't change the rules during the game (though perhaps they do BETWEEN games). In-game, they deal with the structure as presented.

On 3-11-05, Eric wrote:

The thing I've been trying to get a handle on is how to manage the downsides of love and affection.

We all agree that we'd like to see a game mechanically handle love & friendships. "Mechanically handle" can mean a lot of things; it can be a kind of stakes, a means of resolution, a factor in resolution/reward (a stat or score), lots of things. The thing is, because we're looking at making it come up in our games, we tend to reward it. And in doing so, we run into some pitfalls.

It may be that it is harder to model frustration, ennui, curiosity outside the pair, and so forth... than to model affection itself. And without these, we get a one-sided situation which doesn't do anybody any good.

It happened to me. In 1st ed. Pendragon, there's a roll on your Love score to get a significant bonus on acts associated with that passion. It's like an early version of SAs. Quite costly/difficult to increase. My PC was a lovestruck fool, and I made those sacrifices and eventually by the time we wrapped up had, if I recall correctly, a score of nineteen - twenty-one when you included a magical gift from her. Which was huge, insane, ridiculous for a roll-under on d20 system. As a young knight I challenged Lancelot to a joust in the hopes of proving that Milady was fairer than Guenevere... that sort of thing. I was devoted beyond belief.

And you know what? It was stale. Happily, it was part of the character's mores that one can and must love where the heart finds it, so I also had as many secondary Love scores on my sheet as the rest of the group put together, and about thirty bastards all over Britain. And that - that was fun. Conflicted, not always friendly, and a blast.

The problem was that I had, statistically, put so much into the primary relationship between Arylle and Katrina that the GM running Katrina (my wife) felt seriously constrained in terms of what she could do with her. Kill Katrina and a PC drops to literally half the man his compatriots are. Threaten her and he becomes halfway to invincible in her defense. Quarrel with him and he moves heaven and earth to re-earn her favour - and invariably succeeds, cf. killing her.

Frankly, Katrina was a dull character. She was cardboard, too constrained to be much fun to interact with. The relationship itself was a good seed (get landed and lauded so her father will look at you twice, etc) but the character itself was deformed by expectations.

One lesson from this, for me, is that those rules included no way to prompt us for permission and expectation on the downsides of love. There was no downside to loving with all one's force. (Well, a failed passion roll had a lovely "run into the woods and be melancholy" consequence, but it was awkward to use and not hugely game-relevant even when invoked.) There was a mechanism for love... but none for ennui, cabin fever, crossed wires. Partly this is genre, of course - but there was no mechanism for the tension of sexual frustration in courtly love, either.

I'm finding the same sort of thing in working on the space opera game mentioned above. What's the downside to a happily devoted amour-fou between pilot and engineer? If having their relationship run smoothly gets him bonuses in his fight, then how to prevent Arylle and Katrina from cropping up over and over?

Having said that, of course, at least one solution is obvious. Don't give bonuses for a smooth-running love. Give it for snarks, fury, jealousy, and even cheating. Give it for the burn, not the toasty warmth. Balance that against the emergent benefits of things running smoothly between the one who flies the ship and the one who keeps it flying; neither solution "wins", both are rewarded. Yum. Because it's a heroic game, give the same bonus for valour when it's really called on, the beloved is in direct danger and so on... but make it somehow mechanically clear that "same old" gets you nothing.

Sorry for the length, here. Hope that helps you guys, as well as me.

- Eric

On 3-11-05, Charles wrote:

Within the freeform games that I play, love, sex and friendship tend to be well handled as resources, but not very well handled as stakes. Among our various characters, Barry and I are currently playing a married couple who figured significantly in the last game session and, while no sex occurred in play, their interactions with each other and with others were strongly influenced by that existing relationship (which is what I think of as the sign of resource use in freeform play).

Freeform also seems to support development of friendships within play, and supports friendship as stakes reasonably well (questions of "do our characters become friends", and "do our characters remain friends" are well handled by freeform systems). On the other hand, truly deep friendships developing in play are also very rare.

Within our group, freeform is not used to develop love or sex as stakes. Two characters who are not created as a romantic/sexual couple pretty much never become a romantic-sexual couple, unless there is bleed-over from a player-player relationship.

One interesting thing is that online written RPGs seem to handle development of romantic and sexual relationships with gusto. I suspect that this may be because a written game allows for a much clearer character-player divide than face to face games do. Face to face games rely much more on the actorly aspect of play, particularly to convey the more subtle aspects of interaction that are key to initiating romantic or sexual interaction. So if my character hits on Barry's character, for it to be satisfying in game, it will need to involve some degree of me acting out hitting on Barry. If we never step into IC, or if we stepped into IC but completely restrained the actorly component, then the scene (from my perspective at least) would be very likely to be unsatisfying. However, I think very few players who are not sexual partners are comfortable acting out hitting on a player. The potential for bleed-over from the acting out of character interactions to the players themselves seems like more of a problem for romantic or sexual aspects of play than for hostile aspects of play. Possibly this is because most players are more certain that they are friends with their fellow players than they are that their fellow players are not sexually interested in them? This would also explain why good hostile PC-PC interactions require a stronger friendship between the players than companionable PC-PC interactions?

On the formal mechanics side, I also totally agree with TonyLB that the most important feature of a good mechanic is that the structure of the mechanic needs to promote the sort of play that the mechanic handles. This is the appeal (to me) of both Otherkin dice and the DitV system as well as the MW Trust sytem (with which I am even less familiar).

The problem with the system in Pendragon that Eric describes doesn't seem so much like it was a problem of it being a broken resource system (although it sounds like it was that too), but instead that the system for having a character who was utterly in love with an NPC in no way supported the player doing things with the character that actually related to experiencing that love with the NPC, but only supported doing things with people other than the object of affection. So while his character was rewarded for public displays of the importance of the love object (challenging other knights, etc), actually interacting with the love object was completely unsupported, and the process of creating the love object doesn't sound like it was even designed to produce an interesting character.

If the love object is going to be an NPC, then the system for creating the love object needs to specifically support creating a love object who will interact interestingly with the PC.

In the case of Eric's love struck knight, it seems to me that the rules should have made very clear how she felt about his philandering, and her feelings towards him should have influenced the effects of his love-struck characteristic. This would have led to Eric choosing to spend have his character spend a significant amount of effort patching things up and making up to Katrina. Of course, the mechanics would also need to support this process being interesting, rather than a book keeping excercise, but at the very least, the mechanics need to point the player in the right direction.

I guess another way of describing that would be to say that a good rule system needs to use the players' desire for effective play to coax the players in the direction of interesting play, and perhaps even meaningful play.

On 3-15-05, Charles wrote:

Time is definitely one of the critical ingredients for building a deep romantic relationship IC. Possibly the most impressive roleplaying I've ever seen was a romantic friendship that developed between Emily's character Stellan and another of our group (Jenn)'s character Rig (in the Isrillion campaign roughly a decade ago). The thing that made it so impressive was not that they developed a romantic friendship, but that they did it basically realtime over the course of what was probably 20 or 40 hours of play stretched over at least 2 dozen games. Whenever their characters weren't involved in anything else, they were talking with each other about their lives, their day, whatever, and it gradually grew into a deep and powerful bond. Part of what supported that was a game style in which players who weren't directly involved in the scene could drop back and play their own scenes on the side (and having a large group of players helped make that reliably possible). Of course, the other thing that helped was two players with very little gamer baggage (years of D&D so doesn't prepare you for romantic roleplaying).

Other times that I've seen romances develop much faster between characters, they have often been supported by side sessions involving just the romantically engaged characters.

While those side sessions are potentially even more problematic in terms of blurring player - character boundaries, they are a very powerful tool for adding long conversations to a game that does not otherwise support them. Formalizing the existance of such conversations (which might easily be conducted via email or chat for those for whom face-to-face wouldn't work) within a game might help to re-affirm the boundaries. Perhaps using the longer out-of-session conversations to develop a more focused scene in play (either a sort of summary, or a culmination scene).

I think a similar method is often used in written online roleplaying games, where scenes are explored in chat, and then the chat sessions are used as the basis for a written version, that may or may not follow the chat exactly.

Thinking about what a romance mechanic should look like, in very broad strokes, it seems to me that it would differ from most mechanics in that it is based around building something, rather than fighting over something. It should involve the characters having to put something of value at risk, or make themselves vulnerable to harm, in order to make it possible for the other characters to follow up by putting something at risk or make themselves vulnerable. Once the characters start on it, backing out should always be very expensive, but not backing out will put them even more at risk. Also, backing out will always be less expensive than having the other person back out. There would have to be some mechanism for temporarily stabilizing the structure, but it would constantly need to be revisited. It should also be possible for either character to draw off of the created structure in someway, forcing the other character to either accept the borrowing, or bring the whole thing crashing down. This would allow the relationships to go wrong in interesting ways, where neither character wants to call it quits and accept the loss, but both characters are getting twisted around by playing games with the structure of the relationship.

I wonder if anyone has been actively using PTA for romantic gaming. I have just been watching Six Feet Under, which is one of the series PTA cites as a model, and which is very heavily based around the development and collapse of romantic relationships, so it seems likely that it is within the range that the author's intended the game to cover.

On 3-16-05, Tobias wrote:

Ed (and all) --

[Rambling ON]

Yeah, they're a strange duck, aren't they? And unless you go into Solo-Books or CRPG, keeping track of all that happened (if you insist on doing so, perhaps in the hope of building on it) could be a chore.

Your comment about memory is a good one, though. I've been experimenting and puzzling with some bits:

- the (fallible and flexible) memory of 1 player
- logbooking

On this, I've tried some tricks - for instance, in a game I was designing that's been mentioned on the Forge (YGAD), I had something called the Bag - which was a drawing-bag that determined success or failure, but could also yield special event stones. That's become something else (actually, a DitV variant), but from the conversations held at that time, I've retained the thought that a 'bag' might be used as some sort of memory. Another thing I've been experimenting with are memory tiles as a form of challenge to the player (a form of randomisation combined with a personally challenging mechanic). Fang Langford also wrote an interesting piece in Iron Game Chef - Simulationism (on the Forge). I'm pondering if you can't have a Code of Unaris-style 'system' that hacks a few the words in the logbook you use (randomly), as you try to keep the 'story' consistent, adding what you like, but forced to keep creative to incorporate the hacks the system throws at you.

But that's me flailing away at creating a game. Let's go back a bit to first causes.

In keeping with dispensing of theory and just talking about what happens, I'm not going to bother to see whether 1-person roleplaying is possible by definition - I'm just trying to see whether a method of play that is close to indistinguishable from it will is possible.

In the beginning, there was the player, and the player was one and all-powerful.

Without any rules, the player can dream up everything and has no limits on the story he can create. Fantasy. Not a 'game', though.

Fantasy's fun, and I used to do it a lot as a kid (still do, I'm happy to say). Mostly, though, they were little snippets that i thought were cool. Recreating something I saw on TV, adaptation of something from a book, a bit of power-fantasy for yourself in your own social circle (I often entertained myself with books and fantasy, but also wished I'd be more popular).

They were little snippets, story fragments, mostly. Why they weren't longer, I don't know. I'm not really knowledgeable on child development (no kids, no learning). Maybe the fragment was cool enough on it's own? Maybe I wasn't sophisticated enough to build elaborate structures - or it wasn't worth it to me? Perhaps it was all meaningless without something, someone, to relate it to, test it's worth (on the other hand, no-one could condemn me for my fantasy, right? I was free.)?

