Classifying By Social Function

[John Kim]

OK, so I've been thinking about Ron's "celebration" definition for GNS Simulationism and Chris' analogy about anthropology in http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=13109">The Basis for Criticism.  So here's my suggestion.  It may not have anything to do with GNS, or then again maybe it does.  

What about classifying games by their social function?  To see this, look at an actual game, but mentally blank out any reference to the Shared Imagined Space.  What is the game's function for the real people?  It seems to me that there are two clear paradigms suggested.  

One is Contest.  i.e. You invite a bunch of people over for an opportunity to exercise their skills and be awarded respect for achievement.  

Another is Celebration.  i.e. You invite a bunch of people over for a party to celebrate something.  Now, this is a pretty broad category (i.e. there are many different kinds of parties), but there are definite commonalities.  However, I don't think I can easily sum up the social function of celebration per se.  

There are a variety of other kinds of social function.  However, I'm not sure which directly apply to RPGs.  For example, there is Therapy like support group meetings -- i.e. invite a bunch of people over to express their inner issues and receive affirmation for what they are dealing with.  There is Work -- i.e. invite a bunch of people over to accomplish some task, from barn-raising to quilt-weaving.  Since RPGs don't have a product per se, I don't think that work applies as a function.  

The first two seem to correspond to GNS modes.  i.e. Contest as a social function equates to Gamism.  Celebration as a social function may equate to GNS Simulationism.  But I'm not sure if there is a parallel for Narrativism.  Then again, this idea isn't intended as purely GNS.  i.e. The idea of classifying by social function works on its own.  However, it might shed light on GNS or conversely be illuminated by GNS concepts.

[contracycle]

Hmm, well, I follow the case you make and find it convincing at first glance.  I'm not suire I see a use for it yet but it's an interesting proposition.  It might go some way to identifying another way in which different groups experience their RPG play in quite distinct contexts.

[Alan]

Hi John,

Yes, this is an interesting beginning.  My only observation is that it lacks a category that describes narrativist play, which is neither therapy nor work.

Perhaps Myth Creation, in the Campbellian sense of the word myth as a story that exemplifies value choices, or Value Exploration or Confirmation.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi John,

I'm OK with this, and it makes a lot of sense to me - hell, it could even be a replacement set of terms for all the Creative Agenda modes (GNS), because it really hammers the point of social aesthetic priorities.

For Narrativism? Finding a term is tough not due to any definitional constraints but because Narrativist role-playing really is a new phenomenon, artistically.

I'm probably the worst person to weigh in with a candidate at the moment, and will do better to let others provide ideas. I'm really interested, though. I think this might be an important turning point.

Best,
Ron

[Marco]

A group of people getting together to write a screen play is work (in RPG's there is no finished product ... but people getting together to put on a play is still work and there's no finished product there either).

My mother attends story-telling groups. Although I don't know how that factors in, of the listed I'd pick a mix of Celebration, Challenge (there are prises for the best storytellers), and yes, even work.

I would say that virtually *any* game not only could but in some sense likey would move between competiton (check out my storytelling capability) to celebration (this story we're making is cool! And it's good to share cool with friends!) and work (okay, we're all here for the same purpose and making the experience come out this way).

I'm thinking ascribing a 1:1 match-up is a mistake.

-Marco

[ffilz]

But the fact that every game includes moments of competion and celebration is no different than the fact that every game includes moments of naration, gamism, and simulation.

The question GNS CA is addressing is the overal intent of play.

If I have people over to play poker, is the goal to win money or to socialize? In both cases, we think we're playing the same game, but we really aren't.

So I think the real problem isn't so much the terms (which seem pretty useful to me), but in realizing what GNS CA is all about. I'm not sure these social aspect terms really help, though perhaps celebration is better than similation. Contest perhaps is better than gamism (since we're calling our play a game, no matter what the CA). I like story telling or myth creation for narativism, perhaps myth creation is best since a story is still created by any form of RPG play.

Frank

[Marco]

But the fact that every game includes moments of competion and celebration is no different than the fact that every game includes moments of naration, gamism, and simulation.

I'm saying that Narrativisim (or Sim, or Gam) could be either work, celebration, or therapy at different times.

-Marco

[ffilz]

More thoughts...

Therapy and work may not fit the GNS description, but maybe they do correlate to separate CAs that GNS doesn't actually address. It certainly is possible to role play for theraputic reasons, but I'm not sure I've ever seen it outside of professional therapy.

Work as a CA might be what happens when you are playtesting as part of game development (as opposed to handing out playtest copies of your game, which I would expect to generally occur with one of the three GNS CAs), but in house playtesting is focused on "does this specific mechanic produce the results desired."

Of course sometimes we socialize just to socialize. Perhaps this compares to play that occurs without any CA.

