|
|
|
December 13th, 2002
 | 01:39 am - Friends & Paradoxes
Yesterday,  imester and I spent the evening with Charles working out various odd geometry problems, go here for more details on these rather interesting problems.
We also talked about imester's upcoming RPG and about magic and technology in games and in real life. Charles is a dear friend of mine, but despite having quite similar tastes in books and nearly identical political views, we have widely divergent views about many things.
Charles is a fairly strict materialist atheist (but very much not one of the dismissive and fanatical atheists that annoy me so much) with some Taoist leanings. He also likes playing RPGs with magic considerably more than I do and prefers magic to technology for explanations of odd and unexplained events in RPGs.
Given that I'm the practicing magician who has an exceptionally magical world view, I found this fact rather odd. I'm still not certain of why there are such differences between us. However, I do know that one difference in terminology is highly significant.
I described a world where magic was more obvious as one where both human will and human psychology had a more obvious direct affect on the world. Charles described that same sort of world as one where the rules of meaning had a similarly profound effect on the world. Although both of these statements describe the same situation, they are not the same.
If I understand his position correctly, he sees magic as being essentially about connections, stories, and reified themes. I find this definition rather uninteresting (just as he finds mine uninteresting) since I see of of the trappings of magic as purely rooted in human psychology and that its essential characteristic is the us of human (and non-human - I firmly believe in spirits of all sorts) will to directly affect reality. I'm not certain, but this may well be the distinction between someone who enjoys reading about magic and someone who does it.
He also believes that magic has it's own rules and I honestly don't (which is one of the reasons that I find anything other than superheroish magic (which explains nothing and is only another fun power) or fairly esoteric and odd magic systems like the ones in Nephilim or (especially) Conspiracy X to be at all satisfying and honestly have no interest in faerie-tale-like magic system with fairyland and similar trappings. For me, magic works by a combination of will focused through human (or non-human) psychology and highly complex and non-obvious emergent properties of the world.
The short form of this means that I find all attempts to find a scientific explanations for magic that I've ever heard of to be utter nonsense don't expect to see any such explanations until we can accurately model macroscopic portions of the world with near 100% accuracy.
I wonder if this is at all related to another profound difference between us. Charles (from my PoV) has almost a horror of spoilers for upcoming episodes of the few television shows we follow. In contrast, I enjoy reading spoilers and have been known to read the entire script for a show before I watch it.
However, Charles also has a fondness for the sort of non or loosely plotted non-diced RPGs where the entire gaming group consciously works together to create a coherent story. However, I find the entire idea to be both baffling and deadly dull. In part because I like strong plots but equally much because I like the surprise of seeing these plots unfold out of a series of unplanned actions rather than prior decision-making or group consensus.
So in one case, he demands surprise in his entertainment and I don't in the other case I demand surprise and he doesn't. The closest I can get to understanding this is that it likely has to do with the fact that the sort of Taoism that seems almost innate to Charles thought is fairly antithetical to more will-centered personal path that I follow.
Even one's very close friends can be exceedingly surprising sometimes
Current Mood:  contemplative
Current Music: Chinese Burn - Curve
|
I'm with Charles as regards spoilers and atheism (although I'd regard myself as agnostic rather than atheistic).
I literally have no idea how anything could function without rules. Either a thing causes another thing, or it doesn't. If it doesn't, then why did it happen?
Oh, and I like games which are a mixture - not so tightly plotted that players are railroaded into situations, not so loose that they have nothing to do. | | From: | heron61 |
|---|
| Date: | December 13th, 2002 11:52 am (UTC) |
|---|
| | | (Link) |
|
Oh, and I like games which are a mixture - not so tightly plotted that players are railroaded into situations, not so loose that they have nothing to do.
To clarify a bit. I have absolutely not patience with games where there is only a single (or a very limited range of solutions) to the plot I like games where the plot is foregrounded, but where there are a myriad of good (and of course bad) solutions that are possible to it. I literally have no idea how anything could function without rules. Either a thing causes another thing, or it doesn't. If it doesn't, then why did it happen?
What I seem to recall from a philosophy class I took too many years ago is that it is often difficult, logically, to establish causal relationships. Therefore one should not assume that causal relationships always exist. | From: | (Anonymous) |
|---|
| Date: | December 14th, 2002 08:21 pm (UTC) |
|---|
| | | (Link) |
|
Actually, I think of myself as more of a slightly mystical agnostic than a materialist atheist. Since I live with the esteemed Ampersand (http://www.amptoons.com/blog/), who is most definitely a materialist atheist (although not the fanatical sort), I can see the distinction quite clearly. I am, for instance, willing to grant visions a truth value that a materialist atheist probably would not.
I think part of the disagreement between blueheron and myself actually relates to the fact that I am far more mystical than magical, while blueheron is more magical than mystical (oddly, it doesn't seem to matter that blueheron, as a practicing magician, is actually probably at least as mystical as I am, since his mystical practice is a side effect of his magical practice, rather than being his focus in and of itself). For me, a magical game world is one in which the way the world works has meaning, while a non-magical game world (even if it has super powers which we can choose to call magic or choose to call nano-tech) is one in which the way the world works does not have meaning. For blueheron, a magical world is just one in which the world works in an arbitrary rather than a comprehensible way (things work "by magic", which is indistinguishable from (and perhaps identical to?) "because I say so").
I agree that this relates to the spoilers issue, since a magical world is more likely to have meaning to the player if the player is willing to act as partial author of the game to some substantial degree.
