Looking at the idea called 'system' again
Callan S.:
Josh, I think your just pitching that a wrench can be used like a hammer, thus it's both. Do we have any common ground on what it's original intent was? Cause if we don't, then we don't.
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But people always make definitions and act as if they are true, that's called acting on your current understanding, it's called living! The question is whether you challenge your definitions by subjecting them to demonstration
I think I'm talking about asking questions before, rather than asking questions latter/asking after having already acted.
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It may be that people are misusing a word, confusing themselves by shifting from one definition to another inconsistently, or it may be that they define a word differently to you, and you are only just realising this. Perhaps their not confusing themselves about what they mean, just you?
People could define a glass of cyanide differently from me - doesn't mean their defining it differently will mean it'll have different properties once drunk. On this principle, no, I don't respect 'oh, this is our special definition'. Or I respect it about as much as the cyanide would, anyway. (a dark humour part of me wants to say that upon finding this to be true, a gamer would then redefine the word 'drink' and thus declare the problem solved, because they weren't drinking the cyanide anymore)
There are practical issues, physiological issues, with mixing the idea of darwinistic system and man made system. These practical issues do not go away because you define something differently, just as the effects of cyanide do not go away if you define it differently.
We could go into physiological issues, but if you want to talk about it as if it's only a matter of how you want to define it, then we just don't share common ground again.
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Here's what I'd say, it's similar, but not the same. In other words there is some component of Vincent's games that allow him to get away with pissing about with the authority structures of the game.
But maybe that's not true, maybe tolerance is all there is. That the thing that holds the game together moment to moment is just tolerating the crappy bits of what someone does and enjoying the good bits? Does that view help? Explain anything?
This is probably about as close to common ground as we'll get.
If you take it once step further and stop imagining tolerance to be a man made system, you...I dunno, can I give an OTT example? What if, after 'pissing about with authority' the person pulls a knife and inserts it into the throat of someone else? Is that a system? I'm taking it your answer will be no. Okay, how about an old AP example I heard from RPG.net, where a new guy joins a group and at a certain point when his character was hit by a bullet, the GM, under the table and without saying anything prior, shoots him in real life in the gut with a paintball gun. Is that a system? The other guys at that table apparently stayed around. If people stay at the table, does that mean system must exist?
If your tolerance hasn't snapped yet, does that mean there's a system? Or just that your tolerance hasn't snapped yet?
On a side note I try and think of how to put this sort of question into a new game design, instead of just this - but it's hard to figure out how to put it in.
Caldis:
Quote from: Callan S. on October 27, 2009, 02:41:18 AM
Okay, how about an old AP example I heard from RPG.net, where a new guy joins a group and at a certain point when his character was hit by a bullet, the GM, under the table and without saying anything prior, shoots him in real life in the gut with a paintball gun. Is that a system? The other guys at that table apparently stayed around. If people stay at the table, does that mean system must exist?
If your tolerance hasn't snapped yet, does that mean there's a system? Or just that your tolerance hasn't snapped yet?
If they are able to make it work then yes it's a system. It may be a crap system but it's a system. It's how they are determining what happens in the game, it sounds like there are a lot of mind games going on to get people into a mental state that brings them closer to their characters. The link between getting shot by a paintball and your character being shot seems pretty tenuous at best but there are a lot of other crap systems that dont actually achieve what they are intended to do. System as a term is value neutral. It is what it is, these people are doing this and that is how they play. It's left to you to make value judgements on whether you like that system or not.
Let's look back at your initial example.
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Also awhile back I played in a game of rifts, and the GM (a friend of mine) had been saying that aimed/called shots, which take up an attack, don't mean you have to wait. Eg, if it would use up two attacks, you don't sit through two turns doing nothing, you do it now and your total attacks for the melee round is reduced by two. However, when it came to reloading, latter in the same game, no, you had to use an attack and do nothing for a turn. I tried to present this apparent conflict, but he literally said something like 'Aww, come on, you can't just reload and shoot all at once'...despite the fact that apparently people were carefully aiming for some time, yet shooting instantly and somehow that aiming time happened after the shot (was taken off the number of attacks). At this point I thought of the golden rule, how it'd eventually get invoked no doubt, and ceased bothering to discuss it and just went with it (and chalked up yet another dumb and uninteresting point against the golden rule).
They have a system, it's one you dont like but there is a system. Does that fact that you dont like the system suddenly mean there isnt one? If the rest of the players at the table dont mind it and continue to play after you leave are they playing systemless? Of course not. There is system, one where the gm determines how the rules work. It is a system even if it's not systematic.
Callan S.:
Hi Caldis,
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If they are able to make it work then yes it's a system.
