GNS and Hierarchy
Alan:
I should clarify my request to use current CA terms -- I have assumed that we're building on current CA theory. It's possible Ayyavazi means to build a parallel theory on the basis of the old GNS meanings. If that's the case, I'd like to know so I can see the discussion from that angle.
Caldis:
I think the Hierarchy of Agenda preferences is entirely possible in a group and maybe in an individual. It however is not an aspect of functional play rather it's incoherent play where shifting priorities are likely to create problems between the individuals at the table. Take your example in the Gamism and Narrativism: Mutually exclusive thread.
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I think (key word) that Everyone enjoyed watching me grapple with personal loyalty and my loyalty to the state. The damage-dealing is fun I can have in any campaign. What made this one stick in my mind is that it was so customized to the characters that I actually felt like my decisions had more consequences than just success or failure. Killing something wasn't always a path to victory, and it always complicated things.
To get that to happen you needed a GM creating situations that were full of consequence. In return you had to react to the situations in ways that werent just attempts to "win" the situation but something that made a statement about your character. You both had to be in sync on this which would be incredibly difficult if you had varying ideas on what the point of play was.
To put it in big model terms Creative Agenda is the arrow that goes through all levels of play. The first level it has to go through is Social Contract, the arrow piercing the contract makes it part of play and brings it into all the lower level. Therefore the CA has to be a contract, an agreement on the part of the players as to what the point of play is.
jburneko:
Norm,
I think what you might be missing are that competition, thematic dynamics and, uh, imaginative verisimilitude double as Techniques. And has been stated that individual Techniques alone can not define a creative agenda. If a game contains a moment of extreme fierce competative-ness that's exactly what you have, a moment of extreme fierce compative-ness. You don't have a moment of Step On Up (formally known as Gamism).
To try another analogy (different from the Pig one), if I tell you I saw a movie in which there was a passionate kiss can you tell me with confidence that I was watching a Romance? No. All you can tell was that there was a romantic moment involved in whatever I was watching. It might have been a Horror movie for all you know.
So how about an example of actual play. II'm GMing Mouse Guard right now. My friend Colin is a Burning Wheel expert and most of the group defers to him during conflicts because he's a master of the scripting system. I'm not as good. That means that Colin and I can get fiercely competitive during conflicts. There's a lot of, "Oh, FUCK YOU!" and "HAHA! OWNED!" being thrown around. Does that mean we're playing Step On Up?
Actually, no. Because if you look further you'll see the reason we're so invested in "winning" is something other than the constant one-upsmanship. There's no sense of looking for payback. There's no sense of escalation or "pushing" each other. There's no social points being kept. I don't go home after the game and consider how I get him "next time." The social dynamic of the game AS WHOLE isn't building or revolving on those moments of competition. Beyond the self-satisfaction of those individual victories there's no "stepping up" to the on going challenge because there isn't any.
Instead you'll see that the reason we're so fiercely competitive in those small isolated moments is because of our emotional investment in the conflict at hand. It's my job as the GM to add pressure to the character's Beliefs. I do that by introducing conflicts, pushing for my goals and in the event of success presenting the players with choices in the aftermath. Colin is pushing hard because he (and his fellow players) are standing up for their Beliefs. When they succeed it's a moment of resolution, a point at which the characters have made a thematic stand.
The dynamic of pressure and thematic stand is what the social dynamic of the group AS WHOLE revolves around and those brief competitive clashes are just a Technique to get that into play in an emotionally engaging way.
Jesse
Callan S.:
Hi Norm,
Just addressing this point, which isn't directly associated with CA
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but makes them frustrated when their own desires conflict with the cemented hierarchy
This just seems a childish frustration? If you include someone who can't master their frustrations on this matter, then as a group you'll never really achieve a consistant, comfortable CA, because the whole group needs to be focused on it and this guy can't manage that. CA chain is as strong as it's weakest link and all that.
Moreno R.:
Hi Norm.
Quote from: Ayyavazi on August 11, 2009, 07:15:26 AM
Also, I am wondering why I haven't seen your username as a common name in the other threads. Generally, people with a lot to say have said it before, and I would have noticed. I am only curious as to what about this post made you respond that my other posts did not. Its interesting to me.
Two reasons, mostly. The first one is that I write very slowly in English, and when a thread go very fast (like this one, now) I tend to avoid it because usually I am not able to keep the pace of the conversation (and if I try to, it become a very time-intensive activity). Fast threads become usually very confusing, too, because they tend to go all over the place instead of staying focused on the topic
The second is simply that this thread was much simpler that your previous ones (this, at the time I wrote my first reply...)
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When I have played D&D (3.5 and 4th) I have run into many situations where the character would likely do something that would be uninteresting, and so went against character to do the interesting thing. I was just reading about this example, so I'll adapt it. Assume a character is generally cowardly (ignore that playing such a character in anything but a drifted DnD game is pretty much a bad idea). This character should run away from a big scary monster. However, doing so removes the character from the encounter, and results in the player sitting there with his thumbs up his butt. Sure, he may be enjoying that he acted according to character, but will the enjoyment last for the hour or so it takes the party to deal with the threat and then go find his character. Hopefully, the answer is yes, but I have rarely seen that happen. So, in order to avoid boredom, have the character stay and fight. Sure, maybe you could justify it in some way so that you convince others (and yourself) that this is what the character would have done, but sometimes, I just feel like I betrayed the character in order to make sure I was still able to enjoy the situation at hand. Is this incoherence? Is it possible I was seeking one type of play, but playing in another?
