ewilen: Giving up control

Elliot Wilen (

ewilen) wrote,
@ 2007-07-01 17:47:00

Giving up control
I'm taking a break from participation in RPG forums; however I've indulged in reading theRPGsite over the past couple days. I've especialy enjoyed threads on Gonzo Gaming and Notes towards a critique of embedded themes in Forge narrativist games (which are ongoing).

But what I want to write about here, very briefly, goes back to an old thread entitled The need for Conflict Resolution?, which I still think is one of the clearest discussions of the topic if not definitive.

Nevertheless I think I got something wrong in that thread, here, where I wrote,

A[n] example [of a player's intentions being achieved without working through the character's actions] would be something like a character sneaking around the enemy camp, tasting the enemy captain's dinner, mistakenly pouring alum instead of salt onto the potatoes before running away to avoid a guard, and unintentionally causing an argument that results in the cook killing the captain.

To achieve something like this, either the GM has to exercise "narrative control" or the player does--there's basically no way to go from the character's intentions, whatever they were, as expressed via the tasks attempted/performed, to the outcome.

Basically, the bolded part is wrong. Nobody needs to "exercise narrative control". E.g., the shelf of ingredients/chemicals could have been prepared in advance by the GM (or via a random table); the character could have failed a roll to accurately choose/identify the vial of "salt"; the guard's appearance could have been via a random "encounter check" or a chart of the guard's patrol. The captain's reaction could be reasonably extrapolated, possibly based on a personality sketch; ditto for the cook. Reaction rolls & combat rolls could take care of the rest. There may be a stretch or two there but the point is that nobody has to take responsibility for whether the player's intentions are realized. There's no need for "intentions-based resolution". No need for "fiat". Basically the whole thing can be produced through subordination to the fiction in terms of rules & a common understanding of the fictional reality.

Hmm. "common understanding" is really the most problematic issue here. As clashes are possible.

But even if the GM has a different understanding from the player, that isn't the same as the GM imposing an outcome via "fiat". We're talking about disposition of responsibility as well as authority here, and as long as the GM is understood by all to be subject to the fictional reality, we have a very different situation from the GM who endeavors to "tell a story" in terms of selecting and/or resolving conflicts.

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tigerbunny_db
2007-07-02 10:20 pm UTC (link)

The existence of an edge case says very little about the typical case. The typical case is that authority is implicitly distributed in a fashion different from - if not violently at odds with - the way it is said to be distributed, or in a fashion that shifts radically from moment to moment.

Not to mention that I think you're totally blowing past the important part of what you quoted - which is that the linkage between intent and outcome is broken. Now, that may be what you want for any number of reasons, the most common being a sort of naturalism, but the disconnect between intent and outcome is the core issue that calls for intent-relevant resolution.

Also, you seem to have a bad tag somewhere.

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ewilen
2007-07-03 01:21 am UTC (link)

I had two, thanks for pointing that out.

But otherwise, really, the more I withdraw from the hothouse of RPG theory argumentation and concentrate on stuff I enjoy, I don't see this as an edge case at all. As people have noted (and I think the point is gaining greater currency), one of the greatest failings of RPG theory is that so much of it is based on bad gaming experiences, whereas the bulk of good RPGing seems to occur where issues of "authority dissonance" are so far from the mind that formal tools for addressing the issue would only introduce problems that weren't there in the first place.

Another way of putting this is that in a normal small-scale, face-to-face group of peers, the distribution of "authority" is irrelevent. Is it diffuse? Does it operate informally in a manner different from its formal conception? Does it shift fleetingly? In most cases people deal with these sorts of things instinctively.

(Coincidentally, I just realized that Phil Masters' idea of Modes, which I commented on a while back, is drawn from Eric Berne's Transactional Analysis concepts. I bring this up because the idea of "crossed transactions" from TA strikes me as an apt model of how games often go awry, while "complementary" transactions demonstrate functional interaction. In short, "Modes" offers a more complete view of RPing while also situating it within the general field of social activity.)

