Who wants to talk theory?

[pemerton]

Immersive Persona: At least one player takes on the role of a specific character, making decisions "as if" that character.

I want to describe the immersion experience. Particularly on a site that focuses on D&D, you have to have that or you're on a canoe without a paddle. Meta is important. But the experience of the imaginary world ("Exploration") is important, intrinsically, and not simply to fulfill meta requirements.

I don't find that these identify any single feature of roleplaying.

Some reasons why:

*Making decisions "as if" a character can mean making decisions subject to pre-determined constraints of character personality (so-called actor stance) or making decisions which are determinative of character personality (so-called author stance). All that has been excluded here is pawn stance which, as skeptic said in another thread, is inimical to RPGing.

*But in terms of the "immersion experience" actor and author are quite different - one is about "What would my guy do?", the other is about "What sort of guy should I be creating here?"

*Each is therefore prone to different pathologies - actor stance to railroading (eg the GM says that the PC can't do that because it would violate alignment), author stance to inconsistency of story, or to gamist exploitation of a system not designed to withstand the rigours of gamist play.

*Done well, both make experience of the imaginary world important. But it does not follow that its importance has the same nature in each case.

 

[pemerton]

Freedom Principle: Any possible action that could be taken by a character can be adjudicated within the immersive framework of the game.

<snip>

There are two stages of the game experience, design and immersion. Design is the meta-game stage. Design includes the creation of a world, objects, characters, and dramatic trajectories. The goal of design is to enable the Freedom Principle. Immersion is the state of experience participating in the game. Because a game takes place in an imaginary world, the goal of immersion is to engage the imaginary elements of the game.

The two elements can occur simultaneously, but design must always precede immersion.

I find both parts of the quoted passage difficult.

As to the freedom principle: that sets a very harsh threshold of adequacy for a game system. Just a couple of examples: D&D has no rule for adjudicating the consequences of a character's self-inflicted non-lethal wounds (eg in order to try to avoid conscription, or to persuade another that one was attacked). Nor does it have any rule for adjudicating an attempt by a character to disable another with a debilitating but not-immediately-lethal stomach wound.

Off the top of my head I can't think of any RPG that satisfies your freedom principle. Most depend upon an explicit or implicit meta-principle along the lines of "Don't attempt actions of type X because this game doesn't handle those."

As to the two stages: Is the spending of a Fate Point in order to gain certain narrative rights (OGL Conan is one game that permits this) design (ie world creation) or immersion (particpating in the game). What about a game like Runquest, in which character creation and development is itself metagame free and an integral part of play?

Your principles and distinctions seem to presuppose that character and world building are almost entirely metagame processes, and that action resolution is an infinitely-flexible non-metagame process, but that presupposition does not hold good for a good many RPGs.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

I'd like to complicate the "Suspension of disbelief" criteria, perhaps in route to complicating the immersion description.

Personally, I'd argue that suspension of disbelief harms the gaming experience. A passive movie audience suspends disbelief, a participatory gaming player should not.

At the very least I'd say that it seems too perscriptive a criteria for game design. Plenty of games and great works of fiction fail to operate on the criteria of suspension of disbelief without loosing functionality. Saying its a necessary criteria of game design ignore the possibility that you could design for an audience that doesn't play with regard to 'SoD.'

I could make a more rigorous argument on this point, but in terms of the terms already under discussion I think that what's required is a more primitive term. Audiences who are not playing with regard to 'SoD' still need some things that audiences who play with regard to 'SoD' will also need. The criteria needs to operate at that level.

I think this potential modification of critera impacts the immersive axis in that it might better enable that axis to account for players who view the immersive elements as permissions/constraints rather than as experiences/perspectives.

 

[pawsplay]

*But in terms of the "immersion experience" actor and author are quite different - one is about "What would my guy do?", the other is about "What sort of guy should I be creating here?"

They are the same. Both are ways of deciding, "What does my character do next?" That is a decision-making step. Forgespeak makes a distinction between author and actor, I do not. Both the ways of speaking you described are making a design design, and both are anticipating an experience.

*Each is therefore prone to different pathologies - actor stance to railroading (eg the GM says that the PC can't do that because it would violate alignment), author stance to inconsistency of story, or to gamist exploitation of a system not designed to withstand the rigours of gamist play.

Actor stance can also lead to inconsistency of story when, oh yeah, they discover the inhabited world is not interpreted the same by all participants. Authorial stance can also lead to railroading, "I wanted to tell the epic tale of how we traveled west, but you have forced our characters east," to use a facile example.

