Barf Forth Apocalyptica

barf forth apocalyptica => roleplaying theory, hardcore => Topic started by: Simon C on August 29, 2010, 11:26:10 PM

Title: Creative Agenda and GNS
Post by: Simon C on August 29, 2010, 11:26:10 PM
On my blog just recently, I posted about some things I've been thinking about. Some of that was just hare-brained rambling, but this bit I'm sticking to:

"Play should be personally and socially fulfilling" is the one big thing to come out of the Forge in the last ten years, apparently. I'm like "Yup. Cool." Creative Agenda, as a thing that exists and makes play personally and socially fulfilling is something I can get behind, no problem. Things happen in a game, stuff changes, on your character sheet, in the fiction of the game, and in the social relationships between the players, and you notice and appreciate that change. You see it as "progress" rather than just change, because you've got a creative agenda.

So no problem with that.

But! I'm not sure that the specific formulation of creative agendas as falling into three general categories of "Story Now", "Right to Dream", and "Step on Up" is a useful way of thinking about Creative Agenda. I don't see it helping in design, nor do I see it helping in fixing problems in play. I do see evidence that specific understandings about how to design for Story Now play are useful, but I don't see correlated insights into Step on Up and Right to Dream play. I do see a lot of arguments and explanations and wars over definitions.

I don't think it's even a challenge to the Forge orthodoxy (if there is such a thing) to say that there are other ways of understanding creative agenda. I guess what I'm suggesting is that:

a) Historically, GNS (as a seperate thing from Creative Agenda) has been more of a burden to talking about design than a benefit.

b) There is a more useful way to think about Creative Agenda (but I don't really know what it would be).

If you like, I can describe what I mean by creative agenda, to make sure we're talking about the same thing and I'm not terribly mistaken.
Title: Re: Creative Agenda and GNS
Post by: lumpley on August 30, 2010, 10:35:07 AM
(a) The opposite! Historically, GNS discussions put an end to a decade's fruitless squabbling and cultivated a breathtaking development of rpg design. They changed the landscape of roleplaying, for the better, forever.

(b) But it's true, there is a more useful way to think about creative agenda than GNS. It's not an alternate categorization. It's this:

Sometimes creative differences between a game's players emerge that ruin the game. If the players keep playing together, it's a fight; if they stop playing together, it's a relief.

When you're designing a game, or when you're setting up to play a game, how do you give everyone clear expectations and get everyone on the same page, creatively speaking? How do you make sure that everyone buys into the game you're sitting down to play?

What do you do with the players' creative differences that won't ruin the game, but instead give it life and flavor? How do you cultivate those, while also cultivating a powerful, shared overall creative agenda?
Title: Re: Creative Agenda and GNS
Post by: Simon C on August 30, 2010, 04:50:50 PM
On point A, I guess I submit to your superior experience. I only really got involved in the discussion around the start of 2007, so I didn't see a lot of the initial discussion around GNS.

In terms of answering the question "why do I see people playing roleplaying games in ways that I would hate to play them, and yet they seem to be having a great time and they get all pissy when I tell them they're doing it wrong", I can see how GNS was useful.

I don't see the contribution to game design, so much. I can see how the specific understanding of Story Now play that developed definitely contributed to game design, for sure, but I'm not sure that understanding required GNS. I dunno. Maybe.

I think there's a bunch of stuff about what people want GNS to be vs. what it is, and how categorizing things seems to make people kind of crazy sometimes, which I think you'd agree has been a huge pain in the ass. Worth it? Maybe so.

On point B, which is far more interesting, I'm with you. That is a useful way of talking about Creative Agenda. Is it the most useful way? What tools can we give people to facilitate that discussion? I have a couple of ideas, but they might be all wrong.
Title: Re: Creative Agenda and GNS
Post by: Chris on September 09, 2010, 03:32:03 PM
To use an actual example of this in AW, my group is composed of people who are friends first and a gaming group second. And we don't really share the same creative agenda. We're a mix of Story Now and Step On Up, in terms of preference and it kills our AW sessions sometimes.

Playing AW with a Step On Up mentality just destroys it, really. There's not really much of a challenge to the game, in those terms. "Solving" situations really comes down to the dice. Tactics and plans are fine, but execution is iffy, so playing that way is unsatifying.

Interestingly, it's not unsatisfying for the Step On Up players. They enjoy AW just as much. But having a Step On Up style of play crash into a few fronts results in ... problems and they're mostly problems for the players that like Story Now style situations.

