anyway.

Nifty and chewy! I will say more when I have something intelligent to say.

Group Socialist
The rules eschew real-world cues. They organize the players' interactions socially (and thus, by necessity, simply). Examples: my group's Ars Magica game, all "we have character sheets but we never really use them anymore" games.
I'd say instead that they eschew mechanical or quantified cues. Games like this have real world cues (see Sarah Kahn et al's mammoth Things Known, but they are in narrative form. Our game's chronological history of events serves the same purpose.

Effectivist
The rules refer extensively to the fictional stuff but don't pretend to represent it directly.
Why would Universalis fall under Proceduralist rather than Effectivist? Is reference to specific, pre-existing elements of the game world (ie a Setting) what you're getting at?

Here's a very old Forge thread, anybody's interested in the history: our own Ben Lehman's Subtyping Sim. You can see for instance how Ben's "natural law rules" vs. "credibility rules" informs my "technical simulationist" vs. "proceduralist / effectivist."

And, Vincent: yay, yay, yay!

Emily:

You're quite right about group socialist.

I call Universalis proceduralist because it's the players who hold the coins, not the characters. Same as Primetime Adventures' screen presence. Dogs in the Vineyard (for instance) doesn't have a corresponding genuinely-metagame element; even its unassigned relationship dice have a ... referent I guess ... in the fiction.

The Technical Agenda thread.  I'm so excited!

But, yet, I have a gazillion things to do today.

So, uh, later?

yrs—
—Ben

Should we split the Purviewist into those that divide responsibility/mechanical handling consistently and those that have rotating or otherwise switching roles? It seems to me that that's quite a difference between Polaris and, well, just about everything else.

An alternative version of the Group Socialist is the type of play I've been talking about, where each player has total ownership over their character. The difference is that it's not based on group decisions regarding the fiction, it's the person's decision whose character is affected.

- Christian

I'd like to see a game that effectively used metagame mechanics and SIS representatio together.

That is, where I have:

Shakespeare's Pen (dramateurgical tool): 6d8
Spotlight: 4
Mad Props: 14d4

... where the mechanical description is as relevant as it is in Dogs or what-have-you, and its relevance goes up and down depending on some metagame mechanic

Years ago, I developed a system (I think I told V about this) where the efficacy of a hero would go up as the hero approached hir destiny, and all heroes (the PCs) were quantitatively better at stuff than everyone else. Then you had skills and stats. You added your skill+stat and multiplied it by your Fate. Most of the time, no die roll was necessary, so it was mechanically proven that no one could choke on their shoelaces (at least not by accident).

It was a little bud of an idea (that got a fair amount of playtest, believe it or not), but the gist was that your character sheet said just how effective you were at a bunch of stuff, including how much you mattered to the story. It's a desire I've had ever since.

PTA doesn't do it; your description is tiny. Dogs doesn't do it; the only real metagame mechanic is OOC discussion ("I'm gonna make an ass out of myself and you'll come in unexpectedly and win the argument.") and, as you say, maybe unassigned Relationship dice. Now, there's no reason a player can't introduce a new character in town hirself and assign dice, right? That seems like a goodish way to metagame a bit; if I've got a bunch of dice unused and I'm in a conflict, I can grab someone (editorially) an endanger them for their dice.

SO: That's a new design spec for the Sci Fi Game. Em, you taking this down?

... and would you email me the rest of the spec? Cuz I can't remember all of it and you're a good note taker.

J: Check out Polaris when Ben makes it available. I really like its arrangement of description and meta.

Christian wrote:Should we split the Purviewist into those that divide responsibility/mechanical handling consistently and those that have rotating or otherwise switching roles?
Back in the day, John LaViolette came up with some good terminology for this sort of thang (in GMless gaming techniques).

Quote:
FIXED: one person controls a GMing task for an entire game session;

GAME-TO-GAME: task control remains fixed for an entire session or perhaps multiple sessions.

Look good. Group 2 is pretty uncontentious, I would say. I'm most interested in group 1. (And I will not talk about the )

Let me try to spell it out this way: group 1 is about where the input into the resolution mechanics comes from. Does it all come from the elements of the fictional world? Then it's Technical Simulationist. Does it all come from the actions of the players? Then it's Proceduralist. Is it hybrid, that is, players using stuff in the fictional world? Then it's Effectivist. Is that about right?

