A discussion of metagame concepts in game design

[Emerikol]

And so that would represent your conception of your world as opposed to 5e's implied default setting. Nothing is stopping you from that interpretation or set of houserules. I hope that you do have fun with it..

Aldarc, I know you like to be "sensational" with your radical ideas. Please just know that you are making yourself look like a fool by claiming that is the implied D&D setting. You have no basis for it. Your examples are lame.

So keep poking. I'm starting to think you aren't really seriously discussing this issue. You just keep making up extreme statements to try to get people upset. It's common place for many on here to project back crazy ideas into old school D&D but you are talking it to a new height.

The game has mundane characters. Except where explicitly defined differently, we expect the world to work as ours does. We don't expect a peasant farmer of which there are millions more than there are adventurers to suddenly whip out a magic power. We don't expect horses to fly. We expect them to be ridden on the ground. The examples could go on forever but please stop wasting our time with this train of thought. The old move the goal posts and claim the game never was the way it was is getting tiring.

 

[Emerikol]

This has nothing to do with stance. Stance is an attempt to describe the relatoinship between player establishment of fiction and player motivation having regard to the player's special connection to the PC. It's not about talking in first or third person.

Whether you prefer first-person or third person narration by players to establish action declarations and shared fiction is a completely separate thing.

For instance, the following bit of narration (which also, in some systems, involves action declaration), is first person - but director stance:

Player (speaking in character): I hook up with the local dealers in contraband to get hold of some XYZ.​

In Classic Traveller that's a prelude to a Streetwise check; in Burning Wheel to a Circles check; in a typical D&D game there is no associated action declaration, but a GM might still accept it - "Sure, you're pretty sure you'll find someone fiting that descrition at any divy tavern in the Thieves' Quarter."

Despite being first person, it's director stance because it establishes some element of the shared fiction - namely, local contraband dealers the PC might hook up with - without that fiction itself being produced by the actions/choices of the PC.

This has nothing to do with Stance either: a player saying those things is not trying to establish any shared fiction.

This doesn't make sense. I can't literally become a character. I can decide to establish or author a character. Until that is done, there is nothing for me to "become" or to "grasp".

So far I can go along. I agree you can say what you are doing in third person and still be acting within the limits of actor stance. There may though be an overlap between people who like actor stance and people who prefer first person as much as is practical. Personally I'm not over the top on first person but I like it when done well.

For instance, actual actors aren't being motivated by what motivates the character. They are being motivated by things like the desire to give a good performance, the desire to present the character authentically, the desire to please the director, the desire to get paid, etc, etc.

This is more an imperfect naming of the stance than anything else. The actor stance as opposed to the actor above that you described is about being the character. It's about acting within the mental framework of that character. It's explicitly avoiding the creation of the fiction.

As far as inhabitation is concerned, the notion that some forms of narration at the table are more apt to produce "inhabitation" than others is an empirical conjecture, and I don't think there's any real evidence of it. (The opposite I've seen be true: ie when a player is in an especially inhabiting mood, s/he is more likely to narrate in first person - but the narration is the effect, not the cause, of the inhabitation.)

Yeah we should just drop the way people speak from this discussion. Let's just say those interests often correlate but they are not absolute.

And the idea that author or director stance is treating the character as a pawn is not plausible at all. In the case of director stance, consider the example I just gave - that's not treating the PC as a pawn at all. I'm going to give more examples not far below that make the same point for author stance.

Huh? How does a player in (say) Moldvay Basic drfit to "director stance"? Or stay (vaguely or otherwise) in that stance?

Pawn seems pejorative but in this usage I don't think it is really. It's more trying to show that the character has become something you are doing things to instead of living inside of.

And why would a player default to one stance, in games that invite players to inhabit multiple stances? There's no reason to think this is true at all. Eg in Burning Wheel, a player might quickly move from director stance (making a Circles check) to author stance (wondering whether to change a Belief) to actor stance (declaring an action for a PC having regard to established Beliefs - that's how the game works. In Classic Traveller a player might quickly move from actor stance (declaring an action for his/her PC because s/he is imaginging to what the PC would want, like say an Admin check to persuade an official to look the other way) to author stance (lending an item from his/her PC sheet to another player's PC, because that will help optimise the party for their mission) back to actor stance (griping that the borrowing PC is a bludger!).

