[Werewolf] Simulationism: Dreaming is cool, but what's with "The Right"?
David Berg:
So, about a year ago, I played in a game based loosely on various World of Darkness books and rules. It was not without hitches, but was generally fun, and folks looked forward to returning for each week's session. I posted about this game here, and voiced various incorrect understandings about the Big Model. I've since improved my understanding, but this game still has its lingering mysteries for me. Here's the biggest one:
Quote from: David Berg on November 04, 2006, 06:25:56 PM
Matt is the GM; Meg, John, Paul and I are the players.
. . .
John's character is extreme. He was born and raised as a lizard. He's spent most of his life in the Amazon. Most of his kin hate technology . . . He's played [his character's] views with great passion during discussions with my "death is good" nut and Meg's atheist tech geek.
When success is on the line, though, John's decisions are quite predictable -- whatever's most effective. The results follow a pattern illustrated by this example:
During a time crunch, he once tried to convey a concept, in-character, by starting with, "You've seen the Matrix, right?" Paul and I instantly gave him odd looks, and Matt yelled, "John!"
"What, Matt?"
"Has your character seen the Matrix?"
"Uh, well, he could have..."
"When?"
"Recently. He's been trying to understand his new environment."
(Skeptical looks all around.)
"Would he understand it even if he did see it?"
"Oh... probably not. Good point."
Sometimes this is followed by a second, more character-appropriate attempt. When it's done well, everyone at the table smiles in approval, and John sometimes throws in something like, "Sorry about the Matrix, I hadn't though it through."
On days where someone's mean about calling him on such a discrepancy, or John's not in a good mood, this can go less well. "Matt, you know what I want to explain to the guy, can't we just say my character explains it?!"
At the time, I thought, "Look! Look! John's playing Gamist and the rest of us aren't! CA Clash! Incoherence!"
Ron corrected me, and since then, I have come to understand that John was a functional participant in our group CA (which Ron explained as being Sim), so he certainly wasn't "playing Gamist". Rather, the clash he was embroiled in was a matter of Exploration itself. Some gaming groups care that PCs not speak in "game-inappropriate" ways or use out-of-game knowledge, and these groups can be playing any CA and still retain (and enforce) these preferences. It's an issue of "how do we use our characters to add content to the SIS?"
So, where's my lingering mystery? I'm almost there!
In explaining to me why this game was Sim, Ron said:Quote from: Ron Edwards on November 13, 2006, 08:45:50 AM
So here's what I mean - if you're in a scenario, then the investigations, conversations, and fights are part of making that basic scenario into the SIS, and resolving it as a feature of an ongoing, developing plot (for lack of a better word). Think of this as "starting large," from the GM's prep, and then you guys all "fill in small" with the characters' actions and their outcome. But then, conversely, those actions and outcomes end up strengthening and making more internal sense out of the big picture, most typically when the GM returns to the prep stage for the next session.
In this case, what I'm saying is at first not relevant to GNS, because it's merely the useful interaction which generates an SIS, with a bit of a defined division-of-labor between GM and the rest of the group. No big deal. However, when this is made into the primary, driving aesthetic goal of play, so that the syncretic, responsive attention to the whole SIS' integrity not just a key feature, but actually a goal in action - there you go, that's some Sim for you, baby.
"Okay!" my brain went. "The Dream! Super important! Exploration that is consistently fun and rewarding without needing to have G or N tacked onto it = Sim!" All gaming groups care about the SIS' integrity to some degree, so any group might have admonished John for saying "The Matrix" -- but our particular group, with said SIS-integrity being our driving goal, well, it's no wonder our admonition was both firm and instantaneous.
The thing was, at that time, I missed the "Right" in "Right to Dream". Ron covered it (I think) in that quote above, but I didn't fully digest it. Subsequently, I read some older Forge threads, and found a lot of folks saying, "Sim is as simple as Exploration for it's own sake," and I still felt like I knew what the deal was. But then I found this from Ron, which draws a distinction between Exploration and Sim that had eluded me:
Quote
A great deal of the aesthetic power of Simulationist play, as I see it (and I mean that literally), lies in (a) adding to or developing that package, and (b) enjoying its resiliency against potential violation. At its least extreme, this is pure emulation. At its most extreme, it is parody. In between, you get modifications like "Lovecraft on a starship" or "steampunk fantasy" and so on. In each case, the goals are just as I've stated with (a) and (b).
Always remember the (b)! Without it, (a) is merely the chassis for any Creative Agenda.