Now, at least, I think I need some form of challenge, either from another player, from reality (building the highest possible stack, jumping farthest, etc.), or from the game itself (solitaire, or chess against an AI could be considerd a whole game, for example).

In the solo-game, how do you build that challenge? Well, you could introduce some dice that oppose some values you write down on a paper ('character'), and see how often your character beats those rolls depending on whatever rules you write when and how to roll. You could tune that very finely to give exactly the rate of success, variance, failure, you desire. If you introduce alternative options (tactics) that may or may not lead to success, you've got yourself a game, which you can play.

If you want to call that character a 'role', you've got a 'role' playing game - but it might as well be called a 'tactical personnel choice' game. (No slurs or opinions on D&D implied, btw).

So, getting into that role, or, at least, caring about some (human) aspect of that character - or the story that develops from the rolls and free tactical choices of a large part of my creativity, would be required for me to experience it as close enough to 'roleplaying' - and thus a worthwile roleplaying experience.

Any reasons for 'caring' relating to other people (overcoming opposition, peer appreciation, etc.) disappear when you are alone. You could try to create 'another you' and simulate two agenda's at the same time. You could also make some of the tests, difficulties, be self-referential (memory?!), and thus appreciate your own creativity in overcoming opposition or your power of memory.

I'm floundering. There will be no nice conclusion to this post. Still, the process might be worth something. Just warning you in advance.

Roleplaying (with a group) can be a (masked) challenge game to me, or I can explore "what's important". (It's tempting to refer to theory here, but let's keep it this simple - this is what tickles me).

Solo challenge games exist a plenty. I'm sure there are also story-writing games (and I'd appreciate links to RPG-esque variants!). There are 1-person CRPGs. I've tried to use Universalis as a 1 person 'story building' game by faking several 'positions' and 'agendas' and seeing if the randomisation in coin expenditure would force me to be creative in ways I wouldn't have expected - but it doesn't (which is a failure in my expectations, not in Universalis).

I haven't found that solo-RPG that uses my own creativity, makes me care about the characters (they're all mine, aren't they?), challenges me, etc. I'd like to find it (even if it only fullfills some of the wishes).

Right now, I'm thinking some kind of logbooking game that hits close to home and uses a Code-of-Unaris word hacking scheme on the lines you write yourself might be something. Gotta do a lot of writing, yeah, but the physical result might be something fun to have as well. Like Fang Langford's game, encourage doodling, drawing, etc. (I've already considered a rule that pictures/drawings would be unhackable by the game (since it can only hack words in sentences), which would force me to draw a little more, which I've always wanted to do anyway). Like Fang's game, it's a game that would take on the shape of the person playing it.

[Rambling OFF]

Hope someone got something from that.

On 3-18-05, Charles wrote:

Okay, my backing for this is in Narrative Stance theory, so that may influence things.

I think it is probably a useful fiction to take audience and actor as mutually exclusive moment to moment. I'll agree that it is possible to move fluidly and rapidly from mode to mode, and I'll even agree that it is possible to achieve a childlike balance between the two where you are saying "My giant robot leaps to the walls of the castle and tosses Sauron into the moat." and thinking "That is SO cool!" at the same time, and I agree that this is probably an important state to achieve for engaging in child play, but I think that mostly we can treate the modes as mutually exclusive.

I'd divide things you can do while you don't have a character in the scene into two different chunks (recognizing that the in-between category may be pretty big): chunk one is scene framing, suggesting actions when your suggestions are likely to be incorporated, contributing dice to one side of a contest, etc; chunk two is table talk, joking suggestions of actions, suggested dialogue that can't actually be incorporated, or clear displays of interest or discomfort with the direction a scene is going.

In the first chunk, the player is acting to directly control the direction of the game (in the same manner as players with characters in the scene, or players officially responsible for the situation), and is therefore functioning in an authorial mode. At the most extreme form of the first chunk, the player might even temporarily take on an NPC, or might take over control of the situation. At this point, they are clearly not acting significantly in audience mode, but have become one of the authors of the scene. The PTA system highlights this authorial audience.

In the second chunk, the player is commenting on the game, and those comments may be incorporated by the other players into the game, but they are more likely to influence the game itself, rather than the progression of the particular scene. In this case, the player is solidly in an audience mode, but is simply an active audience. One of my two play groups uses this mode very heavily (actually, we use it so heavily that players WITH characters in scene will switch to this mode), with frequent discussions of what sorts of slash fic a particular scene leads to within the imaginary fan community of our game, or entire (non-canonical) conversations between slightly out of character characters.

As a more specific example of the later, Kip's character Guard has very poor language skills, and a very poor sense of self, so occasionally Kip will respond to a situation by playing out what Guard would be saying if he had a better sense of self, and others will respond in character or slightly out of character. These conversation do not take place within the events in game, and exist only within the active audience mode as a sort of fanfic, but they are critical to the shape of the game as a whole.

I think it is definitely worthwhile to talk about the interaction between the two modes within the player position of not having a character in play. I don't think we should restrict the discussion to just the audience mode, but should talk about both the state of being without a clearly defined authorial role (having a PC in scene, being GM), and also the state of watching the game.

To my mind, one if the main effects of giving players without characters some authorial rights is that it helps to keep the players engaged in the scene (while some players are happy to take the part of theatrical audience, sitting quietly in rapt attention as the play progresses, and others are satisfied being the hecklers at a movie, or even being the floor show at Rocky Horror, there are far too many players who, when their character walks off stage, pick up a book or stare out the window). This engagement, to my mind, serves to heighten the audience experience. Of course, it is also a good way to engage players as authors of the world.

Before I run on to long (too late, I know), I will close with a sidenote on the other things you can do when you aren't in scene:

There are two other things you can do when you don't have a character in play: 1)sit quietly and watch, and 2) ignore the game. The first is definitely audience mode (in the sense of watching the game), and can effect the game in three ways that I can think of: 1) its really a subset of the second chunk, in that the body language of an interested audience helps to tell the active players that what they are doing matters, that it is interesting to someone, and that it has sufficient meaning to hold someones attention 2) it ensures that the player knowns what is going on in the game, and will be able to contribute meaningfully to the overarching structure 3) it can be one of the main pleasures of the game. The second is not really audience mode, or maybe it is bad audience mode, but it is part of not having an authorial role. Some people seem to need it in order to maintain their focus on what their character knows, other people use it signal that they are bored with where the game is going.

There are advantages and disadvantages that I can see to all 4 types of things (contribute as author, contribute as audience, watch as audience, not watch) a player without characters in scene can be doing.

Anyway, thanks a bunch for starting this thread.

Oh, total side note, somebody needs to give you a recent comments side bar. I think some of your discussions end not because people stop being interested in talking about the subject, but because they drop to far down the page. As your blog develops into a fantastically cool place to talk about gaming, the ability to keep threads going on longer seems like it might be a big plus.

On 3-18-05, JasonN wrote:

A collection of possibly comments which might or might not be provocative.

1) I don't think we want to turn the term "audience" into a pejorative. Or maybe we do? But I'm not convinced yet.

2) On a technical level, any time you're listening to someone else make contributions to play, you're audience. This I think we can all agree on. And I think as a result, we can say that *listening* is a fundamental skill of roleplaying. We've all played with bad listeners, I'm sure, and they suck.

3) And when you're the one making contributions, you are doing so *to* and *because of* your audience. In the styles of play that Vincent espouses, you are taking your audience into account, deeply. (I think. Comments?)

3a) Here we divide into certain play styles. The character immersionists will insist that they will play their characters the same way, no matter what. People who take audience into account will say that if you have different people in the audience, their play will change accordingly. (Right?)

4a) When we're doing analysis and trying to decide if Engaged Play happened, it doesn't matter if any player made contributions or not (at any given moment in time). What matters most is that they had the choice. Looking at someone who didn't participate, it's very easy to say "they were just an audience" -- but that's the pejorative use of the term. Sometimes, silence is a well-chosen reaction, and a meaningful creative choice in the moment.

4b) Consider a bit of play in which a player, in character, gives an impassioned monologue, and nobody tried to stop her, and after she's done everyone sat silent for a while. Further, let's say that this moment would become a highlight of the game, and part of the group culture. We *could* say that the person who gave the speech was the sole author of the speech, but that doesn't do justice to the experience that people are really talking about: the experience of the moment indelibly includes the silence which followed, during which everyone was enjoying their reactions. The people who sat silently made the *choice* to give the roleplay the space they felt it deserved. The people who sat silently were making contributions to play, if you ask me.

5) The fuzziness we have about where "contributions" stop and "commentary" starts is interesting. Suppose Bob and Sally are shooting the breeze, waiting for a couple other players to show up. Bob says, "Boy, I've had a really hard week at work. I have all this pent up rage. My boss SUCKS." This is just a non-game comment. But if Sally takes this as an *input* and provides Bob, in game, with opportunities to shoot, say, an authority figure with a Very Big Gun -- does this non-game comment remain become a contribution, in hindsight?

6) Having the term "audience" hinge on whether you have a character in the scene seems overly formulated to me. Vincent's thread-starting statements above include not only character, but "creative property" as well -- like if you're playing Ars Magica and you tend to look after the Faerie Forest, that's the kind of stuff I think he means to include here. I think when we say "audience" we're trying to refer to a state where the permissions and expectations work in such a way that you're creatively suspended while others aren't. For most games that means you're PC's not on scene, but that's by far not how it works.

I think there's something socially sophisticated going on here. There are these fluctuations from moment to moment and scene to scene in a game. Kindof like how in playground games, kids take turns. When the social flow of things says it's not your *turn*, you step back and let the others have some space to play. When you're letting other people have their chance -- maybe that's what we mean by "audience"?

Sorry for the long and meandering post.

-Jason

On 3-18-05, Charles wrote:

JasonN, actually, that wasn't nearly as incoherent as you think it was. It was actually very nicely put.

I’m also writing from work, so this may be a muddle (okay, that’s my excuse anyway).

Expanding on your points about character immersionists and the good silent audience, a noisy audience can be hell on immersion, particularly an audience providing commentary rather than contributions (and I think we are all in agreement that a player who is making contributions is only audience in the sense of no character in play, which I agree is a poor definition of the term).

One proof of the fact that we can be audience whenever we are listening is that a two player session in which the players play out a conversation between two characters (to reduce it to as simple a structure as possible) can be hugely satisfying from an audience perspective. On the other hand, I think it is also possible to have immersive scenes in which the audience experience enters into it very little. I have had IC conversations that lasted for hours that were hugely satisfying for the development and experience of character that they allowed, but probably wouldn't have been that interesting to an audience. An audience would probably have liked the scenes if they had been edited down (actually, it is possible that, by only switching into audience mode intermittently, an effect like editing is produced, where I only view the highlights of the conversation as audience, while I experience the entirety of the conversation IC).

One thing that I have been thinking, that I think relates to what you are saying, is that the more interesting question concerning audience is not how can they contribute to the game, but how does the game support the audience experience.

For instance, one of the things that I think is a definite plus to the techniques of giving players without a major authorial authority in the scene (having a character, being GM, having a stake in what happens with the faerie forest are all major authorities) a small authorial stake in the scene is that it is much more likely to keep them sufficiently involved in the scene that they stay in attentive audience mode in between their chances to contribute authorially. I think if you know that you won't have any way to directly contribute to the scene for a long time, you are much more likely to lose interest at some point.