Because actor stance is fun and author/director stance is not for me? I don't think your lending example is very good for what you are trying to show. In real life people, loan items back and forth all the time. Yes the sheet is a player help to assist in being the character but like hit points it's more to aid in communication than to affect actions.

There's a reason that every commentator who has written about player stances has concluded that they're highly fluid in play.

And these examples also shows us that there's no connection between author stance and treating the character as a pawn. Nor between stance and first/third person - all the stuff I just described could be narrated in first person.

This further illustrates the complete independence of Stance and "inhabitation" and "first person".

A player who "leans into" their role, deciding that this is the moment eg to reveal something profound about the character, is playing in author stance at that moment, but certainly need not cease to inhabit the character, nor drop out of first person narration.

I think he can't possibly at that moment be acting as the character. Assuming the reveal is something new to the game and not something the character already knows.

Likewise a player who establishes (necessarily in director stance) that "I know a guy who can help", as per my example at the top of this post.

And for completeness, here's a repost of the definitions of stance:

Much the same can be found at The Forge, where (as far as I know) the notion was first systematically developed. As far as I can see the blog that has been linked to has mostly copy-pasted Edwards 2001 text.

I don't know whether you are trying to assert that actor only stance is impossible (I can assure you that you are wrong on that count if you are) or something else. Not sure what you are getting at other than to maybe debunk the first person voice thing which again is a side road anyway.

I want the decisions you make to be based on information your character knows and be an action that your character could initiate. Obviously, given it is a game, you have to state your actions to the DM. As long as what you state is something your character could realistically do as the character, that is fine.

So if I say to the DM "I am going to the thieves quarter and see if I can find out who murdered joe" that is fine. I am doing something my character could do. As long as joe being dead isn't being made up or the existence of the thieves quarter isn't getting made up at that very moment, things are fine.

As a side note, I hate director mode even more than author mode but I dislike both of course.

 

[Emerikol]

Dragons in D&D can fly, although that would not be possible in the real world.

Fighters in 5e can choose when to push themselves extra hard, knowing that if they burn their reserves now they won't get them back without a rest, which is not too different from how people in the real world can do that.

But fighters in 5e are magical while dragon flight is not?

I don't get it.

Dragons are very magical beings through and through so I don't have a problem seeing their flight either way. It could fall under the umbrella of cinematic though also.

 

[Emerikol]

It's pretty much the same idea, phrased differently. If magic is possible, it's a magical universe. There's no way for magic to exist as some sort of "plug-and-play" extension that attaches to an otherwise mundane universe in a way that makes sense, despite genre conceits. (I'd allow that exceptions exist if the magic is actually some sort of highly advanced science, like in Mark Lawrence's Broken Empire trilogy.)

Let's hypothesize. Suppose a supreme being existed first. That supreme being spoke all of the natural laws into existence as he was also creating the universe. So gravity, electromagnetism, the strong and weak forces, etc.. all came into being at his command. At any time, if he chose, he could command some part of the universe to break the rules. If such happened, it would not mean the end of the rules of the universe except in that case.

So sure, the D&D universe is no doubt different in many ways than our own. The key for me is that where the game is silent I fill in a cinematic version of our universe by default. That is the way I believe most people have played D&D through the years but without a doubt in the early days.

So without a specific magical rule, a person cannot do a second wind. It would be easy to make up such a rule. I won't for the fighter because I want a non-magical fighter and rogue. The very use of the term second wind indicates it is non-magical. If it were a magical power it would have a more magical name. If you had a sacred order of magical knights who drew upon the arcane forces of the universe to do magical things, I'd be fine with that. I don't want that though for the basic fighter and rogue. My players don't want it either. I'd say the barbarian and monk are both those sorts of classes. No one has played a barbarian in my games and the monk only once.

 

[Emerikol]

Yet again you trot out this laughable lie.

I've already established that HP are abstract and meta. So I haven't confused anything.

You, on the other hand, don't have a single argument. You've established, quite literally, nothing which demonstrates that D&D HP are not a metagame device. You simply assert it, completely without justification, over and over again.

Okay I'll be your huckleberry.