Also, I've been thinking about where the mythology of shows like Lost and Battlestar Galactica meet GNS. I've seen situations where a lot of the player drive is centered on "figuring things out", but not necessarily on a mystery level of investigation a la Call of Cthuhlu. It's weird. It's more of an expectation of being fed backstory revelations every few sessions or so, but I don't actually have a set up backstory. So it turns into a Czege Principle thing where the players who are interested in discovering this weird backstory are also making it up, which is unsatisfying.

In AW, this is a drive not really to see passionate characters in untenable situations, but to figure out the Apocalypse and the Psychic Maelstrom on a metalevel. Anyone else seen that?
Title: Re: Creative Agenda and GNS
Post by: Simon C on September 09, 2010, 10:38:07 PM
Chris,

How useful would you say the concepts of Story Now and Step on Up are to you in improving the experience of play in your group? Do you explicitly reference them at the table? Do they help you form a coherant creative agenda?

Can you give some examples of this Creative Agenda clash in play?
Title: Re: Creative Agenda and GNS
Post by: Chris on September 10, 2010, 12:06:26 AM
Chris,

How useful would you say the concepts of Story Now and Step on Up are to you in improving the experience of play in your group? Do you explicitly reference them at the table? Do they help you form a coherant creative agenda?

Can you give some examples of this Creative Agenda clash in play?

They're definitely useful for identifying the exact nature of problems after the fact. I'm not usually thinking about CA/GNS at the table, so I only notice the smaller things after the fact.

As far as examples go, the clearest, to me, is ... hmmm. The biggest, for me, is that if we have an NPC that stands in the way of the PC's direct or indirect goals, the NPC often gets full attention. It's non-stop "attack" until the NPC is no longer a threat, where attack is any method the character can think of to get rid of the NPC. No characterization, no attempt at a realistic portrayal of character. It's simply: "What is the best plan that I, the player, can come up with to remove this threat?". Everything else falls by the wayside.

It's not bad roleplaying, really. In literary terms, it's just a fondness for plot-based narrative over character-driven narrative.

So in Battlestar Galactica, a show I'm hammering through for a tangential hack I'm doing, there might be a huge battle. That seems like it's the focus of the show. But it's only the plot. It's only "what's happening". The important part is actually the character interaction leading up to, during, and after the battle. There are melodramatic conversations, there is exploration of character in a variety of interesting situations. The battle isn't even the actual conflict. The battle is simply a backdrop for the actual character related conflict.

That's how I want to roleplay. But one of my best friends is very much a "I play to win". He's not a DnD 4E player who just loves combat. It's more subtle than that. He plays his character well, to some extent, and has realistic goals. It's just that those goals are his whole existence. Things like where he sleeps or who he might become friends with are not things that cross his mind.

Asking questions as the GM is the solution, but only to a point. He feels like the game is slow if the plot is derailed.

Here's a little recap, from the MC's perspective with complete Front knowledge, of an in game example:

Dramatis Personæ:

Rum: A young woman who has seen a lot of bloodshed in her short life. After the Chairman handed over the reigns to the local area's water supply (and the problems that go with it) to her, she decided that she had had enough. The area around her had always had a legacy of death and misery, but she would fix that. She just needed to get everyone and everything under control.

Mustang: A martial man. He had served as part of the Chairman's security force both at a bar and in the Chairman's local government. He was shot in the line of duty and after his Poppy saved his life, he developed a little bit of a thing for her. He's not that happy with a lot of the methods Rum has been using to control the local area, but he has reluctantly agreed that it had to be done.

Fleece: A young woman leading her people away from a terrible disaster. Completely bereft of places to live or things to eat, her and her refugees have been living on the plains for the last few weeks. What's more, a few of them have been showing signs of a sickness, a sickness the local doctor says is very contagious.

So there we are. Fleece's camp of starving, possibly sick, definitely frightened refugees are becoming desperate. Mustang and several beatsticks head down to the camp to see if the rumors of plague are true and possibly instill some kinda order. "Any means necessary," Rum says.

The meeting goes south, as it has to. The armed representatives of those who have are there to control those who haven't. Old story. Fleece is tired of negotiating. She has nothing to negotiate with. They just want some food. Rum has food. Simple equation, in her eyes.

Things get out of control. One of Mustang's men hit a woman in the head with the butt of his rifle. Things are looking bad. We're just not sure yet which side'll get massacred: the small group of men with guns or the huge, angry, unarmed crowd.

Then a guy shows up in a monster truck and runs over some of the crowd, shoots Fleece in the chest and drives off.