Digressing back to the question of audience experience as the source of the pleasure of gaming, I'm not sure I'm willing to agree that the only satisfaction from gaming is in relation to Audience mode (if you can't hold the audience, the game is a failure). I'd argue for all four narrative stances having their own pleasures from gaming (although Narrative Stance Theory's Actor stance pleasures are usually pretty thin in non-LARP games), and that even within the goal of making stories that have meaning, authorial pleasure is probably as important (although interlinked with) audience pleasure. Also, IC pleasure can be a huge component of the pleasure of gaming, even within the framework of making stories with meaning (if the story has meaning to the audience, it often has meaning to the characters, so the experience of meaning via IC mode can also be important). On the other hand, I can see saying that if the game sucks from any of the perspectives, it is definitely much less of a game than it would be if it didn't suck from any perspective, so if you can't hold audience attention then you are probably doing something wrong.

However, I've found that whether you can hold the audience attention of players without an authorial role in the scene is mostly a player level thing, not a play quality thing. Within my various current and past play groups, holding John's attention as audience is virtually impossible (since he views it as interfering with his ability to function IC), and holding Kip's attention as audience is pretty hard (if you're holding his attention, then your scene is definitely running hot, but not every scene needs to run hot for a game to be good). If your play isn’t deadly boring, then you probably have my rapt attention, and as long as your play doesn’t have tons of mechanics, then it probably would have Sarah’s attention. The first case brings up the fact that some people don’t want to be audience, and the last case brings up the fact that not everyone is interested in all types of games.

Sorry for the muddliness! That is actually edited a bit from the initial muddle.

On 3-20-05, Ninja Hunter J wrote:

I haven't read this thread yet; I want to answer before being influenced by others, but I'm very happy Meg brought this up here.

1) I'm a male player with two characters in very different groups right now. One is an androgyne, but I'm playing him like an 8-year-old boy because the character's primarily comic and I think 8-year-old boys are hilarious. I was never an 8-year-old girl and haven't paid enough attention to their senses of humor to pull it off, but I know it was different than mine.

In the other group, my character is female because:
I get to talk about the Rosie the Riveter feminism of the 1940s (the period in which the game takes place); I get to be sexy in a different way than I, the player am (not that I'm not sexy; I'm just not sexy like a woman. The degree to which you agree with this is, of course, a matter of opinion and taste.); I get to play a character that never gets properly developed in other period pieces; I get to break stereotype by doing what it occurs to me naturally to do, which makes me look like a better RPer than I really am.

In a lot of ways, she's just stuff I'm not, and in some cases, wish I was: she smokes (heavily), drinks (heavily), is tidy, courageous, beautiful, revolutionary, violent, cool. And she can run in heels. In that way, it's like the nerdy, skinny kid playing the Fighter/Barbarian with St20/Dx20. Playing a woman in this context gives me the opportunity to overcome in a heroic fashion the grief the other players deal and I get to define that arena as this interesting social one. If the character was male, it would take a lot of wind out of the character's sails. I'd have to find other, probably less interesting stuff to confront. And there wouldn't be any female characters.

1a) I'm sure this has come up, but in case it hasn't, I'd like to talk a bit about gender orientation in characters vis-á-vis the player's, and would like to know what makes a player choose that. I've played all over the gender map, though I don't recall ever playing a Lesbian, probably because it seems tawdry for me to play it as a fairly straight man. My straight male characters don't tend to play out their sexuality, probably because it's too close to home, and I'd have to have six bushels of trust to get into that with a krewe. (I'm close with my second group, comically distant with the first, listed below.) I'll typically play whatever will be the most textured. A homosexual man in Mountain Witch gave me this beautifully melancholy love/death warrior/lover thing; A 'female' monosex genetically engineered posthuman who birthed and consumed her own society at will in a sci fi game a while back; a bisexual femme fatale elfin spy in a fantasy game many moons ago. I almost got to play the gunslinger wife of a PC US marshall in a Western game a few months back, but I ended up having to Produce the game instead (the Marshall's player may have been a little uncomfortable with the setup, not sure).

2) My games are: 4 male and a female, playing D&D (don't look at me), PTA, and DitV soon. We used to have one more female and one fewer male; The other group is suspiciously like Vincent's second: three female and two male in which we're all playing cross-gender. We've discussed why that might be and haven't come up with anything. It might be random coincidence. We'll look again a few generations down the line.

And now, to read everyone else' posts that obviate the need for this one.

On 3-23-05, Charles wrote:

I think this raises again the question of "What are the pleasures of being audience?"

While I agree that formally recognizing the contributions of "audience" players helps to keep them engaged as "audience," as well as acknowledging that players are never simply audience, it seems to me that that formal recognition is not the only way to maintain the interest of players who don't have a formal role in the scene.

The way that is probably the most common for maintaining player interest is the degree to which the scene being played will later affect the player's interests. If my character (or chunk of the world) needs for your character to succeed in this scene, then I am more likely to be paying attention to what happens in scene.

Another way of maintaining interest is by parallel thematic structure: if what your character is doing is parallel in theme to what my character is doing, then the scene is more likely to hold my interest: how do your choices reflect my choices? what sorts of doubles are we creating for each other?

A third way of holding audience interest is simply the quality of perceived story being created. If the story is good (including the presentation of the story), then it will hold the audience interest in the same way that any other story does.

If you don't give formal mechanical methods for players to register their interest in a scene, then you need to give non-mechanical methods. A play or a live musical performance is more easily engaging the more often we are allowed to appluad. Television is more fun to watch with friends, so we can register our pleasure or displeasure aloud and have it recognized. A game session is more fun if we can contribute commentary on a scene that we aren't in. Sometimes commentary during a scene can be disruptive, particularly if the comments become off-topic. Sometimes it can enrich a scene by giving a new perspective (the imaginary slash fic that often comes up in one of my games maintains heightened attention on the sexual and quasi-sexual tensions within the party in way that is very different than simply highlighting those aspects in play would). Some scenes may benefit from silence from the audience during play, in which case post-scene response from unempowered players should be supported. If I can't say something is cool while it is happening, I need to be supported in saying it is cool afterwards.

Digressing back to Jonas's game (which is a useful digression, since it gives a specific example to work with), I like J's idea of having the PC have sub-PC friends who are played by the other players. I think that the way to maintain tight player control over hir own story would be for the active player to have to solicit help from the non-active players, rather than having the non-active players free to offer support at any time. Such a structure, particularly if the non-active players have some sort of an incentive to refuse to give support, would nicely parallel the idea of the character having to make sacrifices for their love, particularly if friends is the only renewable resource (first you have to go begging to your friends, but if you can't cajole the other players into giving your character support, then you have to choose between failing your love or destroying your health or sanity, perhaps you would also have the option of demanding that your friend help you this one last time, at which point you burn that friendship, but don't have to burn samity or health). As long as you can keep your friends willing to support you, you are okay, but once they turn against you, you are stuck burning your points one by one, or failing your love.

Another option would be to make the actions of each player matter to the other players on a game level. If my character's decisions change the world for your character, then you are more likely to pay attention. Perhaps my character failing her love means that it is harder for your character not to fail her love, as we on the home front decide it just isn't worth it, and Dear John letters become more normal?

One problem I think I see with this design is that you are basically constructing a game in which most of the players will be unempowered audience for most of the game (depending on how many players you have). Furthermore, they will not apparently have an in-character investment in the results of the scenes they are watching (since the at-home characters don't know each other), so the only two aspects of audience they can enjoy are parallel theme and high quality narrative.

There will be lots of opportunity for parallelism since the theme is highly restricted, but meaningful parallelism isn't particularly well supported if we each have no influence on what sort of story the other chooses to tell. Instead, we will end up with something more like a game of Exquisite Corpse. The idea of having the players brainstorm about their characters together during char gen might help with this though, since part of what will make your character interesting to me is how they are set up to handle the issues that I find interesting. Possibly, the char gen could specifically highlight this aspect.

Audience pleasure in a high quality narrative is a dangerous basis on which to hang a game, since few players are skilled writers or skilled actors or skilled storytellers (and very few are some combination). Our hobby has never been much of a draw for spectators, and that isn't likely to change.

On 3-25-05, John Kim wrote:

Vincent: I dunno. Look at what's on your character sheet, and think back to the last time you rolled on it or got a modifier for it. Is there anything you've never used?
Well, my original question was about "participation" -- but now you seem to have reduced this to only die rolls. Given that, yes, there is plenty I haven't used for the purpose of die rolls. My Buffy RPG character sheet has Dot's name on it and some description. These have contributed to my participation in the game, but I haven't rolled on her name or gotten a die roll modifier for it. I also have some drawbacks like "Honorable to Friends" and "Adversary: Vampires". The same applies to them.

But by this you're implying that the only way to participate in the game is through die rolls or modifiers to die rolls. For example, if I am at physically a game but don't make die rolls, then by definition I have contributed nothing. I don't agree with that.

A character sheet is a piece within an artistic work. It can and should have color. The color may include fancy borders or a character portrait. It can also include descriptive words -- whether these are freeform prose or structured labels according to the game. A good example from My Life With Master: The master has a number of attributes (Aspect, Need, Want, Type) which have no bearing on the mechanics of the game, but add plenty of color to it.

The same thing applies to plenty of other mechanics. Here's a good example: in one of my Champions games, a character ("Farslayer") was a telepath who among other powers had the power to kill virtually anyone in the world by remote mental attack. I don't have the character sheet anymore, but it was statted out. He never actually used it. So by your view it was pointless. But I contend that it was FAR from meaningless. Quite the opposite. That he was constantly not using it was extremely meaningful.

This is exactly the problem that I have with your approach to meaning. It seems to me that your approach reduces "meaning" to some kind of numeric counter. i.e. Unless there is a "meaning bonus" or "meaning rolls", then you dismiss it as just simulation which has no meaning. I don't find that at all. I find that extremely meaningful stuff happens even if (especially if) a player is just doing what she thinks her character would, and the group decides what happens based on what they think should logically happen.

Chris: I've been using the term "markers" to refer to mechanics that allow players to indicate to the GM what they want play to be about...

I see what you're saying, but I disagree that the games you cite are empty of markers. D&D is actually a fairly focussed game, in my opinion. It makes no claim to be Soap Opera -- that's why it doesn't have any Soap Opera traits and its dumb to judge it as such. It's designed as a tactical system. On the other hand, other systems certainly do have drama markers. In 1981, Champions brought in the idea of having the player mechanically specify enemies to fight (via the "Hunted" disadvantage), what his attachments for subplots are (via the "Dependent NPC" disad), and what his other weaknesses are. The rules encourage pushing these. i.e. So if I take "Code vs Killing", then the GM is encouraged to have situations where it would really help to kill someone but I can't.

I'm not saying that Champions is perfect by any means, but it certainly has markers. I think Champions is at least as structured and focused as The Riddle of Steel is. That is, if I just have my players put together a bunch of Champions characters -- and I also have them make a bunch of TROS characters -- I think it is much clearer how to create an adventure for the Champions PCs. Roll on the Hunteds and DNPCs, mix it up a little, and the adventure is straightforward. There are other focused games, like D&D, My Life With Master, and Dogs in the Vineyard.