Hit points are a method of communicating in game state. The DM says you were hit for 14 points of damage. You deduct that from your total. You are that much closer to death. This is in game knowledge. However you define hit points. Whether they are wounds or stamina or whatever. I've tried to keep it simple by saying they are just a measure of your closeness to death.

And it matters not even a tiny twit whether you can give me a description and I can reverse that out to some hit point total. That is a strawman and matters not one iota. It is a communication device. It is abstract. But the very fact that it references in game state makes it non-metagame. If you reach zero hit points, you really are dying in the game. However you got there that is real.

Most of the abstract concepts like Hit Points and AC are ways to quickly communicate ideas from DM to PC. Yes the player hears the term and translates it down to the character who then acts. The character though is acting on real knowledge. When he falls back, from the fight due to low hit points he is acting on in game knowledge.

Whereas, a martial power that is daily and non-magical, is not something the character can ever conceive. Right after he pulls off the manuever can he really know for a fact that he can't do this purely physical thing he just did a minute ago. Can he know that by sleeping he can again have the option at any time during the day to perform a very specific manuever but only that one time. The character knows none of this. The player is making those decisions from the author stance. The character is likely played as "noticing" an opening and getting an opportunity and that is the character knowledge. The character also likely thinks for the rest of the day he could get another such chance even though the player knows he will not.

The same is true for encounter powers on a smaller scale.

 

[Emerikol]

What does ".a loose approxiation . . . simulating in a loose manner" mean? You and [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] are saying that D&D uses real world physics. But it's measure of terminal velocity is different. So either G is different, or the way friction works is different, or . . . it's not physics at all, just common sense tropes!

Okay I think you are being deliberately obtuse. Gravity has been known since man started walking. The theory of gravity and the various detailed scientific hypothesis etc... were not known. People knew though that when they throw a rock it comes down. When they fire an arrow it eventually hits the ground. So sure, I don't think we are talking about pointy headed theories and you are creating a strawman. There are things that even primitive people know about the world and a lot of those things they knew are true for D&D worlds. In some cases, the game being a game approximates our world and doesn't hit it dead on. As long as you are reasonable, it's fine.

 

[Lanefan]

This has nothing to do with stance. Stance is an attempt to describe the relatoinship between player establishment of fiction and player motivation having regard to the player's special connection to the PC. It's not about talking in first or third person.

It's about thinking in first or third person. Player establishment of fiction has nothing to do with it, and is for these purposes just a distracting side-discussion.

Whether you prefer first-person or third person narration by players to establish action declarations and shared fiction is a completely separate thing.

For instance, the following bit of narration (which also, in some systems, involves action declaration), is first person - but director stance:

Player (speaking in character): I hook up with the local dealers in contraband to get hold of some XYZ.​

Not sure how you see this as director stance. Put it in third person "Jocinda hooks up with the local contraband dealers..." and it is, but in first person I see it as still being actor stance - there has to be a way to describe your movements and actions.

Despite being first person, it's director stance because it establishes some element of the shared fiction - namely, local contraband dealers the PC might hook up with - without that fiction itself being produced by the actions/choices of the PC.

Silly me, I was assuming those elements were already present in the fiction having been put there by prior in-game events and-or the DM's narration. Players don't just get to declare stuff like that, whether speaking in or out of character.

If the existence of the contraband dealers hasn't been established then as Jocinda's player I might say something like "I need some <XYZ>, and I can't get it legally, so I'll keep my ear to the ground and make discreet inquiries as to where and how some might be obtained." This puts the ball in the DM's court: she can tell me I find someone, or don't find someone, or need to look harder, or that my inquiries weren't as discreet as I hoped and I've run afoul of the law, or whatever.

This doesn't make sense. I can't literally become a character. I can decide to establish or author a character. Until that is done, there is nothing for me to "become" or to "grasp".

For instance, actual actors aren't being motivated by what motivates the character. They are being motivated by things like the desire to give a good performance, the desire to present the character authentically, the desire to please the director, the desire to get paid, etc, etc.

Google "method acting" - you might learn some stuff.

When deciding on whether to take on a role or part an actor's motivaitons are probably as you suggest. But once on the stage, a good actor is fully in character and has left his own person (and his own motivations etc.) in the wings...particularly so in improv theatre where the actor doesn't also have to worry about remembering his lines (which is always what messed me up!).