On the spoilers for tv shows versus surprises in roleplaying games, I think that the difference relates to a difference between roleplaying games and tv that somehow people seem to occasionally elide when talking about these things. While they are both entertaining (or at least they are intended to be (slap intended at tv, not at my worthy GM)), I do not interact with them in at all the same way. My only interaction with a tv show (or a movie, or a book) is as audience. In a role playing game, while audience is a small part of the pleasure of gaming, it is far from the main part. Another large part of the pleasure of gaming is authorship (on the 4 stances of gaming: actor, author, audience and character, see my spouse's (and Kevin Hardwick's) article (http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&th=76902d6e4b1cead&seekm=1998050514311900.KAA09400%40ladder01.news.aol.com&frame=off) of many years ago).
Being exclusively the audience of a tv show, a movie, or a book, I strongly prefer to have my experience of the twists and turns of the plot be structured in the manner that the author chooses to structure the revealing of the twists and turns. I consider the ability to structure a work of fiction to achieve a chosen effect to be one of the more important requirements for being a good author. If the author intends something to surprise me, then I would prefer to be surprised by it. If a character's death is intended to come as a bone jarring shock, and the author goes to great effort to create that shock and then use that shock in meaningful and powerful ways, why on earth would I prefer to skip that shock entirely by knowing that that character is going to die? While I may still be able to enjoy it at the more abstract aesthetic level of "Oh, nicely done! See how the author is using the shock the reader is supposed to be experiencing to good effect," I would prefer to enjoy both the direct experience and the critical experience, rather than skipping the direct experience. Admittedly, most spoilers are largely irrelevant, but at the very least they remove the pleasure of guessing where the story is going. Certainly, there are works of fiction that cannot be spoiled by spoilers, but they tend to be the ones for which no one is giving away spoilers.
</em>continued in next comment</em> | From: | (Anonymous) |
|---|
| Date: | December 14th, 2002 08:46 pm (UTC) |
|---|
| | | (Link) |
|
continuing from the previous comment (who can say anything in 3900 words?)
And, while I heartily approve of Whedon's practice of creating fake spoilers, I see it more as a defense than as a continuation of the work. If the author wants to include spoilers, they can be included in the work, as can fake spoilers. Subtle within work spoilers are called foreshadowing. Blunt within work spoilers are less common, but Bel Canto, by Ann Patchett, includes an example imester (imester) is very fond of.
If a work is particularly well done, then it can sustain re-viewing or re-reading, because aspects of the work which might have been missed on first viewing or first reading will become visible once I am no longer putting any work into following the basic narrative. However, the memory of the first reading is still an important aspect for me of the experience of re-reading.
I can actually understand reading a script of a tv show more than I can reading the writer's plot arc, or a series of plot summaries. The script is at least the bones of the intended experience.
Since I am an author of the role-playing games I play in (as well as audience), I enjoy the authorial pleasures of constructing the world and the plot as well as enjoying the audience pleasure of watching the game and being surprised by events in the game. As it happens, I have never played games of the extremely narrativist style that blueheron thinks I have played, such as those that several of my former housemates later played and one of them designs (http://www.septemberquestion.org/lumpley/lumpley.html) (as a total aside, check out the wonderfully vile vampire (http://www.septemberquestion.org/lumpley/hungry.html) game). For me, I think that those games might push things too far toward the authorial and audience stances, and too far from the character stance, which is really my favorite aspect of rpg's (and one which is totally lacking from viewing and reading). Of course, I have never played in those games, so I suspect that I am actually ignorant of their unique pleasures. I imagine I would enjoy them, but not in exactly the same way that I enjoy my preferred style of roleplaying.
Blueheron, I believe, prefers the character stance over author, audience and actor much more than I do. So, for him, knowing the details of the plot before hand may actually be an impediment to enjoying the game.
For him, the spoiled gaming experience is "I know my character won't be able to stop this particular event from happening, so why try."
For me, the spoiled viewing experience is "I know the surprise twist at the end that will make me rethink everything I thought I had figured out so far, so why watch?"
Charles (blogless)
ps: Blueheron, I think you are kidding yourself when you say that ... these plots unfold out of a series of unplanned actions rather than prior decision-making or group consensus.
While good strong plots are allowed to unfold out of unplanned action, they are absolutely the product of prior decision making (unless, of course, by strong plot you merely mean overwhelming emphasis on plot). The difference is that you want the decision making to take place entirely out of your sight, which may be related to the illusionist (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4217) play style. Of course, actually what I am failing to take into account is that you already said exactly that I like the surprise of seeing ..., not "I like the fact that." Silly me.