Frank

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

Well, umm ... let's take it as a given that we are talking about CA, which is to say, the prioritized approach/agenda for the group (or arguably a person, let's not get into that) ... if there is one ...

In which case, the "little" versions of the categories (what Gordon likes to call g instead of G, n instead of N, and s instead of S) are just going to have to take care of themselves as usual, when we're using the GNS terms.

My impression from John's post, and correct me if necessary, is that we are talking about these big-ol', big-ass, What We Came to Do priority type things. The "littlun" versions which fade in and out as ephemeral features (and are indeed, Ephemera in the model now that I think of it) just aren't part of the topic at hand.

All of the above being provisional to John's response.

Best,
Ron

[John Kim]

So I think the real problem isn't so much the terms (which seem pretty useful to me), but in realizing what GNS CA is all about. I'm not sure these social aspect terms really help, though perhaps celebration is better than similation. Contest perhaps is better than gamism (since we're calling our play a game, no matter what the CA). I like story telling or myth creation for narativism, perhaps myth creation is best since a story is still created by any form of RPG play.  

You're refering to this as a re-labelling of GNS terms, which it is not.  The social function completely ignores anything about the Shared Imagined Space.  I think Marco is absolutely right that we shouldn't allow surface similarities to become identity.  And real games will have a mix of social function, but different games will have different mixes of Contest, Celebration, Work, and any other social function.  

"Myth Creation" doesn't work as a social function, in my opinion.  A myth is fiction.  This scheme asks what is happening with the real people.  I don't think it is correct to call this "myth creation for the sake of myth creation".  The tough question is: what do you, as a real person, get out of your game (whether G, S, or N)?  So what is the real-world function of myth creation?  

A few notes on the other choices:  I initially dismissed Work because RPGs don't have a lasting product.  However, it seems to me that there is work like performance, or ephemeral media like sand art or ice sculpture.  I guess working on an ice sculpture has roughly the same social function as working on a stone sculpture or garden.  Also, in retrospect I don't like therapy as a label because it connotes a professional context.  I think maybe Support is a better label, because people can get together to sort through their problems.

[clehrich]

"Myth Creation" doesn't work as a social function, in my opinion.  A myth is fiction.  This scheme asks what is happening with the real people.  I don't think it is correct to call this "myth creation for the sake of myth creation".  The tough question is: what do you, as a real person, get out of your game (whether G, S, or N)?  So what is the real-world function of myth creation?

I also dislike the term "myth creation" fairly intensely, though oddly enough for quite the opposite reason.  I think scholarship on myth for the last 60-odd years has pretty clearly demonstrated that myth does indeed have social functions, which are horrendously complex and intricate.  

My objection to the term is that, as Alan proposed it, he has in mind explicitly a Joseph Campbell conception of myth.  The problem is that Campbell was and is flat-out wrong about myth, unless you're talking about his crypto-theology of myth-construction as something we should all do as part of following our bliss, which isn't really a claim that can be evaluated.  Apart from that, the several disciplines which continue to struggle with the problems of myth pretty much universally find Campbell a joke, someone whose name ought not even be mentioned, and while that certainly overstates the case it's not by much.

Please bear in mind that this isn't a swipe at Alan.  He was explicit about his reasons and sources, and I agree that in some respects myth in Campbell's sense does fit Narrativism.  The problem is that myth in Campbell's sense isn't myth; it's Campbell.

[Alan]

I too don't like "myth creation" much.  It was just the first thing that came to mind.

It seems to me that the social function of narrativist play includes intentionally having a relationship to a value standard or ethic.   The function seems to be to create personalized stories that address an ethic that players find interesting.  In a sense it's confirmation of the player's ethics, and also exploration of those ethics, and practice application of different ethical interpretations.

How about the term Fabulation - the create of fables.  At least one use of "Fable" includes a component of ethical exploration.

[clehrich]

How about the term Fabulation - the create of fables.  At least one use of "Fable" includes a component of ethical exploration.

Hmm.  Allegory would fit too, but allegorization means something else entirely.  I can live with Fabulation.

[John Kim]

"Myth Creation" doesn't work as a social function, in my opinion.  A myth is fiction.  This scheme asks what is happening with the real people.

I also dislike the term "myth creation" fairly intensely, though oddly enough for quite the opposite reason.  I think scholarship on myth for the last 60-odd years has pretty clearly demonstrated that myth does indeed have social functions, which are horrendously complex and intricate.

Sure, myths have various social functions in practice -- but I still contend that "myth creation" isn't a category of social function.  It's like having a category "scientification" for the creating of science fiction stories.  Do sci-fi stories have social functions?  Sure.  But specifying sci-fi doesn't specify a social function.  For example, real-world myths as studied by scholars are generally part of an oral and/or written tradition.  The same stories are repeated over many years, which passes values from one generation to the next.  But this is not the case for RPGs.  