As far as inhabitation is concerned, the notion that some forms of narration at the table are more apt to produce "inhabitation" than others is an empirical conjecture, and I don't think there's any real evidence of it. (The opposite I've seen be true: ie when a player is in an especially inhabiting mood, s/he is more likely to narrate in first person - but the narration is the effect, not the cause, of the inhabitation.)

Either way, they're related...which means specifically trying to do one will by default enhance the other.

And the idea that author or director stance is treating the character as a pawn is not plausible at all. In the case of director stance, consider the example I just gave - that's not treating the PC as a pawn at all. I'm going to give more examples not far below that make the same point for author stance.

Author and director stances move one away from the character. As [MENTION=10638]Emirikol[/MENTION] points out above, in these stances you're doing things to the character rather than as the character - it can't be avoided in the run of play but it can be acknowledged and kept to a reasonable minimum.

And why would a player default to one stance, in games that invite players to inhabit multiple stances? There's no reason to think this is true at all. Eg in Burning Wheel, a player might quickly move from director stance (making a Circles check) to author stance (wondering whether to change a Belief) to actor stance (declaring an action for a PC having regard to established Beliefs - that's how the game works. In Classic Traveller a player might quickly move from actor stance (declaring an action for his/her PC because s/he is imaginging to what the PC would want, like say an Admin check to persuade an official to look the other way) to author stance (lending an item from his/her PC sheet to another player's PC, because that will help optimise the party for their mission) back to actor stance (griping that the borrowing PC is a bludger!).

I don't see these as changes of stance so much as changes from in-game to meta and back.

Making a circles check: straight meta-engagement with the game mechanics, no role-play stance involved
Wondering whether to change a Belief: actor stance; the character is doubting her beliefs (and maybe even voicing these doubts out loud), and if she changes her belief then the player briefly engages with the meta-mechanics to note this change on her character sheet.
Declaring an action: a combination of actor stance (the character does something) and meta-mechanics engagement (the game has to respond to her declaration).

Declaring an action: again actor stance but maybe not with the attached meta-mechanics
Loaning an item to another PC: full-on actor stance; the loaning PC recognizes her item will be of more use in the borrower's hands than her own...even if she then turns around and complains about the borrower!

And these examples also shows us that there's no connection between author stance and treating the character as a pawn. Nor between stance and first/third person - all the stuff I just described could be narrated in first person.

And would be, were it a player rather than a watching DM doing it.

A player who "leans into" their role, deciding that this is the moment eg to reveal something profound about the character, is playing in author stance at that moment, but certainly need not cease to inhabit the character, nor drop out of first person narration.

Assuming the "something profound" comes out of the character's backstory or history or from in-game events, it could easily be the player-as-PC deciding in actor stance that now's the time to reveal this <whatever> previously known only to her.

If it's something the player just made up on the fly...well, that's another thing entirely. Author stance, certainly.

Likewise a player who establishes (necessarily in director stance) that "I know a guy who can help", as per my example at the top of this post.

In your game, where players are also authors and setting-writers, this may be the case. But in mine a player can't just arbitrarily say something like this unless this knowledge has already been established earlier.

Lanefan

 

[Emerikol]

It is maddening to watch how far you guys will go to twist yourself into knots trying so very hard to "prove" that my preferences are purely arbitrary. What are you afraid of? The metagame police are not going to show up at your house and shut down your game if I'm allowed to play my game my way at my house. This burning need, and believe me some of you are really making fools of yourself contorting in so many crazy ways, is something I'll never understand.

Let's just take some things as a given for my games,
1. Fighters and Rogues live within the limits of a cinematic reality as it relates to their innate powers and abilities.
2. While perhaps the universe is different on some fundamental level from our own, practically for most common people it appears to work the same way as a cinematic version of our world.
3. That abstract concepts like HP, AC, etc.. are used to communicate game world information that really exists as knowledge in game. If you can't accept this then just pretend for now that it is magical knowledge. It's not that in my games and I do play it as known and no one questions that at my table but if you can't grok that then just pretend it's magic.
4. Also realize that I am striving for an actor stance game. I am a skilled DM at providing that sort of game. Sure there are some colossally bad DMs who couldn't pull this off. Take it as a given that I can do it and I have done it for many years. Longer than many of you have been alive I don't doubt.

