GNS and Hierarchy
Ayyavazi:
Thanks everyone again,
Caldis, I understand the old lady thing. The primary discussion here is that I don't need analogies to understand the concept of creative agendas being exclusive. I get that. What I am ultimately questioning and discussing is that I disagree with the analogies and the concept they are explaining in the first place. That is, I fundamentally disagree (or at least I did. Now I'm on the fence) with the assumption that each agenda is exclusively executable. Therefore, all the analogies in the world do nothing to clarify the problem for me, because I already understand it and simply disagree. But there's no hostility here, I'm just clarifying the point.
I think something has slipped through the cracks. When I asked about reward cycles and play examples, I also asked about the variations within agenda. To clarify, I not only need a Step On Up play example, I need several. I need one example for each of the possible dial combinations (this will give me an increasingly clear view of Step On Up, and each other agenda). I also need the variations on Story Now to be expressed, and the variations of Right to Dream. I believe this is critically important to my understanding of GNS as a whole.
Now, on to GNS being about what was rewarded. In the example Rifts game, obviously the GM would have seen the sub-optimal Story Now choice about MD weapons as a poor tactical decision. That is because the game was very much pointed toward Step On Up. Especially when you consider that it involved two rival groups that were supposed to come head to head by design. That whole structure pointed to Step On Up so strongly that it would take a fool to try to swim against its current (or perhaps a serenely naive person such as I seem to be).
What was being rewarded was tactical thinking. In fact, there was even supposed to be a clear winner (and in my opinion there was).
Adding Story Now to such a game would have required complete separation of the initial concept: two rival groups of players.
But if Creative Agenda is only based on what is rewarded, I still have trouble understanding why the two agendas are mutually exclusive. Oddly enough, you claim that one has to be dressing and the other front and center, the exact assumption this thread made: that there can be a hierarchy of agendas. Now, if agenda is defined as being what is rewarded, and each agenda is individually defined as automatically being exclusive in execution, then no combination of the agendas can occur by definition. It is the definition of each agenda as exclusive that I am questioning, just to be clear. Therefore, analogies explaining why are useless. One good thing is that I have been made aware that techniques are not agenda. Thats why I am trying to examine reward cycles. But I feel that I must re-iterate something that seems to have been forgotten, or looked over: I need not only reward cycles, but also to know what techniques are being used, and how their specific grouping points to a creative agenda in action. That will help me to understand why everyone defines them as exclusive.
So, I'll recap where my current thinking on this idea is: Rewarding a Step On Up agenda (which must be about increasing degrees of effectiveness and harder challenges) precludes Story Now (which requires richer and richer situations in which to address premise, and actually force, in a way, the addressing of premise) because at times one will be forced to choose between adressing premise and making a sub-optimal decision (which will reduce effectiveness, a big no-no for Step On Up) or to make the optimal choice and ignore Premise (though I can't think of a single example where choosing the optimal choice would not in one way answer a premise. Instead, I can only think of examples in which it would mean acting out of character for a character, which seems more of a Sim problem than a Nar problem. Perhaps the two are closely linked?).
But, even this assumes that eventually the choice must be made. It assumes that the two agendas are so antithetical to one another that it will inevitably come down to a choice moment, and the choice (a technique or ephemera, I'm not sure which) will actually in this instance determine the agenda in action. But I still don't see why these asumptions are made. Why is it assumed that the two agendas will inevitably force a choice between optimization and increasing success and addressing of Premise? What are the key differences in techniques, ephemera, and rewards that cause this to be true?
Also, I would like to know if you all think this is an appropriate point to split the topic into this thread and a thread to compile play examples.
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