[Theory] Let's have a good look at Colour, again
Christoph Boeckle:
Hello
A fair warning: this thread is going to be heavy on the theory.
A little bit of history
I like putting up links and give a general context when I write posts I consider serious. It makes me look serious. This is one of those posts.
Some things Ron said back in the November results for the Ronnies stuck in my head ever since. I have been trying to make sense of them. Specifically, I'd like to pick out this fragment;
Quote from: Ron Edwards
If I can see the bigger reward system, grasp the Currency, and get bug-eyed to transform the Color into System through play (think about that one!), then the hard work is over, and it's all playtesting and refinement from here.
This one got me thinking about what Colour could really achieve in play.
Let's see the Provisional Glossary definition:
Quote from: The Provisional Glossary
Color
Imagined details about any or all of System, Character, Setting, or Situation, added in such a way that does not change aspects of action or resolution in the imagined scene. One of the Components of Exploration.
Something was missing, but what? I mean, how can Ron be so excited about Colour if it's something that doesn't change aspects of action or resolution? I just did some searching on the various forums, and could barely find any topic where I found somebody really demonstrating they understood Colour in a way that could help me make sense of Ron's idea of Colour being transformed into System. In most discussions, this potentiality is not even evoked, it's usually about "things that do not really import, but make the game more interesting". Ben Lehman wrote an Introduction to Forge Theory in 2005 where he writes:
Quote from: Ben Lehman
Color is all things which are not character, setting, situation or system. In other words, color is all parts of our play which are not really central, but nonetheless of some interest.
I find this to be very representative of most of the views on Colour I could find. It's not that I think it's wrong, it's just that I'm not satisfied by it. Maybe the thing I'm trying to put my finger on is not definitional after all, but I need to get this out first to be sure.
An opening?
So, Ron comes back with a very interesting discussion about Colour and Reward:
Quote from: Ron Edwards
(...) sure, you can have great characters, great setting, and great system, but without Color that rivets one's attention on those before they are experienced in full, then they'll never get into action. Color is superficial in some ways, but crucial in other, cognitive ways. In Sorcerer, the Color is all about arrogance and whether it can be heroic. Everyone knows it can be disastrous, sure; but you look at the red-haired woman on the cover and wonder ... can she do it? Could I? What might lead me to try? Combine that with the visceral response to the word demon and now you've got the Color. (...)
(BTW, note the way Colour is described by example rather than by a formal definition)
"Coincidentally" there's also the Color-first character creation project thread and it's subsequent discussions. Important to my point is that this came just after the discussion of Colour and Reward. I smelled something on the move, but I got distracted by the density and technicalities of the discussions.
More important still, is that it seemed to me that Colour was gaining a more fundamental role than it had up to now, in some special way, and it could be tied to Reward somehow (but Ron was essentially discussing initial buy-in for role-playing a specific game, which is not quite what I want to discuss, or rather, I'm saying that buy-in is a given in what comes next). It was still quite vague for me.
The tip-off
Recently, a guy going by the screen-name Nocker (real-name Guillaume) arrived on the Francophone forum I moderate, which is heavily inspired by the Forge for moderation, content discussion and aim of supporting indie game development. We're having a very good discussion about the role of Colour in his last play of Shock:.
What struck him was that the Exploration of Colour had been unusually powerful. He is quite versed in the seminal texts of GNS and Big Model (you might have seen him talking about his French podcast on the topic) and also explains Colour in the Provisional Glossary fashion.
Again, the notion that Colour is lots of interesting but ultimately "inert" detail grated my sense of things and we discussed this some more. Our discussion over there is not only about that topic, so I'm creating another topic here to specifically discuss Colour, hopefully with some of those who were instrumental to bringing this element into theoretical discussion in the first place.
Some actual play
Two examples should provide some context to my reflections.
Polaris
I was playing this Protagonist who had been beheaded in the icy wastes. I did not even try to get my Protagonist out of that situation, happy to be able to go all Sleepy Hollow. So Minkar loitered around some more, with his head tucked under his arm, going about minding his own business. The rules of Polaris guaranteed that this didn't change aspects of action or resolution in play. It sure distinguished Minkar from all the other characters I have played in some interesting way, but, hey it wasn't really important.