The POINT of this thread
1. Find innovative ways to solve the metagame issue for those that care about it without resorting to magic or changing into other stances.
2. It would be enjoyable to compare and contrast those ideas and discuss the various merits of those ideas with people who at minimum understand my viewpoint. You don't have to agree that you want that sort of game but if you can't even understand my viewpoint then honestly just go away. Obviously for those that agree with my viewpoint, the discussion could be even richer.

 

[pemerton]

OR it's D&D physics, which loosely approximates real world physics. D&D physics loosely approximates real world physics all over the place. Hell, during 1e Dragon put in articles on how to make D&D physics more like real world physics.

Does "loosely approximates real world physics" mean anything more than dropped objects fall, but dragons can fly without magical assistance?

"Except where it is noted they are not", I wrote, under which all of these qualify.

Physics, in the real world, isn't just a list of facts. The discipline is a set of interrelated principles stated in mathematical terms; the phenomena those principles describe are things that follow certain regularities in behaviour and causal interaction.

Asserting that the physics is just like the real world, except dragons can fly is a contradiction, because there is no physics that resembles the real world's and yet in which creatures like dragons are able to fly as D&D dragons do.

That said, if sticking giant ants or flying dragons in the rules is enough to create, for you, an exception to your (or anyone else's) "real world physics" principle, then why don't second-winding fighters equally count? Why would that, in particular, have to be magical?

One could, if one wanted, redesign gravity so it works differently than what we're used to - but one would need a serious grasp of the physics and interrelations one has in mind in order to do this and have it come out working consistently.

But the game already does this! Gravity doesn't bring dragons crashing to the ground, nor crush the legs of giants; so it already works differently from what we're used to! And you said as much yourself, in the passage I quoted just above.

You don't need to assume that actual physics is true in order to understand the basic physical behaviour of dropped objects, running people, etc. Most human beings have understood the basics of these things for most of human history without access to either real or imagined knowledge of physics.

From the point of view of the DM trying to design all this, however, I need to have it figured out.

Really? Out of curiosity, when did you do anything in your gameworld design or adjudication that required applying universal gravitation, Maxwell's equations, thermodynamics, or nuclear physics?

Personally, I've never seen a gameworld (whether amateur or professional in design) that required more than a bit of understanding of geography.

Except where explicitly defined differently, we expect the world to work as ours does. We don't expect a peasant farmer of which there are millions more than there are adventurers to suddenly whip out a magic power. We don't expect horses to fly. We expect them to be ridden on the ground.

But we don't except the principles of gravity and/or fluid mechanics to work as they do in our world - because if they did, dragons couldn't fly. And nor do we expect the biochemistry and/or physics of respiration to work as they do in our world - because if they did, giant arthropods would be impossible.

Given this - and given that "surges" and "second winds" are things that actual athletes actually do in the real world, by drawing on their reserves - why would we be that shocked to see warriors who can perform surges and get their second wind, but then need a bit of a rest before they can do it again?

You may not like the aesthetic, just as some people don't like the aesthetic of flying dragons or Cloudkill spells or katanas or whatever - but I'm missing the argument that these things must be metagame.

Dragons are very magical beings through and through so I don't have a problem seeing their flight either way. It could fall under the umbrella of cinematic though also.

I read this after writing the above. I think the above still stands in relation to giant arthropods. And the most recent quote also raises the question of why dragons don't fall to the ground under the effects of an Anti-Magic Shell or similar.

Even in this thread, as best I can tell there are many who regard a dragon's fight or a giant scorpion's respiration as non-magical.

To the extent that we talk about "cinematic", I don't see how that would fail to encompass surges and second winds without these having to be metagame.

Suppose a supreme being existed first. That supreme being spoke all of the natural laws into existence as he was also creating the universe. So gravity, electromagnetism, the strong and weak forces, etc.. all came into being at his command. At any time, if he chose, he could command some part of the universe to break the rules. If such happened, it would not mean the end of the rules of the universe except in that case.

So sure, the D&D universe is no doubt different in many ways than our own. The key for me is that where the game is silent I fill in a cinematic version of our universe by default.

<snip>

without a specific magical rule, a person cannot do a second wind.