pps: I hope that nothing I have said in this is excessively harsh. The main reason that I am generally not involved in on-line activities is that I tend to be much harsher in writing than I am in speech, and the amusement value of having every conversation spin off into a flame war palls fairly quickly. Some care, and the fact that I know blueheron, went into making this less of flame bait than it might otherwise be. | | From: | heron61 |
|---|
| Date: | December 15th, 2002 12:40 am (UTC) |
|---|
| | | (Link) |
|
As it happens, I have never played games of the extremely narrativist style that blueheron thinks I have played, such as those that several of my former housemates later played and one of them designs (as a total aside, check out the wonderfully vile vampire game).True, however I have been in one of these games and heard detailed stories of several others and I can see similarities between these games and the ones you have links to. The difference is that while I'm largely uninterested in these aspects of these games, but there are other features of interest so I can enjoy being in them, even if I find them less enjoyable than the style of gaming I am used to. The games described in the above links are of a type I have no interest in playing and in which I find nothing that is of even the slightest value to me. I view them with the same sort of baffled and highly dubious disinterest as would a TV show on fishing or an Adam Sandler movie. Blueheron, I believe, prefers the character stance over author, audience and actor much more than I do. So, for him, knowing the details of the plot before hand may actually be an impediment to enjoying the game.I'm a deeply immersive roleplayer and so greatly prefer the character stance. I find that audience stance interesting in moderation, and have been known to use the actor stance with some regularity. However, I find using the author stance in any but the most dire necessity (to preserve the game) to be actively destructive to enjoyable immersive roleplaying. ps: Blueheron, I think you are kidding yourself when you say that ... these plots unfold out of a series of unplanned actions rather than prior decision-making or group consensus. While good strong plots are allowed to unfold out of unplanned action, they are absolutely the product of prior decision making...True, but the prior decisions are made by a group of people who have each made their own separate decisions (or in which small groups have made separate decisions). I find the interaction of these decisions (that have often not been discussed with everyone before hand) to be interesting because the results of the intersections of these decisions is unplanned and often highly unpredictable. I've talked to numerous players GMs of the gaming style I prefer, and have consistently found that in especially good sessions neither the players nor the GM have any idea where the game will do or how various scenes will play out. I like this sort of randomness. (unless, of course, by strong plot you merely mean overwhelming emphasis on plot).I like a strong emphasis on plot and have little interest in forgrounding the personal growth or "character processing" ( as imester calls them )sections of the game. This is not to say that I don't enjoy exceptionally lengthy in-character conversations or having a character change. However, the sorts of conversations that we are talking about seem to me primarily be author-directed exchanges designed to illustrate for promote directed or pre-planned character growth rather than the sort of unconscious growth that I prefer. OTOH, I could be quite wrong in this assessment. Am I? More to follow... | | From: | heron61 |
|---|
| Date: | December 15th, 2002 12:43 am (UTC) |
|---|
| | | (Link) |
|
Here's the rest of my post...
The difference is that you want the decision making to take place entirely out of your sight, which may be related to the illusionist play style. Of course, actually what I am failing to take into account is that you already said exactly that I like the surprise of seeing ...
That is a true statement. However, in part my objection is the same as to diceless gaming. I almost always find conscious planned plots and scenes to be notably inferior to ones that arise from a combination of chance and various people acting with incomplete information. If the players and the GM sit around and and create the plot or plan the outcome of a scene the results are almost certainly going to be notably different from the results of a combination of die rolls and hasty decisions made by individuals who often don't have the opportunity to consult with others. Certainly any attempt to have two separate conflicting plans collide in an interesting fashion would be vastly artificial in a game where this collision was planned rather than where it just happened because two players or two groups of players had their characters make plans without knowing of the other person or group's plans. Do you disagree that pre-planned and non-pre-planned scenes generally yield different results?
Btw, I think I see one crucial difference in our views. You prefer planned, scripted, and designed surprise (as in viewing a interesting twist in a movie). I also find that enjoyable but far less vital to my entertainment. I prefer unplanned surprises, where no one knows the outcome of a particular scene beforehand. In part again, this seems to be due to a difference of how much important we put on deliberate planning and authorial intent.
Also, worry not Charles, this is very far from being flamish.
| From: | (Anonymous) |
|---|
| Date: | December 15th, 2002 04:57 am (UTC) |
|---|
| | | (Link) |
|
I think that the serious preplanning of games by players and GM in concert is largely a non-existant thing, unless you mean at the level of "this is a game in which a group of mages who have decided to found a new covenant get together and go out an found a new covenant." Can you give an example of what you mean by preplanning from either Sarah's game that you were in or any of the games we've told you about, because I really don't think I understand what you mean.
As audience, the fictions I enjoy are tightly structured, whether surprising or unsurprising, whether digressive and round about or neatly wrapped up. Since there are other aspects to enjoying a roleplaying game besides audience, and no good roleplaying game I have ever encountered involved revision of play as a desired or expected aspect, I do not expect roleplaying games to be as tightly structured as fictions. However, I do like for there to be enough meaning to the story that the unexpected events have resonance and meaning, and don't just end up being random surprises.
Often, the best chaotic surprises in my experience have come from plot twists intentional introduced by the ref, that the players run with without knowing that the plot twist is built into what they are doing.
In one of Sarah's games, there were a bunch of magical bags that the characters (and many of the npc's) gained early on in the game. After the characters had been using the bags for several sessions, we discovered that the bags would randomly teleport their contents between bags. This took place in a highly political game and the resorting of secret stuff created immensely amusing chaos (similar to the sort of chaos that often comes out of bizarre diced results). I think that Sarah did resolve what ended up where using dice, since it was a random process, but the decision to build in this chaos was a consious decision on the part of the ref, although still avoidable by careful actions on the part of the characters.
Is this the sort of thing you mean by planned games?
I suppose that our difference on heavily diced versus less diced (I think dice are useful for where randomness seems to be important) is that I find most dice use to produce more of a noisy unpredictableness than a path diverging effect. Although GMs in heavily diced games usually use dice events as the justification for path diverging decisions, I have generally seen refs only allow the dice to cause path splitting when they felt like allowing it. Neither of us plays in the sort of strict resolution (say table of outcomes) systems that would really force a ref to make a path diverging outcome when that wasn't the desired effect.
Generally, I feel that concious decisions provide more interesting outcomes than dice rolls beyond the level of "high good, low bad," since I have never met a rule system that could give a satisfying diced resolution to a complicated action. To my mind, most complex actions don't have results that are simply one dimensional. I think we differ more on high rules : low rules, than we do on diced : diceless.
I find it very strange and off-putting to try to imagine the final scene of imester's last game (in which two very different npcs were vying to become the avatar of two related but opposed angels and only one could succeed) being resolved by dice rolls. And it is not at all because I require that the game have a successful ending (I find complex failure just as interesting as complex success), but only because by that point things had built to such a point that it was clear who would win out and it merely required all of the characters playing out their parts to bring it about. I could have seen diced decisions having an effect earlier (as well as undiced decisions), but the final scene was not the one in which the decision of what would happen was reached, only the scene in which that decision reached its completion.