"Enjoying its resiliency against potential violation" sounds to me like "Enjoying my Right to not have my Dream intruded upon." And assuming this enjoyment is participatory rather than passive, then that's what Ron said (and I glossed over) with, "responsive attention to SIS integrity = goal in action".
So, here's the lingering mystery:
Trying to Win? Sounds like a solid reason to sit down and roleplay.
Trying to craft morally significant statements through addressing a problematic situation in play? Also makes sense to me; let's roleplay and do that.
Even incoherent play held together by shared taste in Techniques and an enjoyable social setting makes sense to me. We hang out and bullshit, and from time to time we have cool game experiences -- good enough, man, let's roleplay. We all enjoy Exploration after all, we might as well do some together.
But maintaining the integrity of stuff we've agreed to imagine together? Why the fuck would that make me want to go roleplay?
I just can't get this through my head as an answer to "what is Sim play for?"* It just feels like a means to an end, not an end in itself. "I went, I played, I won/lost," makes sense in a way that, "I went, I played, I imagined stuff without having the sacrosanct portion of that stuff violated," simply doesn't.
In the Werewolf game, it seems to me that the "adding to and developing the package" aspect of play was much more rewarding and more "the point" of play than making sure no one decided that Werewolves were really benevolent holographic space aliens or some such violation of agreed-upon-pre-game material. Which I think means Exploration for Exploration's sake, with the "right" to explore in a certain way only more prominent than in G or N games because there's no G or N to override it.
Is my focus on fun and rewards off-base? Should I just be thinking about how this "right" functions as an organizing principle (something I'm fuzzy on)?
-David
*Ralph's ideas of "discovery" or "running a Simulation to see what happens" seem more plausible to me, though I'm not sure if those kinds of rewards are higher up (Exploration) or lower down (Techniques, Ephemera) on the Big Model than the rewards of Gamism or Narrativism. I have further thoughts on where this kind of play would fit within the model, but I'll holster those for now.
Ron Edwards:
Hiya,
Great post! Let's see if I can do this like throwing darts: toss, hit; toss, hit. If it doesn't work, then we can shift into a more lengthy-posting mode.
There are actually two parts to your question, I think. The first is "what is the 'right,'" and the second is, "jeez, why bother."
----
The key to the first question is that "Dream" is a grammatical variant of "the Dream" meaning the SIS - because it's a verb. It refers to the act of contributing to the SIS, which barring some kind of telepathy means talking (of which the SIS is composed), and which also means prompting and adding to whatever it is everyone else is able to contribute from that point on.
So if that's "Dreaming," then what is the right? It is the right to be listened to, and in the specific context of Simulationism, to tweak the shared material very strongly. Whatever the parameters are for that group and that game (a given reference, like Firefly or whatever; a given commitment to known physics; a genre as such; an aesthetic value given to depicting one's character; whatever), everyone else has to deal with what you are doing to the "input" material of play. That's your right: to have the contribution be taken seriously and enter into the realm of "the played," toward that end.
That's why Simulationist play is, using most existing RPG systems, delicate - because every time someone opens his or her mouth, there's a risk that the material-of-input will be stretched past the breaking point. And yet the point of play is literally to see that material stretched, at the very least put through its paces as genre or whatever, and in many cases to sustain significant challenge. Otherwise there's no snap or verve to the experience.
The group relies on a shared, constructive denial that they avoid such breaking points. Hitting one evaporates the denial and means that everyone is looking at one another with the essential contrivance revealed ... and their hopes of pushing the parameters they wanted to push, constructively or colorfully or whatever, completely dashed.
Classic example: playing superheroes, including a team member character who is willing to kill and talks tough. This requires a great deal of judgment and acceptance of risk, because if Wolverine-clone just turns around and guts Cyclops-clone in some scene or another when he's annoyed ... it's more than merely violating genre. And it's even more than the social gaffe of removing someone else's character from play. It most especially means that the player has broken the input-material (comics, superheroes, Marvel, X-Men) in a way from which it cannot recover, and he and everyone knew damn well that he didn't have to do that. The other people know that it was a gratuitious act, and that this person has violated their right to contribute further to this whole situation - it's now unplayable.
Within those limits of constructive denial, though, each person does have a powerful and perceived-as-inalienable right (i.e. social agreement) to stretch and challenge and work with any of the agreed-upon, valued, existing material that they treat as input into play. So it has to be done, or it won't be fun; the right to do it is the essence of powerful Simulationist play; and tacitly avoiding breakpoints in the material, which make doing it further impossible, is obligatory.