I'll have to think more about it before I can come up with useful comments.

Vincent-

I totally dig the idea of getting explicit with the Techniques.

I also totally fear adding more "-ist" words to my jargonocabulary.  :P   If you do come up with nicer names, I'd be very happy.

That aside- Trivial Simulationist doesn't really seem like worth grouping here.  It's more like a follow up to Lumpley Principle- "the group decides what is plausible and acceptable".  What might be worth exploring though- is the degree to which the written rules attempt to define what plausibility is...  After all, a great deal of Tech Sim stuff tries just that("Falling Damage", Encumberance, etc.), while Proceduralist stuff leaves it completely to the group.

Have you consider adding "Aesthetic Simulationist" into your big mess o' ____ Simulationist classifications there?  What I'm thinking of here are people who want the events of the game to conform to very specific ideas of "how things work," above and beyond what you're talking about in "Trivial Simulationist."

The anime fan who wants the game to "feel like anime"
The military realist who wants bleed charts and scatter diagrams

are both heading towards an Aesthetic Simulationist technical agenda.

Games with this:
Hero
Riddle of Steel
Teenagers from Outer Space

Big Eyes, Small Mouth has it in the pictures, but not the rules.

yrs—
—Ben

Come to think of it, there is nothing at all in your list about how the players relate to the game in terms of:

1) Aesthetic Appreciation
2) Wish Fulfillment
3) etc.

All that touchy emotional stuff.

Why not?

yrs—
—Ben

P.S.  Not apropos of this at all, but I have a new theory blog at http://benlehman.blogspot.com/ and I thought you might want to know.  Read it!  I command you!

Linkified: This Is My Blog.

The rules work on the pretense that they directly represent the fictional stuff. They leave organization of the players' interaction strictly unspoken.

Are the two parts of this definition as tied to each other as you seem to suggest? Couldn't one have a strictly representational/causal set of rules (that is: the numbers and whatever that determine the chances of conflicts/tasks going one way or the other are strictly determined by the contents of the SIS) while at the same time having the game text be sensitive to the way such mechanics are used in a real social situation?

It's not the best of examples, but what about Great Ork Gods? It is pretty clear about the social interactions, yet it pretends that everything that enters the resolution mechanics directly represents something in the fictional world. (The reason it is not a very good example is that the gods exist in the SIS only in a very shallow way.)

Anyway, is there a necessary connection between strictly representional mechanics and insensitivity to the social situation?

Chris: The reason trivial sim is important to include is: technical agendas have to apply to informal, not just formal, rulesets. Trivial simulationism is one of the primary concerns of informal rulesets. If you ask me or Charles or probably Christian or any number of people how our games work, rules-wise, we'll talk about characters doing what makes sense and the fictional world reacting accordingly.

Ben: Aesthetic simulationism, maybe. Personally, I'd have the particular aesthetic be a detail within the group one agendas, the way that having a sole GM is a detail within purviewism. When you design or choose a game, its aesthetic comes along with its group one agenda, the way that its GMing comes along with its group two agenda.

I'm open to persuasion.

"How the players relate to the game emotionally" isn't within the domain of technical agenda at all, I don't think. That sounds like creative agenda to me.

Victor: Here's where technical simulationism differs from effectivism:

Technical simulationist: "I spent 35 years as a professional locksmith" means more effectiveness in play than "I've jimmied three cars." The player's effectiveness in play corresponds strictly to the character's effectiveness in the fictional setting.

Effectivist: "I spent 35 years as a professional locksmith 1d6" means less effectiveness in play that "I've jimmied three cars 2d8." The player's effectiveness in play is divorced from the character's effectiveness in the fictional world, but refers to it; they may line up with one another, they may not.

Over the Edge is effectivist because your character's trait is worth the same dice whether it's "I'm a former Eagle Scout" or "I'm a super-effective assassin/survival/scout android from 2559."

(Proceduralism then goes one further: the player's effectiveness in play doesn't have anything to do with the character's effectiveness at all. PTA's Screen presence, fan mail - they're wholly the player's.)

Okay, so: "...is there a necessary connection between strictly representional mechanics and insensitivity to the social situation?"

