Failing Forward

[Bedrockgames]

I
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I would also say, though, that the current state of research shows pretty clearly that we are slaves to several of our biases, because the most "dangerous" ones are the ones we don't even realise we have. I thoroughly recommend listening to Dan Kahneman, Timothy Nisbett and Elizabeth Loftus (either their TED talks or the University of Queensland MOOC "Thinking 101"). People who have been studying the workings of the mind their whole lives have discovered that biases and assumptions they don't even realise they have are so ubiquitous that they know they will never escape them. The trick is to learn how to (consciously) live with them.

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I am no expert in psychology or bias so I will leave the current state of research to the experts but I have listened to those Ted talks and this strikes me as an unusual application of what they were talking about as well as an overstatement of their positions. They were talking about serious stuff like the criminal justice system where even a single instance of bias resulting in a wrongful conviction is a huge deal. We're talking about games, where the stakes are low. But in those talks I remember them saying that, for the most part our mental short hand for getting through the day works in most situations and its when those short cuts don't align with reality or logic that bias becomes an issue. For the purpose of running a game or even referring a sporting match, the aim is to get it right enough that all or most participating feel things have been handled as fairly and objectively as possible. A ref who constantly favors one player or makes judgments to suit the outcomes he wants is a slave to his biases. One that can keep those in check, isn't. Now if the biases are so deep and unconscious that no one notices and it doesn't have a discernible impact on people's enjoyment or immersion, then it really isn't an issue. I mean I suppose if you planted a team of psychologists in my game they'd notice little biased that would make a good paper and give some insight into how the human mind works. I think if it isn't affecting play, it isn't an issue and operating at too small a level for us to worry about. For the purposes of play, it is quite possible to be self aware enough that people feel you are as fair and impartial as possible. Also, this is why communication is important. Most GMs have to learn this skill over time by paying attention to how players are responding and seriously listening to concerns they raise. But this isn't really the sort of thing people are worried about when they talk about bias. When it comes to creating a believable world the aim is not a true model of reality, but one that feels real to the players. As long as my biases about how the world operates aligns with what the players feel it will work. Even more, I think as long as the GMs biases are consistent it will create a world that feels Internet sound and real (even if the players have different assumption about how our world operates in reality).

 

[The Crimson Binome]

This nicely encapsulates, for me, where I have real problems with the "GM's world" paradigm. The shop "should" be there according to what metric? It seems to me to be the GM's opinion, based on the usual human-brain cocktail of heuristic and bias, world model and belief. So the cobbler is there and the haberdasher isn't, and the player looking for the former is successful for thinking of something the GM likes whereas the one looking for the latter is SOL because they are looking for something the GM doesn't like. That just doesn't comport with my conception of "fair". Or of "fun". Maybe for others it does - but for me it fails.

The GM builds the world, and the players explore that world via their characters. Maybe the world isn't terribly "realistic", due to those biases you mention, but it is the world that the GM has created based on their personal beliefs and wishes about what would make for an interesting and fun world.

It's kind of like reading a book, or watching a movie, (although obviously much more detailed and interactive). You choose to accept the world, because you want to see what the author puts forth. If you don't like it, then you find some other world from some other author who bothers your sensibilities less.

You can't explore the world if you're the one creating it, though. You can't role-play as a character who makes the best of the world as it is, if you're also the author deciding what's in the world.

We need to have trust that the world is what it is, regardless of what we want it to be, or else there's no way to make any decision about anything. The fundamentals of decision-making all assume that our thought process, itself, cannot change the facts of the world about which we are making our decision!

This is why I would prefer a systematic or perhaps customary "fail forward". The stakes stop being "will you (the player) be able to pursue this plan and see if it works", and become "what number of difficulties will you have to overcome to succeed?" This requires breaking down what the character really needs, and ensure it is available - at a cost to be determined by events and die rolls.

Now you're getting into over-analyzed artificial narrative constructs. "Fail forward" and "what the character really needs" are just labels that you can apply to describe some events, based on how you choose to look at them. How you define a "plan" or a "success" or a "goal" cannot possibly change what you are capable of accomplishing within the world. That's not how an objective simulation works. That's how a story-telling system works.