Gravity has been known since man started walking. The theory of gravity and the various detailed scientific hypothesis etc... were not known. People knew though that when they throw a rock it comes down. When they fire an arrow it eventually hits the ground. So sure, I don't think we are talking about pointy headed theories and you are creating a strawman. There are things that even primitive people know about the world and a lot of those things they knew are true for D&D worlds. In some cases, the game being a game approximates our world and doesn't hit it dead on. As long as you are reasonable, it's fine.

Look, you and [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] are the ones who mentioned nuclear forces. Someone else upthread who is not me mentioned atoms. These are not things that "have been known since man started walking". They are "pointy headed theories".

My own view, clearly stated multiple times in this thread, is that D&D needs nothing more than common sense tropes. And choosing to surge, or getting one's second wind, is a common sense trope. I'm not much of an athlete, and even I have the capacity to push myself harder in a way that I can't keep up for very long.

It is maddening to watch how far you guys will go to twist yourself into knots trying so very hard to "prove" that my preferences are purely arbitrary.

No one has said they are arbitrary. They have said that your professed reasoning seems underdeveloped.

For instance, how would the following lead anyone to conclude that you don't like action surge or second wind?

Fighters and Rogues live within the limits of a cinematic reality as it relates to their innate powers and abilities.

Being able to draw on one's reserves to surge and/or get a second wind seems exactly the sort of thing that athletes in a "cinematic reality" would be able to do (given that athletes in the real world can do it, or stuff pretty much like it).

 

[pemerton]

It's about thinking in first or third person. Player establishment of fiction has nothing to do with it, and is for these purposes just a distracting side-discussion.

What does it refer to? I don't know what you're talking about, but I'm talking about stances, which is a notion that [MENTION=6698278]Emerikol[/MENTION] brought into the thread, that [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION] followed up on, and that absolutely is about establishing fiction. From the Ron Edwards essay that Emerikol's blog has copied and pasted:

*In Actor stance, a person determines a character's decisions and actions using only knowledge and perceptions that the character would have.

* In Author stance, a person determines a character's decisions and actions based on the real person's priorities, then retroactively "motivates" the character to perform them. (Without that second, retroactive step, this is fairly called Pawn stance.)

* In Director stance, a person determines aspects of the environment relative to the character in some fashion, entirely separately from the character's knowledge or ability to influence events. Therefore the player has not only determined the character's actions, but the context, timing, and spatial circumstances of those actions, or even features of the world separate from the characters.​

Each of these is about what a player of the game determines - ie some element of the fiction that is in some way connected to a character, such as a character's decision and actions or some aspect of the environment relative to a character in some fashion and relates that determination to the character's knowledge, perception and ability to influence events.

The analysis of action within stance is not confined to non-GM players. When a GM decides something about what a NPC does, or decides something related to a NPC, we can equally discuss what stance the GM was occupying in making that decision.

So a GM who muses "What would Nerof Gasgal do in relation to that? Well, it poses a threat to Greyhawk, and protecting the safety of Greyhawk is his highest priority, so he would oppose it, even though doing so might hurt the Thieves' Guild" is determining how Nerof Gasgal thinks and acts in actor stance, even though all the reasoning happens in third person.

If you want to coin some other terminology to describe some feature of non-GM player RPGing that is important to you, go ahead! But stance is an already-established notion that is talking about the things I called out.

Google "method acting" - you might learn some stuff.

As best I can tell, I know as much about method acting as anyone else posting in this thread. Method acting is a device for inhabiting a character who is already scripted, and thereby delivering a performance of that character. It's not an orientation towards "determining a character's decisions and actions", which is what actor stance is.

Here are a couple of passages from the Google entry on "method acting":

actors make use of experiences from their own lives to bring them closer to the experience of their characters. This technique, which Stanislavski came to call emotion memory (Strasberg tends to use the alternative formulation, "affective memory"), involves the recall of sensations involved in experiences that made a significant emotional impact on the actor. Without faking or forcing, actors allow those sensations to stimulate a response and try not to inhibit themselves. . . .

