I think the stances are generally bogus, because they're only useful in very clear cases -- most of the time people play in multiple stances, either sequentially or even simultaneously.
To quote again from
the same Ron Edwards essay:
Stance is very labile during play, with people shifting among the stances frequently and even without deliberation or reflection.
The only time I recall seeing stance being fetishised is by certain posters who seem to be trying to prove something about the purity of their RPGing by showing they play in actor stance.
I think that director stance and actor stance (or author stance, for that matter) can overlap in a moment of play, and this can be seen in the way they're described: whereas actor and author stance are about two different ways of deciding what a character does,
director stance isn't characterised in terms of action declaration at all, but as "determin[ing] aspects of the environment relative to the character in some fashion, entirely separately from the character's knowledge or ability to influence events". This can clearly be part of, or a consequence of, an action declaration ("the player has not only determined the character's actions, but the context, timing, and spatial circumstances of those actions") but that leaves open the question of whether the action declaration itself was undertaken in actor or author stance.
The main sort of example of director + actor stance that I'm familiar with is when the player of a religous character declares an action as being undertaken in the name of or at the behest of his/her deity, and - due to the way the table understands authorial power in respect of deities - the actor stance action declaratoin also makes it true, in the fiction, that the PC is doing the deity's will. Some "Uncle Elmo" scenarios may exhibit the same sort of logical structure.
Edwards does offer some conjectures about the connection between stance and GNS priorities:
I think it's very reasonable to say that specific stances are more common in some modes/goals of play. Historically, Author stance seems the most common or at least decidedly present at certain points for Gamist and Narrativist play, and Director stance seems to be a rarer add-on in those modes. Actor stance seems the most common for Simulationist play, although a case could be made for Author and Director stance being present during character creation in this mode. . .
Again, speaking historically rather than by definitions,
*A Gamist approach to Stances usually involves preserving the Author-power of Pawn Stance in competitive situations, such that the player is not hampered in the range of possible options.
*A Narrativist approach to Stances usually involves keeping Actor Stance confined to limited instances, such that Author and Director Stances may generate a lot of metagame impact on the storyline.
*A Simulationist approach to Stances usually involves designating when Actor Stance, the default, may be exited.
I'm personally not sure these conjectures are true. As I expalined upthread, when using a fairly standard scene-framing approach, if the GM is doing his/her job then a player in actor stance should find that "story now" is the result. (Of course, this same approach requires the GM to adopt author stance rather than actor stance in the play of NPCs, but stance as Edwards is using it is really about non-GM participants and their "player character.)
I think pawn stance also has a range of functions outside of the gamist context Edwards suggests. [MENTION=6972053]Numidius[/MENTION] gave an example upthread. A different sort of example occurred in my last Traveller session, where a player with a wealthy PC opted to liquidate assets to pay for the psionic training of an impecunious PC, because the player of the wealthy PC thought it would be too harsh for the player of the poor one to miss out on the opportunity, given its importance to the player and centrality to the character concept. Maybe this will "evolve" from pawn to actor stance as the consequences of the debt are explored in play, but to date it really is pawn stance.
(In some other systems this sort of issue could probably be resolved mechanically - eg some sort of social conflict either between the PCs or between the PC and the Psionics Institute - but Traveller simply doesn't have that sort of mechanical tech.)
I'm also not persuaded that actor stance is the default in simulationist play. It can certainly be important, and as I've posted upthread and as [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] has responded to, one function of the move to setting/social context in games like RQ and C&S is to make it possible. But in my experience author stance is also pretty important in simulationist play for some of the same reasons as in classic D&D dungeoneering (and as are seen in the RQ text I quoted above) - for keeping the party together, for managing intraparty conflicts (I've frequently had players decide that their PCs use less force in hostility against other PCs than they would use against NPCs, precisely because of the real-world priority of not completely hosing another player's character), for not "straying" from the bits of the setting the GM has mapped out, for keeping on the module storyline, etc.
But I certainly agree with Edwards that stance is very labile in play.
pemerton said:
Given the relative thinness of both character mental states, and setting/situation information, effective actor stance requires some degree of alignment between player (in PC build) and GM (in establishing situations). The most obvious contemporary form of this is some type of "scene-framed" play. But the earliest "traditional" form is setting- and/or metaplot-heavy play, in which the character's connection to/location in the setting and/or metaplot allows the player to proceed from PC mental states within the context of the GM's set-up.
Right, this was what I attempted to achieve by making an extremely detailed campaign with a large amount of action spelled out ahead of time, so that the PCs would be constantly engaged with the evolving story. Huge amount of work for what turns out to be only a limited amount of gain. It was a good campaign, but really because it just went off those rails pretty fast. The prep wasn't totally wasted, and was fun, but I would never take that option again.
I've done the setting thing, and it took a while (as in, years!) to work out - by refelection on my actual play - that it was the use of setting elements in framing (GM responding to players' hooks) rather than the integration of PCs into the setting (players responding to GM hooks) that was really doing the work.