I'm not sure what you mean, chronologically? Take my beach ball example - when the balls fell down by chance, there was no system. But then after that, the guy decides to set them up to avalanche at him. That set up is obviously a system at that point. If that's what your saying, that after the events he can find a way of repeating them that works, well at that point that's a system, yes. It's a system he worked out after the original chance fall of the beach balls.
But if your trying to say that afterward, if he says it works, that means there was always a system/there was a system even before he worked out a system...well, do you have any evidence toward that?
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They have a system, it's one you dont like but there is a system. Does that fact that you dont like the system suddenly mean there isnt one? If the rest of the players at the table dont mind it and continue to play after you leave are they playing systemless? Of course not. There is system, one where the gm determines how the rules work. It is a system even if it's not systematic.
Your starting with a premise that system exists, then trying to raise the idea that if I don't like it that doesn't prove there is no system. Of course, debunking something that might prove it doesn't exist, doesn't add any evidence that it does exist. Debunking a million pieces of disproving evidence doesn't provide even a single piece of evidence for something. Then your saying they are indeed playing, which is just you saying they are playing a system. This is just coming down to me having to take your word for it.
When people are around a chess board, it's possible to measure their physical actions in regards to their pieces, to determine if they are following the rules of chess. You can provide proof someones following a system. Indeed with capes or escape from tentacle city, if people were sitting around a table you can in the same way measure their physical actions in regards to tokens and points and provide proof of there being a man made system between them.
If you can't provide proof, your working from faith. If you want to, okay, whatever. Apart from occasional exceptions, that'd be as far as the forge gets then.
contracycle:
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If they are able to make it work then yes it's a system. It may be a crap system but it's a system. It's how they are determining what happens in the game, it sounds like there are a lot of mind games going on to get people into a mental state that brings them closer to their characters. The link between getting shot by a paintball and your character being shot seems pretty tenuous at best but there are a lot of other crap systems that dont actually achieve what they are intended to do. System as a term is value neutral. It is what it is, these people are doing this and that is how they play. It's left to you to make value judgements on whether you like that system or not.
This seems pretty weak to me. Being-shot-with-a-paintball decides nothing, determines nothing, does not influence the game state. One could claim that its a sort of penalty, but I think its a far safer bet that it's just a bunch of hyper-macho idiots pissing about.
How can something with zero transformatory power be a "system" of anything? At best it is the product of a system. Sure, it may require some degree of social contract agreement to keep playing that way, and its not as if I've never played games (like Knuckles) that include this sort of element. But the fact of consent surely cannot itself be taken to imply the presence of something that can be dignified with the term "system".
It seems to me that the weakness of the system-is-what-they-agreed-to argument is that its not transferable. If "system" is to be so abstract that any structure of relations between players is regarded a "system", then the exercise of rules writing is so much intellectual masturbation. If system can't be abstracted out of specific relationships, rendered into a textual form and reproduced by others, then system design is itself impossible.
Obviously, players of games may have rules that are not textual, but nonetheless exist. But that doesn't mean that such rules are in some way ineffable such that they cannot be abstracted ,encoded in text, and reproduced; it merely means that these players have not yet done so. This applies equally to games that are fun or not fun, functional or otherwise. It is certainly, practically speaking, worth asking what elements of a fun game might have been non-explicit, and not recognised as system at the time - but it does not follow from this that the act of consent to any old thing accords that thing the status of system.
It's valid to ask what was agreed to in order to discern all of the elements of system which were actually in use; it is not valid to then conclude that agreement itself defines the presence of system.
Caldis:
Quote from: Callan S. on October 27, 2009, 04:37:07 PM
Hi Caldis,I'm not sure what you mean, chronologically? Take my beach ball example - when the balls fell down by chance, there was no system. But then after that, the guy decides to set them up to avalanche at him. That set up is obviously a system at that point. If that's what your saying, that after the events he can find a way of repeating them that works, well at that point that's a system, yes. It's a system he worked out after the original chance fall of the beach balls.
Thing is we're not really doing it, we're imagining it happen. It all happens inside our heads and is shared with others, there is no question of can we do it, we can do anything. All you have to be able to do is imagine the beach balls being restacked, now different people might imagine failed attempts at restacking the beach balls while others might imagine getting it done right the first time. That's all system is in an RPG resolving what happens so we can all agree.
Check out the Lumpley principle.
"System (including but not limited to 'the rules') is defined as the means by which the group agrees to imagined events during play."
So what do we need for a system to be in place? A group that agrees to imagined events during play. How they agreed upon those events was the system. That system may have been invented in play, it doesnt have to exist before the play happens but when they do imagine the things happening it has to resolve them so that everyone can agree. If you dont agree then you can argue to change the system or you can leave the group you cant really keep playing and not agree with what has happened. You cant have half of the group believing the beach balls have all been restacked while one person continues to describe how they are attempting to restack the beach balls.
System is never laid out in full before hand, it always depends on the group and how they interact with the rules of the game.
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