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.

Now: because of our history the above probably reads as a complete rejection of what you said. It's not. I actually agree with everything you said and in the CA paradigm, even an expanded one that is not "according-to-Hoyle CA's" that you reference, it is, I think reasonable.

But reasonable doesn't always mean correct. I question the basic suggestions of the model that created the term--and I think this post is an example of how they shape thinking along their lines.

-Marco

[adamdray]

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

I think the restaurant analogy breaks down when you really start to apply things. When your group chooses to go to Mama Lucia's for the tenth time in a row, it's not like choosing to play D&D for the tenth time in a row. At Mama Lucia's, you can't order sushi -- ever. At Edo Mae, you can't order gnocci al salsiccia either. But in your D&D game, you can do your thing and your friends can do their thing, too.

You can't even use a smorgasbord or buffet analogy because you're not sharing food. Each of you gets his own plate. You can fill yours with salmon maki from the sushi bar and your friends can pile the lasagna onto their plates. You watch them eat, but you don't derive your eating enjoyment from their eating; you enjoy eating your sushi.

See how the analogy to role-playing breaks down? In an RPG, you have to assimilate each other's input into your own fun, or ignore it.

Maybe a better analogy is the band. You show up with your tuba and say, "cool, a band! let's play some polka!" but your friends want to play country western. You're all, "No polka? How about you play country western and I'll intersperse my tuba oompapa-oompapa -- it's in 6/8, of course -- among the sublime steel guitar and crooning vocals. What? Your song is in 4/4 with a steady country-rock beat?"

I think, for some combinations of music types, you can come up with some pretty fun and workable bands. Rap and rock, sure. Rock and swing? Probably. But it's harder, right? And you want some kind of game plan for making it work.

[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.

What I'm saying is this: I don't believe there's any reason to believe that what's going on in the hypothetical is CA related. Sure: it could be happening as you say it--but it could be any number of other things. The CA world-view obscures what I think is far more likely (Bob is just pissed off that he's not getting his way than that he has a paradigm of the game that Laura is violating and that's the foundation of the issue).

I'm not sure where that leaves things: do I reject CA's as possible categorizations of games? No--not really. I think Deep and Awesome, Gamey, and Shallow would be both clearer terms and more honest for the majority of the dialog.

I do not take as a matter of faith that these categories have any true unifying themes. I don't believe that the categories of music are any more relevant here than the CA's--but clearly those CA distinctions work for some people.

-Marco

[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.

Basically, if you can say what you say without any jargon whatsoever, I'll likely agree (note: I think that there can be productive creative tension produced by either sudden shifts in the dynamic of the game or by having players who don't do the group-think thing with you--but that's neither here nor there).

But if you start talking CA, I think it brings in a bunch of toxic baggage when you start looking at what those words try to mean that you don't need and don't help.

-Marco

[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?

My experience leads me to disagree. I've had the most fun playing CA-focused games the way they were meant to be played. I've had very disappointing play when trying to make a CA-focused game do something different (notably, making D&D 3E do Narrativism over long-term play, but also making Cyberpunk 2013 and 2020 do Narrativism, and also watching other players try to make Dogs in the Vineyard into a Sim game). I've had a series of disappointments when trying to make CA-agnostic games (like D&D 2E) do Narrativism but maybe I need to try out other games like JAGS. Gonna be at GenCon this year?

[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