Looking at the idea called 'system' again
Callan S.:
Hi Josh,
I don't really understand or recognise your own rephrasing? Perhaps your rephrasing is off?
And again you've given the assumption that there definately was a system - this time you've given the conditional that if you had a good time there must have been a system involved.
Really? If you had a good time, that definately means a system was involved? As I ask above, is it possible that even in an enjoyable game, no system was involved? Do you think it's even slightly possible? If not and your certain there has to have been a system - well, I'm not tackling that sort of certainty in this thread. I'm not sure it's possible to tackle, even - if someones not prepared to doubt their beliefs to some degree, what could anyone else say or do to change that, anyway?
It's possible for a series of events to occur that happen to be quite fun. Afterwards one can try and recall those events, invent a procedure and try and make it all occur again by following that procedure. But this is inventing a system after those events happened. It doesn't mean there was a system going on at the time just because afterward you can think of a system that fits those events. If someones walking past a stack of beach balls and it collapses perchance and they have fun dodging them, can they stack up the balls and deliberately make them collapse for dodging fun/make a system of it? Yes. Does that mean there was a system involved the first time? No. It was just a chance event.
Honestly, your all aware of how many traditional games get played in multiple different and incompatable ways, yet you think how things occured in those games come from some system? No, it's like the stack of beach balls - they sat down, shit happened, it was fun. But there was no system, even though those fun events are recreatable.
Again for everyone, if your only certain that system must have existed, or system must exist if the game session was good, this thread isn't for you. It's only for people who can mull over the idea that perhaps it's possible that no system existed, and how to measure if that was the case (assuming it's measurable).
Just try mulling over the idea of "what if there was no system involved in X instance of my own play history", for thirty seconds. Don't even have to post about it or anything that might acknowledge the idea at all. Just mull it over. What harm could mulling do? Or if you do want to post and say "Well, I thought about it but it seems crazy, because that would involve things being X...and I know they are Y", go for it. And if you don't want to think about anything but your premise of there being a system is right, don't post. The only way I know of to prove something is false, is if the person will humour the idea even slightly that it's false. Unless you put some effort into disproving something yourself, nobody can disprove it to you, simply because your simply not even putting the effort of absorbing what is said. If you wont, it's a waste of time trying to disprove it - atleast by words, anyway. Don't post, you'll be wasting your time and you'll be wasting my time.
Ben Lehman:
So you're basically asking: Does system exist as a thing itself outside of and pre-existing our definitions?
That's easy. No.
System, the term, exists solely as a means to analyze play, text, and the interaction between text and play.
There is not abstract truth to it. If you want to do analysis of play, text, or the interaction between text and play without a concept labeled "system" go right ahead. You don't need anyone's permission.
JoyWriter:
Quote from: Callan S. on October 23, 2009, 04:04:35 PM
I don't really understand or recognise your own rephrasing? Perhaps your rephrasing is off?
Then we've reached mutual incomprehensibility then! A way forward of a kind, at least we know we're looking at it very differently now.
I sought to point out that as a logical statement, (an I thought I'd talk about it that way given your programming background) that fragment you quoted is pretty devoid of meaning; it's an "if" without an "implies". But ignoring that floatyness, and taking it as a statement of fact, all it tells you is that something can become something else; whether you call those elements of the theory "colour and system", or "jam and monk". The syntactic content is not sufficient to define the terms, so I wasn't sure what the insight the phrase unlocked was. What previous misunderstanding does this resolve? Or what does it state that was previously undefined? Did you just twig that you can link the classic forge model of exploration with Vincent's clouds and boxes stuff?
Quote from: Callan S. on October 23, 2009, 04:04:35 PM
And again you've given the assumption that there definately was a system - this time you've given the conditional that if you had a good time there must have been a system involved.
I haven't got there yet! All I've said is that there is something that is common in experience between good games, and people make up a pattern to describe it. If someone comes to you saying "I had an awesome game last night", then you try to see if that game is intepretable within that pattern, if it is structurally homomorphic to the model (in operations reserach speech). If it is; if you can categorise every part of what made the experience good by the existing model, then great, and maybe you can use some of the predictions associated with that model to suggest other things they can do. But if not, this is one place where falsification comes in, or at the very least change, where vocabulary shifts and twists around.
For example, say you suggest you had a good game where no system was around, then people will ask you what happened in the game, and what kind of things were said and how people reacted to it. They will then see if this matches to what they call "system", and if they can get it to match, they may make some suggestions about things you haven't told them yet. If they turn out to be different from their predictions, they may ask more questions, trying to shift their picture of your game until they see ways to bridge between the kind of games they enjoy and the kind you enjoy. At the end of this, they may say, "system exists in this form ____" by which they mean "your language maps onto my language in this way ____".