I disagree that "the disconnect between intent and outcome...calls for intent relevant resolution". You are saying absence of X calls for X, which is begging the question. The call for intent-relevant resolution comes from a willingness to sacrifice subjection to the fiction in order to achieve mastery over the fiction. What's more, the call for "intent relevant resolution" is almost always presented in a context of "power struggle" between the player and the GM--that is, if the player is to exert mastery over the fiction, the GM must lose mastery; if the player doesn't exert mastery over the fiction, it's because the GM refuses to relinquish mastery.

This is false in the general case. In all instances, or nearly all instances, the integrity of the game world requires that both the players and the GM give up some measure of their mastery over the fiction. This is something that's even acknowledged in the Nar school of game design, though it gets swept under the rug, as a footnote on the "Say yes or roll dice" mantra. That is, again and again, when people are asked what it is that keeps distributed-narration games from heading off into gonzo or flights of self-indulgence, the answer is "we don't play with jerks". Or put another way, "Continuity and integrity of the game world are handled by social contract." Where "social contract" is a Forge-y way of saying "you must have a compatible group going into play".

The difference, it seems to me, is that "traditional" games go much farther in assuming group social compatibility, provided the concrete qualities of the fiction are nailed down, while many "hippy/Forge" games assume a high degree of "fictional compatibility" and instead concern themselves with coordinating social-level relations ("who has authority").

(cont'd)

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ewilen
2007-07-03 01:21 am UTC (link)

However, the question of where the "fictional compatibility" comes from is a bit of a digression. As long as continuity and internal causality are upheld to some degree, whether by rules or on the "social" level, so that they act as constraints on what the participants would otherwise like to have happen, there is a subjection to the fiction. Another way of observing this subjection is to note situations where, in spite of whatever the GM and the players would like to see...such as a PC dodging across a control room through a hail of submachinegun fire to pull a level and save the world...it's thwarted either by the dice or the rules or the group's own sense of credibility.

In short the need for constraint to maintain coherence subtracts from the sum of the mastery which either the GM or the players can exert over the fiction. This is true even in free form "ruleless, diceless" games: if there aren't overt constraints, then the participants have internalized a large common body of invisible constraints. (The exception is, again, full-on gonzo or mutual indulgence.) So I conclude that the "distribution of authority" is really between players, GM, and fiction.

Going back to my example, it's both true and false that the linkage between intent and outcome is broken. It's true in the sense that if you use the "naturalistic" model I sketched out, the player didn't control the outcome. (Though neither did the GM.) It's false in the sense that if the player did want to kill the enemy captain, he got the result he wanted. And if I say so myself, it would be a pretty funny story.

Did I say story? Yes. And here's the kicker: if this is Ouija-board play in the service of "story", nobody moved the planchette. Furthermore, even if somebody did move it, or could be accused of moving it, who cares, if it's (more) fun that way. E.g., one of the players asks the GM if pouring alum in the potatoes might mean the captain yells at the chef, the GM smiles and says "Maybe!", the dice come up with a severe reaction, the group throws out ideas on what might happen next, and either the captain or the cook dies, to the group's amusement.

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tigerbunny_db
2007-07-03 02:38 am UTC (link)

Ah well. I wanted to give it a shot. But you and I are coming at this whole conversation from such different places I don't think we can meet. To me, anything that says the fiction has authority is obfuscatory at best. The fiction comes from the people. Always and everywhere, the people have authority. Coherence of fiction is always and everywhere a convenient illusion we maintain for our own purposes - we could always choose another outcome, and even rationalize it to a fare-thee-well.

The ouija board is there, with its letters printed on it (by whom? why in that pattern? why those letters?). We put our hands on the planchette. No ghost moved it. That we all have plausible deniability over what it spells out may be to our advantage, given the sort of raw creative and social nerves it might touch. But it didn't move by itself.