Up to the point where he returns to his home. There, my Mistaken suddenly has a Kafkaesque bolt of inspiration and frames a scene that basically goes like this: the administrative heads of the city remnant have a problem because their law states that dead people are not allowed to mind their own business in the city and surely Minkar was dead since his head had been severed from his body, but it was legally impossible to judge a dead person. I was quite interested by this interesting legal loophole, found it quite adequate with the "Colour" of Polaris and accepted, invoking my character's last strands of loyalty (the protagonist was already Weary) to the polarian hierarchy and system, to be submitted to some experience which could then allow the judges to deal with Minkar.
For some reason I forget, the bureaucrats decided that Minkar's falcon could be used for a soul transfer into a living being, after which Minkar-falcon could be judged. This was getting way too stinky for my character, but conflict being what it is, Minkar did end up in the falcon's body. I managed to obtain a major debate amongst the would-be-judges. Disgusted by this bunch of wankers, I declared Minkar flying away from their grasp, far into the sky and direction the sun, full South...
This was how it ended for Minkar (betrayal of the people).
Prosopopée
This is a game nearing end of development by a friend, Frédéric Sintes. It's only available in French for the while being, but essentially it's about playing some slightly supernatural individuals who go about a fictional world mending all the disharmoniousness in the environment. It feels very zen and contemplative to play, characters being essentially a vehicle to explore rich settings with emerging human settlements running into conflict with nature.
At the start of each new "Painting" (episode), the players should decide upon an object in the room to be used as a seed for inspiration.
For this snippet of play, it was a sextant. Thus I decided that my character, who pre-dates the choosing of this symbol, called "He who returns the souls to whom they belong", would use a kind of sextant in his job. We have a scene where he observes an incoming ship from the lighthouse in a port. Something seems fishy with the souls of those on board. So far, sextant or no sextant, I could have done this narration however I wished, it has strictly no effect in the essential evolution of the situation.
We play some more, and gradually, through the combined narration of the players, it becomes apparent that my sextant is probably more a cause than a relief! Everything goes surrealistic from there, time-walking, philosophical discussions held by the two other characters with an owl under one great swinging pendulum ensues and spiritual quantum-physics ensue (measuring the souls seems to be the thing that actually cast the souls into their undesirable state). Finally, the two other characters return, back before the point where my character observed anything at all. I again narrate the first scene, but this time the sextant slips from my character's hands before he actually observes the arriving souls and is destroyed meters below. In effect, my character had indeed returned the souls to the seafarers!
My point
See how elements who at first were pure Colour wound their way gradually into Situation and eventually into a fundamental resolution for play? I suggest that if Minkar had been injured differently (say, a wound to the belly), he would never have been considered dead by the bureaucrats in the first place. I believe that if "He who returns the souls to whom they belong" had not had a sextant, our session would have worked out completely differently.
Then again, with some other game texts, these elements would have been formalized by the rules from the start (this is especially evident with the sextant who would have been considered a piece of equipment in a lot of games). So sometimes it's not quite clear at a given point in time if something is Colour or System. Only play can tell, and some games try to make "predictions" on what shall become System (for all I know, had we been playing a game where the sextant was a piece of equipment, I'd have gotten a bonus to a roll and that would have been it: a pretty minor contribution to the changing of the state of the fiction).
So, retroactively, I see how Colour has become System and I'm starting to think I understand what Ron was talking back when he organized the Ronnies.
However, if this is really what he was talking about, then the definition is really lacking in some way. Sure, I don't contend that some elements of Colour never change actions or resolution in the imagined scene, but every now and then, something grabs a player and goes all the way through the whole of Exploration and back up into the Reward cycle!
This has to go into the definition somewhere, I think it would make Colour a much more useful concept if we recognized the potentiality it has to become System at any time.
By the way, while I was doing some research today, I discovered a post where a certain Jason Lee had already basically said what I was intending to say: Quote from: Jason Lee
Color affects Situation in all play. Many elements we might refer to as genre are classified as color. Color is instrumental in determining character motivations and how players resolve Situation. There is no Situation outside color in Nar and Gam either. It affects all aspects of play, even System. The divisions of Exploration are purely artificial. The categories don't actually exist in the sense of having boundaries.
