Looking at the idea called 'system' again
Callan S.:
Hi Josh,
Quote
Also it might be helpful to contrast all of these robberies and things with an actually healthy situation; have you referred to anything in this thread that you would consider right?
I think this would just change the topic. After all, that I think something is right, or that I even consider if something is right, is not, as far as I can tell, any reason for anyone else to. And if I talk about what I think is right, that'll get pointed out to me. Instead I'm just nakedly trying to prompt moral reflection (or find if it's there and I missed it) simply on the basis of do unto others and all that shit.
Quote
Now I'm going to see if I can take a stab at defusing this right here, here's hoping aye!
Well, no, I was trying to draw out the spark of moral outrage I thought I detected from you for a moment in terms of our mutual patterns perhaps clashing. Rather than get into describing it all as if it's part of normal, everyday life...which you then went on to do and ask me what the problem is.
The problem is that yourself and many others don't seem to have a problem with this stuff, or more exactly, show any reflection on whether something is a problem or not for yourself.
It reminds me of the T&T account Ron gave once where the players brought up the idea of buying a slave to take the hit from a bad curse a player was under. IIRC Ron was appaled, but the players were just in optimisation mode, no reflection on the morality of their actions (I am not critiquing that game, BTW). In terms of discussing 'system' here, all I'm seeing is optimising people, with no real moral level brought to the fore at all.
I'm seriously wondering if, like a computer memory leak, there's a morality leak here. Like, for example, it's okay for the T&T characters to do that...but what if a game has some sort of leak, where it goes from it being okay for characters to skip morals, to it being okay to spoof the GM and ignore rules you promised him you'd agree to? Somehow the sense of 'Oh, it's just a game' has slipped out of it's pen?
Quote
You can go back to the start of this thread and see me suggesting that you provide an alternative, a way of looking at games so people can "pretend your view is true". Until then, there's no possibility of shared understanding, it's just "I don't think the same as you, maybe your wrong". Perhaps we're all wrong, but if you provide an alternative view then people can decide to try yours out, hypothetically, and compare it to their own one. Your starting to do this, which is great, but it's still board games or card games, not your own explanation of actual rpg sessions.
Well, you seem to be insisting on absolute shared understanding, rather than shared understanding on following procedure and a possible absence of shared understanding in terms of fiction.
If you have to have both constantly, well, recognise that as your own need, rather than something that has to happen somehow. I've 'survived' many a boardgame without any fictional understanding - 'surviving' a lack of fiction understanding in an RPG is more of the same. Not to mention, Ralph Mazza, essentially a specialist in the simulationism field, put it: In my view 80+% of every RPG ever played by anyone actually occurs in the Unshared Imagined Space of each individual player.
I dunno, is everyone this way, needing absolute understanding on both rules AND fiction, at all times? I don't. And I've been talking as if to people who don't have to (they can want to have both, but don't have to). Bad assumption on my part?
Quote
Is that what you did, in that game? Did you declare that you disagreed? And the game carried on anyway? And you didn't pack up and leave?
Man, that's just lazy reading! IF I knew...I did not. C'mon!
Quote
Did you start going "well if that is how reloading works, I'd have to do this"? That's what people are referring to, an agreement to build on something as if it was what actually happened. You might call it tolerating, and make a moral distinction between the two. But if so, what you call "tolerating", other people have included as part of "agreement". That's all, no confusion, just disagreement.
I call that delusion - it isn't disagreement, because as you say in your example they think I totally agree with them. Someone isn't disagreeing with you when they are certain you agree with them but you don't. They are just deluded.
Anyway, it's wreckage - time to go sort of thing. Like if a chick tells herself you love her when you don't, it's time to leave rather than leave her like that. Though I totally grant some guys hang around in that circumstance and fuck such chicks for extended times. Lets call that a 'system' or 'relationship', eh? No, I'd rather not. But people seem to be doing that in regards to gaming.
Quote
What people maybe haven't seen though, is that you tolerated something you really didn't like. Why? You'd have to answer that. (if I'm right that I'm right that .....)
I don't actually have an issue with fractured fictions. Other peoples imaginations work in weird ways that mine doesn't. This happens in movies or books all the time - there's some fiction that just doesn't jive with me and I ignore it and just go with my own fiction till they jive again. No one else does this?
Caldis:
Those personal views of the fiction are pretty much irrelevant. Role playing is a form of social interaction where people are sharing their imagination. When we look at game play we are looking at what was shared because that is out in the open. What's going on inside the contributors mind, exactly how they see it, doesnt matter because we cant know that. What we can know as a contributor or as an outside party watching is what was shared, what was communicated between the individuals what was seen to happen. In your example a situation developed and combat broke out, you tried to have your character reload and fire in the same round in the same manner as the other characters had aimed and fired in the same round. You proposed that he should be able to do so, the gm interpreted the rules against your intended action, play continued. That was the system in action.
Callan S.:
Caldis, that's slipping into 'Roleplay IS...' territory. It is not. It's just your own personal preference expressed. With some things you can say what it is, like 'fire is hot' or 'water is wet' and it's genuinely how things are. But those things physically exist - while roleplay is just an idea. As such it is not a case of what it 'IS' but what the idea can be, between us, if we both agree.
If you don't take that to be case and don't even humour any doubt as to being wrong on that (just humouring...even scientists humour the idea that the theory of evolution could be wrong), all I can do in terms of conversation is walk away. Because you'll just be taking my continued presence as some sort of support for this perception of yours.
