thread: 2006-03-08 : Between-session Activity
On 2006-03-09, Vincent wrote:
Neel, Charles: No big. Here's all I meant:
The big model is an analysis of collaboration. I read Ben to be asking "how does the analysis of collaboration apply to non-collaboration?" I answer "it doesn't, except where the non-collaboration makes a difference to the collaboration; in that case, it's only concerned with the difference, not with the non-collaboration itself."
Whether we define "play" to include or exclude what and which, whatever. It remains that our analysis of collaboration treats non-collaboration narrowly.
Charles: Your between-session play, how much of it is solo and how much of it is collaborative? Your favorite bits, solo or collaborative?
If the answers aren't "most of it" and "collaborative" I'll eat my hat.
I don't think it's problematic at all to look at nested roleplaying games. Imagine, for instance, a Dogs in the Vineyard convention. Ten GMs run ten different towns for ten different groups, and then the groups all meet in the center (at Bridal Falls city) for reflection, then the groups shuffle and ten GMs run new towns for ten new groups, etc. Each group collaborates to create fiction, then the larger group collaborates to create an overall fiction incorporating some-but-not-all of the events of the smaller fiction, then more smaller fiction, etc.
We can look at the process by which the GM's town prep becomes part of each group's fiction; we can look at the process by which each group's fiction becomes part of the larger group's fiction - those both being collaborative processes. Exactly the same, we can look at how a subgroup of your group creates stuff, then look at how your whole group incorporates it. Not a problem. Two levels of play with two different sets of rules, is all.
Now, non-collaborative, solo created stuff can matter, of course it can, but as an analyst I don't care about it except when it does matter.
I hope I'm making more sense now, not talking worse gibberish. We'll see.
This makes CS go "no need to eat your hat!"
Agreement. While there are large bits that are non-collaboartive while they are occurring (say, writing a wiki entry), I don't have any problem agreeing that it is the collaborative parts that make them game.
This makes NK go "Roger"
Okay, I'm with you now, and think we basically agree.
I think "levels" and "nesting" aren't quite the right way to think about it. It's more like a collection of processes in communication, and the lines of communication between the processes won't stratify cleanly, because there's no reason to expect one part will take precedence over the other. That's a quibbly point though.
This makes VB go "awesome."
Totally with you on the quibble.