Would diced decisions in that final scene (perhaps a contested roll between the two npcs, or perhaps a contested roll between Indira (pc) and Sophina (enemy npc)) have made more sense to you or have been more satisfying?
Charles | From: | (Anonymous) |
|---|
| Date: | December 15th, 2002 05:08 am (UTC) |
|---|
| | | (Link) |
|
Specifically in relation to what creates surprising outcomes, my experience with (and as) the sort of GM you like less is that most of the best and most important scenes are still highly unpredictable, and you generally go into them not really knowing where they are going to go, same as with your preferred style of play. I agree that from our (mutual) position, highly narrativist games seem like this wouldn't be the case as much, but I think that the strong multi-authoring that these games encourage mean that, again, the actual outcomes are determined on the fly and are just as likely to be nothing like what anyone expected.
The big difference is whether the scenes mean something in terms of the story.
Charles | | From: | heron61 |
|---|
| Date: | December 15th, 2002 02:16 pm (UTC) |
|---|
| | | (Link) |
|
"Meaning" in the sense you are talking about is something I don't often tend to consider with RPGs. Being deeply immersive, I instead care that the various decisions are the result of the same mixture of both immediate and planned individual character decisions and random chance as in our world. In this way, I see RPGs as being vastly different from novels, movies or other forms of constructed stories. I don't see an RPG as a story in any real sense (except perhaps if one considers life to be a story).
I can enjoy finding meaning and signficance in scenes afterwards, but in the same sense that I do with life, and with the knowledge (or at least the hope) that this meaning was in no way created or intentional but is something that I am making out of a story with little intrinsic meaning.
However, the important part of the game for me is the experience of doing it, looking at the result it made in the end (the "story" from your PoV) is something I rarely spend much time on and which I consider to be vastly secondary to the experience of playing the game. Highly "narrativist" roleplaying which foregrounds the story over other elements (and in my PoV over the characters) seems very much like it sacrifices much of the joy and spontanaity of playing the game to produce a more aesthetically pleasing end result. I'm still confused as to why anyone would wish to do this. | From: | (Anonymous) |
|---|
| Date: | December 15th, 2002 07:48 pm (UTC) |
|---|
| | | (Link) |
|
However, you do seem to prefer save the world over dungeon crawls (a string of unrelated incidents with no deep ties to the characters lives) or village games (a set of characters who are driven almost entirely by their personal relationships and on who relatively little world shaking plot is dropped) (or is it just your GMs who have this preference?). You do seem to want the things surrounding the decisions to be big and exciting. To my mind what makes the set up for the decisions big and exciting is the meaning. To my mind, story concerns dictate what the game focuses on, not the resolution of individual events. I agree that decisions should be the result of planned and spontaneous individual character decisions and random chance. I don't think this is particularly related to meaning. For me, the meaning should be tied into the individual character decisions in two ways. The decisions should arise out of the meaning of the situation to the character, and the meaning of the situation for the players should arise out of the characters decisions. I agree that individual character decision should not be dictated by player preference in meaning, just as character actions should not be dictated by player understanding of the plot. Firewalling is just as important for thematic aspects as it is for plot aspects or character aspects (what I, the player, know about your character should not influence my character's behavior if my character doesn't know it). The main difference to my eye is that almost any set of actions, and certainly success and failure for even the most key events, can be tied into a thematic structure if the thematic structure exists. Thematic structure is thus far less likely to influence decision making than other sorts of out of character knowledge, since anyone who is paying attention to thematic structure is likely to enjoy the dissonance between player knowledge and character actions when it happens. There isn't really a win situation in relation to theme, as there is with plot. When the situation is one which has meaning for the characters, the character actions will be driven by that meaning.
Part of the job of the ref, and one that is greatly facilitated by ref-player discussions, is to get the characters to care about the meaning of the situation. This allows the characters to be motivated to interact with the plot by deeper concerns than experience points, money or fame. I don't think that you actually disagree with much of this, except that you hate having to firewall (understandably, since it can be difficult to combine with deep IC, although not impossible) and therefore prefer to avoid being in the ref-player discussions on theme (although you seem to enjoy guess the plot and figure out the world ref-player discussions, both of which influence plot and world as much as they simply provide the players with additional chances to do the IC thinking through of these issues OC and off screen) and that you have difficulty believing that a focus on theme doesn't mean that individual actions are resolved without reference to theme. My guess is that it is your concern that theme or narrative interest will influence individual event determination that predominantly drives your dislike of narrativist gaming. As you said, in a game in which there is plot stuff happening you don't mind there being narrative stuff as well, so long as it isn't impinging on your IC experience of the plot stuff.
continued in the next post | From: | (Anonymous) |
|---|
| Date: | December 15th, 2002 07:59 pm (UTC) |
|---|
| | | (Link) |
|
continuing
One benefit of thematic focus over plot focus for a game is that I see it actually allowing the characters greater leeway in what sorts of things they choose to do. For any particular thematic focus, there are a far greater variety of courses of character action that will play off of the themes than there are courses of action that will play off of a particular plot in a plot focused game.
If the plot of the game is the overwhelming focus, and my character isn't interested in this particular plot, then there is little my character can do to get game focus. If the themes of the game are the overwhelming focus, then what my character is interested in doing merely needs to be thematically linked to be able to get game focus. One of the problems for this, of course, is that plot focusing is much more likely to produce the critical mass of characters all in the same place at the same time.