Callan S.:
Just to tie that in more, it's very easy to be right on a subject if you can keep inventing facts on what that subject 'IS' and that subject is A: Something that doesn't physically exist (it's a name for an invented activity, it's not a name for a physical object, like water), so there can be no physical test to disprove it and B: You have decided you don't need the other guys agreement on what it is. You could be telling me what sort of hats the invisible fairies wear - I really have no way of disproving which hat they wear (and indeed, whether they exist) and in doing so it's not asking for my agreement to what hat they wear, it's just telling me.
Or I'll pitch it the other way around - there are invisible fairies, that you can't see or feel. They are part of the process and they are why you are wrong. And they definately exist. I'm telling you, not asking.
In do unto others terms, not something you want argued to you, not something you want to argue onto others.
JoyWriter:
Quote from: Callan S. on November 10, 2009, 05:48:00 PM
Quote
Also it might be helpful to contrast all of these robberies and things with an actually healthy situation; have you referred to anything in this thread that you would consider right?
I think this would just change the topic. After all, that I think something is right, or that I even consider if something is right, is not, as far as I can tell, any reason for anyone else to. And if I talk about what I think is right, that'll get pointed out to me. Instead I'm just nakedly trying to prompt moral reflection (or find if it's there and I missed it) simply on the basis of do unto others and all that shit.
Rabbi Hillel said "That which you dislike, don't do to your fellow", Jesus said "Do to others as you would have them do to you". I take from that difference the idea that morality can be phrased in negative and positive senses, focusing on the harmonious ideal or on damage, and I prefer to focus on what I should be doing. There's some psychology that has been done that suggests people respond better to that, but there's probably advantages in both. So when I see people making moral judgements, setting up limits, I wonder if they have found a way through the maze themselves, if they have found the positive to complete the negative (similar to my previous comments about combining game rules with explanations of the designers core intent). That's what I was wondering about there.
I'm one of those crazy people who is actually happy when he meets someone who totally disagrees with him, because it means I may have an opportunity to see a new way of looking at the world. In my experience a clash of perspectives can go well or badly, depending on the behaviour of the participants.
Now something I'm not sure you caught in my last post, was the idea that rather than forcing you to change your mind, someone might ask you to entertain the concept that they are correct, as you have done at the start of this thread, but also ask the person who disagrees with them to go "if then, what...." and build off it. This kind of thing is sometimes called a domain of discourse, and I think in some ways it forms a good metaphor for SIS.
Quote from: Callan S. on November 10, 2009, 05:48:00 PM
Quote
Perhaps we're all wrong, but if you provide an alternative view then people can decide to try yours out, hypothetically, and compare it to their own one. Your starting to do this, which is great, but it's still board games or card games, not your own explanation of actual rpg sessions.
Well, you seem to be insisting on absolute shared understanding, rather than shared understanding on following procedure and a possible absence of shared understanding in terms of fiction.
Bang, you just did it! That was exactly what I was referring to, jumping from "it reminds me of this" to "I think it's like this". It may seem a tiny distinction to you, but it can give other people (like me) a lot more to get hold of when talking to you. If this is an accurate description of how you play (agreement to procedure before everything else), and how you want to play wheras the former is not, then we can make a big distinction between why and how you play and why and how other people (like Vincent) play.
I'm guessing also that you might say that the most important "step on up" reward in these games is mastery of that procedure? At least for you?
Quote from: Callan S. on November 10, 2009, 05:48:00 PM
Quote
What people maybe haven't seen though, is that you tolerated something you really didn't like. Why? You'd have to answer that. (if I'm right that I'm right that .....)
I don't actually have an issue with fractured fictions. Other peoples imaginations work in weird ways that mine doesn't.
Fair do's. What was the problem then? I thought based on this:
Quote from: Callan S. on October 21, 2009, 08:42:44 PM
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).
That your problem actually was that his idea differed from yours, it differed from yours in that it was inconsistent, when interpreted as relating to the same fictional world. My guess is that you like to be on the same fictional page for predictive reasons; it allows you to plan ahead within the game without having all of the rules in front of you, it acts as a way of inferring other rules by analogy, but that's just a guess naturally! But I'd also guess that although that is mostly your reason for disliking those dissonances, you also have a little bit of that enjoyment of suspension of disbelief that makes these things wrong simply because they don't fit your expectation, they jar, rather than for any reason associated with competition or shifting goalposts.
Then presumably after that the other "delusion" problem manifested itself? Or is that where I misunderstood you? Were you referring to the original example game with your comment about delusion?
I probably misunderstood you, I certainly didn't mean to read lazily (incidentally that's one of the things that really does piss me off! It's somehow easier to be angry about little things...).
Quote from: Callan S. on October 21, 2009, 08:42:44 PM
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).
This is what I think most people would be talking about when they talk about lumpley principle style agreement in a game, not that you overwrite your own personal view of the situation, that you fork it and work off the public build. Where I think you may have made a powerful insight is that people can follow the system and "agree" in that sense, despite having persistent misgivings that may not be dealt with. In other words "agreement" or "sufficient tolerance" can be reached that is sufficient for play to continue but not for actual satisfaction of the participants, and that something extra that you want from a game might be different from what other designers here want and insure they preserve.
Quote from: Callan S. on November 10, 2009, 05:48:00 PM
I dunno, is everyone this way, needing absolute understanding on both rules AND fiction, at all times?
I think that need is probably the hunger of a connoisseur; technically your hungry for any old thing, but what you're really after is some lovely chinesy stir-fry! That focus is so much part of the core of why they play that going without it is a bit tasteless in comparison.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page