Can someone explain the true reason behind "traits" (PtA style) to me?
Callan S.:
I think this ties into Marcus' point from before...
Quote
I don't want to criticize games that I don't understand fully yet, but how many times have I read the phrase "The key point in playing PTA is..." (btw, it also showed up in this very thread)? My opinion is that that key point, if it is indeed a key point, should be there in the text for everyone to grasp.
I think his lack of trust that she'd position is actually a good thing, IMO. It's critical analysis of why someone would do something they have not been told to do. To me, that lack of trust makes sense.
Why would she position when the text does not instruct her to do so? Or perhaps more accurately, how much has the text done to inform her that in order to play, she must position?
I think a certain lack of trust at the critical level should always be sustained. Is it possible to play the pool or PTA while maintaining a certain degree of distrust, or do you have to completely trust (no amount of distrust permitted) that she will position?
FredGarber:
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I don't want to criticize games that I don't understand fully yet, but how many times have I read the phrase "The key point in playing PTA is..." (btw, it also showed up in this very thread)? My opinion is that that key point, if it is indeed a key point, should be there in the text for everyone to grasp.
In my copy of PTA, on page 8, it describes Traits. The last paragraphs talk about how a trait can be used : "A player can use a protagonist's traits to improve the outcome of a situation where the trait applies. When the character is doing research, being a retired professor will help, but being an auto mechanic probably will not. The Protaganist with the professor edge, then, can apply that trait to learn more from the research. Each trait can be used in this manner a number of times in each episode equal to a protagon'st's current screen presence (see below). After that, the player must spend fan mail each additional time he or she wishes to use the trait."
So using the Trait indiscriminately, in every challenge? That's this game's Drift, not the game designer not including how to use Traits. I think that if you enforced that a Trait could only be used so many times an Episode, it might have made her ration how often she brought up the trait.
I still think the biggest problem as described in your actual play is that you expected a story with a different style than your player. She brought in the Edge "louder" than you expected at that point at the story. I don't think there's anything _wrong_ per se with that either, but it is a potential risk in a game that lets multiple players come up with the story.
-Fred
Callan S.:
I was reading the thread through again and looking at where I suggested to Markus he wanted informed consent (to which he agreed), then I looked back to one of Ron's posts.
Quote from: Ron
A person could be forced by the rules to write up all manner of Traits, for instance the Dogs-like progression you describe, and he or she could still play the character as a stupid theme-less mass.
What you describe as an uncomfortable risk, which is to say expecting people who play with you to share your agenda for play, I call a basic expectation. Simply put, [/b]I do not play The Pool with people I don't trust to do that[/b] - or more accurately, if I feel like playing Narrativist (which is most of the time), then I'm bloody well going to play with people who currently feel the same way.
No problem with someone playing with those who they trust to do a procedure and excluding others.
But in terms of designing, do we all just decide to leave it there? It's purely up to a player and not the text?
For example, I can imagine someone reading a game that forces the player to write up all sorts of theme based traits. I can imagine this person, if they didn't like thematic play, going "Eww, not for me" and they decline to play/they exclude themselves. They don't need someone else to decide if they can be trusted to follow the procedure - they simply exclude themselves to begin with.
There doesn't just have to be some person who decides who he trusts to do the procedure and exclude others. The text can inform readers enough that they will exclude themselves. And both of these can work in tandem!
But a trait which can, as Marcus notes, be defined as anything...is that rule informing a potential player enough to thematic content? Enough that they will exclude themselves should they dislike or currently not be interested in doing that?
Really that's all a design choice - as a designer you can leave it just to people to only play with people they trust to position. Or you can have both that and the text helps readers exclude themselves. Me? I'm leaning toward both! I think that the exclusion is so useful to supporting play, the text should support it too.
Or am I grasping at straws to draw some conclusion here? Well, even if I am, that straw looks a good one to keep in mind either way.
Side note: Markus' actual play account was using the pool, not PTA.
Ron Edwards:
Hey,
I think it's time for this thread to spawn sub-threads. One has already occured, the one about Space Rat. In it, Markus 'ported over the question about how exactly is the use of a given trait actually invoked during play. That's a really good question and for purposes of discourse, I think we should let it drop in this thread and deal with it over there, in the context of the specific game and instance of play which I've described.
Callan, the question you keep coming back to is how text is involved in the process. I think that it must be said: text alone cannot do it, at least not yet. For one thing, I can count the number of times that everyone at the RPG table has read the actual text on the fingers of one hand. For another, the state of the hobby is such that one-on-one, or one-on-group teaching is the standard expectation. A person who GMs a game is supposed to teach it to everyone else; if there's no formal GM, then the person who teaches it to everyone else actually becomes something of a formal GM anyway.
So the problem is not really with the text in relation to play, it's with the text in relation to whatever real-person teaching process is at work and only then in relation to play. Believe me, speaking as a struggling author in this hobby, the capacity of readers and role-players to read exactly what they expect, in full defiance of the words on the page, is astonishing. And unfortunately, since only one or at most two people are reading it, there is no corrective mechanism among the group as a whole for whatever they think they've read. We do not know yet, as a subculture, how to make text and learning and subsequent play actually work together. "Write more clearly" is a fine thing, I struggle with it constantly, but it's only one nail, and hammering it ever harder isn't the sole aspect of the solution. This is a work in progress at the largest scale, across many games and certainly across many years to come.