The End
Title: Re: Creative Agenda and GNS
Post by: Chris on September 10, 2010, 01:07:54 AM
The battle isn't even the actual conflict. The battle is simply a backdrop for the actual character related conflict.

Also, could we do this in games? It's something I've been playing with. If there is no move for fighting, what happens. Obviously you can still fight someone, fictionally. But what happens? I think this is really the way to make games REALLY Story Now. Just remove those types of challenges at a mechanical level. Let the fighting fall back into the childhood Cowboys and Indians games we're all trying to avoid with rules, with just the GM arbitrating the unimportant combat side of things purely through his Agenda and Principles specific to the individual game while the "important" conflicts are handled mechanically.
Title: Re: Creative Agenda and GNS
Post by: Alex on September 10, 2010, 12:36:17 PM
Hi there people! I wanted to first address Mr. Simon's observation that he doesn't see GNS as something important for game design. Two games that I feel have a very clear creative agenda written into their core are Burning Wheel and Pendragon. Now, I admit I haven't played much of either yet (unfortunately), but still, here is how I see them.

Burning Wheel seems to have Story Now written at the core of its mechanics, thanks to Artha. Artha is a resource a character can earn during the game. In order to earn Artha, a BW character must fight for what he believes. Only by driving toward his beliefs (statements chosen by the player about what his character believes) can a player earn Artha. In doing so, however, the player causes the situation to get more and more complicated. Eventually, the players will probably manage to solve their situation, thanks to the Artha (which can be used to earn very useful bonuses in tests). Solving the situation, will provide more Artha, change the player's beliefs in someway and, thanks to the resolution systems, leave plenty of loose threads. Thus Artha is always driving the game on. And since the way to earn Artha is basically to have a good Story Now game, the creative agenda is written in the very core of the game.

Pendragon likewise has, at its core, a Right to Dream system that helps using Arthurian Legend tropes to drive the story. In Pendragon there are these attributes called Traits and Passions. These attributes are numeric values which can be used in a variety of ways, including being tested to determine how a character will act, being tested against each other to simulate inner conflict, being tested against the traits of another character to solve disputes of will, etc. These attributes can be tested during play to gain heavy bonuses, but they can provide heavy disadvantages too. But the reason Traits and Passions drive the game toward a Right to Dream agenda is because they are only somewhat under the player's control. The way these attributes rise, fall and are tested may be influenced by the player, but are more or less determined by how Mr. Stafford felt an Arthurian tale should go. Thus the game will, ideally, take the players ideas and input without deviating from a predetermined core, the passions of knights that drive Arthurian tales.

By the way, an interesting fact is that, while I am not sure about the first example, at least Pendragon was made way before the Mr. Edwards wrote his essay on the GNS modes of play. I think the creative agenda has always influenced RPG design, even before it was formalized by that essay. So I think that the GNS is very important in determining a game's design, but it can do so without the designer actually knowing about it. It is the ideas behind them that are important, not the name they are given.
Title: Re: Creative Agenda and GNS
Post by: Simon C on September 10, 2010, 09:53:44 PM
I'm not seeing examples of understanding Step on Up and Right to Dream helping people design games, fix problems in play, or articulate creative differences.

This:
Quote
As far as examples go, the clearest, to me, is ... hmmm. The biggest, for me, is that if we have an NPC that stands in the way of the PC's direct or indirect goals, the NPC often gets full attention. It's non-stop "attack" until the NPC is no longer a threat, where attack is any method the character can think of to get rid of the NPC. No characterization, no attempt at a realistic portrayal of character. It's simply: "What is the best plan that I, the player, can come up with to remove this threat?". Everything else falls by the wayside.

It's not bad roleplaying, really. In literary terms, it's just a fondness for plot-based narrative over character-driven narrative.
Seems like a pretty good explanation of creative differences in a game, that doesn't rely on any kind of understanding of GNS.

I'm not arguing that it isn't possible to categorise play in terms of GNS, I'm arguing that it's not often very useful. As Vincent and I agreed at the start of this thread, there are in fact much more useful ways of talking about creative agenda. It's possible that historically it was useful, I'll grant Vincent that. But outside of the concept of Story Now, which I agree provides a good framework for producing functional games, I don't see GNS contributing to dialogue about creative agenda. Mostly I see it causing arguments, confusion, and a narrowing of the scope of design.
Title: Re: Creative Agenda and GNS
Post by: Chris on September 10, 2010, 10:29:44 PM
Yeah, what I described was the actual difference. GNS isn't really more useful; it's just easier. It's like saying "love" or "fun" or "science fiction". These are just simple words attempting to cover a lot of ground.