Yes.

Say you decided to make Dogs in the Vineyard into a technical simulationist game. Everything works just the way it already does, except that during character creation everyone is required to give their most fictionally-effective traits high dice and their least fictionally-effective traits low dice. Furthermore they have to check and balance against one another, so that if my most fictionally-effective trait is "I broke horses for five years" and yours is "I broke horses for ten years," I have to put lower dice in it than you.

See how this would be automatically socially destructive?

Here is what I think about "emotional commitment."

I'm looking, for right now, at "wish fulfillment."

Let's say we're roleplaying, and the reason I'm playing, or one of the reasons I'm playing, is that I really want to have a power fantasy, to be cooler and stronger and better.

See how that could be any of the creative agenda?  I think its orthogonal, which is where the "maybe it's a technical agenda" came in.

Where is it in the model, though?

yrs—
—Ben

Ben: "I really want to have a power fantasy, to be cooler and stronger and better."

I don't know of a power fantasy that can survive contact with the issues power raises. The only way to preserve a good power fantasy is to intentionally (if unconsciously) refuse to take on the issues it'd provoke.

Are you taking on issues of power, coolness strongness and goodness? Then it's thematic play. Are you rejecting the issues, to preserve the fantasy? Then it's not. That's CA.

Hi Vincent,

Rereading it again- I see why you mention it.  It's a dial that has -become- an agenda for for some, and being unable to see past it is where they get stuck seeing that there are more ways to go about it, right?

Thanks for the additional example, Vincent. Yes, I can see how Technical Simulationism wouldn't work for DitV. But let's put a little more pressure on the idea.

Dungeons & Dragons, 3rd edition - as far as its core business, fighting, is concerned, this seems to me an example of Technical Simulationism. Let's say it's used to do Dungeon Crawls, where the players try to overcome a pre-made scenario by making brilliant tactical decisions. Could very well be socially functional, and in a way which is reinforced by the game. (It could even have a chapter about it in the game book, even though it doesn't.)

The difference between D&D and DitV is that here not only the meaning of the character's traits on the level of play is decided by the system, but also their meaning in the SIS. There is an exact one-on-one correspondence between the facts I can write on my character sheet and their effectiveness; not like in Dogs, where I can choose how many die I assign to a trait.

Thesis (to be mercilessly attacked): Technical Simulationism need not lead to problems on the social level if the system provides for a strong link between the meaning of attributes on the level of the SIS and on the level of play.

Ben: Ah, but there does need to be an agenda group or continuum about balance of power among the elements of exploration. How about:

Roughshodist
The rules are constructed to support characters' power over setting. In rule-effectiveness terms, established setting details are lightweight, easily broken, destroyed or transformed by character action. Examples: Polaris, Capes.

Preservativist
The rules are constructed to preserve setting details in the face of character action. Examples: The Mountain Witch, Ars Magica, GURPS.

Universalis allows the players to set this agenda on the fly. How many coins do they invest in setting details vs. character actions?

Ciao,  Vincente (say like you were an italian pilgrim)

vincent said: "See how this would be automatically socially destructive?

There you go again, swinging wide your mighty hammer of dismissive generalization. I submit that such a design is not "automatically socially destructive." "I broke horses for five years" versus "I broke horses for ten years," I have to put lower dice in it than you. could, in fact, be used quite effectively to support design goals and premise. Presaging, creating and reinforcing the elusive "feel" of a game so that play takes on certain desired characteristics.

Or perhaps I'm missing the point.
I know I did last time!
-Luke

V, I don't understand why it would be socially destructive, either. It would be a different game, and I don't think it would be as much fun, but it would be fine as long as, presumably, there is some balance there, where we're all spending resources so no one becomes deprotagonized.

Less fun, yeah. Socially destructive? Explain.

I think that the continuum of balance of power is more about how players appeal to elements for authority.

Roughshodist implies that situation and past events lend little (perhaps no) authority to a player who appeals to them.  Preservativist implies that situation and past events lend vast (perhaps definitive) authority to any player who appeals to them.

The notion that the rules can preserve setting details in the face of [i]concerted[/i] player action is, I think, flawed.  They can preserve setting details by empowering players to defend them against other players.  Yes?