This may be why I have a preference for games with physically limited scope (such as Ars Magica supports), where there are few enough npcs that they can all be individuals, rather than plot devices. This allows pc - npc interaction to be more reliably interesting, and tends to force inter-pc contact in a naturalistic way. In a game in a large city or other setting with inherently unrestricted mobility, pc interaction needs to be forced through plot, which can become overt forcing if any of the characters become less interested in a particular plot than the other characters are.
Small settings also allow for something closer to the full range of types of pc-pc relationships, something that, as we have discussed, I like and you don't. | From: | (Anonymous) |
|---|
| Date: | December 15th, 2002 08:09 pm (UTC) |
|---|
| | | (Link) |
|
A further clarification. The 'player as audience' enjoyment of the story is not after the story is over. It is an active component of play. Nobody plays rpgs for the pleasure of remembering the game afterwards (although we certainly hope to be able to do that too). ![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/4031634/792700) | | From: | lumpley |
|---|
| Date: | December 16th, 2002 10:16 am (UTC) |
|---|
| | | (Link) |
|
Hi, I'm Vincent. I hope I'm not intruding.
Quoting Charles for context (Hi Charles!):
"While we both agree that it is preferable for simulationist naturalism (that is, what makes sense to happen should be what happens, including the fact that it makes sense that unexpected things happen) to govern event resolution, I think that thematic influence is more likely to produce unexpected and path diverging results than plot influence is."
It seems to me that plot's vs. theme's influence on event resolution is less important than plot's vs. theme's influence on conflict setup. Like in Meg's and Em's and my current Ars Magica game, we have two big conflicts: Can we establish ourselves as a covenant in the Transylvanian tribunal? and How do you use power responsibly (especially, what makes a good parent)? The plot conflict about building a covenant is the stage for the thematic conflict about power.
So as we play, we decide which decisions and sub-conflicts to pay attention to and which to skim over, same as everybody. Being theme-oriented just means that we wave our hands at some of the technical, plotty challenges of building a covenant, and instead focus on the conflicts in which use of power is the issue. For example, will Em's mage Soraya stand up to her abusive former master? is a more interesting question to us than can Soraya cast a spell through her abusive former master's parma? How will my mage Acanthus come to an understanding with the fairies in his lab? is more interesting than can Acanthus drive the fairies out of his lab?
The theme practically never influences events' outcomes; it doesn't have to. Whether Soraya stands up to Severin or not, she's made a statement about the power imbalance between them, and that's what we're after. So in the shared prep part of the game, I don't say things like "I want Acanthus to have to fight to get the fairies out of his lab, so let's give them a Magic Might of 18;" I say things like "hey, anybody else notice the weird sibling thing developing between Acanthus and Ivald? Let's see where that goes."
Also, um, thanks for having this conversation in public like this. It's great stuff.
-Vincent
| From: | (Anonymous) |
|---|
| Date: | December 16th, 2002 09:42 pm (UTC) |
|---|
| | | (Link) |
|
Hey Vince, I'm happy to have you jump in, and happy to hear from you, its been a while.
I am particularly happy to have your input since you run/play in games that are much more collectively run than the games that I used to play in, and that are at least as strongly thematically motivated. Since I haven't run a game in more than a decade, I can't really argue very effectively against John's refusal to believe that a focus on thematic concerns doesn't influence event resolution any more than plot concerns does (personally, I think it influences event resolution much less). Since event resolution is largely the GM's domain (and if it is spread around amongst the players, that really just means that the GM-ship has moved to collective or semi-collective GM-ship), I think the testimony of a GM might be more convincing than that of a player.
Glad you've been enjoying reading this exchange
Charles | | From: | heron61 |
|---|
| Date: | December 15th, 2002 01:01 am (UTC) |
|---|
| | | (Link) |
|
For me, a magical game world is one in which the way the world works has meaning, while a non-magical game world (even if it has super powers which we can choose to call magic or choose to call nano-tech) is one in which the way the world works does not have meaning. For blueheron, a magical world is just one in which the world works in an arbitrary rather than a comprehensible way (things work "by magic", which is indistinguishable from (and perhaps identical to?) "because I say so").
Not quite, I think I finally understand this. You talk about meaning. For me, our world and any other world I would have any interest in has no form of intrinsic meaning. I'm actively disinterested in this concept in fiction and somewhat horrified by it possibly being true in our own world.
I see meaning as something every individual (and to an extent) ever culture or species puts on an essentially meaningless world. This is why I tend to be either uninterested fiction involving fate and predestination, except in the sense that this is an illusion that various individuals are actively attempting to maintain by conscious manipulations (which to drift a bit off-topic) is very much my assumption about the Company series by Kage Baker.
Magic (from my PoV) only has meaning because of how we do it, which says far more about us than about the world. A world with intrinsic meaning is where characters ultimately w/o free will and in which the range of possibilities and results are greatly narrowed. This distinction is also very much why I like what you and Sarah K. refer to as low fantasy by authors like Mary Gentle or Andre Norton to any form of Fantasy or (especially) to any books which have a strrong "faerie tale like" feel, like many of Patricia Mckillip's recent works such as The Book of Atrix Wolfe.
This same difference (if I am correct about it) may also explain our differences in taste in gaming.
Comments? | From: | (Anonymous) |
|---|
| Date: | December 15th, 2002 03:55 am (UTC) |
|---|
| | | (Link) |
|
Indeed, this difference really only applies to our taste in gaming, since I believe exactly the same thing as you do about meaning in the real world (completely individual/cultural, no absolute meaning, absolute meaning would be horrifying if true).
But yes, I think it does apply to our preferences in gaming style beyond just magic vs. no magic. I like for the game world to support a satisfying narrative, while I think you prefer the limited narrative that arises out of combining a situation and a bunch of people responding to it. Of course, I also like the unexpected aspects that arise out of the summation of individual decisions. Many of the most fun scenes arise out of these situations, particularly where the characters are acting on severely incomplete information. However, I find that the most gut wrenching scenes often arise out of more narrativist scenes, where the players can see very clearly where the situation is heading, but the characters are blind to the situation.