Success at such a process twists the definition in such a way that it may be very different to what they started with. But this doesn't matter, providing the new understanding includes all the explanatory power of the old one, and you can explain the changes.
I still haven't hit your core complaint, so sorry if this is going a bit slow, but I want to insure that I pace myself to avoid overloading etc.
Callan S.:
Hi Ben,
That doesn't seem to jive with the system does matter article? It specifically refers to system as a way of resolving what happens during play, not a way of analyzing what might have happen during a gathering?
Hi Josh,
Quote
taking it as a statement of fact, all it tells you is that something can become something else;
That's not worth questioning/I wouldn't be questioning that? Wait, never mind that, I'll just cut to the chase - yes, I'm questioning this statement of fact.
Quote
At the end of this, they may say, "system exists in this form ____"
I'll seperate two ideas of system really quick. One is that you could consider chaos theory events a system. For naming purposes I'll call this a darwinistic system. Check out my beach ball example from above (when it happens by chance), to indicate darwinistic system in action.
The other one is where you ask someone if they want to be a part of a procedure/system, they agree and there's alot of evidence that they are following the procedure originally proposed, right at a given moment. Check out my beach ball example from above, when they recreate the beach ball avalanche delberately, for an example of this system.
If your refering to the second use of the word system (or atleast more that one than darwinistic system), then yeah, your again just giving the assumption there was a system, then going on to only try and confirm your hypothesis, with no effort to try and disprove your assumption.
If your skipping from one to the other and back again, intermingling the situations as if they are one and the same - that's probably the core error to this I'm trying to point out.
JoyWriter:
Quote from: Callan S. on October 24, 2009, 11:34:26 PM
That's not worth questioning/I wouldn't be questioning that? Wait, never mind that, I'll just cut to the chase - yes, I'm questioning this statement of fact.
Ok then! What I wanted to find out was why this was a revelation, cause of how seeing what someone finds mind-expanding might tell you something about how they think. But I reckon we've got enough fuel for discussion now anyway.
In response to your question to Ben, I'd say that it is both:
The very article is an activity analysing what happens during play! And it describes a part of people playing the game as system. "System" in that context is a word used for talking about games, and describes a specific bit of what happened. Really obvious right?
There's some profound stuff there if you can be bothered to get it, and I'll try a really shortcut example here:
People divide up the world into things, and put names to those things. Some people will talk about a wood, other people trees, other people paths. You can switch in your head from thinking about "the wood" as a zone, a big block of space, or about a selection of trees spread on surface of the earth, or not focus on the trees as much as the way certain gaps line up to form spaces you can walk through. The "existence" of these things is a question of how much our mental pictures are backed up by reality.
So is there a path between the trees? Does it exist in the same way the tree's do? You get the idea.
Quote from: Callan S. on October 23, 2009, 04:04:35 PM
If someones walking past a stack of beach balls and it collapses perchance and they have fun dodging them, can they stack up the balls and deliberately make them collapse for dodging fun/make a system of it? Yes. Does that mean there was a system involved the first time? No. It was just a chance event.
That idea of post-event rationalising is quite a genie to unleash: It applies to your "darwinian systems" as much as it does to people playing games. Maybe everything is just random stuff happening, constant change, and we just create theories and systems and logic as a fragile net woven to ignore the world's fundimental meaningless nonsense. Maybe all communication, all conceptualisation, all thinking is just a post-hoc defence mechanism against the roiling chaos of existence.
Maybe I'm incorrect, and maybe correctness itself is incorrect. Maybe.
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, and I've suggested before the basis for testing that these ideas of "system" have. If they succeed, and I'll emphasise it again, they have succeeded in partially mapping their picture of their previous experience onto the situation you describe to them, or onto their own experience if it is their own game they are analysing.
Anyway, this is way too general, lets focus more on games in particular:
Quote from: Callan S. on October 24, 2009, 11:34:26 PM
If your skipping from one to the other and back again, intermingling the situations as if they are one and the same - that's probably the core error to this I'm trying to point out.
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?
And to be honest I'm not sure it's about confusion to any great extent, more disagreement.
Remember how I said about the big model rpg theory version of "system" being a part of a model of good play? Here's what I think has happened; if I'm right Vincent put the fear of Kaos into you by including into his model of "good play" something that is similar in many important ways to some of the worst experiences you've had playing rpgs.
So you're there going "what the hell? that sounds awful! How can someone by suggesting that as a part of play?"
So there's a definition split; you pull back from the full variety of Vincent's definition and try to ground your's in what games you have enjoyed.
You also try to understand why people could be suggesting such an abusive relationship, like the one you experienced. Do they just like being abusive? Are they confused about something? etc.
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?
But what is the place for adherence to rules texts, if people can just sit in a room and "put up with" each other's contributions? Is it about restricting the region of possible stuff to be tolerated?
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