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.
pemerton said:
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.
<snip>
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.