thread: 2011-05-11 : The Un-frickin-welcome
On 2011-05-11, Vincent wrote:
Okay.
Emily: My position is just that you need to override the group's natural social dynamics and expectations if you want to give them something they can't get without you. You need to introduce the unwelcome, make it compelling (meaning that the group chooses to see it through instead of ditching out), and then ultimately make it fulfilling.
To override the group's natural interactions you can use content, explicitly stated principles and instructions, procedural cues, and mediating cues, (and quite possibly others that I haven't thought of).
The conclusion I've drawn is that explicitly stated principles and instructions aren't very strong, compared to constructed cues. Confronted by the unwelcome, a group is far, far more likely to ignore explicitly stated principles and instructions, and fall back on their natural interactions. Remember how you scrutinized my play when I had Puliarus break Murinus Mus' gift? Procedural or mediating cues would have made that unwelcome thing much easier for you to accept.
Thinking about Jeep makes me think about the differences between explicitly stated principles and instructions on the one hand, and constructed interactions without cues on the other. "There's a GM, and it's Meg," for instance. I'm going to add it to my list:
Content
Explicit principles and instructions
Constructed interactions without cues
Procedural cues
Mediating cues
Make sense?
