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Message: <blockquote data-quote="thefutilist" data-source="post: 9569661" data-attributes="member: 7044566">I'll give it a try but a lot of what I'm going to talk about is upstream of the thread topic so we don't get to social mechanics until much later, if at all because it might become obvious where the differences lie, I don't know.Also I wish I had more PG examples but unfortunately I'm pulling off other stuff I've written to people and it would be a lot of work to redo everything from the ground up.Here's an example of some roleplay. I'll be using the names Jim and Alex to refer to the actual players and whatever character names to refer to the characters.The situation is: A failing girl group nearing the end of a disastrous tour, they have three dates left. The manager is the owner of the company and it consists of, well just him. You have a run down dance studio / office in the bad part of town. Play is going to take place exclusively in the studio over the course of maybe a week.What we're playing to find out: Whether the group carries on or not (across the whole game, not just in this scene)The players (in this scene) are Alex: Cindy, Jim: Bob.Cindy approaches Bob and says that she wants to try out her songs they're not as poppy as the ones they brought from the song writer but they're more expressive and have more personal meaning.Bob says to Cindy: This isn’t about art it’s about money. Artists starve. Yada yada. Besides I know what I’m doing.Cindy says: well you don’t know what you’re doing because we aren’t getting anywhere.Bob lights a cigarette looking a little annoyed.Bob: Rome wasn’t built in a dayCindy: We’re not building Rome at allBob: I’m the manager here, you want to perform your own songs, form your own group.Alex narrates Cindy pulling down the blinds.Cindy: Just these next three shows and...I’ll CENSORED. (1)Bob: You can CENSORED if you like but we’re not playing your songs at those shows.So the first thing to notice is that this is a bit garbled. I left it that way because a lot of roleplay is like that and I didn't want to give a super polished example.So just talking about the fiction here. We have this sequence of events.We learn that Cindy is a song writer and her art is important to her (or something like that)Then we learn that Bob prioritises money over art AND he's exerting his authority over Cindy, or doesn't like his expertise questioned (or something like that. It could be a bit confusing)Cindy questions his authority and Bob gets annoyed, this results in Bob flat out using his authority to shut Cindy down.Cindy changes tact and we find out that Bob priorities money? something over what Cindy is offering.INTERPRETATIONSo as an audience member, let's say someone else sitting at the table and watching these people roleplay. There's stuff we don't know and some stuff we have to infer.We know Cindy values getting her songs played over her body but we can't say exactly why. Like is it because she just wants her art to connect with people, is it because she thinks they'd be more successful playing her songs (she seems to think that), but what does that bring her, does success equal money and fame or just a broader platform.We know that Cindy's escalated across a moral line but we don't know how much of a big deal that is. It might be barely a big deal at all, if Cindy loves sex and finds Bob attractive then it's not that much of a big deal. If she's in a committed relationship then we find out that her art means more than the relationship. We just don't know.One way we can look at the scene is like this:Cindy uses three different methods to persuade Bob and the order she uses them and what she expects probably says a lot about her priorities and world view.She asksShe appeals to Bob's need for money via attacking his expertise/authority.She appeals to Bob's horniness.Because stuff is sparse and we don't know a lot, if we frame this in terms of conflicts between priorities we have.Cindy ask appeals to Bobs mutual sense of artistic appreciation maybe.Bob's conflict is 'love of art' v 'need to make money.' (money wins)Cindy then appeals to Bob's need to make money via an attack on his expertiseBob's conflict is 'retain his authority' v 'need to make money.' (authority wins)Cindy then appeals to Bob's horniness via seductionBob's conflict is 'retain his authority' v 'get his rocks off' (authority wins)QUESTIONSSo first up. Does this seem like irrelevant gibberish that doesn't even begin to answer the question and/or it's just written so haphazardly you can't make or heads nor tails of it. Be honest because I don't want to write a load more because you're too polite to tell me I sound like a crazy person or it doesn't seem at all relevant. Now putting it like the above (Cindy appeals and Bob is torn between two priorities and has to choose) is dive bombing a lot of nuance but do you agree that we can very broadly conceive of the scene in those terms?Another way to conceive of the scene or at least part of it, is an argument over facts of the matter. So Bob might just disagree with Cindy that playing her 'emo pop' would actually make them more money. If we focussed on the facts then then the interpretation of the scene ends up being a bit different. Are you on board with that?We can also talk about reward within the scene. So if we viewed roleplay as a challenge based medium then we could be focussing on Cindy's tactics and whether she won or lost (I think we both take this as a given so I'll be ignoring this specific delineation from here on in)An interesting one. We could conceive of it as the actual creation of priorities. So what the scene is doing is showing us who Bob is rather than what he prioritises. This is a really tricky one and part of why this can be so hard to talk about. You might see a difference and you might not, if you don't it doesn't matter too much because I'll be returning to this later.and if you don't just think this is gibberish then I can also take questions before I move on.</blockquote>

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