 

[Umbran]

I would also say, though, that the current state of research shows pretty clearly that we are slaves to several of our biases, because the most "dangerous" ones are the ones we don't even realise we have. I thoroughly recommend listening to Dan Kahneman, Timothy Nisbett and Elizabeth Loftus (either their TED talks or the University of Queensland MOOC "Thinking 101"). People who have been studying the workings of the mind their whole lives have discovered that biases and assumptions they don't even realise they have are so ubiquitous that they know they will never escape them. The trick is to learn how to (consciously) live with them.

With respect, this is a particularly... tortured application of the concept of cognitive bias. Cognitive biases are things that influence how we accept and process data. The concept is really useful in dealing with how we process information that conflicts with our preconceptions, how we make decisions, and how those decisions may not be as based on real data and reason as we may think.

But we shouldn't be invoking cognitive bias on how the GM answers the question, "Is there a florist's shop on the block?" This is not an issue of how the GM accepts, rejects or processes real data - it is ultimately a creative decision, not a failure to process real-world information rationally. It is a fictional world, there is no particular rational process that will tell us what "should" be there.

 

[Janx]

The GM builds the world, and the players explore that world via their characters. Maybe the world isn't terribly "realistic", due to those biases you mention, but it is the world that the GM has created based on their personal beliefs and wishes about what would make for an interesting and fun world.

It's kind of like reading a book, or watching a movie, (although obviously much more detailed and interactive). You choose to accept the world, because you want to see what the author puts forth. If you don't like it, then you find some other world from some other author who bothers your sensibilities less.

You can't explore the world if you're the one creating it, though. You can't role-play as a character who makes the best of the world as it is, if you're also the author deciding what's in the world.

We need to have trust that the world is what it is, regardless of what we want it to be, or else there's no way to make any decision about anything. The fundamentals of decision-making all assume that our thought process, itself, cannot change the facts of the world about which we are making our decision!

Now you're getting into over-analyzed artificial narrative constructs. "Fail forward" and "what the character really needs" are just labels that you can apply to describe some events, based on how you choose to look at them. How you define a "plan" or a "success" or a "goal" cannot possibly change what you are capable of accomplishing within the world. That's not how an objective simulation works. That's how a story-telling system works.

Let's clarify some things here. You said "We need to have trust that the world is what it is, regardless of what we want it to be"

It is more precise to say "Saelorn needs to have trust that the world is what it is, regardless of what Saelorn wants it to be"

What you are espousing as fact is opinion. As a player, I wholly accept that the game world is made up crap based on what my GM thought of and what I might have influenced. And I am always influencing my GM, before, during and after the game and outside of the game.

Your last comment nails it. You are decrying what is and is not an objective simulation vs a story-telling system, as if one is the goal and the other is to be avoided.

Fact is, you and I can both be running D&D 5e games, and for you, it is run as an objective simulation. And for me, I am running a story-telling system. Same game, same rules. Difference is the human making the decisions on what happens next.

I suspect, in such extremes, D&D runs best as a middle-ground. Sometimes it's about objective simulation, sometimes it's about story-telling.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

You are decrying what is and is not an objective simulation vs a story-telling system, as if one is the goal and the other is to be avoided.

Yes, this is exactly what I am saying. Traditional role-playing games are objective simulations. Role-playing is the act of making decisions as your character, not telling stories about your character.

It's fine if you want to collectively tell a story, and if you want some sort of rule-set to guide you, but that should never be mistaken for role-playing. The two are as different as night and day.

 

[Balesir]

I am no expert in psychology or bias so I will leave the current state of research to the experts but I have listened to those Ted talks and this strikes me as an unusual application of what they were talking about as well as an overstatement of their positions. They were talking about serious stuff like the criminal justice system where even a single instance of bias resulting in a wrongful conviction is a huge deal. We're talking about games, where the stakes are low.

The cases where the stakes are high naturally have more impact. But the models being formed don't apply based on impact - they apply to certain types of decision or judgement. And judgements about how "realistic" things in a fantasy world are fit smack in the centre of the area they draw doubts over.

With respect, this is a particularly... tortured application of the concept of cognitive bias. Cognitive biases are things that influence how we accept and process data. The concept is really useful in dealing with how we process information that conflicts with our preconceptions, how we make decisions, and how those decisions may not be as based on real data and reason as we may think.

That was the way they were initially slanted, yes, but I am thinking specifically of the way that what Dan Kahneman has dubbed "System 1 thinking" works - which is arguably the root of many types of cognitive bias. It'll take more time than I really have, but I'll try to explain what I mean a bit, below.