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losrpg
2007-07-03 03:48 pm UTC (link)

Elliot's position does not depend on anything other than the people having the authority. Any sensible unpacking of "a subjection to the fiction" understands that the enforcers of that subjugation are of course the people themselves, and that they hold the authority to uphold that subjugation or to subvert it. It's just that "subjection to the fiction" is a useful shorthand for what would otherwise be a very longwinded explanation.

You see the same misunderstanding with the whole "but the character doesn't exist" mantra.

I think it's all just a big linguistic gap.

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ewilen
2007-07-03 04:09 pm UTC (link)

At this point I'm not sure it's just a linguistic gap.

I'm basically working from the position that people don't have complete control and complete knowledge of themselves, their beliefs, and their reactions. This is why, even in a relatively freeform situation, people can feel a conflict between their metagame desires and the need to maintain setting or character integrity.

In more mechanically-driven games, it's true of course as Mark says that the mechanics were designed by humans, or that both the scenario and characters were created by humans (perhaps using some of those human-designed mechanics). However, again, there's a "veil"--of ignorance, randomness, or incalculability--which separates intention from outcome. This separation may be overcome, if you learn how to manipulate and exploit the internal dynamics of the rules & fiction, but if it's simply brushed aside you lose the sense of the fiction as an independent, external object.

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tigerbunny_db
2007-07-03 04:16 pm UTC (link)

Exactly. My preference is NOT to have that sense of the fiction as a thing-in-itself. Others find that illusion to be the very purpose of playing the fiction game in the first place.

As you say, though, that "conflict between [real-people] desires and the need to maintain ... integrity" is always there, at least in potential. I just want it settled in favor of real-people pretty much every time. Others will have different preferences.

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losrpg
2007-07-03 06:12 pm UTC (link)

I'm not sure I'm reading you right. The need to maintain integrity [b]is[/b] a real-people desire; it really can't be anything else. Given that, what you [i]seem[/i] to be saying is that given a conflict between the need to maintain integrity and [i]other[/i] real-people desires, that you want it settled in favor of the other desire pretty much every time. Sound about right?

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tigerbunny_db
2007-07-03 06:22 pm UTC (link)

Not quite. If the desire for fictional coherence is viewed as a real-people thing, rather than a property of the fiction, then it is one real-people priority among many and should not automatically be given any special pride-of-place.

I'm not against coherence and internal logic being considered important. I'm just against them having any special ontological status over against other possible considerations.

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losrpg
2007-07-03 07:40 pm UTC (link)

I think you'll have to look pretty hard to find anyone who gives them special ontological status. I certainly agree that they should not automatically be given first priority. But I think there are many times when they should be given first priority...it all depends on the players.

You can pretty easily find players who claim to find them literally indispensible to their gaming fun -- some of whom make this claim dogmatically, some of whom have examined their gaming and are honestly reporting their conclusions. So, for some players, it makes sense to give fictional coherence pride of place. The real problem is that these players need to only play with other players who can tolerate their special needs in this area, and they shouldn't assume that other players will do so.

The only way to do that with any degree of reliability is via some out-of-game communication, be that pregame discussion or whatnot. Because if you have rules for distributing narrative authority, then sooner or later one of the other players will have that narrative authority and use it in a way that is perceived as detrimental to fictional coherence...and the game will all go to hell in a handbasket (quickly or slowly).

I think we agree about what the fundamental issue is here. When you say "my preference is not to have the sense of the fiction as a thing-in-itself", you're really saying that you would prefer not to have the real-people desire for fictional coherence to be prioritized over other real-people desires ... which is not how that sentence reads to me on first blush, not at all.

The difference I see between your position + Elliot's position is that you have different game priorities, largely because you have differing requirements for suspension of disbelief. Your original posts read to me, even on a second reading, as though you have differences over the metaphysical nature of the fictional world, characters, and so on.