I think part of your hostility toward character development scenes may come from your preference (and much greater experience with) strongly plot driven games. I find that strongly plot driven games (and I have played in both heavily plot focused and strongly character focused games) tend to squash the conversational scenes down to the level where the only sort of serious character developing conversational scene possible is one in which the characters are coming to author driven realizations. In a more character driven and conversational game (as in the real world), most conversations do not involve characters coming to personality changing realizations. Instead, most conversations reflect the existing relationships between characters, or are the process by which characters develop those relationships. Change in character is reflected in the conversations when it happens, but it can either happen almost invisibly gradually or happen in sudden lightning strokes (as in real life) as the situation dictates.
I imagine you find the concept of playing out hours and hours of personal conversations in character to be rather pointless and excruciating, but to me conversation in character is at least as potentially interesting as breaking into buildings, creating wondrous new technology, or engaging in bar room brawls in character, and is at least as likely to reflect both the world and the characters as any sort of action sequence.
The greatest dissatisfaction for me with roleplaying often comes from the fact that most worlds and most characters cannot really support a serious in-depth conversation. I have always envied those gamers who can have hours and hours of intense personal conversation between their characters.
Charles | | From: | heron61 |
|---|
| Date: | December 15th, 2002 08:57 am (UTC) |
|---|
| | | (Link) |
|
I like for the game world to support a satisfying narrative, while I think you prefer the limited narrative that arises out of combining a situation and a bunch of people responding to it.
Exactly! In short, I prefer games that privilege character over narrative and you prefer the reverse. For me, narrative is of absolutely no interest on its own or as something separate from the characters. | From: | (Anonymous) |
|---|
| Date: | December 15th, 2002 08:37 pm (UTC) |
|---|
| | | (Link) |
|
I think I started to respond to this in one of my other posts and then ended up not responding to it in that post. If I actually did respond to this somewhere else... well, I'm responding to it here as well.
Both of us privilege character over all else. You prefer to privilege plot over theme, and I prefer to privilege theme over plot. You feel that privileging theme over plot works to the detriment of character, I think that privileging plot over theme works to the detriment of character.
What makes a satisfying narrative out of a situation and a group of people responding to it is for the relationship between the situation and the group of people to be a part of the situation. The situation needs to matter to the characters for reasons deeper than money, fame, experience, or even "well the world looked like it needed saving and we were the ones standing here next to the hole in the dike."
Is this (which I see as the basis of a satisfying narrative) something that really doesn't matter for your enjoyment of a game? If a campaign consisted of a group of characters who are sent on missions by their commanding officers, and the characters didn't necessarily even know why, would you find that a satisfying game? For me, the main pleasures in such a game would come from peripheral aspects (what do the characters think of each other? what do they think of the fact that they work for this organization? are they really sure that doing these things is morally right (whatever that may personally mean to each of them)?), but whether or not they succeed at stealing the crown jewels this week really wouldn't interest me very much. If I were running such a campaign, the peripherals would definitely dominate in terms of game focus.
Again, this may relate to happy endings. For me, the game gets interesting when the character's motivations pile up and run contrary to each other (within character more than between character, while I may like limited character-character hostilities, they generally work better as personality clashes or bad blood than they do if my character is your character's arch-enemy). I like for characters to be put in situations where there are serious sacrifices required to get what they want, no matter what they decide they want, but such double binds, while they can still lead to overwhelming plot success, will never allow truly happy endings.
I think I like bittersweet better than sweet.
Charles | | From: | heron61 |
|---|
| Date: | December 16th, 2002 12:30 am (UTC) |
|---|
| | | (Link) |
|
Both of us privilege character over all else. You prefer to privilege plot over theme, and I prefer to privilege theme over plot. You feel that privileging theme over plot works to the detriment of character, I think that privileging plot over theme works to the detriment of character.
Very true on both counts.
What makes a satisfying narrative out of a situation and a group of people responding to it is for the relationship between the situation and the group of people to be a part of the situation. The situation needs to matter to the characters for reasons deeper than money, fame, experience, or even "well the world looked like it needed saving and we were the ones standing here next to the hole in the dike."
I only play in games with interesting & complex characters, but I could just as happily play a member of a highly trained team of secret agents who might occasionally have to deal with traitors and moles in their organization, but who all believed in their organization and its goals. Then again, that sort of thing describes a number of pieces of fiction I have enjoyed. To be honest, I'd generally prefer such a RPG setting to something like Kage Baker's Company novels unless the PCs looked like they had a reasonable hope of victory over "The Company". Similarly, while I enjoy Iain M. Banks' novels, I'd be none to eager to play in a game where the PCs were screwed around with anywhere near that much. That just sounds depressing.
Is this (which I see as the basis of a satisfying narrative) something that really doesn't matter for your enjoyment of a game?
For me, it's not necessary to the extent that you likely mean. If the consequences of not saving the world are obviously bad either for the character or someone or something the character cares about, then that's sufficient reason for my character to save the world. Alternately, I could be happy with a somewhat episodic SF game much like Firefly where the focus is making an interesting living out on the fringes. I've play in several travel games where the PCs only began revisiting the worlds they visited more than halfway through the game. The PCs got involved with various plots because people we knew (or occasionally strangers one of us took a liking to or who had something interesting to offer) asked for our help. Alternately, sometimes the PCs saw something that bugged them and decided to fix it. In a number of cases, these solutions were obvious very different from what the GM had imagined would happen, but that's what makes a good game.