Traditionally, the systemic approach relies on probabilities and quantities, placed into relation with one another. Another, later approach that immediately became so widespread as also to be called traditional, relies on method acting and depiction. I suggest that neither works particularly well, and it's not surprising that the immediate fix (to privilege one member in the group with complete propositional and complete veto power) isn't satisfactory. After all, what good is a right when it's only to hit your mark and deliver your cued line? It's also not surprising that "system" became a dirty word for the latter group, because what good is a resolution technique which causes those breaking-points to happen (i.e. the gunman rolls critical hit and critical damage and Superman fails his Health roll, and is killed by a pistol shot)?
I give all respect to some good tries, though: Unknown Armies, Fvlminata, and others come to my mind. I think we could also discuss Ysgarth, Hârn, the Avalon Hill version of RuneQuest, and similar games, which succeed so well in their weights-and-measures approach to everything in play that any character is guaranteed to be utterly plausible and utterly boring. And I have a sneaking suspicion that Pendragon is really successful, but people more experienced with it will have to investigate why.
Only recently, I think, has Simulationist play entered a systemic revolution. There are a number of good examples, of which my favorite is Dead of Night. I hope that the various Actual Play postings about it already show why and how it works as such. I'm sort of cursing at the moment too, because I keep remembering a title that I mean to mention in this same context, and yet failing to post about it because I forget, and now I'm forgetting again - and knowing I'm forgetting. Damn it.)
----
As for "why bother?" Well, I've noticed that once someone really gets the concept of Creative Agenda and understands the various options pretty well, at least one of three seems awfully unattractive to them. It was Simulationism for me, too. At first, all I wanted was finally to get consistent and fun Narrativist play of certain forms into action; then, secure that I and others could do it, I found myself branching into some forms of Gamist play with great zest and even ruthlessness. Only then, much later, did I find myself enjoying some forms of Simulationist play.
All I can say is, it's a lot like attending a big fun party in which everyone ... geez, I'll pick a real example, dresses up like a concept in evolutionary biology. I went as Constraint (a trench coat, label on the back) / Adaptation (only shorts underneath, label on my crotch). Other people went as the Plastic Phenotype, the Wild Type, Kamikaze Sperm, and Mosaic Habitat. Sue me, it was grad school, OK? My point is that we all liked seeing concepts with which we were familiar get lovingly twisted or even a bit abused into funny costumes which were references to them. The actual concept and controversy over adaptation vs. constraint is one thing; my extremely rude costume was another; and the payoff was realizing how the costume brought the concept into visual reality by mocking it. So I mocked it, and yet celebrated it, and it worked.
"Let's do Lovecraft on a space ship!" is a lot more potentially risky to the concept of the Mythos than it looks, at first. You're really putting one set of ideas (existential horror, nihilism, a-rationality) into a box of entirely different ideas (optimism, technophilia, faith in can-do, positivist science). Will it work? Even without knowing that you're doing this, only overtly processing "X with Y!" color in your mind, that's what makes the whole thing fun. It's not like someone says "Let's do Lovecraft in a rowboat!" Whether they pick another era, or pick another genre-trope to combine with the Mythos, it's only fun if it puts a little pressure on the Mythos ... can it do what it does (inspire a frisson of fear, revel in the breakdown of the mind, end quite badly for most concerned) in this new context which doesn't quite lend itself to such things?
Or if you're sticking to one genre or set of tropes, e.g. Bob's fantasy world, then it's a bit simpler - can the agreed-upon system actually sustain our characters' actions? If I cast this spell and do this and that and the other thing, are we able to celebrate Bob's world, or does it all get fucked up when we find the system can't cope? Playing Rafael Chandler's game Dread is a great example: you have to kind of jump straight into a no-holds-barred mode play, and you know that your character might do one last great deed, or that he or she might end up being as useless and worthless as a hero as he or she was in the back-story. Can the system live up to the necessary suspense and the shocking outcomes? As it happens, it can. It's fun to see it do that.
I mean, don't get me wrong, David, because I'm not trying to convince you to like Simulationist play. It is perfectly OK not to like a particular Creative Agenda, and it is also perfectly reasonable for the dislike to manifest as "why the hell would anyone do that?" After all, it's quite possible that that's exactly how a preference against a given agenda is experienced by definition.
My point in all of this is that past experience at the Forge has shown me that, over time and given much rewarding and coherent play experiences, one's CA preferences do tend to broaden.