*Done well, both make experience of the imaginary world important. But it does not follow that its importance has the same nature in each case.

In every case, you have double vision, what I call the envelope of experience. Separating author from actor is artificial, demonstrably incorrect, and problematic.

 

[pawsplay]

I find both parts of the quoted passage difficult.

As to the freedom principle: that sets a very harsh threshold of adequacy for a game system. Just a couple of examples: D&D has no rule for adjudicating the consequences of a character's self-inflicted non-lethal wounds (eg in order to try to avoid conscription, or to persuade another that one was attacked). Nor does it have any rule for adjudicating an attempt by a character to disable another with a debilitating but not-immediately-lethal stomach wound.

Off the top of my head I can't think of any RPG that satisfies your freedom principle. Most depend upon an explicit or implicit meta-principle along the lines of "Don't attempt actions of type X because this game doesn't handle those."

D&D meets the test handily. You can of course attempt to cause a self-inflicted non-lethal wound. It's up to the DM to adjudicate the action. There is a rule for this situation: in the absence of specific rules, the DM decides how to proceed.

Not only is this a basic principle of RPGs, it is central to the design of rules-lite systems. And in any system, you can point to a hiearchical level of resolution that begins with "Use the rule in the book that covers this situation properly" to "use something similar to the game's general mechanics" in the middle to "GM fiat" at the other end.

As an example of two games that do NOT fulfill this requirement:

1) The Baron Munchausen Roleplaying Game. Despite the name, this is not a traditional role-playing game, but a structured storytelling game where players role-play. Just as an example, you cannot decide to poison your rivals, or even commit suicide. It is outside the bounds of game, not a permitted action, and there is no GM if you wanted to "house-rule" it.

2) Another example is City of Heroes, the MMORPG. No matter now annoying the hedges in Perez PArk, you cannot simply bowl through them with super strength or burn them down with fire. You cannot even move through them with Plant Control. No, the only way to deal with them is to wander through the annoying maze, or get a friend within the maze to teleport you in.

As to the two stages: Is the spending of a Fate Point in order to gain certain narrative rights (OGL Conan is one game that permits this) design (ie world creation) or immersion (particpating in the game).

You had some immersive experience that contributed to your decision, you make the design decision, then you immerse yourself in the results. Design-immersion is circular, very much a chicken-and-egg scenario. The only non-immersive design decisions are made before anything is done. As you can see, this isn't the best place to talk about a Fate Point.

Fate Points are more relevant to Story, specifically to decision-making. My assumption is that both meta and immersive reasons contribute to this decision.

What about a game like Runquest, in which character creation and development is itself metagame free and an integral part of play?

What about it? I do take issue with "metagame free" there is no such thing. If you create a character to play, you obviously have an intention as to how you plan to play them.

Your principles and distinctions seem to presuppose that character and world building are almost entirely metagame processes, and that action resolution is an infinitely-flexible non-metagame process, but that presupposition does not hold good for a good many RPGs.

I reject both presuppositions, actually. In my view, there are no entirely metagame processes, except those that precede play, and no resolution process that does not entail metagame.

 

[pawsplay]

I'd like to complicate the "Suspension of disbelief" criteria, perhaps in route to complicating the immersion description.

Personally, I'd argue that suspension of disbelief harms the gaming experience. A passive movie audience suspends disbelief, a participatory gaming player should not.

I'll argue the opposite. The difference between "I attack with my longsword" and "I am going to roll a twenty-sided die and add a number to it and tell you the result" is suspension of disbelief. The senses disbelieve in the longsword, you suspend that disbelief.



At the very least I'd say that it seems too perscriptive a criteria for game design. Plenty of games and great works of fiction fail to operate on the criteria of suspension of disbelief without loosing functionality.
[/quote]

Name one.

Saying its a necessary criteria of game design ignore the possibility that you could design for an audience that doesn't play with regard to 'SoD.'

I am deeply skeptical, but I would like to hear your argument.

I could make a more rigorous argument on this point, but in terms of the terms already under discussion I think that what's required is a more primitive term. Audiences who are not playing with regard to 'SoD' still need some things that audiences who play with regard to 'SoD' will also need. The criteria needs to operate at that level.

I think this potential modification of critera impacts the immersive axis in that it might better enable that axis to account for players who view the immersive elements as permissions/constraints rather than as experiences/perspectives.

How so? I cannot fathom how immersive elements are permissions/constraints rather than acts of imagination (visualization, creation of imaginary phemenona, sympathy, etc).

