Resolution

[adamdray]

I have been thinking more about elements of my Social-Play Model, especially the IIEE pieces of it, and doing a little reading. I found Victor Gijsbers' old post, Shared Imagined Space, Shared Text (April 2005) to be very enlightening. I know next to nothing about Derrida, structuralism, semiotics, and the like, so I tread on thin ice here, but

Comments

[marcochacon]

So okay, this is good. I'm reading along and going "yeah, yeah--okay. Yeah, I agree with that."

It's all reasonably well presented.

Where I want to call attention to stuff I think is interesting.
1. Your blog's black background makes it painful for me to read your posts anywhere but *my* friend's list--and replying is hard too. Hard on my eyes.

2. (the real content) I believe that CA's are problematic here (and always have) because they create what I think is an illussion of underlying structure where it's not that simple. I.e. the fact that Bob and Laura argue about killing the hobgoblin (in the functional 3rd example) does not, to me, indicate a fundamental issue with how RPGs are done right--but rather the garden variety thing that happens when the group picks Italian food again and I stew.

It isn't that I have a Sushi-ist CA and it's being denied--it's that I didn't get what I wanted. I'm not convinced the context of the game is what's key here

[adamdray]

Should be much more readable now, right? I was due for a color change anyway

[adamdray]

My point in all that was that I don't just think it's a social thing ("you selfish fuckers, we always get Italian and never order sushi!"). I think it's earlier than that: you have certain preferences (Sim vs. Narr, polka vs. country) and certain skills (bricolage vs. scene framing, tuba vs. slide guitar). Someone is bound to get frustrated.

Maybe a group who have played together for years manage to create the polka-country fusion band that surprises music critics. Hey, Smashing Pumpkins does great things with a violin, and Cake fuses weird funky and jazzy influences with rock and adds a dash of swing brass flare, and John McCrea (lead singer) almost raps his music rather than singing it...

[marcochacon]

I don't know--when my friends don't do what I want them to it's annoying even without all that input-feedback-loop stuff. The fact is that I can get annoyed when they choose a restaurant I don't like and don't assimilate my requests same as if they're not doing what I want in an RPG

[adamdray]

What's this pissed off stuff though? Mostly, I'm just talking about people being bored or less than enthused. I've had a very small number of games ever get to "pissed off," and we were hormonal teenagers.

I've experienced countless games where I didn't get the fun I was expecting out of the game, and in almost every case I can attribute it to the kind of thing we'd call a CA clash.

I mean, yeah, I wasn't getting my way, and I played and had a reasonable time of it, but it didn't compare to those games where everyone at the table knew what they'd be getting out of the game, and the play delivered it. Those games rocked.

And I think that's all people mean by talking about CA, isn't it?

If the distinctions between categories don't work for you, I can only shrug. Categorization schemes often fail to account for everyone and GNS is probably just another one of those schemes. But it's useful for a lot of people, including me.

[marcochacon]

Re: the pissed-off stuff: I read Bob as being pissed off.

Re: What people mean by talking about CA.

I mean, yeah, I wasn't getting my way, and I played and had a reasonable time of it, but it didn't compare to those games where everyone at the table knew what they'd be getting out of the game, and the play delivered it. Those games rocked.

I can sign to this. It doesn't have any GNS-jargon in it.

I don't believe that's 'what people mean when they talk about CA'--or, rather, after the closure of the theory boards on The Forge, something fundamental changed in (most) of the GNS dialog which brought it closer to what you mean--but still not there

[adamdray]

And I'm saying I don't read most people as being pissed off when games go sour. Just bored or less than enthused.

I also don't believe you when you say you'll agree if I talk without any jargon whatsoever. I think you mean Forge jargon. If we talk for more than a few paragraphs in any detail about game theory, we're either gonna be using someone else's jargon or making up our own. The topic is just too complicated to discuss without jargon.

Hell, I spent two or three comment-posts hashing out with Bruce that he and I meant something different when we said "play."

[adamdray]

I'm reading what you said a little closer, and see this: "the fact that Bob and Laura argue about killing the hobgoblin (in the functional 3rd example) does not, to me, indicate a fundamental issue with how RPGs are done right."

I latched onto the stuff that came after that (Italian food again) and missed the "fundamental issue with how RPGs are done right" stuff.

I get you. I think you're saying that an RPG ruleset is just fine if it doesn't pick a narrowly-defined CA and jackhammer on just that one CA's techniques and what-not. I suspect you mean that fun is no more reliably guaranteed by a CA-focused game than by a CA-agnostic game. By CA-focused, I mean full of structure and techniques to support and encourage (or reward) playing that CA. By CA-agnostic, I mean full of structure and techniques that support all kinds of stuff, but containing little or nothing to encourage one CA over another (it probably rewards something though, but it might reward more than one CA or no discernible CA). Do I read you right

[marcochacon]

I'd love to do Gen Con one of these years! We'll see. If I had the truly rocking Archetypes books done in time (Ha!) I might be likely :)

-Marco