Best, Ron
David Berg:
Ron,
Boom! The first toss hits my first dart board smack in the middle. I think it's a bullseye, tranforming "The Right" from something lame into something not lame, but I'm still squinting to make sure it isn't lodged in the "Big Model Structure" board divider next to the bullseye or some such. More response to follow after further digestion.
The first toss also shakes the wall, dislodging my second dart board, which is labeled, "How could The Right: Lame Version be a fun goal?"
The second toss hits a whole new dartboard I hadn't seen before, which is labeled, "How could The Right: Not Lame Version be a fun goal?" And then an "I'm not trying to get you to like Sim" disclaimer falls out, which cracks me up, because my entire past history of roleplaying includes no Narrativist play and only a few isolated occasions of maybe-Gamist play, and the bulk of what I've loved about roleplaying to date has been Simulationism if it's been any CA. "Like Matt's Werewolf game, but with fewer hitches, more immersion in the 'place' of the gameworld, more player direction of what to Explore, and my favorite color bits," is largely what I'm interested in playing, GMing, and designing.
I have some thoughts on Sim design, and some questions about Dread and Dead of Night, but I'll wait on those until I've made sure that "The Right" is truly in "Not Lame" territory in my mind.
Ps,
-David
masqueradeball:
Here's my take on the why do it question:
Have you ever heard of the concept of a finite game? A finite game is like, say, checkers, you play towards a stated goal, at the conclusion of which, you quit playing. On the opposite end you have infinite games... an infinite game is a game that you play in order to keep playing. That's the goal of play. The most important of these games is life itself... under a certain train of thought, living is one big infinite game that we play in order to keep playing. Another good example is World of Warcraft, or any other MMO. People participate in those games in order, primarily, to keep participating. The SIMs and other simulation style video games follow a similar model...
So why do it? Well, if we think of life as an infinite game, and we see people as being wired to play that game, to get pleasure from its experience, than things that simulate life, but allow for faster, more immediate gratification of reward cycles have an appealing and almost addictive quality, its like living life with less risk (you don't risk dying, or ruining your real life by taking chances) and more compact, quickly delivered rewards (in the form of in game goals). Also, the simulated experience's rewards are more tangible, since they normally measurable in the game's construction.
So the point is, its enjoyable... we're wired for it to be.
This doesn't exactly apply to Simulationism, Big Model Style, at least not all of it, but I definately think its the base line for most on the market RPGs, that the games are suppose to be infinite in the sense that the only purpose of play is continuing the act of play until it becomes unsustainable...
David Berg:
Ron,
Okay, I'm inching closer to being able to look at your post and say, "Inspiring reason to roleplay? Check!" But I'm not quite there yet. So, I'd like to address my first two of several potential hang-ups:
Hang-up 1: "input-material"?
I'm gonna go back to the Werewolf game to tackle this one. For anyone reading along, please check out the earlier thread on this game if you get disoriented.
Matt approached me and said, "I want to run a White Wolf game. Based on Werewolf, but with the players playing different changing breeds." I'd never read a Werewolf book before, and I told him so. He asked how much Werewolf mythos I'd soaked up over the years, and we had a nice discussion about Werewolf's deities and metaphysics. Matt didn't want any one metaphysical interpretation to be obviously "true", but he showed a distinct preference for complexity over simplicity; extremists were likely to be farther from the truth than those with a more nuanced view. Regardless, PCs and NPCs were intended to do a lot of bouncing metaphysical interpretations off of each other. I told him, "Sounds like something I can have fun with."
Matt then told me about his gameworld. He briefly filled me in on the general mood and milieu of World of Darkness, to an extent that left no impression on me whatsoever, and then proceeded to give me a detailed history of New York City from the year 2005 to 2011, establishing the Werewolves as both dangerous extremists and the dominant power in the area.
I like playing maverick and dissident characters, so I decided to be a servant of the Wyrm, the Werewolves' enemy. The Wyrm is something between simple Death/Destruction and hideous Corruption/Putrefaction, so I said, "How about a were-vulture?" Matt loved it. I decided that my character would believe that "Death/Destruction" was true and good, while "Corruption/Putrefaction" was a baseless smear campaign. Matt told me that this view might be dead right, or dead wrong, or neither; "Cool," I said.