But we shouldn't be invoking cognitive bias on how the GM answers the question, "Is there a florist's shop on the block?" This is not an issue of how the GM accepts, rejects or processes real data - it is ultimately a creative decision, not a failure to process real-world information rationally. It is a fictional world, there is no particular rational process that will tell us what "should" be there.

I should start by saying that it may be a creative decision, but it's not a completely arbitrary one. The choices are not generally expected to be completely uncorrelated or surreal - there is expected to be some sort of unifying pattern to the selections, because there are others involved. The players would have no game to play - no basis for decisions of their own - if the choices were purely arbitrary. Rather than "is there a haberdasher in town?" you might as well ask "is there a gun shop?" or "is there a vacc suit supplier?"

So the model underlying the choices has to be at least to an extent shared or understood by the players. And the general concept of a fantasy-adapted pseudo-medieval society frequently forms the basis of that shared base of assumptions. So, yes, it is a creative decision, but it is formed based on an assumption of some underlying model society, the outline of which is understood, we hope, by all involved.

Making decisions based on such a model requires judgement, or "instinct", both common terms for the operation of "system 1 thinking". This system is exceptionally good at making snap judgements related to survival - threat assessments, fight or flight decisions, mating choices, body movement decisions and a host of others. It is exceptionally poor at estimates of risk or probability, complex assessments involving multiple factors and anything involving any sort of maths (including adding two small numbers together).

As an exercise, here is an easy question:

If Barrack Obama were as tall as he is intelligent, how tall would he be?

Now, I don't need to know your answer - they will likely be very diverse and their implications too political for this venue - but the point I am trying to make is not a political one at all. It is that, even as you finished reading the question, I would be amazed if you didn't already have an answer in mind despite the fact that the question makes no objective sense whatsoever.

Assuming you had an answer, this is a nice example of system 1 thinking. It works by assigning intensities to things (like "intelligence" and "height") and it constantly monitors and assesses the world around us in these terms. The intensity scale it uses is the same for everything, and it translates those intensities (fluent language is another thing system 1 handles) into whatever model is appropriate for the topic at hand. Hence, if crimes are colours, homicide is a deeper red than theft and failing to pay a parking ticket is rose pink, maybe. Note that what is remarkable here is that you have an idea what I am saying.

So, system 1 will use intensities to swiftly, effortlessly and often involuntarily come up with an answer to any question you pose it. Going back to the "is there a haberdasher in town?", it will likely compare <intensity> size of town with <intensity> number of haberdashers in (pseudo-)medieval europe - which is higher? Scale with respect to <intensity> number of cobblers in (pseudo-)medieval europe. Maybe also set an intensity required for the omission of such an establishment from town qualifying as a "mistake"...

Hmm - we begin to see a problem. The question is too complex for an easy, instant answer. How does system 1 cope with this? Actually, it has a very well tried and tested trick. It cheats. If it can't answer a complex, hard question, it finds a simple question that it can answer that is superficially related to the complex question - this is called "substitution" and is implicated in many biases. It crops up all the time. "Which of those cars do you think is faster?" is a question that requires extensive technical knowledge and a consideration of the conditions of various potential tests to fully answer - but we don't have time for that! "Which car is more sporty looking?" is much easier to answer and close enough to form a heuristic for the car's speed if we don't think too hard about it. Voila! Instant answer. Of course, system 2 - the rational, logical part of the brain - could veto this substitution. System 2 has universal veto power. But it's trying to prioritise and resolve a whole load of problems and questions (if you are a typical GM running a game, say) and, besides, it takes way more time and effort than system 1, and it's lazy, so it very often gives heuristics a pass without too much consideration.

So, how does this relate to the haberdasher? Well, the question "what is the probability distribution of the number of haberdashers in a (pseudo-)medieval town of this size and how does that relate to my threshold level for reconsidering my (lack of) placing one here?" is way too hard a question for system 1. It will substitute another, heuristic, question. "How much do I like hats?", maybe. Or - using a very common substitution technique, especially where probabilities are concerned - "how many examples of haberdashers in fairy tales/fantasy novels/history books can I think of off the top of my head?"

Thinking about my own (involuntary) assessment of the question when I first read it, I think "I can think of fairy tales about cobblers, but none about haberdashers" figured in my instinctual, "gut feel" answer to the question. But, there is a problem with this type of heuristic very specifically; it is susceptible to another source of bias, often called "anchoring", or "framing".