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tigerbunny_db
2007-07-03 08:14 pm UTC (link)

Side-note, and that's the end of our digression. "my preference is not to have the sense of the fiction as a thing-in-itself" is both bigger and smaller than you're seeing it. It contains both a desire not to have fictional consistency automatically or by default considered a higher authority than other concerns, AND also a desire not to see the fiction as a thing which is fixed and settled - rather, it is dynamic, subject to editing, recontextualizing, subversion, and all the other things we, as creators, might wish to do to it. The fiction, for me, is always object, never subject.

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ewilen
2007-07-03 07:51 pm UTC (link)

Note to both of you: we've gotten tangled up in the "need for fictional coherence" issue, and it's easy to wander from there into arguments over whether "intent-relevant resolution" (or "required shared narrative control", a term coined by James Skach) supports fictional coherence better or worse than either GM-centric resolution or highly mechanical resolution.

From where I stand, that whole issue is a digression. Let's accept for the sake of argument that fictional coherence can be maintained to a very high degree regardless of the method. Then I say there's always the potential for things to happen in the fiction that nobody at the table wants to have happen, except that if they aren't allowed to happen, it would damage the coherence of the fiction. Valuing this potential is closely tied to what I'm calling subjection to the fiction.

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losrpg
2007-07-03 08:04 pm UTC (link)

Then I say there's always the potential for things to happen in the fiction that nobody at the table wants to have happen, except that if they aren't allowed to happen, it would damage the coherence of the fiction. Valuing this potential is closely tied to what I'm calling subjection to the fiction.

Yeah, I think that you've put your finger on the real issue there. I think this is what drives a lot of the differences in preference.

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tigerbunny_db
2007-07-03 08:07 pm UTC (link)

Yep. My feeling is that this not a good candidate for an a priori or categorical decision - sometimes I'm going to be okay with the fiction having priority, but it is really, really easy for me to conceive of situations where that would not be the case. That's probably because the principal motivation for me in playing is an expressive one, not an experiential one. Does that make any sense?

I like IRR because I want to have tools for expressing myself. Hopefully, I'm able to express myself fully while never going outside the bounds set by previously established fictional constraints. But if push comes to shove, expression is the priority.

I'm down with an agreement to act as if the fiction is a fixed and "real" thing. I wouldn't want it for my own play, but it isn't incoherent. The language typically used regarding such agreements, though, imputes an otherness, an independence, to them that is not possible for them to have. I do, in fact, have a metaphysical position regarding fiction, but I don't think it's different from yours or Lee's.

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ewilen
2007-07-04 05:13 pm UTC (link)

Experiential vs. expressive sounds pretty much on the nose to me, but to be experiential, I really think the game-world does need to be independent in a sense.

Elsewhere in this thread we've acknowledged that of course everything in a game is created by people, but that doesn't prevent it from "taking on a life of its own" through a number of mechanisms. "The author is dead", etc.

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losrpg
2007-07-03 04:28 pm UTC (link)

Well, I would posit that even if the people are using their subconscious mind to do these things, it's still clearly the people that are doing them...and I think that the issue of mechanical games or not is just pushing the issue back one level. Even if game mechanics are used to explicitly apportion authority among the players, it's possible for the players to limit themselves and only use that authority in (self-imposed) subjugation to the fiction.

In practice, most of the players attracted to that style of game are not using the mechanics that way, but I have played in games where they were. Probably it's significant that for me the [b]sense of[/b] the fiction as an independent, external object doesn't at all conflict a view that of course IRL the fiction doesn't have any metaphysical existence but that doesn't stop us from profitably talking about it as an object. It's all in the key phrase "the sense of" -- I can have a sense of the fiction as an external object which is not compromised by the intellectual recognition that it doesn't exist.

So, [i]for me[/i], holding these two views at the same time just isn't a problem. It seems natural -- in fact, seeing the views as conflicting seems unnatural to me. I guess that's I find reconciling your position and Mark's position to be trivial, when both of you see it as a fundamental divide.