I've only played Storyteller a few times, and they haven't been great, so I hesitate a little to defend it. But from my readings, it seems like they have plenty of markers for politics. Each character is required to choose a clan or such -- and often several other choices -- which places her on a side in the political game. There are many well-defined positions (i.e. Whip, Sheriff, Harpy, Seneschal, etc.) within the hierarchy. On the personal side, there is Nature and Demeanor. As I recall Vampire, there are three moral traits in addition to Humanity.

On 3-25-05, John Kim wrote:

First of all -- to all four of the prior posters -- I am absolutely 100% down with "System Matters". I have seen it in action again and again. Lousy or inappropriate systems don't completely doom a game, but they sure do drag it down. By and large, I'm fine with Storytelling system bashing. I have limited experience but what I have seen is largely sucky. On the other hand, bashing (say) Champions or Ars Magica or James Bond 007 will get me to object.

Ninja Hunter J wrote: The system didn't support that. If your pointed nonuse of that power didn't give you resources, it was just a point sink
...
If, on the other hand, you didn't use it and got bonus points for not using it, for instance in the form of Great Responsibility dice, that would be a different thing.

OK, here is where I completely disagree. This is exactly my objection to Vincent of reducing meaning to bonus dice. Meaning comes out of the narrative, not from the labels which are attached by the system. In my opinion, the system did support my example. Champions has a hideous learning curve as well as some other faults, but once you can get players creating their own powers, it is excellent at supporting meaningful narrative within its niche. (Obviously, in my opinion.)

Once again, in case anyone is reading me wrong -- I am not saying that any system is good for this. There are tons of systems which are terrible at this. And I don't inherently reject the idea of Great Responsibility dice. But the proof is in the pudding. Just having Great Responsibility dice doesn't mean that the system supports meaningful narrative. Nor does lack of them mean that the system does not support meaningful narrative.

Emily Care wrote: I don't think any of us think it was meaningless, but the system of the game sure did, for the reasons Ninja J outlined.

Of course the system of the game thought it was meaningless. Meaning comes from humans, not from system labels. The question is, did the system support creating a narrative which has meaning to the humans? My answer is yes, it absolutely did.

Superheroics is a great genre because everything is so richly symbolic. By creating a superhero with a name, costume, and powers, you are engaging in the creation of meaning. So, say, when Ron made Farslayer, or Joe made Archetype (who channeled ideals of social roles), or Craig made Statuemaker (who teleported by making bodies out of material that was there), or Ingrid made Nicole (a girl with an invisible friend), they were all rich with meaning. This was driven by the Champions system. They also got to engage by defining who their subplots were and who their enemies were. That's from the system.

Vincent wrote: On the other hand, there's no good reason for you to want to have this conversation with me. You enjoy your roleplaying, right? So what are you hoping to get out of this?

Well, I'm here because I'm interested in what you say. For example, I've got a copy of Dogs in the Vineyard beside me, and I've been trying to organize a game of it. I enjoy much of my role-playing -- but I nevertheless want to try out new varieties and hear other points of view. That's why I went to Knutepunkt in Norway, for example. I'm at least hoping not to be closed to new ideas.

However, when things which you say clash with my experience of games I enjoyed, then yes, I'm going to express disagreement. I have a fair intersection with you on many points -- I despise the total-GM-control / linear-plot track that role-playing got into, particularly in the 90's. I think that mainstream tabletop games today are in a rut, and really have been by and large since around 1990. But I expect I will disagree with you on some other points.

On 3-25-05, Andrew Norris wrote:

Hi John,

I've been following this conversation. I don't think we really want to get hung up on whether or not Champions specifically does what Vincent's talking about. I'm going to try to generalize it a little bit.

First, I agree with your assessment of Hunted and DNPC to an extent. It's written right there in the rules that the GM should make that roll, and if it's a certain value, that NPC should show up that session. (I think I remember a caveat that the GM should feel free to not make the roll if it wouldn't fit in the current adventure, though, which makes it a little stronger than the Storyteller Contact example, but not all that different.) But I think it's a little different from player participation, in that the player's not saying "...and then my DNPC shows up." They know it'll happen eventually.

Compare that with the equivalent DNPC "disad" in The Shadow of Yesterday: You get XP every time you're in a scene with the person, and more if protecting them causes your character difficulty. The difference I see here is that the player is the one invoking the mechanic. They're going to actively seek out this person, spend time with them, and protect them.

I'm seeing in your posts in this thread that when other people say System, you're reading that as "the rules plus the social context of the group". I mean, yeah, in one sense I can say "Duh, having empty points on your character sheet is meaningful" (I've played plenty of Champions), but the rules as written aren't giving you anything for that. The rules are giving you and the group a chance to go "Yeah, I see what you're doing there." When I hear you say "stuff can tribute to meaning without being a roll or modifier," this is how I read it. It's meaningful as a data point even though it's not a part of the game mechanics.

I contrast that with the Great Responsibility dice example, where you're taking what you and your group are doing with the rules (the idea that not exercising a capability displays restraint and responsibility) and writing it into the rules themselves. The player's not relying on the group to get what he's doing by inference -- he can call upon something in the book to express that he's exercising restraint and responsibility.

(As an aside, we should probably drop Hero system as a reference -- I just realized that the construction kit approach encouraged by them, where the group's idea of "how to build" is so entertwined in the rules as written, is making this really confusion.)

Finally, about Dogs. This makes me think you really may be missing something, because this wasn't confusing to me at all. Relationship dice can be incorporated into a conflict whenever they're relevant, whether or not the person is present. (I don't think they even have to be alive.)

So in most games, if I'm consoling a grieving widow, and I tell her "You know, my brother died when I was a child, if you want to talk about it, I think I can relate," that's meaningful, but it's just color -- it's up to the people at the table to decide how that's relevant. In Dogs, it was a Raise using the relationship. It was using stuff on your character sheet.

I realize "rules + social context" is hard to separate from "rules alone", because when we're playing there's a social context there. I'm trying to say that your examples are largely being injected into the game by the social context, while in Dogs they're injected by the rules.

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On 4-28-05, Kai wrote:

Hi, I'm Poh Tun Kai, and I represent the entire Malaysian market for DitV and kpfs at the moment. :)

Been roleplaying since 1987, more or less, and I've found myself taking on the role of GM because nobody else seems to want to, and because folks tend to like my GMing. I ran D&D from Red Box Basic Set all the way on up to Companion for about three years, three parallel campaigns with the same bunch of players, during high school.

Later, I went to study Computer Science at the Ohio State University and picked up Feng Shui, which led me to throw out combat maps and jettison a lot of unnecessary pre-game preparation, like statting up every damn NPC in the world. That game probably influenced my GMing style more than anything else.

I did some writing for the Blue Planet RPG (including the short story "Easter" in the Archipelago sourcebook) before coming back to Malaysia and joining a computer game developer (one of those infernal Chinese-language MMORPGs, actually) for about three and a half years. I'm currently editor at a local computer magazine, although I plan to move on soon.

I still game semi-regularly with a rotating cast of about nine people, four of whom I consider to be my core group. I GM almost all the time. Folks seem to like my Dark Age Vampire (bloody politics) and Delta Green (horror and paranoia) campaigns most, although in the past I've done some fun Blue Planet and Feng Shui shoot-em-up games.

My most successful single session in the past couple of years was a Call of Cthulhu 1930s game (using Unknown Armies rules) where the PCs joined a broadway musical production to investigate occult murders at a music hall, and my players to our delight spent half the game just having fun with all the tropes of Jazz Era musicals.

I discovered Indie RPGs and the associated theory mainly because of Paka's DitV review on RPG.net (where I go by the handle PTiKachu). I grok some of the theory Vincent talks about, but a lot less of the stuff on Forge, which I skim occasionally. I'm trying to incorporate what new ideas I can into my much more traditionalist Vampire and L5R games, but I fear I've spoiled my players with my GM-is-God style in the past.

Most of my players are very staunch traditionalists, with a mix of "I want to get into my character's head" Simulationist and "Step On Up" Gamist interests. Some find it hard to find the appeal in games like Primetime Adventures, but I have run DitV for them successfully a couple of times. Half of my players would like to try PTA, but the traditionalists (who are also among the most fun guys, actually) aren't interested.

I also plan to get DitV going in a local game store dominated by D20 and mini/card gamers in the near future. It seems to be much more accessible to traditional gamers and might be a stealth way to introduce more modern game design concepts to them.

I should mention that the gaming scene in the Klang valley consists mainly of a few small groups of Malaysians who have studied abroad (and thus learned about RPGs) and their circles, and there are only four functional game stores, all relying heavily on minis and cardgaming for income, only three of which stock RPGs, and then only D20 stuff.

One of my ambitions is to come up with an RPG based on the Infernal Affairs films, wherein players each play a PAIR of double agents on BOTH sides of a police/Triad war.

And I think I've taken up too much bandwidth, so it's back to lurking. :)

On 5-2-05, Matt Snyder wrote:

This discussion has dragged on for a little more than a week now on various blogs. I find it really interesting, and occasionally frustrating.

I want to take this space to clarify some issues that I thought at the outset were pretty obvious. I'm amazed, excited, and frustrated all at the same time that the following are not obvious:

1) I'm clamoring for more games of the "regular people, regular situations" type. NO WHERE have I bashed, well, anything at all. I have said, repeatedly, I'm all for you and your fun, all for D&D, all for genre, geekdom, and on and on. I enjoy those things often. Yay! I'm not criticizing anything except the utter lack of sufficient games of "regular people, regular situations" type.

2) Genre has been a huge terminology problem. I wish I had never used the term. Oh well. What I have been talking about all the time are dramatic situations of the kind found in, say, literary fiction, TV drama, or movies found in the Drama section. It's a "genre" of its own, sure. I wasn't trying to avoid or bash "genre." But, I was trying to point out this genre's "un-geekness." As in, geeks aren't usually very interested, but regular folk seem to be. (shrug)

3) It's the situation, stupid. For some reason, I sense people took me as saying "just regular people doing boring stuff in regular life ... BORRR-RRRING." Um, no. I'm talking about regular people involved in tense situations that produce a powerful story. And, the games I'm imagining and clamoring for damn well better do a good job of setting those situations up so players can knock 'em down.

4) Isn't it strange that people seem to need to "protect" themselves from meaningful (or literary, or thematic, or whatever term you like) creation of "regular people" stories in gaming? I've already read at least two posts/replies that say something to the effect of "I don't want to explore that stuff; it's too close to home. I'd rather do it in some funky way with superpowers." This in the same breath as "It's ok in movies." Why do we feel that collaborative creating a story via characters in a role-playing game is more "threatening" to one's psyche than watching sympathetic characters on the screen? WEIRD.

5) Isn't it strange that we must argue a bit and flounder around for an appropriate word akin to meaningful to express the bloody obvious? We're talking about a process in which we create stories. We struggle with the words, and we constantly explain our statements, like I'm going to do in this next sentence: I'm using story here as a constructed narrative that expresses a profound theme. God, why must we do that? We are too geeked. I hate that!