(...)
[The] part: added in such a way that does not change aspects of action or resolution in the imagined scene, is just trying to say "Color is a different category from System and Situation" and not "Color is inhert in regards to Situation." I could very well be wrong, and the definition does mean Color is inhert. I which case, I think that definition sucks and I reject it based on Actual Play.
Maybe this was clear for lots of readers and this is just a "say it yourself" kind of post, but in any case I'm eager to discuss this further, because this is like rediscovering Colour (or some other part of the Big Model if I'm mixing concepts up) for me.
Callan S.:
Quote
and get bug-eyed to transform the Color into System through play (think about that one!), then the hard work is over, and it's all playtesting and refinement from here.
Was that being said as part of a playtesting process itself (ie, a process where floaty ideas in the mind eventually get transfered to cold, hard paper/writtenprocedure), or being said as something that's to happen during regular play? Probably sounds an obtuse question, but I'd think it pivotal.
Also this seems to be mixing up colour at the end, by describing it as rediscovering colour. It's discovering it's conversion to system or such, isn't it? Yeah, I know, boring and pedantic of me, but it might matter alot.
Simon C:
Is Colour another way of talking about the fiction? What's the difference between the two?
Or is Colour more like "style" - not what you say, but the way you say it?
greyorm:
Christoph, I get what you're saying.
What made me understand Color as something more than pretty-but-"useless" bits of fiction was Ron shooting down an idea I had to formalize the bonuses and penalties to the martial arts stances one could take in Sex & Sorcery, by noting that the stances taken (and take-able) in the fiction already drastically impacted the results of conflicts as part of the momentary situational context of play. That there was a real difference to a character deciding to use a Throw as opposed to a Grab, even though there was no mechanical difference between them, depending on the previous and current combat situation, and even narrative situation.
Which made me go "dur..." for a moment, until it clicked and I had a moment of enlightenment.
Christoph Boeckle:
Hello Callan
I think it would be best that you check that post out for yourself or else that we wait for Ron's clarification, lest I introduce unnecessary bias. Nevertheless, I interpreted it as Ron looking out for specific points while reading and evaluating the Ronnie submissions, with their plausible effects on playability (minus the polishing and tweaking) in mind. Especially, he was looking for opportunities to transform Colour into System, the point which I'm indeed talking about. This potential that Colour has to become more than Colour, is what I am suggesting is a fundamental aspect worthy of figuring in any basic discussion of Colour. It has been mentioned a number of times in the past, but, it has perhaps more often received the short end of the staff.
Cheers Simon
I don't use Colour as an other way of talking about fiction. As far as I know, the term fiction is problematic (I try to slap myself behind the ears each time I use it in a sloppy manner, with visible effect), because it can just as well mean a series of events, a given point in that series and a number of variations on the general concept of "backstory/background/written story in book-form".
Colour is part of what the Big Model designates as Exploration (the act of role-playing if you will) and permeates through all the other four components: System, Situation, Setting and Character.
I have quoted two definitions of Colour produced by important contributors to the theory and have stated that I find this definition a step short of what this component really does (but perhaps these definitions precisely eschew the function and prefer to describe the nature of the beast for a good reason I'm missing).
So I'm not sure I can answer your question directly (since this thread might just be the result of some knot in my brain), but I hope I've given you enough material that you might answer it yourself or find the interest in helping out in this thread.
Hi Raven
Yeah, I think you do indeed get what I'm saying. Do you still believe that the two definitions of Colour that I have quoted are sufficient? I'm not trying to say "uh, these definitions suck, they should have incorporated my point from the start", I appreciate that I've quoted the Provisional Glossary on the one hand and an Introduction to Forge Theory on the other. I also fully acknowledge that others have understood and even talked about this in the mean-time (especially Ron which we both cite), and basically I just want to have a direct discussion about how central this idea that Colour is clay waiting to be shaped into other stuff (resulting in Reward even!) really should be. I mean, it did take a specific interaction with Ron pointing out specifically what he meant for your click to happen, and it has taken me a good deal of research and actual play to figure it out for myself.
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