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ewilen
2007-07-03 05:43 pm UTC (link)

Lee, when you say it's possible for players to only use narrational authority in subjugation (I prefer "subjection") to the fiction, that's exactly what I mean by internalizing a body of "invisible constraints". Or what I would consider the most charitable, least skeptical reading of claims that narration-trading and stakes-setting can be "just as realistic" and "immersive" as the traditional GM/player distribution of authority. I doubt it really happens very often to a degree which would convince me as a player...but it's possible, if everyone has a compatible vision with everyone else, and everyone is more-or-less capable of separating their metagame and in-character desires from their responsibility to fictional coherence.

Also I'm not exactly talking about a subconscious mind, more like an unconscious mind or basically a set of formal and unwritten assumptions and constraints which are the domain in which meaning is formed. I'm attracted to the concept of agency, which I first saw Jonathan Walton describe over at the 20x20 room, though I gather it's an established concept in social theory. But in more down-to-earth terms, a person doesn't consciously control their suspension of disbelief or their tastes. If I could, I'd be a lot happier with e.g. The Godfather Part III or the later Star Wars films. Sometimes genre helps here (which probably goes a long way toward explaining my enjoyment of certain anime), but even genre is based on a set of rules or tropes, and divergence both from those rules and from baseline concepts of e.g. human motivation, rationality, and causality still leads to "not buying it".

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tigerbunny_db
2007-07-03 06:17 pm UTC (link)

Ohhhhh... that's really interesting, Elliot. I'm really way, way out-of-norm on that "a person doesn't consciously control their suspension of disbelief or their tastes" thing. My superpower is willing suspension of disbelief! A significant part of my enjoyment of a lot of genre works is precisely because I consciously and willfully "turn down" my critical eye and try to take the work on its own terms, deliberately ignoring the things about a work that don't accord with my own sense of those "baseline concepts" you cite. I like giving myself over to the work on its terms. Critique can come later, if at all.

In fiction play, though, I really, really can't do that. Because I'm simultaneously in the roles of author, performer, and audience. And if I wanted to relinquish any of those roles, I'd be doing something else. So for fiction play, I need to be in a different position relative to the fiction than I do as audience.

I tend to call that place the "fanficcer's mind" - where I'm interrogating the work even as I'm absorbing it and constructing a constant stream of speculation and invention based not only on the text in front of me but on a whole web of reference, social context, and personal agenda.

I think maybe I need to bake a post about this...

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tigerbunny_db
2007-07-03 04:10 pm UTC (link)

It's more than a linguistic gap. It seems to reflect a pretty significant difference in cognitive bias. I dislike the reification of fictional constructs because I find it enhances my experience to see people/procedures first, fiction subordinate and emergent. Others prefer the language of reification because they find it more enjoyable (workable?) not to "see the wires" when they're playing fiction.

How we talk about things reflects how we think about things. And vice versa.

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A note on all the above--about "shared narrative control"

ewilen
2007-07-19 10:26 pm UTC (link)

...and intent-relevant (or at least intent-clear) resolution.

So, here's the thing. If we are subject to the fiction, and we are aware of each other's subjection, which amounts to a kind of "good faith" or informal sense of collective & mutual responsbility (about the closest thing to a true "social contract" in gaming), then this subjection becomes the basis of "shared narrative control" which is neither formally required nor absolutely discretionary.

Which is to say if there's implicit trust--or call it faith--between GM and players, then shared narrative control exists in rather the same fashion that's spelled out in the post by Eero Tuovinen, regarding "conflict resolution" in Sorcerer. I read Eero as saying that narrative control is shared in Sorcerer by virtue of the GM's responsibility to provide Bangs that are both thematically-relevant to the PC's Kicker and capable of being addressed through the game mechanics. Well, if there really is a "shared imagined space", even if it starts out largely as an exploration of the GM's imagination, the commitment to addressing the game world as an independent construct will over time make it more and more "shared" as everyone comes to understand it and be able to manipulate it according to impartial rules. Provided that the GM is committed to impartiality, and the players trust the GM, etc.

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