Becca's game and Aaron's most recent game were both odd for me, because they had (and Becca's more than Aaron's) a clear and direct overarching plot and a definitive endpoint. I'd never even played in a game with an endpoint before. I've found that such games can be as enjoyable as any other type (as long as there are plenty of sessions that have nothing to do with the overarching plot and if the characters actually succeed at their goals). However, I'm far more familiar with games w/o large overarching plots.
Aaron's previous game had a theme - the 1999 game had some sort of theme that dealt with memory and identity. However, I'd be hard pressed to state that theme in any coherent form and likely so would everyone else who was involved.
In a far more real sense, the 1999 game was the story of Alec and Warren and their companions, the story of the band they formed, and the separate stories of the various characters who got thrown out of their normal lives and found new homes and new lives in a wide variety of different and strange places. This was not only satisfying but near ideal for me.
The only reason I (or Aaron) ever knew the memory was a major theme was that one of the players noticed and commented to the rest of us that memory and identity formed a major element of many separate plots. Neither Aaron nor I had noticed this fact before it was mentioned. It was clearly an unconscious theme, with is likely why it worked so well for me. I prefer unconscious knowledge to conscious decisions and random outcomes over decisions in situations where the outcome is unclear.
More to follow... | | From: | heron61 |
|---|
| Date: | December 15th, 2002 09:06 am (UTC) |
|---|
| | | (Link) |
|
I imagine you find the concept of playing out hours and hours of personal conversations in character to be rather pointless and excruciating, but to me conversation in character is at least as potentially interesting as breaking into buildings, creating wondrous new technology, or engaging in bar room brawls in character, and is at least as likely to reflect both the world and the characters as any sort of action sequence.
I completely agree with you preferences. I'm used to vastly conversational games (which explains why the average time-rate in our respective games is so glacially slow and so similar. The difference is that I often prefer these conversations to be about attempting to understand some phenomena and if possible to work out a mutual understanding of the phenomena between the characters (as opposed to the seemingly endless and highly argumentative planning sessions that happen in more problematic games). You keep trying to say that you like conversational games more than I do, but I don't believe that this is true. However, the sorts of conversation are different.
The one remaining paradox is that I also very much enjoy emotion-based conversations between PCs and PCs and NPCs (in moderation), but they tend to be somehow different from the sorts that you prefer. I don't believe the difference is solely one of degree, but can't get at this realization more deeply at this point. | From: | (Anonymous) |
|---|
| Date: | December 15th, 2002 04:58 pm (UTC) |
|---|
| | | (Link) |
|
Actually, I think what it comes down to is that we both prefer exactly the same sort of in game conversations. As evidence for this, consider imester (imester)'s last game: many (if not most) of the really good (from both our perspectives) figuring out the world conversations were between our two characters. We were both happy to go on for hours until Dawn and Sarah were both sick of them. On the personal relationship conversations in that game, to my eye some of the best and most extensive were between your character and Lauren. Can you actually think of specific counter examples of in game conversations that you have seen or we have described that I liked and you didn't?
The only possible examples that I can think of are actually related to a somewhat different issue: the Isrillion Council sessions, in which characters used discussion of the world and of plans as a means of attacking each other rather than (or in addition to) supporting each other. Now, this was not bad gaming in the sense that the players were attacking each other through the game, the player were enjoying playing out their characters fighting with each other. I think that this is related to your preference for a more positive gaming style over a grim gaming style. For instance, I think you see no attraction in the idea of playing a character who is stuck in situation where they have to depend on people they don't like (and who they will probably never come to like) or in a game where the events in the game are so monstrous or debilitating that the characters are slowly driven mad, or are unlikely to ever succeed in actually changing the things that they believe need to be changed.
I can understand your position: after all, life is bad enough as it stands, if we want the experience of trying and failing at something that we see as immensely important we could just go out and try to stop the next war with Iraq, or we could try to get US society to stop eating the world, or we could try to decrease infant mortality in the Southern US, and if we want to depend on people we hate, we could just get office jobs, or visit our parents for Christmas. I know that Imester prefers save the world games, and I have assumed that you like them as well. Fairly clearly, neither of you like try to save the world and fail over and over again games.
Personally, I'm okay with save the world games, and I'm okay with happy family parties, but I also like a good trip through the depths of despair.
A while back I said that for me scenes that tie strongly into theme are often the most gut wrenching. I wonder if part of the issue is that you don't particularly want gut wrenching from your games. | | From: | heron61 |
|---|
| Date: | December 15th, 2002 05:17 pm (UTC) |
|---|
| | | (Link) |
|
Excellent point about preferences as reflected by our character's conversations in the last game.
For instance, I think you see no attraction in the idea of playing a character who is stuck in situation where they have to depend on people they don't like (and who they will probably never come to like) or in a game where the events in the game are so monstrous or debilitating that the characters are slowly driven mad, or are unlikely to ever succeed in actually changing the things that they believe need to be changed.
Agreed, that sounds like a somewhat harsh but not untrue description of Aaron's last game, and this what one of the primary things I found so problematic about it. Even if the character's succeeded at almost all of the individual scenarios, it still felt hopeless and pointless. Also, I have very little tolerance for inter-party bickering or any sort of long-term conflict (as opposed to non-hostile rivalry or various positive relationships) in the party. If the characters don't like each other and get along poorly, then my answer is someone needs a new character unless there is some solution to the situation. Any other options is highly unenjoyable for me. Short-term party conflicts will always occur, but if they cannot be smoothed over then from my PoV there is a serious problem. As I think about it, the descriptions of conversations and interpersonal relationships that I've heard of your games that I've objected to have always involved this sort of long-term conflict or similar problems surrounding hopelessness and despair. Basically, I want the characters to either be friends or at minimum colleagues who respect each other and can work together effectively. The more this is untrue, the less I will enjoy the game.