Polaris is less roughshodist than you think.  Think about how major events and changes are recorded, and think about the effect that that has on challenges.

yrs—
—Ben

I'll take a shot in the dark at the "socially destructive" issue. My take, not Vincent's, so there it is.

I *think* what's socially destructive about that is character effectiveness doesn't account in any way for player input into the game. One player creates a character (five years breaking horses) and another makes a character (ten years breaking horses).

Neither player has any specific guidline of and what he, the human being playing the game, can butt in. That's left to the people, and the text is utterly silent about contributing to the game. BUT, it is very specific about which character is more effective.

Clearly, one character is, by the rules, more effective. Thus, it has a chilling effect on the less effective character. They play, and they encounter a situation in which they really need to break a horse. Guess who gets to do it first? Sigh. There just isn't any crafted means for the "junior" horsebreaker to contribute.

Will it happen that way every time? Probably not. But, isn't there a reasonable chance that this, and similar comparisons, cause the junior player to resent his character, his choices, and perhaps even get jealous of the other player's "air time"? I think that is a reasonable conclusion, especially over time.

Oops. First sentence in that third paragraph above should read:

"Neither player has any specific guidline of what, when, and how he, the human being playing the game, can butt in."

isn't there a reasonable chance that this, and similar comparisons, cause the junior player to resent his character, his choices, and perhaps even get jealous of the other player's "air time"?

Yeah, there's a 'reasonable chance'.  But that chance depends on a whole raft of assumptions about the Social Contract.  And, anyway, we weren't talking about 'a reasonable chance.'  We were talking about 'automatically,' not 'a reasonable chance.'  Luke never said he disputed 'a reasonable chance.'  I certainly wouldn't.  But I sure do dispute 'automatically,' at least as applies to your description.  I'll wait and see what Vincent says, though.

Gack!  That last "anon" post was me.

Lee, right on. Fair point. I really have no idea what Vincent meant there, so I'm interested for his input. Frankly, I doubt I'm even close to what Vincent meant, but I stand by the point that such systems and texts are often problematic (and, I dont' think you're disagreeing—it's cool).

Interestingly, given prior discourse and my understanding of Vincent's views, I also doubt I'll disagree with him!

Sounds to me like it would cause friction based on the context of the game. Within another context, it could make sense & be supported by assumptions made.

TonyLB: "The notion that the rules can preserve setting details in the face of [i]concerted[/i] player action is, I think, flawed."

Character action, I said. How powerful are your characters relative to the world around them? That's a technical concern.

Ben, along the same lines:

Me: I slay all 1000 demons on the field and bathe in their blood.
You: Okay, if also you break the spine of the earth.
Me: Done.

Sure, but...

Now you have the Ability aspect "Bathed in Demon Blood" and possibly the Fate aspect "Break the Spine of the Earth."  What does that do to future scenes pertaining to Demon's Blood and Earth Spine Breaking?

The relationship of the players wrt setting material—definitely roughshodist.  The relationship of the players to things previous marked as important during play?  Complicated.

Anyway, this is the technical agenda thread, and I agree with that binary in general.  Lets not dicker about my one game.

yrs—
—Ben

"Socially destructive." Everybody, chill out for a sec and imagine doing exactly what I said, creating Dogs characters the way I described. Now show of hands: who here thinks that playing it that way will help you be better friends with the people you're playing with?

Right now when you create Dogs characters the interactions are "cool trait!" and "niiice." and " 'I know no words for love 2d4'? fuck dude."

What do you think the interactions would be like under my proposed technical simulationist rules?

"Dude, your Elf is only 158 years old and you took the Song of Rage at B5? Holy fuck!"

"Yeah, his Uncle turned Dark Elf and murdered his mother. I figured he went berserk."

or

"His 52 year old Orc Great One can kick the living shit out of any body in the clan."

"Damn, it looks like we goblins are going to have to scheme, plan and plot our way to wictory."

or am I missing the point again?
-L

Luke: Yeah, a little. For instance, there are no elves, orcs or goblins in Dogs.

That was flip, but I'm serious: my "automatically socially destructive" comment was about Dogs, not about the Burning Wheel. If you want to talk about technical simulationism more generally, you have to back up to the comment I made about that: strictly representational rules are necessarily insensitive to social situation. "Socially destructive" is one case of insensitivity.

strictly representational rules are necessarily insensitive to social situation.