6) Ego trip time: I find it fascinating that at no point in this broad discussion no one has recognized Dust Devils as a completely appropriate type of this game. It's not exactly accidental that the guy who wrote that damn game started all this lasershark mess. Dust Devils has a strongly recognizeable genre. It has ZERO supernatural or otherwise typically "geek" elements. It's "regular" people in "regular" situations, if we sorta fudge the Old West as "regular." There are no lasersharks in Dust Devils, to be sure (Ben, look, I used it correctly! Nyah nyah!)

So, all the while I'm bitching about this, I already put my money where my mouth is -- about three years ago. MOre to come.

Happily, the discussion has brought up Wuthering Heights, SOAP, My Life With Master and Nicotine Girls as possible "ungeek" games. HeroQuest and Dogs in the Vineyard have also been discussed; both include obvious "geek" elements like supernatural magic. Of course, they also feature incredible systems for wonderful Narrativist play.

On 5-3-05, Matt Snyder wrote:

Jason, are you suggesting, therefore, that it's ok to have a game that's more unfocused in terms fo tension and conflict so long as we have spandex (or something else to grab onto)? That's what I'm reading, and I find that problematic. ALL games, spandex or otherwise, should be as focused as you suggest for just the "regular folks" games. Am I reading too much there?

Tim, I hear what you're saying. Yes, Spiderman was a mega-hit. Yes, I loved it. Yes, Return of the King won the Oscar for best film. That's great! Totally mainstream, certainly. I love both movies more than I can say!

But, consider, have you ever met a person who just wasn't interested in those movies? I have met dozens, if not hundreds of people in that vein, people for whom Spiderman's love for Mary Jane does less than nothing. My co-workers. My parents. Many, if not all of them, are adults, often baby boomers. These people (no, not all baby boomers) just don't care about all that geek stuff. They aren't interested.

These are the same people who take the following view: Role-playing ... er, excuse me ... D&D is a for ridiculously nerdy, socially offensive goons who still live with their parents. (They have no idea other games exist, and if they do realize it, they are similarly LAME games played by LAME people.) They are the people you (may) try to avoid discussing role-playing with altogether. Why? Not least of all because there ARE ridiculously nerdy, socially offensive goons playing the game. But not you, you claim, while hiding the books in the backpack!

Meanwhile, these are the same people UP TO THEIR NECKS in Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code or Tom Clancy or Danielle Steele or the lateset Julia Roberts flick. They are the people who tape The West Wing and watch Survivor live every week.

They're not interested in role-playing because they associate it with anti-social morons. Ergo, the game must also be anti-social and moronic.

Clearly, I disagree that the games and the process of role-playing are anti-social or moronic. I find them to be precisely the opposite of that. It is an entirely healthy social hobby and an intelligent hobby. (Or, at least it has considerable potential to be.)

So, in part, I'm interested in doing my small work to break down that barrier of ignorance to get just a few more people to see that the process is really, really cool. It can do some amazing things. The games, the characters and their situations, will knock your socks off better than ol' Dan Brown any day!

It ain't for everyone, sure. But, as a hobby, we're proceeding with complete and total acceptance of geek culture as divided from the rest of America (and beyond). We retreat into that geek-identity because it makes us feel good. We're embracing it, in part as a big Fuck You to the other people who look down their noses at us. We laugh at all the in jokes, and giggle a bit (and feel uncomfortable a bit) when NBC's new show, The Office, makes fun of us, just as dozens of show did before that.

That's ridiculous, anti-social behavior. We're fulfilling their prophecy about our "STUPID hobby" all in the name of finding like-minded souls.

I get it, I understand that desire. I want to find like-minded souls, too. But, my hobby and my interests are rapidly diverging. It's so high school!

And, I really, really think this happens. All the time, all over the place. Generally speaking, we, as gamers, retreat in our safe basements and safe living rooms with our safe group of like-minded, geeked-out pals. And, we're comfortable.

But, we're also close-minded, defensive hobbyists who lash out when, oh, someone points out that it's absurd we must geek-out all our stories with superpowers and Lovecraft and the Force.

WE are doing this. Not YOU. I'm as guilty as the next guy or gal. Absolutely.

Like I said, I'm both fascinated and frustrated by these observations. I realize I'm slinging mud all over the place now, but I'm covered in my own mud here, too. I have no easy solutions, but I hope to work in my very small way to produce some ideas that break down this great divide as humbly as I can.

Wonderfully, I'm not forced by money to stay on "this side" of that great divide. I can't imagine White Wolf risking a game like Americana for fear of its revenue loss. Small indies like me can avoid all that mess and take a risk with some ideas like that. That's exciting to me! I can be wrong, and not lose my shirt. Cool. It's a risk I can accept gladly. If I even move the needle, fantastic. If I don't accomplish much, but inspire other designers, fantastic.

What happens if I'm completely wrong, and fail entirely? I still have the basement and the living room, and I keep on doing what I enjoy as often as I can enjoy it. In case it wasn't clear, I love America for that reason. I love the hobby for that reason. I'm sure Eero over in Finland gets it, too. It's why I'm making the game I'm making.

On 5-3-05, Collin M. Trail wrote:

That was great Vincent, I found this very helpful.

One thing I was happy to see is that you aren't suggesting that anyone come up with theme ahead of time, because in my experience that hasn't worked.

In fact, this essay has provided me with some concepts that are helping me understand the development of my own gaming style. I usually am the one running games for my group. When I first became interested in trying to address weighty human issues in gaming, I tried to do so by either creating a theme or an issue, and putting the characters in situations which addressed these issues. I found that they usually didn't buy into it. I realized that this was because the theme/issue was all in my head, and had been created independently from whatever characters they were playing.

My next stage was to wait until the characters had been designed, try to guess at what their issue was, and create situations addressing that issue. The difficulty with this has been that sometimes I can't identity their issue, or they don't have one, or the issues addressed by the different characters are so diverse that the situation becomes schizophrenic.

Now that I am a little more conscious of what is going on, I can see that I need to communicate with the players about what issues we want to address. I'm a little worried, though, that we will have difficulties finding an issue that will be engaging to all of us. It strikes me that there are at least two ways to build a consensus about any of these issues- either everyone works cooperatively to find something that will be acceptable to all, or some authority decides unilaterally. Now, traditionally the person running the game decides the situation, and players are used to letting authority on that subject be centralized, as long as the situation seems somewhat appealing. But the character and the issues that character is 'about' are traditionally controlled by the player of that character, so I suspect people will be hesitant to give up control in that area. Especially since traditional gaming follows the model of a facist god for the gamemaster, ceding relatively little control to the players, they may want to have full control over the one area they normally are fully in charge of. (I think this is also at the heart of why many people resist rule mechanics which influence the mind and emotions of a character- so much is usually taken away, that no one wants to give up the one thing they still have control over). Any thoughts on this?

It also makes me wonder whether addressing multiple issues is a good or a bad idea. It might increase player buy in, but at the possible cost of fragmenting vision.

You wrote “I've written about this quite a bit: resolving the immediate conflicts that make this situation unstable transforms this situation into a new one.” Any suggestions on good posts to read to review that? Certainly something I'd like to be solid on.

I found Victor's comment about how this may imply that players need more control of consequences in narrativist play interesting, and would like to discuss this more. That seems to follow, but... being able to decide what the consequences of your conflict are somehow make it seem flat to me. If I can predict all of the consequences when I make my choice, then I'm just choosing the consequences as well... I'm not exactly sure why, but it seems like it would deflate the tension.

Finally, you mention wanting to use dice to create and build tension without harming causality, and say that we have some good ways of doing this. Any resources you could suggest for more information on this subject?

Again, good work, I found this very useful and look forward to discussing it more.

On 5-4-05, Collin M. Trail wrote:

I've got a couple of things I'd like to discuss, but here is one that has really been nagging at me...

Things on character sheets, in particular characteristic, skills, and whatnot. What is their purpose, and are we going about the right way of fulfilling their purpose? I'm going to go with the Lumpley principle on this one, and say that ultimately they are apportioning credibility about statements made in the game world. (SIS is the term used here?) Occasionally they communicate things outside the game- as I understand Kickers and SA's, they are as much to communicate about what the creative agenda is between the GM and player as they are about who has the authority to say what in the game. But for most characteristics, they communicate traits that the character is granted to have, such as being strong, or knowing about computers, or being a king, which give them the authority to decide what will happen in the game.

So, what is the best way to communicate and establish this credibility? My instinct is that the best way is through normal, natural communication. "My character is one of the strongest people in all of the world, so he is unlikely to fail at any task of strength unless it is near mythical, contested by an equally exceptional person, or involves extremely adverse conditions".

I have often heard this position countered, by saying that this is too vague, and that some kind of mechanics need to be used to give the idea any rigor. If the character briefly described above tries to knock over a stone tower, how will we decide whether or not he is successful, without knowing that his strength is 20 and you need to roll a 25 on a strength roll to knock down a tower?

There is some truth to this position. It is very difficult to articulate what authority you claim involving a character. If only you have authority over your character, how will your character ever face a conflict with an unknown outcome? If the authority over outcomes is shared, how can you be sure that others will respect your vision, that ultimately you will have any authority given that others may disagree with your unstated assumptions? If the authority is the gamemaster, how can you make sure his decisions don't come down to pure fiat? A mechanic, which gives number and probabilities or some other method for determining what occurs and what doesn't, seems like it could settle these problems.

However, I don't think these mechanics can really deliver. Perhaps in some small area carefully delineated by the game system, they will be able to- like combat in most games, where if I have a certain attack score and someone else has a certain defense score, I will reliably be able to narrate certain effects.

But no game system could possibly model every conflict that will come up in a game completely. Even something as simple as buying and selling is incredibly complicated in the real world, and one of the joys of roleplaying games is that you don't have to narrow yourself down to a small set of rigorously defined options, like in a video game. Some games try to get around this by giving a difficulty scale. But this ultimately comes back to someone's fiat, just as in the cases this method seems to be trying to avoid. The game system can tell me that if I have a computer skill of 5 I have a 20% chance of succeeding at a difficult task, but someone still has to decide what tasks are difficult. So has knowing that a 5 has a 20% chance of doing it useful?

Not that I don't think randomness is useful, just that it might be better to use it more transparently, and not expect system to do something I don't think it can deliver. Saying that you think the character has a 20% chance of knocking down the tower and then rolling for it, because somehow that seems like the best number to you, seems like it will result in better decisions than comparing numbers and setting fairly arbitrary difficulty numbers. Which suggests to me that a really transparent mechanism, like D6 or percentages, would be best.

So I think we are still at the point of apportioning credibility, trying to make sure that everyone's vision is respected while still incorporating randomness and outside input so that the conflict isn't stale. How do we do this? Some games seem to do it by directly addressing credibility, giving it out as points or the result of a roll, which doesn't seem like a bad approach. But is there a less all or nothing approach, where you can have more nuanced control over outcomes, as is suggested, but not in my opinion achieved, by current systems? And what does everyone think of my assessment of the situation- right on, or on crack?

On 5-5-05, Sydney Freedberg wrote:

So the basic structure is, "A or B? A or B? Choose!"

And you've already said, based on Charles's comments, that refusing to choose is a choice, right?

So let me take that further:

The essay implies (I think) that if the story/game asks "A or B?" and the character walks away with both A and B (e.g. Master & Commander), that's a cop-out. Maybe that's not what you meant, but if you didn't think that way I'm sure some people here are, so I'll address it.

Getting A+B is obviously the dream-comes-true-huge-sigh-of-relief-off-the-hook outcome. But it's not necessarily a cop-out. Sometimes, in life, the world gives you a break. And sometimes you outgrow your old dilemmas.