John and Paul had played plenty of World of Darkness before, and had read many World of Darkness books, so their pre-game chats with Matt were somewhat different. Paul picked a were-panther because he'd loved their powers and color for almost a decade. John picked a were-dinosaur because he liked their combat stats, and then invented a "let's all get along, all viewpoints are valid" ethos because, well, that's what John's like in real life. Meg had never roleplayed before, she primarily wanted an excuse to be snide and bitchy. She didn't care about metaphysics, so she made a character who didn't either.
Matt clarified to each of us: "I want to run a game where the PCs have a reason to stay together as a group, and that reaosn is going to be that they all want to help, in the way that seems best to them. Helping humans and deities is nice, but the focus is on helping changers."
So, here's my question:
First session, we sit down to play. What's the package we're going to be exploring? What's the "input-material"? What's the "stuff" that we're going to stretch and challenge and reflect and celebrate but not violate?
And here's my answer:
We show up with a variety of shared and individual ideas and expectations.
We all agreed that (a) our PCs were working together as a group, for some cause greater than individual self-interest, (b) our PCs would initially hold quite disparate metaphysical assumptions, (c) we were going to Explore Matt's version of Future New York City, which included just about every creature in any White Wolf source book, and maybe (d) some other stuff I'm not focusing on now.
No problems there.
I personally had a few unimportant ideas/expectations, e.g. the Black Spiral Dancers would be the main villains, religious moderation would prove to be "better than" extremism in the end, my character's views would influence New York City. None of these happened, but I didn't mind, which is why I retroactively call them unimportant.
No problems there.
I personally had a few strongly-held ideas/expectations, including the idea that my character would be feared, and treated with a certain respect that is aesthetically consistent with someone who is feared. I didn't want to bluster and command, I wanted to be subtly creepy and unnerving. I even spent a lot of character points on some powers intended to pull this off. I made a mirror that could affect anyone whose face it had reflected, making them see themselves as a rotting corpse whenever they looked in any mirror for a certain duration. Unfortunately, I hadn't prepared myself for the pattern of play that this game would entail: prep for Action Mission, go on Action Mission, make progress, repeat. There was no time for, and no point in, terrorizing individuals, and the pragmatic nature of the inter-PC discussions inclined everyone to treat my character as just another opinion rather than a creepy dude.
Problem. Seriously. The first time I said something ominous that was just brushed off with, "Yeah, anyway, what's the plan?" I felt, "Well, I can't play the game I wanted to play anymore."
The problem, as I see it, with this kind of play:
It's hard to get everyone on the same page about the boundaries of the "inviolable" portion of the package for Exploration.
So what happened?
Well, play moved along, and I readjusted my expectations. In our first session, there was a big fight, with lots of emphasis on tactics and color, and John's character got killed, and then quickly resurrected as soon as the fight was over. The NPCs we interacted with were all slotted into their belief-set niches and showed no inclination to debate, but the metaphysical arguments between the PCs were enormous fun. The Setites appeared, announcing themselves as "main badguys" to anyone who's seen them used as Vampire's "more evil than thou" trump card. We took over a magic cave that benevolent NPCs told us was super-important and super-useful.
Accordingly, when it came time for session number two, the shared material that would serve as "input" for play had been both clarified and expanded, getting everyone slightly more on the same page than we had been before about the package Matt wanted us to work with.
The takeaway, as I see it:
Getting everyone more on the same page about the "inviolable" package through play is an important feature of much successful Simulatonist play. (Am I overgeneralizing?)
Now let's skip ahead several sessions. We went on many missions, had many arguments, always worked as a team, always made some sort of progress toward understanding the Evil Plot or defeating it. When the PCs clashed about what to do, play tended to drag a bit. Paul had left the game due to increased family obligations, leaving me to deal with John and Meg at "what do we do?" time. I formed a plan, which was to side with some powerful fringe psychos (Spiral Dancers) in order to accomplish what we wanted (Werewolves lose power) in a particularly destructive way (sic Vampires on 'em). John, true to his character concept, was pretty malleable, while Meg, true to hers, was quite the opposite. A fun answer occurred to me: brainwash Meg's character.
I came up with a plan and the Black Spiral Dancers agreed with me on it. Matt was a little nervous, but he seemed more curious to see if I could pull it off than invested in stopping me. I came up with some lie that entailed John and some NPCs going to Staten Island while Meg and I went to Harlem. I presented it flawlessly, and they both went for it. Matt played through John's entire mission with him, exploring these tunnels with nothing in them. Then he played through me and Meg entering the Harlem sewer, and our lights being blown out, and some sort of attack, which ended with me "unconscious" in the sewer and Meg unconscious and being led to walk the madness-inducing Black Spiral.