[Adler's] version of the method is based on the idea that actors should stimulate emotional experience by imagining the scene's "given circumstances", rather than recalling experiences from their own lives. Adler's approach also seeks to stimulate the actor's imagination through the use of "as ifs", which substitute more personally affecting imagined situations for the circumstances experienced by the character. Adler argued that "drawing on personal experience alone was too limited.​

The "method" is about using various techniques - memory, imagination, etc - to generate an authentic emotional expression. It has nothing to do with deciding what action the character takes - it presuppose that the character is already scripted (hence the actor's quest to identify a "motivation" for that scripted action).

a good actor is fully in character and has left his own person (and his own motivations etc.) in the wings...particularly so in improv theatre where the actor doesn't also have to worry about remembering his lines (which is always what messed me up!).

I don't know a great deal about improv, but my understanding is that riffing off what your collaborators give you is an important part of it. Correlating that to RPG stances would map onto Author Stance - ie the actor decides that (in character) s/he will do XYZ because that riffs well of what someone else just did - and then (whether using "the method" or some other device) establishes an (in character) motivation and rationale for doing XYZ.

Author and director stances move one away from the character.

Again, this is nonsense.

Deciding that my enraged character will reach to the ground to pick up a rock to throw isn't moving me away from my character - there are a whole range of circumstances in which that might be the most authentic thing I can declare for my character - but it involves director stance, because of the rock.

And author stance doesn't move one away from character either - as the improv example I just gave illustrates.

It may be true for you that you can't think about or inhabit a character while also thinking about the environment that character inhabits (although to me that seems rather odd) or thinking about how your portrayal of the character fits with other things going on at the table or on the stage (although to me that would seem like an impediment to doing good improv). But those would be biographical facts about you. I've got no reason at all to think they generalise to other RPGers.

Not sure how you see this as director stance. Put it in third person "Jocinda hooks up with the local contraband dealers..." and it is, but in first person I see it as still being actor stance - there has to be a way to describe your movements and actions.

It's director stance because the action declaration purport to establish an element of the environment that is "entirely separately from the character's knowledge or ability to influence events", namely, the existence of contraband dealers in this urban locality.

Attempting to establish that element of the fiction in first or in third person doesn't change that fundamental fact about it.

If the existence of the contraband dealers hasn't been established then as Jocinda's player I might say something like "I need some <XYZ>, and I can't get it legally, so I'll keep my ear to the ground and make discreet inquiries as to where and how some might be obtained."

OK, that's a biographical fact about you.

But I'm not speculating about what you would do. I am positing that the number of times, across the history of D&D play, when the GM has told the players "You arrive in a new town" and the players respond "OK, we look for the local <tavern, contraband dealers, fighter's guildhall, docks, temple, druid's grove, whatever else?" is well into the millions. And that was all director stance.

It's almost impossible to play an RPG in anything like a conventional fashion without the non-GM players from time-to-time entering director stance, because players think of things they want their PCs to do and engage with that haven't yet been established by GM narration literally all the time. You could try and play a game in which every single time the players waited on GM narration, or instead of saying "We head to the local tavern" asked "Is there a local tavern? If so, we head to it" - but I don't think that's realistic or practical, and I certainly don't see what the extra verbiage adds to the game. If, in fact, there is no local tavern, then when the players say "We head to the local tavern" the GM will quickly set them straight.

As [MENTION=10638]Emirikol[/MENTION] points out above, in these stances you're doing things to the character rather than as the character

This is just wrong, and frankly shows you don't know what is meant by stance.

Deciding that my PC does this rather than that because I don't want to violate my LG alignment is an instance of author stance. It's not doing something to the character.

Deciding that my PC, having arrived at a new town, heads to the local tavern is an instance of director stance. It's not doing something to the character.

Your aesthetic preferences are what they are. I'm not trying to gainsay them. But the notion of stance doesn't validate them.

Eg in Burning Wheel, a player might quickly move from director stance (making a Circles check) to author stance (wondering whether to change a Belief) to actor stance (declaring an action for a PC having regard to established Beliefs - that's how the game works. In Classic Traveller a player might quickly move from actor stance (declaring an action for his/her PC because s/he is imaginging to what the PC would want, like say an Admin check to persuade an official to look the other way) to author stance (lending an item from his/her PC sheet to another player's PC, because that will help optimise the party for their mission) back to actor stance (griping that the borrowing PC is a bludger!).

I don't see these as changes of stance so much as changes from in-game to meta and back.

I don't know what this means. Are you coining some new notion of "stance" which is different from the one that Emerikol, Aldarc and I all referred to?