Consider my daughter, 14 months old Tuesday. Right now, her A vs. B is "stand or move?" Because if she stands up to see better and grab things, she can't get very far; but if she goes down on all fours and crawls, she can't see far or grab things. And right now, she's pretty cranky a lot of the time, because A or B? A or B? Stand or move?

But very very very soon she's going to learn to walk, and then, BAM! A+B. Move while standing up. Stand up while moving. The heavens open. The Red Sea parts. The scales fall from the eyes.

And it's not an easy out not only because it was hard getting there, but because it throws her into a whole new world of A's vs. B's she couldn't have imagined before.

This happens all over the place.

The abused child who grows up to have a series of abusive relationships is constantly having to choose, free but lonely or together but abused? A or B? And then one day you might a decent person and suddenly you can be together and free. A+B.

And the Gospels are all about this. Do good or avoid suffering? A or B? You even have Peter going "B! B! I do not know that man!" and choosing life over virtue, and Judas choosing the 30 pieces of silver to betray his Master, whereas Jesus keeps on healing and preaching and restraining His followers from violence until the nails slam through His skin. BUT. Judas hangs himself -- so neither A nor B -- and Peter repents and Jesus comes back, so the answer to the dilemma is not just "A+B," virtue plus life, but in fact "if not A then never, lastingly, B; but if A, then, ultimately, by the grace of God, B."

Which may be too-good-to-be-true-wish-fulfillment-treacle. Or it may be outgrowing the limits of the old dilemma.

Aaaaand... dragging this back around to roleplaying:

This is where your "not knowing the answer before you start" comes in. This is where the dice, or other means of injecting uncertainty, come in. The one time my group played Dogs (see http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=14215), we ended up facing down a teenaged sorceress, a kid really, a huge threat to the whole community, plus she was killing us; and one of us fired (not me; I couldn't bring myself to) and took her down... but the fallout dice rolled low and she lived and had a chance to repent. Afterwards I told the player who'd decided to fire, "You shot her just enough to save her soul"; and he said, "No, I got lucky."

If the all-powerful narrator (GM or freeformer) says, "Okay, fine, A+B," it's too easy, it's a cop-out. But if you roll the right result against all odds.... well, maybe that's luck, and maybe it's grace. And it's definitely not an easy out if you walk away with the nail marks in your hands.

Short form: A or B? A or B? Sometimes A and B.

On 5-10-05, Vincent wrote:

Christian: no criticizing! We go always forward.

Steve: I'll check it out. I am denied LiveJournal by my workplace netnanny, on account of sometimes it has the sex or something.

Emily, Eric: Groovy.

I think that all the institutions' agendas are: to further entrench their own particular status quos. Wouldn't you say?

1) Mechanical rules for opposition, situation, IIEE, resolution and outcome. They should include both a reward mechanism and a positioning mechanism.

Here's where the scratch list goes.

For opposition, the resources that the institution whose status quo you're disrupting can bring to bear against you. (If you're not acting against any institution's status quo, there's no resolution. No conflict!)

Something like this: I'm the owner of the institution, you're the one with the PC acting against my happy oppressive status quo. If I can bring no resources to bear, I roll 2d6 and take the lower. If I can bring resources indirectly to bear, I roll 2d6 and take the higher. If I can bring resources directly to bear, I roll 2d6 and add them.

If your number is higher than mine, you win. If mine's higher, you choose a) you lose, or b) you "burn" other numbers to make the difference. I think that you must accompany burning numbers with a) a narrated-but-binding disadvantage, that is, a way that the situation resolves non-ideally; or else b) a narrated-but-binding use of your character's changeling powers. In other words, I get a "yes, but," except when your changeling powers are applicable.

There's opposition and positioning. Reward: we really, really want the changelings to act against the institutions. We need to decide how to recognize that when it happens, and then how to reward it.

I also want really solid situation rules. The relationships of the PC changelings with the people around them should be mechanically significant, substantially so.

Furthermore, we need some IIEE wicked bad. Here's a starting question: you say "I tip you out of the helicopter so you fall; you're beaten to death by the mob below." We compare numbers and I win. What am I allowed to say? Here's another: are you allowed to say that in the first place, and if not, what are you allowed to say?

Also, you should replenish numbers more slowly than 3 per. Or else - oh hey, I have a good idea, let me formulate it.

2) Mechanical rules establishing each player's starting position wrt resolution and reward for sure, and the others as appropriate.

Wrt resolution: roll your scratch list. Wrt reward: dunno yet. Wrt situation: establish the mechanical significance of your initial sitch. Maybe that's all we need.

3) Rules or guidelines providing each player with an answer, at every moment, to "what should I be doing right now?"

Suggestions?

4) Enough material to kick the players without any further work on their part into agreement about at least two of: characters, situation, setting and color. Characters and setting is the easiest, but not-at-all easy to get right; characters and situation is the easiest to get right.

5) Rules or guidelines for coming to agreement about the other two.

We gotta get the changeling PCs into motion. Their lives right now, at the beginning moment of play, have to be untenable. Any thoughts? Wanna do it with built in situation, with rules, or with guidelines?

6) Violence, sex, children, money, God, art, politics, or science.

Covered!

On 5-14-05, kenjib wrote:

I've been thinking about the theme essay and issues of A vs. B and what happens when the protagonist ends up with A+B. The other post is so old that I thought I might post my thoughts here as a possible new take on the old topic.

There are four possible endings when the protagonist chooses A over B:

1. Neither A nor B: This is tragedy. The protagonist has made the wrong choice and suffers the consequences. There is a clear value judgement.

2. Both A and B: This is comedy. The protagonist made the right choice. He was faced with the very real possibility of losing B because of his choice, but in the end it worked out. The fact that it worked out is a judgement on his actions. It makes the statement that he did the right thing.

3. A but not B: This is the kind of ending which you have already adequately described. I think the key here is that judgement on the protagonist has not yet occurred once the game is over. This is neither tragedy nor comedy because the outcome has no narrative value judgement until it is interpreted through the filter of each person in the audience. You are left pondering the outcome and deciding for yourself whether or not you think the victory of A was worth the loss of B. It is an introspective ending that makes you contemplate various aspects of an issue instead of making a direct statement about that issue.

4. B but not A: Well this is really strange and I don't know what to make of it. You pick one thing and the results turns out the opposite of what you expected. I can't think of any actual examples of this from literature/film though, so I suspect that it just doesn't work. It might work as some kind of nihilist satire...

I think the key here is that causality from a narrative perspective is very different that causality from a simulation perspective. From the narrative perspective, protagonists are not rewarded or punished because it is the logical outcome. Instead, they are punished based on the needs of the narrative - did they choose right or did they choose wrong? In this case it seems completely acceptable to end up with either an A and B or a neither A nor B ending so long as the protagonist was forced to commit to giving up one of them up.

The act of forcing the protagonist to commit to the choice is key to creating narrative theme, not the act of following through with denying him B. How it ends up is a value judgement on his choice. If you end up with A but not B, as you suggest is the best course of action in your essay on theme, then the narrative itself does not have an inherent value judgement. The audience is left to form their own. Is this ambiguity really a superior outcome or just a different kind of outcome equally as interesting as A+B and A nor B?

So, the theme of Master and Commander is not "it's better to fulfill both friendship and duty than to sacrifice friendship for duty." This can not be the theme because Aubrey made the choice to give up pursuit of the ship. He made his choice and was willing to sacrifice his duty for his friend. The real theme of Master and Commander is "Choosing friendship over duty is the right thing to do." That's what Aubrey did, and in the end he came out a hero for it.

What exactly is this judgement phase of a narrative game and how does it work? Is it possible to move this part of the game more consciously into the mechanics in a productive fashion?

On 5-17-05, Christopher Kubasik wrote:

Hi all, sorry I'm late.

The topics and points of views here are huge and slippery.

To that end, I will side step them.

Instead I will talk about the "Fractured Family of Men" piece.

Didn't like it at all. The whole "feminine side" thing.... We have to be gay to cry together as men. What a sad, sad point of view.

I will explain...

Right now, I'm studying Bukido. Bukido is a martial art developed by Richard Machowicz, an ex-Navy SEAL. The discipline itself is a mix of boxing, street fighting, a bunch of stuff that Machowicz has mixed together from other marital arts.

It differs from a lot of martial arts training in that we don't spend a lot of time perfecting technique. Bukido is neither dance like, nor is a "sport" -- where the idea is to use this stuff in controlled circumstances with everyone playing pretty much by the same rules. We practice in shoes and street clothes.

As I mentioned, the focus is not on the moves (though that is covered). We are trained to look for the first and easiest target on the opponents (eyes, throat, groin, whatever); then use whatever weapon can most easily hit that target (palm, knee, forearm, whatever), then move to bring our body with full force behind the weapon to the target.

So, manuever is not what we practice. The TARGET is really what we're practicing. It makes all the difference in the world in terms of making this a very practical martial art.

More important than the technique (which is emphasized, but not as much as in other disciplines), is the attitude you bring to bear in any situation.

We are trained to: be aggressive; to dominate and control the opponent; to own the situation. If someone attacks us, we move *closer* to them, attacking and taking control of the situation to end the conflict as quickly as possible.

The discipline of Bukido is a metaphor that can carry into all areas of one's life. My mother commented to me in three seperate conversations that she loved how "aggressive" I'd become in marketing my writing lately. Thanks ma!

It also translates into how I carry myself and how I see conflict. A couple of weeks ago one of the instructers asked, "What is your first weapon?" The answer is, our voice. If we use our voice with the same committment that were training our bodies with when someone approaches us, then there well may never be a blow thrown. But, let's be clear, using your voice that way is an aggressive act. Some people here are splitting hairs on taking a march to the streets and throwing a punch. I do not. (That may change. Who knows? I've changed on these matters several times already.)

For me, aggression is aggression -- and it gets squeezed out as needed -- and often defined by the circumstances. If someone is beating the crap out of my mother, I'm not going to try to "Influence" them or whatnot. The guy's going down. That's it. We can talk about the misdirection of his life force later.

If you want a better break down of this material, check out Machowicz's book, "Unleash the Warrior Within."

The books was recomended to me. I read it. Did the exercises it contains (about attitude adjustment and other matters), thought, this is genius, signed up for his three day training intensive this past February. I've been attending classes since.

At the Intensive, we get training in Bukido. But a lot more. When you're doing three 12 hour days of training, starting at six in the morning -- with material you don't know, with people you don't know, a lot of "stuff" can come up: anger, frustration, wondering why the hell that woman is getting so much more attention, beating up yourself for getting the "moves" wrong and so on. (By the way, the way, the reason the women get more attention to the women is because the Bukido school gives more attention to women -- they usually have further to go to stop being polite and being aggressive.)

The amazing thing about Machowicz is how he's one of the most thoughtful, perceptive guys I know. And when he saw you going off on your own shit and not paying attention -- not staying on Target -- he'd call you on it. I likened it to having him opening up the hood of my skull and tinkering.

And here's the point: there were tears. All these people spending three days shouting and practicing martial arts. And a lot of crying as things that'd we'd been trying to hide from ourselves in order to be "good" people, or blaming other people to avoid facing our own shit... or whatnot... all got stirred up. There were quiet intimate moments, and big emotional moments. And yes, Machowicz cried a couple of times as well.

