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More DMing analysis from Lewis Pulsipher
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<blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 6340730" data-attributes="member: 6696971"><p>Thanks for checking in and good post!</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I've seen you post this on several occasions and I think there is a communication or understanding breakdown of what people are saying when they're referring to the issues with abstraction. I'll try another angle.</p><p></p><p>There are two main issues at work. I'm going to define them:</p><p></p><p>1) Immersion - The capacity of players to perceive the emotional, mental and sensory experience of their characters.</p><p></p><p>2) Player Agency - The capacity of players within a gaming construct to act independently and to make their own free, informed choices.</p><p></p><p>I hope it is clear that the two can be exclusive to one another. Player agency can manifest in the extreme in a wargame setting where the players are entirely making their free, informed choices from Pawn Stance, bereft of immersion. A player can be immersed fully in their character's emotional, mental, and sensory experience even as their GM suspends the action resolution mechanics, and thus the player's agency, as they feel is required to fashion the game after their metaplot inclinations.</p><p></p><p>So, given the above, when folks talk about abstraction being problematic to process simulation (contrasted with genre simulation - high concept sim), they're referring to precisely what Balesir is speaking on in his above post; the 2nd and 3rd order effects/circumstances inherent to complex systems <strong><em>from which informed actors derive their decisions</em></strong>. They're considering these things within the confines of (1) and (2) above. </p><p></p><p>To put it another way, one person may have a shallow understanding of how something works (such as swordplay). They may use "common sense" (1st order coupling of cause and effect - which is likely to miss an enormous number of, possibly imperative, parameters but the data is smoothed enough such that the person's judgement doesn't become unbounded, sometimes leading to truly absurd experiences) or they may use "genre logic" to underwrite the sense that they make of what has transpired at the table. Good enough for them. They feel that they are informed because their capacity to perceive/access the mental/emotional/sensory information of their character is sufficient and, as such, their decisions are informed and of their own volition. </p><p></p><p>However, other folks may have a much deeper understanding of what is underway and the machinery that makes it so. As an actor looking for process-simulation and undertaking a decision, it is all but impossible to "unlearn" what you know and settle back into "common sense" or "genre logic" perspectives. You're looking for very specific information, much of it 2nd and 3rd order, to empower your decision-points. You've been running your own subconscious permutations in real life from this perspective for far too long. Without requisite granularity, your capacity to perceive the emotional/mental state and sensory information of your character is blunted. Without those inputs, your ability to make informed, free choices is rendered obsolete. You now experience neither immersion nor agency. And that is because of abstraction. Hence, <em><strong>abstraction, and the intentional information loss inherent to it, causes play to become jarringly unrealistic for you.</strong></em></p><p></p><p>That is, of course, if you are (a) particularly learned in a field, (b) of a particular mental/emotional bent, and (c) looking for the kind of simulation of process which underwrites your own mental processing.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Manbearcat, post: 6340730, member: 6696971"] Thanks for checking in and good post! I've seen you post this on several occasions and I think there is a communication or understanding breakdown of what people are saying when they're referring to the issues with abstraction. I'll try another angle. There are two main issues at work. I'm going to define them: 1) Immersion - The capacity of players to perceive the emotional, mental and sensory experience of their characters. 2) Player Agency - The capacity of players within a gaming construct to act independently and to make their own free, informed choices. I hope it is clear that the two can be exclusive to one another. Player agency can manifest in the extreme in a wargame setting where the players are entirely making their free, informed choices from Pawn Stance, bereft of immersion. A player can be immersed fully in their character's emotional, mental, and sensory experience even as their GM suspends the action resolution mechanics, and thus the player's agency, as they feel is required to fashion the game after their metaplot inclinations. So, given the above, when folks talk about abstraction being problematic to process simulation (contrasted with genre simulation - high concept sim), they're referring to precisely what Balesir is speaking on in his above post; the 2nd and 3rd order effects/circumstances inherent to complex systems [B][I]from which informed actors derive their decisions[/I][/B]. They're considering these things within the confines of (1) and (2) above. To put it another way, one person may have a shallow understanding of how something works (such as swordplay). They may use "common sense" (1st order coupling of cause and effect - which is likely to miss an enormous number of, possibly imperative, parameters but the data is smoothed enough such that the person's judgement doesn't become unbounded, sometimes leading to truly absurd experiences) or they may use "genre logic" to underwrite the sense that they make of what has transpired at the table. Good enough for them. They feel that they are informed because their capacity to perceive/access the mental/emotional/sensory information of their character is sufficient and, as such, their decisions are informed and of their own volition. However, other folks may have a much deeper understanding of what is underway and the machinery that makes it so. As an actor looking for process-simulation and undertaking a decision, it is all but impossible to "unlearn" what you know and settle back into "common sense" or "genre logic" perspectives. You're looking for very specific information, much of it 2nd and 3rd order, to empower your decision-points. You've been running your own subconscious permutations in real life from this perspective for far too long. Without requisite granularity, your capacity to perceive the emotional/mental state and sensory information of your character is blunted. Without those inputs, your ability to make informed, free choices is rendered obsolete. You now experience neither immersion nor agency. And that is because of abstraction. Hence, [I][B]abstraction, and the intentional information loss inherent to it, causes play to become jarringly unrealistic for you.[/B][/I] That is, of course, if you are (a) particularly learned in a field, (b) of a particular mental/emotional bent, and (c) looking for the kind of simulation of process which underwrites your own mental processing. [/QUOTE]
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