(although you did actually state it much more agressively in the post itself: I consider this pretense socially destructive.)

Do you consider rules concerning character class and character power balance to be technical simulationist or are they effectivist? They refer to things in the game world, but they are clearly designed to structure player-player interaction and control distribution of player power and screen time.

If such rules are effectivist, then I definitely agree with your weaker formulation (strictly representational rules are necessarily ...). It seems to me that the social structuring of games like AD&D derives from the very tight structuring of game goal, and the parcelling out of player power in the form of character class. Games like GURPS, with a lack of character class and a less fixed goal, provide vastly less coherent guidance on how they are supposed to be played.

This may be a total tangent, but what does "I'm not all that good with horses, 2d8" mean in DitV? It seems to me that that means that the fact that I'm a mediocre horseman is going to come up often and save my ass every time. In play, does that mean that I'm constantly falling off my horse just as someone was about to shoot me, or accidentally spooking the horses in ways that help me out, or does it mean that I actually constantly inexplicably succeed at horsey tasks, even though I stated I wasn't all that good with them?

Sorry, but I have been struggling with the concept of Effectivist rules all day trying to understand that one.

I totally see what a proceduralist rule of that sort would mean: "My poor horsemanship will get lots of screen time, 2d8", but the effectivist version puzzles me (because my success rate, rather than my screen time, is what I'm putting dice into, but my number of dice (and therefore success rate) doesn't need to connect to my character's actual skill level).

Again, though, it's the pretense that's socially destructive, not the rules. The rules might very well mitigate or overcome the natural social destructiveness of the pretense.

I need to make a post all about only technical simulationism, clearly. Everybody, let's put this conversation off until I do, okay?

Meanwhile, Charles: exactly, when you bring your poor horsemanship into a conflict, it'll contribute to you winning the stakes. You'll still be a poor horseman. You'll still fail at horsemanship-related tasks, because failing at horsemanship-related tasks is how you bring "I'm a poor horseman" into play. It'll work out to your benefit in the end.

It's self-correcting: bringing "I'm a poor horseman" into play in a conflict where victory depends on who's the better horseman will be hard. You'll have to justify it well to make it a sensible see or a raise. And if you justify it well, then it won't seem odd that it helped you win!

Bringing "I'm a poor horseman" into play in a conflict where what's at stake is like "do I get her to tell me the truth" and it happens to take place in a stable - that's wicked easy, as it should be.

Okay, that makes sense.

TonyLB: "The notion that the rules can preserve setting details in the face of concerted player action is, I think, flawed."

Character action, I said. How powerful are your characters relative to the world around them? That's a technical concern.

Oh... now I'm confused.  Is this an outcome of the mechanics?  Or the setting and situation?

If I have a bunch of samurai laboring up the side of Mt. Fuji, and I play it in Capes, isn't the relationship between the world and the characters identical to Mountain Witch?

And, follow-up question:  If you consider the moral basis of the universe as part of the "established elements of setting", does that make Dogs a roughshodist game?  Or is it preservationist because it's always going to be a western with religious overtones?

The above is mine.  Too fast to post :-(

(Tony, check out the

wiki for our Dogs game and see if it will always be a Western with religious overtones.)

i admit it, i just like busting vincent's chops whenever he uses the word "simulationism." And when he makes sweeping generalizations.

heh.

; )
-L

Vincent wrote: If you want to talk about technical simulationism more generally, you have to back up to the comment I made about that: strictly representational rules are necessarily insensitive to social situation. "Socially destructive" is one case of insensitivity.

I don't follow this.  As far as I can tell, whether the rules are representational or not has nothing to do with sensitivity to social situation.  Whether a power is representational or not, it is at the social level a power used by real players.  i.e. Suppose my rules balance power between players.  They can do this either (1) representationally by balancing the power of elements that the players' control; or (2) non-representationally by balancing some sort of meta-game power.  Whether they represent or not, the question for social situation is how they affect the players.

So, for example, suppose there is a rule which gives one player a huge amount of power and the ability to dominate the game.  Let's presume this is socially insensitive.  Now, it could be either representational (i.e. the in-game elements he controls are overly powerful) or non-representational (i.e. the player gets a monopoly on a narration resource).