And now that I've been going to classes regularly, I'm becoming closer to the men and women at the school. And let me tell you, there's lots of hugging between the guys. More than I've ever experienced between men in any other situation. And crying. I just did support on a three day training event -- four guys doing hikes up the Malibu mountains through the middle of the night, surf drills in the pacific ocean, martial arts training in burned out houses, and more, almost no sleep for most of the trainers and the volunteers -- and pizza and champaign at the end of it on a mountain top. With lots of hugs, lots of crying. Lots of personal details coming out. I was talking to my two trainers about most of the stuff I posted over at the Forge during those days and nights when they were taking breaks, which is why it was so clear in my head.

My point: What the Preacher longs for between men I'm finding now -- but it's not because I'm tapping into my feminine side. It's because I'm hanging out with men who are comfortable with their masculinity -- their strength, their aggressive engergy. They know it, know how to use it well. It isn't something they are AFRAID will get away from them once they open that door. And in this they know how to be open, vulnerable, emotional.

Christopher

On 5-18-05, Valamir wrote:

I think its a fundamental mistake to try and say "assertive" and "aggression" and "force" are over in one box and "violence" is something else. This is exactly the kind of thinking that Chris has brought up before. This unreasonable, obsessive need to consider violence to be some automatically harmful alien thing to be purged out of mankind's behavior responses.

That's the root of the whole disagreement. Violence is NOT a bad thing. For the vast majority of human history Violence was an accepted fact of everyday life and a standard tool in interpersonal dealings. That it has become (in some circles) so horrifically unacceptable is a curious blip of modern culture. I think it would the height of hubris to equate that blip with any notion of superior civilization.

Violence, assertiveness, and aggression are intimately intertwined. True they are not precisely synonyms...but they are completely insperable concepts. One CANNOT talk about assertiveness in any meaningful way without also acknowledging the role of violence.

Violence, or the threat thereof, is a fundamental part of human social interaction. Many of the standard rules of common courtesy and etiquette exist because of their relationship to violence.

I hear people saying what amounts to: "if only they'd used the word 'assertive' I could agree with them, but since they used the word 'violence' or 'aggression' I must rail against the horror of it"

Frankly that's absurd and nonsensical. It shows exactly the kind of irrational avoidance of the idea of violence that is at the root of Chris's comments. They are completely tied together. You can't accept one and dismiss the other.

Ultimately one doesn't exist without the other.

Throughout most of human history you couldn't BE assertive unless you were also willing to commit violence to back your assertions up. As civilization progressed that relationship didn't change, it just became more common to inflict violence by proxy.

The only reason any free citizen has the ability to assert their own opinion in a public forum is because ultimately...that ability is backed by the threat of violence. To turn your back on that fact and pretend that its not true and that you get through life entirely without violence is the height of naivety, and rather insulting to the people whose job it is to use violence to give you that freedom.

Everytime you express an opinion without being stopped, you can do so because of the underlying threat of violence towards whoever would try to stop you.

Violence constructively applied is the foundation of all civilization. Its what makes civilization possible.

Now I'm getting a little farther afield philosophically here than this topic was originally. But I do so only because I keep hearing this embedded sentiment that "violence is wrong, violence is bad, violence is horrific"...and that's just...well...wrong.

So talking about assertiveness and calling it violence is NOT confusing the issue. Trying to pretend that those are two seperate and unrelated concepts is what's confusing the issue.

Every single time you assert yourself there is a corresponding act of violence or threat of violence that goes along with that assertion. It may not be an act committed by or threatened by you. It may have been an act committed in the past or threatened to be committed in the future by someone else. But there is violence underlying every privilege you enjoy.

They are NOT seperate things.

On 5-18-05, JasonL wrote:

I'll chime in here. Facinating how this discussion has evolved.

We're human, so we're wired to use language to discuss these things. Look at the medium we're using, too. It's words and nothing else.

So, I'd like to pose a series of questions, directed both at Chris and at those who've decried his choice of words:

Kudzu invaded the southern US - driving out native plants and chaning the biological/ecological dynamics across not just plant life but animal life too. Violent, aggressive or assertive?

Here in Chicago we've got this rapacious species of Japanese Carp that's worked it's way up the Chicago river. The ecologists are tyring to keep it out of Lake Michigan - because they know this species will dominate the battle for resources and kill off dozens of other fish species in the process. Is the fish violent, aggressive, or assertive? What about the scientists and polciy makers and engineers actively trying to stop the carp's spread? Are they violent, aggressive or assertive?

Now, let's take it back to the human realm, and let's leave the extreme examples out of it. I'm confronted in my daily life with the myth of the win-win situation. It's very hard to achieve, and I don't think I've ever actually seen it. Part of my role in my job is to provide insight about our business - insight that ought to drive strategic direction. I'm in a meeting with someone who wants my widget company to treat all our customers the same way. They've got data on their side that talks about the real financial benefits to our bottom line. I'm like "No, no, no. If we do that, we'll lose lots of customers who'd like to at least think we're treating them based on their needs, desires, wants relative to our services. Sure, we'll save some money, but we'll lose more than we save."

I've got just as much data as they do to back up my claim. I'm better at selling my data than they are at selling theirs. I walk all over them in the meeting, and things go my way. Our company's limited resources will be used for my thing. Was that violent, aggressive or assertive?

Now, in my experience, in those real-world situations, you end up with one party winning and getting their way, or half-vast half-measures (i.e. compromsie) where parts of multiple options are combined together to create some kind of whole. It's the "let's do both!" option. I've never seen this be successful in business. The business plans/strategies/tactics that work are one's based on a clear vision that's pursued with relentless focus, and a willingness to say "thanks for the input, but we're still gonna go this way, because we know it will work..." Is that violent, aggressive or assertive?

Here's the definition of violent, from dictionary.com:

adj 1: acting with or marked by or resulting from great force or energy or emotional intensity; "a violent attack"; "a violent person"; "violent feelings"; "a violent rage"; "felt a violent dislike" [ant: nonviolent] 2: effected by force or injury rather than natural causes; "a violent death" 3: (of colors or sounds) intensely vivid or loud; "a violent clash of colors"; "her dress was a violent red"; "a violent noise"; "wild colors"; "wild shouts" [syn: wild] 4: marked by extreme intensity of emotions or convictions; inclined to react violently; fervid; "fierce loyalty"; "in a tearing rage"; "vehement dislike"; "violent passions" [syn: fierce, tearing, vehement, trigger-happy] 5: characterized by violence or bloodshed; "writes of crimson deeds and barbaric days"- Andrea Parke; "fann'd by Conquest's crimson wing"- Thomas Gray; "convulsed with red rage"- Hudson Strode [syn: crimson, red]

A lot of you that talk about violence being necessarily abusive are reading with a connotative eye, it seems to me.

Cheers,

Jason
"Oh, it's you...
deadpanbob"

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On 6-4-05, Jonas Barka wrote:

"I read you saying something like "dice fucks with my immersion in the game just like dice would fuck with my life if I had to roll them in real life to impress a girl". Am I reading you wrongly?"

Close, but not exactly. More like "dice fucks with my immersion in the game just like dice would fuck with *my sense of being me* if I had to roll them in real life to impress a girl". I have a feeling that I control my life, and choose my own actions. I want to experience exactly the same feeling when playing a character.

If you got an alien voice in your head (*please* consider this exaple in a serious way) saying stuff like "What are the motivation for this character in this scene", "What if I should bid five power to get this job" or "Ok, lets roll to se if he escaped the burning building", would this feel natural? Wouldn't you get a feeling that something is really wrong, that you eaither is mad or that someone is watching you and controlling you. You wouldn't feel like a real person at all. You would most certainly get distracted.

Why do your character doesn't get distracted by things like this? Can you really feel that you are him while in the same time rolling dice for his actions. I can't and thats why I do not use rules when I want this kind of immersion.

"I guess (hope) you cannot kill people for real in your roleplaying games. That's a rule. Does that interfere with your immersion when your character kills another character in the game's reality? If it doesn't, why do other rules, like dice rolling or card turning or hand sign or whatever?"

In table top rpg:s there are lots of things that interferes with the immersion. The surroundings aren't real, just imagined, lots of characters are played by the same person (the GM) and many other things. Not getting to actual kill something is not the biggest problem at all for the sake of immersion (not that we usually kill stuff in our freeform games). There are many things limiting the immersion but why should you add onother one that is as easy to get rid of as saying "we have no mechanics for conflict resolution".

In a larp things are a bit different, but there are still problems with the immersion. The surroundings are not always perfect and I meet persons i know in real life and that can be distracting. Of course you cannot kill people for real and that limits the level of combat immersion (and *no* I do not strive for this to be allowed, at least not in the games I participate in). In the type if games I usually play this is solved by having no combat at all. How often do you engage in combat in real life? Probably seldom or never. There are so many scenarios to play where real fights are unlikely. It happens that you (as the character) feels like attacking someone and in these cases you have to drop the immersion and choose some other course of action. But again, just because there are limitations to the extent of the immersion, why introduce even more of these limitations in the form of rules?

Are you from Sweden? If so it would be easy for you to try one of these games, like Mellanrummet (www.ncid.org/mellan). Without trying this way of playing, how can you know that it wouldn't be ruined by adding rules? I do play rules heavy games and realise their values but if you want to focus on immersion, the rules must go.

/ Jonas

unrealitiesofmine.blogspot.com

On 6-4-05, Charles wrote:

Per,

When I imagine my character killing another character, and the other character's player accepts that I have killed their character, and depicts their character as dying, how is this like switching into dice rolling mode? I suppose it is to the extent that my imagining of my character performing actions is not the same as me performing my characters actions. As long as my character actions consist mostly of talking, or if I'm LARPing and my character actions are non-violent but involve movement, or I'm LARPing in a LARP with boffing or some other physical method of handling combat, then my actions as player are the same as my character's actions. Once my character is taking actions that it is not possible for me to take physically, then one level of distancing happens. If, instead of imagining and describing those actions, I must switch into a different experiential mode and consider whether my dice pool is big enough, or my rolls good enough, to undertake the action I imainge my character taking, then my thoughts as player about the situation are not in sync with my thoughts as character and an additional layer of distancing takes place. For some people, this additional layer of distancing is a killer. Others seem to be able to move back and forth between immersed and consulting rulebooks without a substantial loss of immersion. Still others seem to be able to make the equation of player consulting dice and character appraising situation so thoroughly that they remain immersed while consulting the dice.

Since everyone agrees that some degree of intermittent non-immersion is required for almost all forms of gaming (long IC conversations between two players seem to require the least non-immersive elements, which is probably why immersion junkies prefer games in which long IC conversation is the primary content of play), I don't take Vincent's original claim to be that mechanics have no negative impact on immersion. Instead, I take his claim to be two-fold:

1) A negative claim concerning immersion: Non-traditional system like shared auhority over the world, multiple characters per player, or conscious attention to what we want as players, rather than simply what our characters want, are NO MORE LIKELY to be harmful to immersion than traditional system mechanics like rolling to-hit dice or scratching out hitpoints and writing in new values.

2) A positive claim concerning immersion: system can help or hurt immersion, depending on how well it supports his three proposed underpinings of immersion.

Vince, how well does that match what you are saying?