Taking this from the other direction, I contend that you can have, say, a myth-writing contest.  Or you could celebrate a famous fable-writer's birthday by creating some new fables in honor of his tradition.  These might not be Narrativist, but they are myth creation.  So the act of creating a fable or myth can be used in a variety of social functions.  

It seems to me that the social function of narrativist play includes intentionally having a relationship to a value standard or ethic.   The function seems to be to create personalized stories that address an ethic that players find interesting.  In a sense it's confirmation of the player's ethics, and also exploration of those ethics, and practice application of different ethical interpretations.  

Creating personalized stories is not a social function.  However, confirming player's ethics would be a social function.  This sounds to me very similar to the Support function.  i.e. A support group explores and confirms it's members ethics.  Indeed, they are often explictly formed to confirm particular ethical values such as not drinking alcohol.  This doesn't have to be follow any particular group formality.  i.e. A social function of all coming over to someone's house and offering confirmation/support can be informal.  

How about the term Fabulation - the create of fables.  At least one use of "Fable" includes a component of ethical exploration.

Like Myth-Creation, this is not a social function.  You can create fables for any number of social functions.  Fables told repeatedly to children, for example, will have a very different function from fables told once among a group of adult friends.

[clehrich]

"Myth Creation" doesn't work as a social function, in my opinion.  A myth is fiction.  This scheme asks what is happening with the real people.

I also dislike the term "myth creation" fairly intensely, though oddly enough for quite the opposite reason.  I think scholarship on myth for the last 60-odd years has pretty clearly demonstrated that myth does indeed have social functions, which are horrendously complex and intricate.

Sure, myths have various social functions in practice -- but I still contend that "myth creation" isn't a category of social function.  It's like having a category "scientification" for the creating of science fiction stories.  Do sci-fi stories have social functions?  Sure.  But specifying sci-fi doesn't specify a social function.  For example, real-world myths as studied by scholars are generally part of an oral and/or written tradition.  The same stories are repeated over many years, which passes values from one generation to the next.  But this is not the case for RPGs.

I understand what you're saying, John.  Really I do.  But as it happens, you're quite wrong about myth.

I don't want to preach a big lecture about myth here, but those constantly repeated myths that you're thinking of are the products of incessant and continual reification by members of the cultures in question.  Epic, saga, all that -- that isn't myth as told by living mythic cultures.  What we find when we look at living mythic cultures, by which I mean cultures that still use myth and don't just repeat it, is that these things are highly flexible and change constantly.  It's a lot more like listening to jazz than it is like listening to different performances of a classical piece -- the improvisational is to the fore.

People seem to tell myths to work through social difficulties.  You have three clans, but then one has lost most of its members because nobody seems to be having boys much these days, and another clan has had a lot of boys lately, and suddenly there's an imbalance.  So where once you had the Eagle, Bear, and Turtle clans, now you split the Turtles (because there are a lot of them) and you end up with Eagle and Turtle, but there are two kinds of Turtle, Yellow and Gray.  And pretty soon you'll find that there's some myth about why there are two kinds of turtles, and it might mention something about bears being killed.  The thing is, what we see when we encounter myth is just a society with an Eagle and two Turtle clans, and a myth that says something about bears.  And if we don't know what happened in the past -- which usually we don't -- we can't figure out what the hell this thing is really about.  And the temptation is to read the myth as telling us something about the good Turtle cooperating with his brother and the bad Bear and so on.  But that has nothing to do with what the natives are actually on about.

Myths, as a rule, are not moral fables.  Not when told by living mythic cultures.  You get the apparent heroes committing incest and murdering their fathers and all of this has no explanation whatever.  Very close examination, if we're lucky, will reveal that these people are thinking through very complicated social problems (the above example is exceedingly simplified) in terms that we don't use.

The basic social function of myth appears to be to work through social difficulties and come up with social solutions.  If the best a people can work out through myth is that the Leopard clan and the Eagle clan really should be one clan, because by a kind of mythic logic the Leopard really needs to be the Eagle's brother, you will soon find that Leopard and Eagle clan members cannot marry, because this would be incest.  And so forth.

My objection to the notion of "myth" in narrativism is simply that myths are not "stories" in the sense meant by Story Now.  And using Campbell makes it worse.  But social functions of myth?  Oh yes.  That's the whole point, you see, and it's taken most of a century to even begin to understand what it's all about.

[Edit:

If you want to see just how horribly difficult all this is, read Claude Levi-Strauss's The Raw and the Cooked and go on through the remaning three volumes, From Honey to Ashes, The Origin of Table Manners, and The Naked Man.  His analyses are certainly not always correct, but I think on the whole it's generally agreed that we can't seriously talk about myths in the Americas without going through these books -- which is one reason why there isn't a lot of talk about myth in the Americas these days.]