Consider for a moment the original question:

"Is there a haberdasher in the town?"

Now consider this one:

"The town's merchants and aldermen must get their fancy, draped hats from somewhere - is there a hatmaker or clothier who deals in hats in town?"

Objectively, these are the same question. But my guess is that the second will garner many more positive responses than the first, because it guides the GM's system 1 to a specific availability heuristic - "how many fancy hats with cloth hanging down beside the face can you think of in (pseudo-)medieval stories, texts and (especially) picture books?" - that is likely to return a lot more hits than tales about haberdashers.

This is how the two key features of system 1 thinking - intensity mapping and substitution - lead to decisions about what is "likely" or "correct" in a fantasy world that are both non-objective and manipulable. But, of course, if the GM sticks rigidly to "how much do I like hats?" as a heuristic, the would-be manipulator is probably still out of luck

I suspect, in such extremes, D&D runs best as a middle-ground. Sometimes it's about objective simulation, sometimes it's about story-telling.

Good response, in general - but I am far from sure that "objective simulation" is even possible, for the reasons just outlined...

 

[Bedrockgames]

The cases where the stakes are high naturally have more impact. But the models being formed don't apply based on impact - they apply to certain types of decision or judgement. And judgements about how "realistic" things in a fantasy world are fit smack in the centre of the area they draw doubts over.
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Again, impact mattered in what they were saying. Because if I recall the Ted talks correctly, one of the key points was most of the time, these mental shortcuts work just fine. They didn't put a number on it, but let's say that is 80 or 90 percent. It is was the remaining 10-20 percent of the times that it was an issue. If the stakes are high, that impact matters a lot and you would want to pay attention to bias because people might enjoy fewer advantages than others, go to jail or even die, as a result of bias. But this is a game, where the GM is trying to make the players feel like they are in a real place. No one is going to go to jail if his biases lead to a slightly inaccurate description of the number of haberdashers in town. All that matters is that the tools he uses to make those judgments, yield results that produce a world that feels real to the players. Impact is immensely important here. What matters is that the players assessment of the GM is he or she is fair and objective. That is what I meant when I said he doesn't have to be a slave to his biases (the comment that initially got us off on this tangent).

And for me this modeling is a lot more about consistency. As long as the GM is consistent in how he or she is making these kinds of calls (whether those judgements are biased or not) the result is a fairly consistent game world.

I don't know I feel like sometimes when you tell people that you like the world in a setting to feel real, you immediately get presented with this straw man that holds up the impossibility of a genuine actual simulation. I guess you could throw your hands up at that, or feel like you have to master the field of cognitive bias before getting behind the GM seat. Personally I think it is usually enough to strive for fairness, objectivity and to try to be self aware enough that you don't make decisions on thing like where you want the adventure to go or the story you are interested in emerging. You can tell us it is impossible, but the fact is many of us have experienced exactly the kind of game we describe. We're not lying about it.

Again, I am not at all familiar with this field of research and I am very, very wary of bringing that kind of research into my game design. If I understood it well enough, perhaps I'd feel differently but I make games, I am not a scientist. The ted talks were interesting to listen to. But they condensed a lot into a short period of time and were generally expressing a particular point of view from one researcher in each instance.

 

[Reinhart]

The two are as different as night and day.

That seems extremely partisan. And an obviously false-dichotomy for those of us that do both.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

That seems extremely partisan. And an obviously false-dichotomy for those of us that do both.

I'm not saying that you can't do both, or that you can't enjoy each for what it is, but you can't do both at the same time. Any time you're making a decision about the world, or about what happens to your character, is an instance where you're not making a decision as your character. You also need to worry that your authorial control doesn't change how the character makes decisions, because that would be meta-gaming, but that's something you could probably figure out with sufficient practice.

I am also saying that I cannot enjoy story-telling, and I find it highly disruptive to an RPG. That's why I'm not saying that everyone should avoid playing FATE - for all I know, they might actually enjoy it - I'm just saying that it's primarily a story-telling game rather than an RPG. Conflating the two does a disservice to both.

 

[Reinhart]

[MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION]: I get what you're saying. And I agree that actor and author-stance aren't something that comfortably intermix. But when you essentially suggest that the games that Pelgrane and Evil Hat publish aren't RPG's then I think you've got way too narrow a definition of role-playing. This is a point I think I can respectfully disagree about and move on with though.