If we are playing freeform, and I and another player disagree whether a certain event should happen, we can either break out of our immersed states and discuss whether it happened, or we can break out of our immersed states and toss a coin to see whether it happened. If we were playing with a mechanical system, we would break out of immersion and use the mechanics. How easy we will find it to get back into immersion may relate to the specifics of the mechanics, or it may not. Vincent is arguing that how the mechanics effect his 3 criteria will be more important than traditionally obvious features such as whether they involve dice, or whether people other than a GM have say over anything except characters attempting to take actions. Likewise, a ten minute discussion of what happens may break immersion less than a one minute bidding war, or it may break it more. Obviously, never reaching a disagreement about what happens in the game, and therefore playing continuously IC, would involve less interuption of immersion than play in which we disagree over what happens and need to use some sort of (formal or informal) mechanics. However, trying for play with no disagreements over what happens, and no use of mechanics, will necessarily limit the subject of play pretty severely.

I would add an additonal underpinning, which is the degree to which the mechanic requires a state of mind which is similar to the PC state of mind. If my PC is trying to be totally open and honest with another character, and the mechanics for doing so pit us as players against each other in a competitive bidding war where one of us will lose and one of us will win, then that would seem to create a conflict between what I am experiencing as player, and what I am experiencing IC, and that may act to the detriment either of my ability to effectively use the rules, or to effectively remain immersed in my character, or both. If the mechanics instead involved us as players working together against abstract difficulty, then that might better mirror the IC situation, and better allow us to remain immersed.

For instance, this parallel structure between IC situation and OC mechanics is what makes Dogs mechanics interesting, although the finickiness of dice counting and manipulation seems to have been too distracting for Neel's players. Probably, greater familiarity with the system and experience with manipulating the piles of dice would also help with that. Drumming circles may work great for someone who is well familiar with them as a means of reaching a transcendent state, but they would probably not work nearly as well for someone accustomed to za-zen or to Catholic Mass as a method of reaching transcendance.

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On 6-6-05, Jonas Barka wrote:

"(If social rules like "we don't spit on each other even when our characters do" do screw up your immersion, then your immersion's too brittle to deserve the name.)"

If you by "screw up" mean "lessen" then yes, it do lessen my immersion. You can solve it in three ways:

1. Actually do spit on the player. Potentially no immersion is lost, but if you feel to disturbet about it you could instead snap out of it completely.
2. Play games when spitting in the face is unlikely to happen, and when you get the urge to do it very briefly step out of charater (in your mind only) to react in a different way. The other players do not have to notice this. Some immersion is lost, and only to me.
3. Step out of character completely and describe the action. More immersion is lost to all who withness.

Number one is only suitable to hard core larps. Number two is sutable for most larps and certain free form tabletop. Number three could be considered the "normal" vay to handle it.

Is number three less disturbing for the immersion than rolling dice? It is for me, as the act of describing my characters actions as a pure result of his thoughts and emotions separates him from me less than if was to make a bidding war, where I had to consult my own knowledge in a much more direct way. It feels obvious to me but I cannot claim that the same applies to you. All minds do not work the same.

Can you understand my reasoning about different levels of abstraction and/or different levels of separation from the character? This works from a definition of full immersion as not being able to separate yourself from the character at all (Not desireable at all but I assure you there is no risk of this happening by accident).

How brittle the immersion is of course depends on how deep it is, so I do not understand your remark on "too brittle". I guess you have never experienced especially deep immersion if you consider out of character descriptions to not lower the level of immersion.

In my last larp (I know you do not consider larps but the same principles apply to tabletop, but on a less extreme level) i fell out of character (for maybe five seconds) when I saw a magazine lying on a table that was clearly not an inteended part of the setting. This would never have happended in a tabletop game, as I would never have entered this deep a state of immersion in the first place.

In short, social rules do not lower the level of immersion as much as mechanical rules, because of the different levels of abstraction.

"The game's formal rules made her feel her character's plight more viscerally than she had. Can you imagine having a similar experience yourself?"

Yes I can, and I have experienced this kind of feelings myself, but not in a character immersive way (the way I define immersion). As I see it she did not feel *as* the character but *for* the character. It is the same way you feel for characters in a good movie. To me this is not immersion but empathy and sympathy.

( Again I do not say rules can't be incorporated in the same game as deep immersion but not at the same time. When the rules enter the level of immersion is lowered. )

In general I see immersion as being closely tied to the stances with my proposed "Deep immersion stance" having the highest potential for immersion and Director stance the lowest. If you experience character immersion during director stance I do not think we talk about the same thing at all.

/ Jonas

unrealitiesofmine.blogspot.com

On 6-6-05, Jonas Barka wrote:

To further explain how I connect the stances with immersion I will describe how my own game (Orpheus) functions. There are four player and me as the GM. By social contract we divide the game time in a number of different "types". We have been trying to formalise them and the shifts between them as there can be much confusion if different players are in differetn types. This is the first time i define them in this much detail. From what I know about "you" rpg theory thes types are at least closely related to the stances.

Type 1: High immersion conversations. You act out as much as you can instead of describing the actions. You shout if your character shouts but if you want to spit you have to describe it. You often play with your whole body, mobing around when the character does. No rules, immersion is high.

Type 2: In character actions. As soon as conversation is not the main part of a scene, more out of character descriptions are allowed. Players most often do not play their characters using ther bodies. Rules are avoided whenever possible. Immersion is lowered to accomodate a different type of scene.

Type 3: Combat. Do not happen at all during all sessions. Heavy use of rules because we find that it adds a level of tension not possible with ruleless combat. The immersion is low but we experience other types of fun.

Type 4: Out of character planning. No first person play at all and a much more strategic gaming. A player can say about her character "Today Nagi goes see her brother" and we discuss what happens during her visit. Here players are very free to introduce things in the game as they wish, as long as it stays within our social contract. They sometimes switch to another character. They are still expected make descisions based mainly on their characters wished, not their own. In this type we still use few rules but not because of the immersion. We could have used very heavy rules without lowering it further as it is virtually zero even without rules.

Type 5: Game and character planning. This only happens between games. We all discuss where we want to take the game and the characters. The players often suggest scenes where some aspect of their character will be likely to display. We discuss what was good and what can be better next time. No immersion, few rules.

This game can accomodate most types of stories, while still offering sections of comparably high immersion. In some cases we do not want a diverse story, but instead focus only on the immersion. In this case we play a game with focus on long character dialogue, witch can be played out using only type 1. This gives another kind of focus but primary more time for deep immersion scenes. Have you heard of "less is more". Mixing diffent types of fun do not necessarily makes for even more fun. For a person (not me) who feel immersion is much more important than other types of fun, playing with less immersion than type 1 is pointless. They gladly sacrifice story diverity to get a bigger share of immersion. I do not claim they do not understand fun, only that their fun is diffent.

So, depending on witch type of scene you play, different ammount of rules can be used without ruining the immersion. And switching between the types, primarily when entering type 1 and 2, *do* take some time, which prevents us from using interlacing them with rules.

Larps (as we play them) take place at even lower types and higher levels of immersion, how high depending on the larp in question and your personal ability for immersion.

Do you get me at all? At least a little bit?

(pardon my spelling and grammatic errors)

/ Jonas

unrealitiesofmine.blogspot.com

On 6-7-05, Jonas Barka wrote:

"What I'm seeing here is that someone who might just have a grand bit of insight into regular immersion isn't willing to admit that there might just be the possibility of better immersion. As if admitting that means admitting that his game sucks. Maybe that's not what's going through his head, but that's how it looks from my side of the screen."

The funny thing is I see it the other thing around. I se a person not able to admit "the possibility of better immersion. As if admitting that means admitting that his game sucks." I did not expect him to se the possibility to integrate it into his way of designing games, only that it could be another possibility for reaching immersion, equally viable.

You cannot deny that this article had a tone of "everyone who has dropped rules to enhance their immersion is not only universally wrong, but somewhat stupid".

I do not doubt that Vincents way of archieving immersion could be viable, even if it could probably never work as good for me. As long as he do not recognise the possibility (note possibility) of my way being equaly good and maybe the only thing that works for me, any creative input from me feels wasted.

This article, as written, feels much more lika an attack on the Nordic scene and the likes, than a creative proposal to get someting done.

"And the shame of it is that, if he were to open up that possibility in his mind for a moment, that it's possible to improve on something good, then maybe he could share that insight with the master rules designers that reside around here. Now, maybe no rules that ever interested him would come about. Certainly is possible. But then, maybe, just maybe, a rule would come to mind, become carefully honed, and expertly implimented, that would rock his world. Open up whole new qualities and quantities of immersion. New worlds to see and lives to live."

Yes, that could possibly happen if the master rules designer opened up a bit. I do already use rules, you know, and see their value. And what if, even if it would take lots of opening up, this master rules designer could see the value of no rules, and maybe even learn a non mechanic immersion technique or two. Yes, it's a shame.

"What really boggles me is that anyone who's spent any time around here can for a moment believe that any gamer at any time can achieve a 'no rules' state of being. I don't believe that can ever happen. Not for a minute, a moment, and instant. In the deepest most intense moments of immersion, one is still locked into a complex set of rules. They just aren't there in the front of the brain. They've settled back to a comfortable spot in the subconsious, still ruling things, but being quiet and unobtrusive. If the rules we notice between moments of immersion are like commericals, then the rules we don't notice are like product placements. Sometimes we notice them, and sometimes someone has to point them out to us."

That depends on how you see rules. If you call what actors do to do portray a good character rules, then it is ok. If you call what I do to not embarass myself at a party rules, then it is ok. If you call meditation techniques rules, then it is ok. If you call hypnosis techniques rules, then it is ok.

Othervise, no, I do really belive that rules interfere with immersion. At least for me and many person I know. You have to take my word for it.

The rules when in deep immersion (my opinion, you may differ) can be no more abstract and no less integrated in my mind than the social rules I live by every day. That's what I mean when I say "It would be as weird as rolling dice in real life." My game should be as close to real life as possible, only different. This kind of mechanical rules are not present in real life and thus should not be present in the game.

"So, if we take a moment to imagine those quiet rules in the back of our head operating like a quiet little machine, guiding and forming our game, then it's not too hard to imagine the ability to rebuild that little machine in earnest, with the intention of making it take us where we'd like to go."

Still depends, if Vincent would accept a "rules" system consisting only of thoughts and mind technique, where no part of the system is obervable to a bystander as soon as the game has started, then I'm all set. That would be a great experiment if there ever was one. For some reason I see dice, resource allocation, bidding wars and stances. Noone would be happier than me if I was wrong.

"If the master calamari chef could acknowlege the mastery of the cheesemaker and open his mind to the possiblities, then we might all have a tasty plate that much sooner."

It takes opening up from both parties. My only remaining claim, that my way of doing it could be equally good and maybe the best way for some persons and their minds, is something I'm not willing to drop. My world is based on a non-objective take on reality that can not accept a unviersal thruth like "there shure is an ideal ruleset out there, we need only find it". Why could it not be the other way? That only by dropping the rules can the game reach the next level. I do not say that is the truth, only that it's a possibility. And that is the possibiliy I personally belive in and work with.

No hard feelings from me, and I hope none from you. Even discussions where no agreement at all is reached can be valuable, at least for me. Som thought of mine have been formalised here for the first time and that will help me to get a better game.

/ Jonas

unrealitiesofmine.blogspot.com

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