This isn't to shut you down - far from it. You are asking yet another excellent question from the guts of this thread: what should text fairly present about using a technique of this kind? I think it's fair and even right for you to claim this particular question as yours, the thing you're really seizing upon in this thread. It would be absolutely excellent to make a whole thread on just that one thing.
Because, I tell ya, I can't keep up with the convolutions and ins and outs of this thread. It's too big. It's had too many questions raised and too many (although few) settled. More stuff in it is too much for me to manage at the same time as working with parallel dialogue in new threads.
I think you're the best person to start a new thread about your question, most especially maintaining the pointed observation, perhaps even accusation, that I entered into the "teach this system" mode rather than "discuss this text's actual written rules" mode in order to talk about using Traits in playing The Pool. That was absolutely right. I want to get at that and we need a thread to do it.
Best, Ron
P.S. Added for clarity: I'm not closing this thread. Markus, I'm interested in whether my points about Positioning are making sense to you, and we can continue that here. (edited in - RE)
Markus:
I have so many things to say I don't even know where to start... OK, let's do it step by step, most important things first:
(1) As I mentioned in Ron's hugely helpful Space Rat thread, I feel that this thread is now a tad too abstract for my taste, and most importantly I feel it's starting to going in circles without much actual progress (at least for me)... So if it's OK for everybody (and btw, thanks a lot to everyone who joined the discussion!) I'd prefer to move *most* of the discussion to other threads, in which we discuss specific side issues backed with pertinent actual play, and not in abstract terms like here.
(2) One thing I really, really cannot understand now is *why on earth* I called this thread "Blah blah...*PtA style*". And one wonders why us roleplayers have difficulties in grasping innovative rpg concepts? OMG, I even fumbled the TITLE of my thread, that should say all. OK, enough self-flagellation for now. On the bright side, the wrong thread title is also due to naive generalizations that now, after this discussion, I wouldn't do again. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that maybe another reason for closing this thread is that it's got a hugely off-topic title. Especially because: (see point 3)
(3) The one bit of this thread I think we can still discuss here (if anyone is still interested, that is) is about my actual play report and how/why *ThePool* as a system failed me (not as a whole, but in subtle, specific ways). I feel I have a lot to learn here from this.
(4) Ron, this 'positioning' stuff is so crucial I can't believe it does not appear in every other thread here (but in retrospect, maybe it does, under the cover of other stuff). It's also a bit frustrating for me: I seem to be close to grasp something new, but I'm also sure I'm not quite there yet. I *think* I understood positioning in general terms; but in my head, the new concepts perfectly 'lock-in' with my original questions, to the point of reinforcing them. Specifically, you said:
"In this game, there are many detailed features of a character, in addition to the basic attributes and skills: Clan identity, Advantages, Disadvantages, and a list of 20 questions. My point is that most of them are very easily identifiable as Positioning, but that I am also choosing to regard all of them as Positioning, even indirectly."
and,
"On casual or raw inspection, that particular advantage is Effectiveness, but I have chosen to regard Effectiveness and Resources as expressions and reinforcements of Positioning - I took pains to make Positioning central even though the various rules of L5R are a bit of a mess in helping to focus on it, and, if I really had to pin it down numerically, tend toward Effectiveness as where most of character-building effort lies."
In my understanding, you (and, very importantly, all the people playing with you) had a clear creative agenda in mind, and according to this, you used whatever tool the system gave you to make it happen, even if the tool itself wasn't probably the best to do that, and even if the tool turned a simple thing into a complex one. Yes, you can eat a pork chop with a spoon, if you want. Which makes me wonder, isn't this an exemplary case of system drift?
Now, if the above is true, one alternative way of describe what you did could perhaps be the following. You read the L5R rulebook, which was your sole medium through which you could learn what this game was. The text was completely silent in how to support your crateive agenda, but you saw how that system could be used toward that end nonetheless. And now the crucial point that's giving me hedaches: in my opinion, even if you then played L5R completely by-the-book (re: the system mechanics), you *added* a meaning that wasn't originally there, by functionally drifting the system. So, in my current way of seeing things, you didn't play *the* L5R game; the text vagueness renders it impossible to state whether the way you played is the one that its author envisioned, or not.
Now, I'm finding strong analogies between what you described for L5R and what you suggested I should consider for ThePool. I can see the merit of your suggestions, and they'll help me a lot in my future sessions. But, given the reasoning above, did't you basically suggested me something very close to drifting the system? I mean, with ThePool it's a way more subtle and small drift wrt that you needed to do with L5R, but isn't it system drifting nonetheless? I ask this because I still cannot tell how my way of communicating/playing ThePool was less "by the book" than yours (prior to my "patch"); BUT, I can see that mine was a *much less functional* drift given my Story Now CA.
What was the specific system portion drifted? The traits rules. Why? Because The Pool, I literally mean the written text, leaves me in the dark re: how to use this technique in my games. I was in a position in which I *needed* to add something to the system; and that something I added was probably not the best solution. Now I can see it.
...Even as I'm writing this I can see how this thread is moving more and more into abstraction and away from real, at-the-table play, which is something I feel is not what I'm searching for. So if any of you has specific comments on this I'll be happy to hear them, BUT I'll also be happy if you just ignore my last post; we'll continue discussing the 'real' stuff in other threads.
thanks a lot again!
M
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