Session over. Matt turns to Meg. "Um, your character's about to be transformed from a mousy, rationalist, OCD geek into a chaos-worshipping turbo-slut. How do you feel about this?"
I crossed my fingers. Had I broken the game or not? Did this count as "working together"? Is a team where one member brainwshes another still a team in the "oddball supers tac squad" paradigm? Did subverting Meg's character to Spiral Dancer influence allow her to still "work for a greater good"?
My takeaway from this:
Truly pushing the boundaries of the "inviolable package" is fun, and rewarding when it works, but risks totally ruining the game.
I'm wondering if we're on the same page regarding these italicized points. If we are, Sim play seems scarily fragile by definition. Your example where Wolverine-clone kills Cyclops-clone is an obvious case of, "You didn't have to do that and ruin our fun, asshole," for the group you imagined, but could be perfectly legit package-stretching in a different group. Further, this variation isn't just group-by-group, it's player-by-player! What might not break the game for me might well break it for Meg!
I think this simply supports the point you made when you said "Sim play under most existing systems is delicate", but this seems like a big deal to me, so I want to be sure.
How "safe" to play?
It seems to me that the obvious way to avoid such maybe-breaks is to "play safe", and stick comfortably within the boundaries of the "yes, agreed on by everyone, definitely" package of "inviolable" material. Regarding this, you said, "there's no snap or verve to the experience." I wonder: do you believe that to be categorically true, or just a matter of taste?
Let me ask that another way: suppose that after several missions in Matt's Werewolf game, we'd just stuck to the pattern of "follow GM lead, fight things, get GM's scrap of info, repeat". Suppose his leads had all been obvious, our choices had all been predictable, and we'd explored and expanded the package without ever really putting any pressure on it. Hardly sounds ideal, but I think I've enjoyed games like that for maybe as long as 2 or 3 instances of play, and even if my memory's off, I don't see why it wouldn't be possible. So. Is that still Simulationist play?
Does Sim cover the full "challenge your input material" spectrum from "no challenge" to "push it 'til it almost breaks"? Is that what you meant with this quote?Quote
At its least extreme, this is pure emulation. At its most extreme, it is parody.
What about pushing it 'til it does break?
Meg initially was shocked at the idea of losing her old character, but during the week between sessions she reflected that she'd been bored lately and it would be fun to fuck with John's head by having her character show up totally transformed. So she went with it. But Matt told her she didn't have to. If she'd said no, he would have just had her be rescued from the Spiral Dancers by someone; he told me so, while she was mulling her decision.
This process was constructive, but there sure wasn't any denial going on. Gameworld causality and opacity bent over for the Social Contract. Didn't matter to me at that point, because Matt's world already felt hopelessly contrived ("non-contrived" had been ejected from "inviolable package" at John's resurrection in session 1), but in some games (the "deep immersion in character and setting" Sim games) this kind of open GM world-manipulation would be completely unacceptable, leaving me never wanting to play again...
Never again, that is, until I'd busted out with some "I'm just gonna forget that ever happened" self-brainwashing, a sort of after-the-fact constructive denial. I've done this in supposedly "immersive" games. I loathe it. But I can get past it, in time, and enjoy the game again. (I should admit these might have been instances of some kind of Exploration-level dissonance that was not actually violation of "the inviolable package" -- not sure I'd know how to tell the difference.)
Do you think this is normal in Sim? Play on the edge, break the game, experience a moment of, "Oh, this is awful, we can't play," and then find a way to play on anyway? (I wish I had an actual example of this from the Werewolf game, but I don't; if my "what if?" example is distracting, ignore it for now.)
Hang-up 2: Constructive Denial
Avoiding breaking points already sounds tricky enough to me. Now we have to do it and at the same time deny we're doing it? Gah!
How complete is this denial supposed to be? The two mental acts of (1) recognizing a potential break-point and (2) veering away from it -- are these supposed to happen unconsiously?
I don't like spotting break-points, and I don't like veering away from them. Maybe that has more to do with me liking Setting Immersion specifically than Simulationism generally; I dunno.
-----
I know I've asked a ton of questions in this post, but I hope it's clear how they're all interrelated: they concern the forming, molding, challenging, defending, breaking, and (possibly) reforging of the "package of material" that Sim play adresses. (I should also probably acknowledge that I have special interest in controlling this process, making sure it "works out", to help me design Sim-supporting games.)
Thanks,
-David
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