 

[pawsplay]

Re: pawn stance. Pawn stance is not inimical to role-playing. Allow me.

The Ron says:

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.


So there is really only one stance: author stance. Based on my real world priorities, I might either determine a character's decisions and actions using only knowledge and personality of the character, or I might define their actions, include environmental elements that affect their actions, separately from their awareness. I could state my character has a heretofore unknown psychic power and declare it activates, I could say, "Budd would never do that", or whatever. It's all authorial. In my model, there is only authorial stance.

The distinction between authorial stance and pawn stance is meaningless. "Wormface stabs the innkeeper." "Why?" "That's the kind of guy he is." Or even better:

"Wormface stabs the innkeeper."
"Why?"
"Because a being outside his reality that is all powerful dictates his actions."

So in reality, all stances are author stance. Or all are Pawn stance, but I'm not going to denigrate other people's choices. I might view the random slaughter of innkeepers as abhorrent, but it's integral to the RPG experience that such freedom exist for those who require it.

 

[pemerton]

D&D meets the test handily. You can of course attempt to cause a self-inflicted non-lethal wound. It's up to the DM to adjudicate the action. There is a rule for this situation: in the absence of specific rules, the DM decides how to proceed.

OK. So is there no difference, then, between playing RQ, playing RM, playing 3E, playing HeroWars or playing AD&D, because they all have a GM who can adjudicate actions that the rules don't otherwise cover, and they all have some text (more-or-less facile as the case may be) telling the GM to do this?

Classic Traveller (especially when one includes Book 7:Merchant Prince) has fairly extensive rules for trading. Rolemaster also has such rules - less extensive, but they are there in Character and Campaign Law (and amplified in ...& a 10' pole). AD&D 1st edition has none beyond some suggested prices of certain tradeable items in the DMG. Tunnels and Trolls 5th edition has none (the price lists only cover weapons, armour and similar "adventuring items").

Are you asserting that all these games nevertheless equally satisfy your "freedom principle" in respect of players who want their PCs to become merchants? Are you asserting that if players wanted to play a trading RPG game there would be nothing to choose between AD&D, RM, Traveller or any other GM-adjudicated RPG?

If that is what you are asserting, I find it bizarre. On the other hand, if you accept that different games are better or worse at facilitating different sorts of activities by the PCs, then I think you are pretty close to conceding that the "freedom principle" isn't satisfied - because the difference between "doesn't handle it well" and "doesn't handle it" is a pretty thin one. (And "handles it well with houserules" is really just the same as "doesn't handle it" conjoined with "I'm an amateur game designer".)

 

[pemerton]

They are the same. Both are ways of deciding, "What does my character do next?" That is a decision-making step. Forgespeak makes a distinction between author and actor, I do not. Both the ways of speaking you described are making a design design, and both are anticipating an experience.

Re: pawn stance. Pawn stance is not inimical to role-playing.

<snip>

So there is really only one stance: author stance. Based on my real world priorities, I might either determine a character's decisions and actions using only knowledge and personality of the character, or I might define their actions, include environmental elements that affect their actions, separately from their awareness. I could state my character has a heretofore unknown psychic power and declare it activates, I could say, "Budd would never do that", or whatever. It's all authorial. In my model, there is only authorial stance.

<snip>

So in reality, all stances are author stance. Or all are Pawn stance, but I'm not going to denigrate other people's choices. I might view the random slaughter of innkeepers as abhorrent, but it's integral to the RPG experience that such freedom exist for those who require it.

Many distinctions are apt to be denied, as they do not individuate natural kinds. I don't know that anyone has ever asserted that author stance and actor stance are natural kinds, so of course the distinction can be denied.

Likewise one might deny the distinction between voluntary and coereced action, as both flow from a conscious decision by the agent. Nevertheless common sense draws a distinction, and it is the job of theory to accomodate, analyse and explain that distinction.

Actor stance and author stance are not natural kinds, but they do mark a difference in play which is quite salient, at least to me. I have played games (especially 2nd ed AD&D, also CoC and Pendragon) in which what counts as good play is ensuring that my portrayal of my PC matches the various descriptors on my character sheet. This is the logic of prescriptive alignment mechanics, of personality flaw mechanics, and so on.

I have also played games in which what counts as good play is making my PC do things that are interesting or relevant to the players at the table, and in which part of the skill of RPing is weaving a plausible or entertaining narrative around those choices that presents the PC as a coherent (if evolving) persona.