Yes, it seems like incoherence. Now, as I said, Creative Agenda is about the players, not the characters, and it's at the entire game level, not about a single scene. So, in this case, the incoherence isn't in the cowardly character running away. It's at the beginning, in the player choosing a cowardly character.
This is too little, by itself, to categorize the entire game as incoherent (maybe he had other reasons...) so I will have to suppose that this behavior is characteristic of this player in the entire game. It''s a big assumption, so please don't forget it: I am still talking about the entire game, not about a single choice. If so, what I can suppose is that this player wanted to play a very different game. He wanted a game where he could explore his character, maybe show how, little by little, he would have overcome his cowardice. Or maybe he simply thought the idea of playing a coward funny. But, if he is not someone who think that ruining games is "fun", he made a mistake. He didn't know, maybe, that the game would have been all about "stepping up" and now he can't contribute to the stepping up with this character.
What he do, if he combat with the others, is simply betraying the initial idea of his character, to be able to play the game (and not running away every time). It can be conscious (the player ask the GM to remove his cowardice trait, for example, or something happen "in the fiction" to remove it), or everybody simply "forget" that that character was coward.
But soppose that the player still want to play a cowardly character. In this game. The player want to play ANOTHER game, with a different CA. He think that the GM should use the character's cowardice to create something for him TO DO. (maybe, running away, he meet somebody. Maybe he is captured and meet the queen of the underworld and fall madly in love with her) and should still give him his share of "screen time".. But the GM don't think so, the GM created some opposition for the party, and if someone run away instead of stepping up... he doesn't deserve "screen time". That useless waste of ink on paper will return after the fight.
The GM and the other player thinks that that player is playing very badly and he is useless in a fight, and maybe want to ask him to stop playing with them. The player thinks that the GM is not a good GM and the orher players are only able to roll dice and don't know "what true role-playing is".
This is usual. When a group who played always with a CA see someone play with another CA (or "not in tune" with the group CA) what they think, almost always, isn't "they play a little differently", they think "this is not role-playing". Because for people who never experienced different CAs, the CA is not an agenda, is "how role-playing works".
It's not possible to play with different CA at the same time, because it would mean playing thinking that "people who don't care more about A than B, play very bad, and I don't want to play with them" and "people who don't care more about B than A, play very bad, and I don't want to play with them" at the same time, and in the mind of every single player. When people experience play in different CA they usually see this very easily, but a lot of people simply played with different techniques (immersing, not immersing, talking in character, not talking in character, etc.) but always in the same CA, they see that the techniques can cohesit, they think they are CA, and think hybrids can exist.
(after playing with true different CAs, by the way, you learn to recognize them and learn how to voluntarily "switch" them when you change game)
(I think that it's possible that, in a group who play with a CA, for example "Story Now", there could be a list of "preferences", so that the difference between the third choice for a CA and the second is noticeable. Some years ago I called that "secondary CA", meaning that it was subservient to the primary, that always "won". But I don't use that term anymore because it confuse people (and it confused me when I used it). A Ca can't be "secondary", it's a contradiction, (that give way to things like the existence of "hybrids"). It's simply the preference for some combination of techniques in service of the only CA, that resemble the techniques used for other CAs
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And what do you mean when you say you cannot address premise in a single scene. If that is the case, I have a gross misunderstanding of what Premise is and how and when it gets addressed. Possibly this clears up all of the confusion in some of my other threads, and so it is probably worth exploring, along with the rest of the calls of, "GNS is not in the small stuff!" Its kind of like physics. The theories break down when you get to the really small stuff. Buit if that were the case, either the theory is incomplete or wrong. Either way, I'm interested in your response and the other things you have to say.
Maybe I was confusing there. What I meant was that you can address a premise in a scene, but you did it in the previous one, too, and in the following one, too. It's an ongoing process and HOW you address the premise will be clear only at the end.
For example, let's say that the premise is about the relative worth of life and love. In a certain scene, your character has to decide if saving himself of his loved one. He choose himself, condemning his loved one to death. Did you address premise here? Yes, but only here? How it could happen that you had to make that choice? I think that it could happen only if the entire game, from start to finish, was build to make you adress premise. The GM has to try to oppose you with "thematic" choices, not only tactical ones, and this isn't a choice you do in a single moment. It has to be built.
More than that, THE GAME IS NOT STILL FINISHED. The story has still to run his course. If you look only to that choice, the theme of the story seems to be "life is better than love everyday". But it is? Maybe that is simply what the CHARACTER would do. But remember, "CA is about what the PLAYERS do".
Suppose that, at the end of the game, the player use some metagame resource (like fan mail in PTA or bonus dice in TSOY) AGAINST his own character, or that he choose to add to the character a trait like "remorse" that hinder him and cause him to die at the end... at the end, the Theme of the game would have been that that choice was WRONG.
The choices of the players build one onto another. You address the premise from star to finish, with every single choice, but no single choice determine the theme (the answer to the premise). No single choice can answer the premise, only the entire game do.
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