The simple proof of this is that I can make a representational mechanic into a non-representational mechanic, and vice-versa.  For example, I can trivially assert that there is in-game a mystical "Convergence" quality that characters have in the world of Dogs in the Vineyard.  This corresponds to unassigned Relationship dice.

John: I'll dedicate a post to representational mechanics in a little while.

Tony: In The Mountain Witch, by the rules, it takes until the last session for my character to get up Mount Fuji. In Capes, by the rules, I can write "goal: get up Mount Fuji" on a 3x5 card and my character can be up Mount Fuji by the end of the scene. The Mountain Witch has absolutely no rules by which my character can lift Mount Fuji and fling it to Mars; Capes does.

We could sit down at the beginning of playing Capes and adopt a bunch of informal rules like "no flinging Mount Fuji to Mars" and "we won't reach the top of Mount Fuji until the last session"; that would make our Capes game much less Roughshodist than Capes played straight.

I admire Roughshodism in a game, by the way. Calling a game Roughshodist is in no way perjorative.

Oh, I didn't take it as Roughshodist.  I'm just trying to understand what you mean by it.

I'm in total agreement that a player in Capes has more ability to get their character up Mount Fuji than a player in Mountain Witch does.  But that would be true even if I did posit (in Mountain Witch) a super-powered samurai who could pick up Mount Fuji and throw it to Mars, or if I did restrict my samurai in Capes to purely human physical feats.

That's why I have trouble seeing your formulation as being about how the characters relate to the setting.  Characters and Setting are tools, but I have trouble understanding your statements in those terms.  Do you mean simply that in Roughshodist the Character is a sledge-hammer and the Setting is a ball-peen, whereas in Preservationist it's vice-versa?  Or, to put it in authority-terms, in Roughshodist are appeals to character traits for authority to narrate more effective than appeals to setting and situation?

First sentence:  "Didn't take it as perjorative"... of course.  Oy.

Hmm...

I think something just clicked for me.

You know how in, to pick a system at random, GURPS, you have to say "My guy shoots at the other guy."  I mean, sure, you can say it "I shoot him" but we all know what you mean.  If you say "I shoot him, it hits him right between the eyes, his head explodes like an overripe melon, there are brains and chunks of skull flying everywhere like a bad salsa, and it messes up your suit" the game breaks.

In Polaris, it is the opposite.  If you say "My guy shoots at the other guy," the game breaks.  Whereas "brain chunks like bad salsa" is exactly what the system needs to function.  To play the game and not have it snap in half, you have to make statements about your actions in a different way than you normally would.

Is that what Roughshodist versus Preservativist is, Vincent?

yrs—
—Ben

Tony: "I'm in total agreement that a player in Capes has more ability to get their character up Mount Fuji than a player in Mountain Witch does. But that would be true even if I did posit (in Mountain Witch) a super-powered samurai who could pick up Mount Fuji and throw it to Mars, or if I did restrict my samurai in Capes to purely human physical feats."

Exactly! Ex-actly! That's all there is to it. The two games' rules support, promote, create, require, provoke different actions, whole different scales of action, on the part of the characters.

Ben: No, that's still the player you're talking about, not the character. I really do mean just the character, baffling as that might be.

Ah! Try this: in GURPS, how much time and resources does it take for you to have your character kill 50 enemies, build a pyramid, level a mountain? In Dogs in the Vineyard, how much? In Polaris, how much?

Okay.  I think that's what I was talking about.  Let's use "build a pyramid."

GURPS:

"I get a bunch of venture capital"
*resolve*
"I start workers mining big blocks"
*resolve*  *wait*
"Okay, I'm going to instruct them to build it like this"
*resolve* *resolve*
*GM introduce problems with building*
*resolve problems*
*bean count costs*
*slave death roll?*

In the end—pyramid.  Does it stand for all time?  Boo howdy, that's a whole 'nother passle of resolution.

Polaris

"I build a pyramid."

"But only if two thousand slaves die in its construction."

"But only if it stands for all time."

"And so it came to pass."

Right?