These are (at least to me) different RPing experiences. One thing I like about the GNS lexicon is that gives me a handy vocabulary for capturing that difference.

As to pawn stance: this has nothing to do with slaughtering innkeepers, which can easily be rationalised in author stance ("My guy is a psychopath" or, as you suggested, "That's just the kind of guy I am.") It's to do with whether or not one is roleplaying. How do you distinguish a tactical wargame or boardgame from an RPG in which all the play is in pawn stance?

Actor stance can also lead to inconsistency of story when, oh yeah, they discover the inhabited world is not interpreted the same by all participants.

I don't understand what you mean here. Are you talking about differing interpretations of the GM's narration, or differing presuppositions about what elements exist in the gameworld? If so, that seems to have little to do with actor stance. Or are you talking about differing interpretations of the mechanics that dictate the constraints of acting (eg different interpretations of alignment)? I'm not sure I'd describe that as an inconsistency in story - it seems more like a metagame problem to me.

Authorial stance can also lead to railroading, "I wanted to tell the epic tale of how we traveled west, but you have forced our characters east," to use a facile example.

Again I don't quite follow. What you describe is not an example of author stance - "I wanted to tell the epic tale of how we traveled west, but you have forced our characters east" is not a piece of narration intended to explain and retroactively rationalise a PC's action.

In every case, you have double vision, what I call the envelope of experience. Separating author from actor is artificial, demonstrably incorrect, and problematic.

I don't understand your metaphors of "double vision" and "the envelope of experience". Nor am I separating author from actor. I'm simply distinguishing two different approaches to the relationship between PC personality and roleplaying: Is the personality pregiven such that good RPing consists in faithfully reproducing that personality in play? Or is the personality up for grabs such that good RPing consists in finding clever, plausible, entertaining, meaningful, etc - insert normative adjective of choice - rationalisations of behaviour which is the result of a decision made during the course of play for reasons quite independent of the PC's hitherto-revealed personality?

Btw, you seem to have an image of me as some sort of peddler of evil Forge anti-D&Disms who is all superior about his preference for narrativist play. I've been playing RPGs for over 25 years. Like many, I started with D&D and then AD&D. I was able to diagnose the unsatisfactory elements of AD&D (especially 2nd ed) without any help from the Forge (which I think didn't exist in the late 80s and early 90s) - discussions in articles and the Forum in Dragon magazine, especially about alignment, plus my own play experiences, did the job.

I discovered the Forge a bit over 4 years ago following a link from an RPGnet review, and found a terminology and structure of thought that was new to me, but quite helpful - in some cases even illuminating - in explaining and interpreting many of my own experiences playing RPGs. And its practical utility was first made clear to me in various discussions on the ICE message boards around 18 months ago about the then-pending but now-postponed RM revision. My sense of its practical utility has more recently been reinforced by the discussions on these message boards around the new edition of D&D.

I don't know how much you care about persuading me (or others, like Skeptic) that the Forge analysis of RPGs is unhelpful. But if you do want to do that, you're not going to do so by telling me that I don't understand my own experiences, or that my perception of them has been tainted by the Forge. You're going to have to offer some sort of conceptual framework for thinking about my experiences that offers more insight into them than the Forge framework has done. And that framework will have to respond to and explain perceptions of salient differences in play, not deny those differences.

 

[pawsplay]

Are you asserting that all these games nevertheless equally satisfy your "freedom principle" in respect of players who want their PCs to become merchants?

Correct. RM, 3E, HeroWars, and AD&D are all role-playing games.

Are you asserting that if players wanted to play a trading RPG game there would be nothing to choose between AD&D, RM, Traveller or any other GM-adjudicated RPG?

No, not any more than stating a dog is a mammal and has approximately four legs means that all dogs are equally suitable for all purposes.

If that is what you are asserting, I find it bizarre. On the other hand, if you accept that different games are better or worse at facilitating different sorts of activities by the PCs, then I think you are pretty close to conceding that the "freedom principle" isn't satisfied - because the difference between "doesn't handle it well" and "doesn't handle it" is a pretty thin one. (And "handles it well with houserules" is really just the same as "doesn't handle it" conjoined with "I'm an amateur game designer".)

The freedom principle is only a criterion for distinguishing whether something is, in fact, a role-playing game. Whether a given game is a good game, in general or for a specific purpose, might depend partly on how it facillitates those kinds of activities, but the principle is not itself any kind of measure or scale, except insofar as a game might straddle the definition itself.