I know that Imester prefers save the world games, and I have assumed that you like them as well. Fairly clearly, neither of you like try to save the world and fail over and over again games.
Not in the least.
A while back I said that for me scenes that tie strongly into theme are often the most gut wrenching. I wonder if part of the issue is that you don't particularly want gut wrenching from your games.
I can greatly enjoy gut-wrenching scenes in a game, but only in limited circumstances. I greatly prefer if the problems are caused be external events, and wish to avoid any situations that involve serious unresolvable conflict between party members or for that matter any other situation that cannot be satisfactorily and positively resolved. In this way, my tastes in games and books are very similar. I avoid highly depressing or nihilistic novels. I'll see movies that are like this, but that's because I invest far less of myself in a movie than in a novel or RPG (in part simply because it only lasts 90 minutes or so).
In short, I like happy endings. | From: | (Anonymous) |
|---|
| Date: | December 17th, 2002 12:37 pm (UTC) |
|---|
| | another unsolicited $.02 | (Link) |
|
May I cut in? Hope it's okay that I comment as well.
Very interesting discussion. Thanks for making it public. This is Em here, by the way. (Hi Chaz! Hi John, thanks for hosting us all in your blog)
John wrote:
The one remaining paradox is that I also very much enjoy emotion-based conversations between PCs and PCs and NPCs (in moderation), but they tend to be somehow different from the sorts that you prefer. I don't believe the difference is solely one of degree, but can't get at this realization more deeply at this point.
This may be way off base, or trivial, but: What kind of immersion do the two of you practice? What are you looking for from your experience of character? Actually feeling your emotions conform to patterns consistent with the history and aspects of the character? (I'm thinking of you, Charles) Is your experience of the world through the medium of character necessary for you to "suspend your disbelief" in the world and game elements? (Is this how it is at all for you, John?) Those suggestions may not relate to your experience, but perhaps the basic question will help. John mentioned something like this; the differences in setting and rules may spring from different priorities about your internal experience of the game.
The long rambling IC conversations Charles talks about are, for me, a way of exploring world and character in a way that is inaccessible any other way. Assuming the character's guise for the discussion helps me have insights I (perhaps) wouldn't otherwise have, and also there is more happening than merely the words: the characters are interacting and establishing their relationship. For example, Stellan and Rig (characters)talking about their childhood experiences is very different than Jenn and Emily (players) talking about Stellan & Rig's childhood experiences. Stellan and Rig are in the process of falling in love and the act of talking is part of their bonding etc. Emily and Jenn describing Rig and Stellan relationship OOC lacks the experience of it happening.
And other arbitrary thoughts:
The "safety wire" concept Charles brings up is resonant with my feeling that all game mechanics, fortune based or otherwise, exist a) to help us choose a portion of the possible events and outcomes that match our desired experience in gaming (essentially, system matters) and b) (my contention) to allow us to invest emotional attachment in them. Different people require different techniques allow them hold game events credible. Your differing "feels" about randomness vs. arbitrariness would be different types of these requirements.
Finally, just a comment about our co-gm'd sim/nar games, out here in Western MA. The themed element arose organically from a sim oriented, loosely plotted game. We identified a theme from the authorial choices we had made as player/gms and incorporated that into our decision making criteria for further developments to the game. (Vincent actually was instrumental in identifying the theme, and it added a lot to our play to recognize it as we were going along). And what it mainly did was encourage us to prioritize scenes that helped us explore the theme, and provide an incentive to frame scenes that would give us the opportunity to do so. Not change outcome of events to match said theme.
Good to be hearing all y'alls virtual voices. (And, boy, am I homesick)
--Emily Care
| | From: | heron61 |
|---|
| Date: | December 17th, 2002 03:09 pm (UTC) |
|---|
| | Re: another unsolicited $.02 | (Link) |
|
This may be way off base, or trivial, but: What kind of immersion do the two of you practice?In an earlier post I mentioned my approach to stances: I'm a deeply immersive roleplayer and so greatly prefer the character stance. I find that audience stance interesting in moderation, and have been known to use the actor stance with some regularity. However, I find using the author stance in any but the most dire necessity (to preserve the game) to be actively destructive to enjoyable immersive roleplaying. imester pointed out to me that I was somewhat misleading with my statement about my use of the actor stance. "Some regularity" should be clarified. In an average game I use it no more than once or twice for short periods of time, and I can go several games without using it at all. Essentially, I am deeply immersive and my play is almost exclusively a mixture immersive (when my character is on-screen) and audience (when my character is off-screen). What are you looking for from your experience of character? Actually feeling your emotions conform to patterns consistent with the history and aspects of the character? Most definitely. (I'm thinking of you, Charles) Is your experience of the world through the medium of character necessary for you to "suspend your disbelief" in the world and game elements? (Is this how it is at all for you, John?) To an exceptionally high degree. In games where that level of immersion is difficult or impossible I tend to become fairly gamist and revert to my old D&D habits, because those two options (old-style gamist roleplaying and deep immersion) are essentially the two forms of enjoyment I can get out of an RPG. However, I greatly prefer deep immersion and almost never play in games that do not support this sort of play more than any other (since playing immersively with other people who aren't is difficult and annoying). One of the problems I have with Ennead games is that in my short experience with one of their Ars Magica games, I found that they did not support the same level of immersion I was used to. The difference was not huge, but it was definitely there. I'm not at all certain why this might be (any ideas Charles?) except that the whole idea of playing multiple PCs seems highly antithetical to deep immersion and is something I have little interest in. There may be other barriers to deep immersion in their games, but I'm not absolutely certain what they are. |
|
