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Dealing with agency and retcon (in semi sandbox)
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<blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 9072228" data-attributes="member: 6696971"><p>Appreciate the thorough response. Let me say a few things and see if I can't clarify some of the potential daylight between us.</p><p></p><p>Take three different contests/games: Texas Hold 'Em, American Football, Mixed Martial Arts. Each of these have elements of pattern-seeking and pattern-disguising along with substrates of best practices/analytics that undergird play. So what you're trying to do is (a) deploy best practices both situationally and across the throughline of play while (b) sussing out what your competition is trying to do and (c) disguising what you're trying to do to your competition. For instance:</p><p></p><p style="margin-left: 20px">The most successful NFL coordinators will (a) follow an Expected Points Added (EPA is a measure of success which defines the value of each play by the effect it has on the offense's likelihood to score) "script" in their play-calling sequencing (both situationally and broadly) while (b) simultaneously self-scouting to understand their established tendencies such that they can (c) "tendency-break" as much as possible but especially in key situations. </p><p></p><p>Now, trade out the particulars for the game, and an analogous paradigm emerges in Texas Hold 'Em and Mixed Martial Arts. </p><p></p><p>Ok, so. What I am saying is the following:</p><p></p><p>* Any given sequence of play will reverberate into the next. Put another way, gamestates are not independent from one another.</p><p></p><p>* Because of the way humans digest and pass along information, both in the experience of <em>what happened</em> and in the subsequent conveyance of<em> what happened</em>, any given sequence of play will have an associated "tale." That tale will involve situation and characters. The individuals involved in the play experience will have attendant impacts to their cognitive states (and possibly physical states) based on the collisions and resolutions of sequences. These state-changes will create a momentum/arc/swell to play that is captured and catalogued by both participants and attendees/audience.</p><p></p><p>* The accretion of all of those sequences, because they are not independent from one another, will develop into a discernible throughline. This throughline will be both experienced first-hand by the participants and witnessed by attendees/audience members. The situations, characters, and throughline that emerge as a result will have a tendency toward being catalogued as "legacy-defining" and achieve iconic status in proportion to the stakes, exposure, novelty of play, and embedded "storylines."</p><p></p><p>[HR][/HR]</p><p></p><p>Ok, hopefully that is all clear. So what I'm saying is:</p><p></p><p>* Gamestate and its changes are not independent from one another.</p><p></p><p>* Participant and audience members cannot help but capture the events (situation, characters, throughline) in a way that yields "story."</p><p></p><p>* The participants involved will experience the magnitude of events cognitively (and possibly physically) and this will impact limbic function and prefrontal cortex function. They will capture and "feel" the unfolding events to one degree or another. The best competitors will be able to harness these "feelings" successfully while lesser competitors will wilt as the moments and arc of play weighs upon them. The former will sense their agency bulwarked while the latter will sense their agency stolen from them.</p><p></p><p>* Just like gamestate is not independent from other gamestates, participants and attendees experience and witness the events before them in a way that is dependent on these gamestate relationships and maps the sequences of play and its throughline to a phenomenon of "story."</p><p></p><p>Hopefully that makes sense as I want to lay this out as a foundation for subsequent conversation on TTRPG gamestate: story relationships.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Manbearcat, post: 9072228, member: 6696971"] Appreciate the thorough response. Let me say a few things and see if I can't clarify some of the potential daylight between us. Take three different contests/games: Texas Hold 'Em, American Football, Mixed Martial Arts. Each of these have elements of pattern-seeking and pattern-disguising along with substrates of best practices/analytics that undergird play. So what you're trying to do is (a) deploy best practices both situationally and across the throughline of play while (b) sussing out what your competition is trying to do and (c) disguising what you're trying to do to your competition. For instance: [INDENT]The most successful NFL coordinators will (a) follow an Expected Points Added (EPA is a measure of success which defines the value of each play by the effect it has on the offense's likelihood to score) "script" in their play-calling sequencing (both situationally and broadly) while (b) simultaneously self-scouting to understand their established tendencies such that they can (c) "tendency-break" as much as possible but especially in key situations. [/INDENT] Now, trade out the particulars for the game, and an analogous paradigm emerges in Texas Hold 'Em and Mixed Martial Arts. Ok, so. What I am saying is the following: * Any given sequence of play will reverberate into the next. Put another way, gamestates are not independent from one another. * Because of the way humans digest and pass along information, both in the experience of [I]what happened[/I] and in the subsequent conveyance of[I] what happened[/I], any given sequence of play will have an associated "tale." That tale will involve situation and characters. The individuals involved in the play experience will have attendant impacts to their cognitive states (and possibly physical states) based on the collisions and resolutions of sequences. These state-changes will create a momentum/arc/swell to play that is captured and catalogued by both participants and attendees/audience. * The accretion of all of those sequences, because they are not independent from one another, will develop into a discernible throughline. This throughline will be both experienced first-hand by the participants and witnessed by attendees/audience members. The situations, characters, and throughline that emerge as a result will have a tendency toward being catalogued as "legacy-defining" and achieve iconic status in proportion to the stakes, exposure, novelty of play, and embedded "storylines." [HR][/HR] Ok, hopefully that is all clear. So what I'm saying is: * Gamestate and its changes are not independent from one another. * Participant and audience members cannot help but capture the events (situation, characters, throughline) in a way that yields "story." * The participants involved will experience the magnitude of events cognitively (and possibly physically) and this will impact limbic function and prefrontal cortex function. They will capture and "feel" the unfolding events to one degree or another. The best competitors will be able to harness these "feelings" successfully while lesser competitors will wilt as the moments and arc of play weighs upon them. The former will sense their agency bulwarked while the latter will sense their agency stolen from them. * Just like gamestate is not independent from other gamestates, participants and attendees experience and witness the events before them in a way that is dependent on these gamestate relationships and maps the sequences of play and its throughline to a phenomenon of "story." Hopefully that makes sense as I want to lay this out as a foundation for subsequent conversation on TTRPG gamestate: story relationships. [/QUOTE]
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