The Social Mandate
jburneko:
I think what's been said so far is very fascinating. I'm not exactly sure if the thing I was originally talking about is exactly the same as that unspoken social functionality Ron's talking about. I agree with everyone else that when someone breaks out a deck cards and says let's play a game the unarticulated goal of "winning" kicks in and it really sucks to play with someone who might be following the procedures of the game but clearly isn't actually putting any challenge or resistance. I even think of social situations where mixed social agendas happen. Someone says, "Let's go bowling" but upon arrival 50% of the people are just hanging at the bar and 50% of the remaining 50% are just kind of tossing the ball on their turn. We haven't "gone bowling" we've thrown a party a in a bowling alley and those of us who wanted to "bowl" are kind of getting shafted.
However, I'm unconvinced that even if "gamer culture" died and role-playing took diffused out into a much more socially functional context that what I'm describing as The Social Mandate wouldn't be necessary from game to game. Do you think a bunch of non-gamer die-hard Le Carre fans wouldn't need that text about The Cold while playing Spione? Is the Handbook section of Dirty Secrets completely unnecessary for hard boiled detective fans? I don't think so.
I think even if "address Premise" got out into the cultural subconscious as deeply as "try to win" when someone breaks out cards I'm not sure the specifics of what needs to be brought to the table creatively for *this* or *that* game would no long be necessary.
Jesse
Ben Lehman:
Hmm...
So -- agreeing with everyone else here -- most leisure activities have implied, unstated social mandates. When I pick up a deck of cards, the social mandate is either "win" or "chat" or both, and we can figure that out pretty quickly.
Role-playing games clearly suffer a lot from a lack of this sort of implied mandate. For people who are not culturally indoctrinated as kids, it's totally unclear what to do, and at present most-if-not-all texts don't really help with that at all. There simply are no commonly held social mandates for shared, non-audience directed creative activity. I think, at this point, there's four options we can have as designers:
1) Rely on mandates out there in gamer culture.
2) Clearly and slowly state the social mandates for our game.
3) Rely on commonly held social mandates, such as those from sports, games, movie-going, fiction reading, what have you.
4) Design for children, who don't have these things as ingrained.
To do 3) we have to create, in our text, an identification of our design with the thing in question (this is a card game, this is a sport, this is a movie), and then we have to make sure that the following the proper procedures for that thing will result in the game actually paying off.
Mostly what we've done, so far, is 1) and 3), with some strongly notable exceptions for 2). 3) is what I want to talk about, specifically what do we mean when we say "this is a game."
"This is a game" implies "This is a social activity with a formal set of rules which has winners and losers, and the social mandate is to try to win, unless you are playing with someone much worse off than you at the game (a newcomer or a child), in which case the social mandate is to try to keep the game as even as possible."
My thought is that this identification with "a game" is useful for describing more than just gamist-oriented role-playing texts. For narrativist and simulationist rules-sets, you just have to make sure that the process of playing to win will yield the results you want, and then you have to tell people how to go about playing to win.
But my only example right now is a negative case: This is something that I've struggled with a lot in the Drifter's Escape. How to win the game is very simple: The Devil and the Man must convince the Drifter's player that the Drifter deserves their specific outcome to his life. To win as the Drifter, you must enlist the help of good people in doing good things.
So far, in playtesting, this has worked admirably except for once. That once was playing with someone who was a hard-core gamer: His idea is that games must be won mechanically, and must be played mechanically cut-throat, and must only be played mechanically. Presented with the rules, he realized (it's pretty obvious to someone who knows these things) that the Devil and the Man cannot win by simple mechanical brute force: the Drifter's player must choose to let them win. Thus, as the Devil, he abandoned trying to win and just tried to kill the Drifter, under the rationale that "since winning was impossible, the best he could do was make sure no one else won."
Clearly, something in "winning" and "losing" tripped off something for him that it didn't for other playtesters, and this has made me realize that there was simply a different implied social mandate: since his assumption was that all players would be playing aggressively to win and that any regard for the fiction was an "error," it was clearly impossible for him to win.
I'm still stewing over what this means for the text: maybe nothing. The consequence of not clearly explaining your social mandate is that it will, sometimes, be misinterpreted. The consequence of clearly explaining your social mandate is that it will be confusing and frustrating to those that find it alien.
yrs--
--Ben
contracycle:
1st point. I dislike the term 'social mandate' partly because I do not find it particularly communicative, but mostly because its use in conjunction with the social contract risks presenting some problems. Very rapidly the "social" part will become redundant and we will be referring to "the contract" and "the mandate", which I think would be to the detriment of SC. SC benefits from its full form being used all the time, I think.
2nd point. Generally, game does mean, as Ben summarises, "a social activity with a formal set of rules which has winners and losers, and the social mandate is to try to win". But game can also be employed in other contexts as "a regular set of interactions". I wonder if Eric Berne's Transactional Analysis, which frames human activity of such games or regular interactions, could be mined for terminology. TA uses "transaction" to mean "the fundamental unit of social intercourse" and "stroke" as the atomic unit of transactions, essentially a recognition of the person. Perhaps if game texts were framed in terms of the transactions that are expected/required to occur between the participants that would be comprehensible. You could maybe say something like, "the primary transactions that occur between players of Dirty Secrets are contests of their working theories". You could discuss transactions between players and GM's separately, or perhaps even game events sequentially. That is, you could indicate the the first transaction of play is negotiation of SC, during which you will do X and Y, the second transaction is character design, during which you will do X and Y etc. Maybe something like "transaction sequence" could be used to refer to "all the stuff you must do for the game to work". Perhaps Ben could write a paragraph on "Transactions between Man and Drifter" etc. in which he articulates the correct employment of the mechanical structure.
3rd point. A rather more quixotic metaphor might be "barn raising"., A barn raising is a collective enterprise, lots of stuff happens, there are many side activities, but one of them is central, particular, important. It's quite clear what the end product is supposed to be. Maybe an essay on "raising this barn" in a game text would provide a suitable metaphor by which the necessary behaviours could be explicitly discussed. Barn raisings have quite a few similarities with our sorts of games, being arranged, requiring resources, calling on specific skills and techniques, lasting for a fairly limited if flexible duration.
GreatWolf:
Jesse wrote:
Quote
However, I'm unconvinced that even if "gamer culture" died and role-playing took diffused out into a much more socially functional context that what I'm describing as The Social Mandate wouldn't be necessary from game to game. Do you think a bunch of non-gamer die-hard Le Carre fans wouldn't need that text about The Cold while playing Spione? Is the Handbook section of Dirty Secrets completely unnecessary for hard boiled detective fans? I don't think so.
Ah. Things become a bit clearer. I think.
Let me pitch out an analogy and see if I'm understanding you. I'll use Bridge as an example, because this thread is all about the card games.
"In Bridge, the goal is to work with your partner to earn more points than the other team, thus achieving victory. You should be trying to do this." = What Ron and I were talking about.
"In Bridge, the way to play successfully is to control the lead, thus allowing you to dictate which suits are played. At the same time, you want to draw out your opponent's trump cards without losing control of the lead." = What you were talking about.
Never mind if the second statement is an accurate statement about Bridge. Is it on the same level of thought that you're describing? Because Ron and I were talking about some high-level overarching stuff, and I think that you're looking at something at the level of "good strategy" in a card game.
So, am I understanding you properly?
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