Making a circles check: straight meta-engagement with the game mechanics, no role-play stance involved

What does that even mean? "As I ride along the river bank I keep my eyes peeled for signs that any fellow members of my order live here or have passed this way." That involves a "roleplaying stance" (actor stance, on the face of it) and is an action declaration (Circles) - not all Circles checks involve director stance, although there are GM-side subtleties which I won't bother going into it which could mean that the apparent actor stance is, in fact, director stance.

Wondering whether to change a Belief: actor stance; the character is doubting her beliefs (and maybe even voicing these doubts out loud), and if she changes her belief then the player briefly engages with the meta-mechanics to note this change on her character sheet.

I was referring to the play of a particular system - Burning Wheel. Changing a Belief is author stance - it is a decision about the character's commitment or orientation or aspiration that is made having regard to real-world considerations (eg how do I want the arc of my character to unfold? what do I think will best engage whatever it is that is up the GM's sleeve? what would be fun to do with this PC?).

Declaring an action: a combination of actor stance (the character does something) and meta-mechanics engagement (the game has to respond to her declaration).

Again, this depends on system. If the action is I pick up a rock from the ground or I head to the local tavern in this new town then the action declaration, implicating as it does the environment separate from the character's ability to influence it, takes place partly in director stance.

Whether mechanics are resorted to depends entirely on context and system, and has nothing to do with discussions of stance.

Loaning an item to another PC: full-on actor stance; the loaning PC recognizes her item will be of more use in the borrower's hands than her own

You don't just get to change my stipulated example and therefore conclude that it never happens. I was describing a situation in which the player decides that his/her PC loans the item to another PC because the player thinks this will help the mission. That is author stance - making a decision about a character's action based on real world concerns (ie wanting to do well in the mission). The fact that the player then imputes such a desire to the character - ie engages in the "retroactive step" - doesn't stop it being author stance. It confirms it as author stance rather than pawn stance.

TL;DR: the notion of stance doesn't bear on your RPGing preferences in the way you seem to think it does.

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I don't know whether you are trying to assert that actor only stance is impossible (I can assure you that you are wrong on that count if you are)

I think it's impractical and I doubt that many tables play that way.

For instance, every time someone makes a decision about his/her action declaration for his/her PC because it would be fun, or because she is worried about where his/her PC will be on the GM's alignment graph, or because the session is going to finish in 5 minutes, or because everyone else at the table is sick of the banter between the elf PC and the dwarf PC, or . . . . then we have author stance roleplaying. And I frankly doubt that there are many tables where this sort of decision making by players never happens.

I want the decisions you make to be based on information your character knows and be an action that your character could initiate.

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As long as what you state is something your character could realistically do as the character, that is fine.

That incorporates actor stance, author stance and director stance.

All the examples I just gave are actions the character could initiate and can be based on information the character knows - that is the retroactive justification part of author stance.

There are director stance examples that also fit that bill, such as the ones I have discussed with Lanefan.

if I say to the DM "I am going to the thieves quarter and see if I can find out who murdered joe" that is fine. I am doing something my character could do. As long as joe being dead isn't being made up or the existence of the thieves quarter isn't getting made up at that very moment, things are fine.

But if the GM hasn't yet decided whether or not there is a thieves' quarter, then this is just like example I discussed with Lanefan. Maybe the GM vetoes it. But if s/he goes along with it - and some GMs will - we have director stance.

This is why I think that an all actor stance game is impractical. Because unless the gameworld is an incredibly sparse environment then the players will be establishing all sorts of elements of the environment (however trivial these might seem) which are outside the influence of their PCs - director stance!

And to make another, related, point: it's just an error to equate stance with mechanics. Games that have no metagame mechanics (eg RQ) can still have action declarations that involve director stance: eg the player declares, in character, "I pick up a rock and throw it at him!" in circumstances where it has not yet been established that the PC has a rock ready to hand on the ground. In RQ, because of the lack of metagame mechanics, the GM has full veto rights over that action declaration, because the GM has ultimate authority over whether or not there are rocks on the ground near the PC. But if the GM lets the action declaration go - and in my experience many GMs would, far more than would go along with the thieves' quarter - then the player determined an aspect of environment relative to the character over which the character has no influence, namely, the presence of a rock ready-to-hand. Hence director stance.