I think that's what I was saying above.  *shrug*

yrs—
—Ben

Technical Simulationist
The rules work on the pretense that they directly represent the fictional stuff. They leave organization of the players' interaction strictly unspoken. (Of course they do organize interaction, but indirectly and often without consideration. I consider this pretense socially destructive.)

What I see in this is that the rules as written are incomplete in a simply technical simulationist system.  They require the addition of rules that are often unspoken or are part of the oral culture of rpg: ie gm fiat, gm as social arbiter, parties must "stay together" etc. Social constructs & agreements are made that end up being coersive or socially stunting.  The reason for them is to act as crutches for the inadequacies of the rules set.

The simple fact that games may now actually address how players interactions are organized is one of the biggest steps forward that have been taken.

Emily—

I seriously disagree that non-textual social contracts in games are necessarily problematic.  GM fiat and GM as social arbiter rules are actually pretty functional, most of the time.  If they weren't, I wouldn't have had fun playing with them for almost two decades!

The point, though, is that every RPG text carries with it some basic, usually unspoken, rules about how the game progresses and functions, and what the game means on a social level, and those are carried through oral culture and taught group to group.  And they are also different from group to group.  Even pervy modern RPG texts have this issue.  It isn't necessarily bad, especially when you consider that, in nearly every game, the players are going to be bringing a chunk of system with them to the table.

Technical Sim runs into problems because the rules are totally agnostic to the social situation, and so can end up being used as a tool for unpleasant social aggression.  Like, I kill your character 'cause "it's what my guy would do" when actually all I'm doing is trying to make you cry.  Good rules, maybe, give avenues to address and prevent that, rather than just describing how much damage my attacks do.

yrs—
—Ben

Hi Ben,

Agreed. No system will or can be entirely "complete".

Your example maps with Vincent's wording: "I consider this pretense socially destructive." Bullying through "my guyism" is using the lack of conscious acknowledgement that we are having interpersonal interactions via the imaginery elements for a socially distasteful purpose.  In the absence of structures to help avoid this, intervention by human agency is required.

The social tasks of a gm can be functional. The breadth of the creative task a gm handles can be fun. However, the reason a sole gm has been necessary for the last 30 years, is because the rules of games have been socially inadequate (among other things).

We're finally getting to the point where we can play nice on our own. If we choose to have a single gm, it's because we may value the ability of an independent viewpoint to provide adversity or help mirror & focus the issues we are exploring. Not because it's the default way to organize the groups' creative contributions & avoid social conflict.

There are aspects of the body of oral culture that are necessary & good that are now becoming part of the written textual culture of gaming.  This makes functional and fun gaming accessible to more people than in the past. Also, it may allow people who are not—& would not want to b—part of the oral culture the ability to just play, providing enough on their own to be able to have fun, instead of needing a large social apparatus that they may not be hooked in to.

best,
Emily

Okay, how about another axis of technical agenda:

Do some games support immersion/IC stance/whatever the hell you want to call it more than others? How? Does this constitute a technical agenda?

Exactly! Ex-actly! That's all there is to it. The two games' rules support, promote, create, require, provoke different actions, whole different scales of action, on the part of the characters.
Vincent... I still disagree with the last word.  It's not "characters."  It's "players."

You're talking about how different rules systems allow for different scales of action, even when the characters are identical as described and narrated in the SIS, right?

That's why my examples are of a superhuman samurai in Mountain Witch, and a human-normal samurai in Capes.  To point out that the characters were not the determining element in that equation.

Tony, picking up Mount Fuji and flinging it to Mars is something a character does, not a player. I mean, I'm way over hear, nowhere near Mount Fuji.

Me saying "my guy picks up Mount Fuji and flings it to mars" is the exact same scale an action in the real world as saying "my guy wakes up in the morning and brushes his teeth." The scale of both is a single sentence about ten words long.

Here are two RPGs with differently-scaled player actions: Pantheon (a strict single sentence), De Profundis (a whole written letter, as many pages long as you want).

About the GM: I don't think that abusive GMs are worth much consideration. I mean, I've never had one; I've been one only once, and it sucked so bad that I knocked it off in under ten minutes.

My concern about GM fiat is that it's hard, and it makes the GM the fall guy for every little grief in the group. Good rules protect the GM and make the job easier. Up to and including making everybody do it.

Charles: Good question. I'm inclined to think of immersion as just the same kind of engagement with your character as you get when you're writing fiction. You become (voluntarily, of course) subject to the character's logic. I associate it very strongly with meaning, actually, with theme.

Hey, I just thought of something, apropos to the above thread about genre and "real people games."

I was thinking about Breaking the Ice, and how much it is totally genre-agnostic.  Emily had an example, which is that you could see Star Wars as a Breaking the Ice game, with Han and Leia as the couple.  You can totally do science-fiction Breaking the Ice, fantasy Breaking the Ice, etc.

It's just that it doesn't matter.  Why?

Because the game uses an Effectivist technical agenda that even verges on Proceduralist.

The point is, when you're playing a Technical Simulationist game, the focus is on the actions that the characters are taking in the world, rather than what those actions mean.  Because of this, it is really easy to narrow your systematic focus down to character abilities, especially since they are the only route to player effectiveness.

And, given that, a really simple way to generate interest is to make the actions themselves interesting, rather than what they mean.  This means super-powers, or at least some sort of unreal-to-normal-life element.

If you're going with a Effectivist or Proceduralist scope, then it frees up the mechanical focus to be about things other than what is being done as a gross action.  Thus, what is being done can be more mundange, because the focus can be shifted to the interactions between the players, the meaning of the actions, the ramifications for the game, etc.

With GURPS, it would be really boring to play a therapist trying to make it up a long flight of stairs on crutches.  I mean, talk about boring!  Plus, it is meaningless in the long run.

With Breaking the Ice, we can care about this scene, because it is really about whether or not she gets the sympathy of her date, and whether she gets it in a way that's palatable to her.

yrs—
—Ben

Vincent,

I'm not sure I agree that immersion is associated with meaning, but that is actually a CA question. What I'm wondering about is the TA of immersion. Universalis is often noted as being a game that strongly tends to not support immersion, I've read MLLW described as non-immersionist (although that kind of surprised me), DitV gameplay descriptions definitely sound like it supports immersion, my groups free-form style is definitely immersion supportive (I think it is more so when we play individual characters for more scenes in sequence, rather than rapidly jumping characters).

What is it in the mechanics of these games that supports or opposes immersion? Surely Universalis can tell kick-ass, meaning-rich stories, but it does so in a way that opposes immersion. Free-form play can easily support "And then I go to the kitchens and get a sandwich, and while I'm there I chat with the cute dishwasher, 'Hey, how you doing', 'Oh, I'm doing fine, the cook is totally on my back about some dishes I broke this morning,' 'Oh, hey, sorry to here that. Maybe I could fix them for you?' 'Oh, I couldn't ask you to work magic for something so trivial,' 'No, really its not a problem,' 'You're so kind,' and then I go off to my tower to read some more of the books of Lem" which no one would mistake for a great story (and while it could conceivably tie into a theme, I see no reason to assume that it did), but could easily be incredibly immersive for the player. Whether the dishwasher decides the mage is nice enough and caring enough to be worth the risk of sleeping with may or may not have thematic interest (and therefore be of interest to the players), but it probably has a lot of personal interest for both the dishwasher and the mage (and is therefore of interest to the characters, and to the players for the length of time they are playing them).

The major things that I see that support immersion are focus on individual characters (not too much world responsability to throw the player out of character) and open ended scene control (which might be what pushes MLLW towards on-immersive), which allows the player to follow the character in whatever direction the character goes.

I suspect the first thing is a major reason for the popularity of GMs (which allows all the players except the GM easier access to immersion).

I suspect that DitV's "Say yes or roll the dice" rule also greatly helps with immersion, since having a character decide to do something interesting and something interesting happens, means that the investment in immersion gets a very reliable pay-off.

For me, frequently resorting to mechanics can also be an immersion killer, but many people don't seem to feel this effect. It is also possible that deep familiarity with the mechanics may lessen the effect, and it is also possible that mechanics whose feel for the player is parallel to the feel for the character may lessen this effect.

I guess this could better be expressed as a set of categories or an axis, but I don't think it is there yet.

Ben - wow. I think you're right. Wow.

Charles - yeah. Good question. I don't think it's there yet either.

Here's my checklist for front page posts: representational mechanics pro and con, immersion.

Anything else, anybody?