Just like no one has the same definition of science fiction (is Star Wars science fiction?), no one really has the same definitions for any of the same GNS terms. We could both go into a game with a Story Now agenda and totally want different things.

So CA/GNS "helps" talk about these things insofar that it's shorthand and most of these discussions happen over the internet. Story Now gives you a rough idea of what we're talking about, although not an exact one.
Title: Re: Creative Agenda and GNS
Post by: lumpley on September 11, 2010, 08:18:17 AM
I propose that the very first thing you have to know about a game you're designing, and the very first thing you have to know about a game you're trying to learn, and the very first thing you have to establish with a group when you're sitting down to play, is this:

Does this game have protagonists, winners, or what?

If you don't even know THAT, the attempt to design, understand, or play is doomed.

There are ongoing, persistent problems with conversations about GNS, it's true. GNS doesn't cause them. GNS takes 10 seconds and makes the interesting conversation possible.
Title: Re: Creative Agenda and GNS
Post by: Simon C on September 11, 2010, 06:55:15 PM
I confess sometimes these conversations make me want to throw my hands in the air and make noises.

Vincent, you're making a good point, I think. But here's what I stumble on:

When you look at any instance of play, overwhelming, to a great degree, the participants are focused on creating interesting and coherant fiction.

Even in the most hard-core, pawn-stance, play-your-fighter-right-or-we-send-you-home, three-hours-of-combat-five-minutes-of-talking game, the orcs are orcs and they stay orcs for the duration of the game, and it matters that they're orcs and not goblins, and not just because the numbers are different, but because we said they were orcs and you can't change that now. And what's that for? Why go to all that effort (and it is an effort) if it doesn't support what's supposed to be the point of the game?

Can you also give some examples where the game has winners? I only know of a few, and in those it's this thing where you're kind of competing but you're really not supposed to try too hard, and if you're actually playing competitively then you're doing it wrong.

And protagonists. I guess I don't get it. Can you give me some examples of games where the players' characters are not protagonists, and show me why?

I mean, maybe it's a thing where I've only experienced one kind of Creative Agenda, and I just can't wrap my head around other ways of playing. But I've played a lot of games, a lot of different ways, that seem to be encompassed by the GNS agendas, and they still seem like really confusing, pointless categorisations. Like, that other thread here about GM Agenda and Right to Dream and such. What's going to come out of that conversation? To me it reads like Anatomy of Unicorns 101.

I guess I got my cranky pants on there for a bit. I guess I just find it frustrating, because yes! It matters that players are on the same page, creatively. And yes! The way the game is designed matters to what kind of creative agenda it can sustain in play. But GNS just seems like the least useful way of talking about that.
Title: Re: Creative Agenda and GNS
Post by: lumpley on September 11, 2010, 08:07:33 PM
I mean, maybe it's a thing where I've only experienced one kind of Creative Agenda, and I just can't wrap my head around other ways of playing.

That's how it looks to me, yeah.

You say, "yes! It matters that players are on the same page, creatively. And yes! The way the game is designed matters to what kind of creative agenda it can sustain in play. But GNS just seems like the least useful way of talking about that."

I say back, yes, if we've already established that we're playing Story Now (or any of them, but with you it's obviously Story Now), then GNS is beyond the least useful way. It's not even a way of talking about that AT ALL. You're misapplying it and then complaining that it doesn't apply.

All GNS is good for is establishing that we're talking about play with protagonists, not play with winners. 10 seconds, bam, and on to something interesting instead.
Title: Re: Creative Agenda and GNS
Post by: Chris on September 11, 2010, 08:54:48 PM
All GNS is good for is establishing that we're talking about play with protagonists, not play with winners. 10 seconds, bam, and on to something interesting instead.

Yeah, theoretically, it's a shared frame of reference that gets us in the same ballpark and then we talk about specifics.

I used to hate GNS a lot more than I do now. I have a guy on my local boards that swears that roleplaying has nothing to do with story. He's gaming to actually be there, in the place, as the person. No story. No narrative. Just reality. Dude is THERE. I played in his game. Took 40 minutes of real world time to do five minutes of game time. I was not THERE. Different CA.

Some people have wildly different goals when they roleplay. You ask for examples where the game has winners? I'm not sure about games, but I have players whose sole goal is to win Apocalypse World. They're gonna solve that shit. It's a clear agenda and it falls into to Step On Up. And it breaks the game. Clearly a GNS issue.

I maintain that GNS is exactly as useful as saying science fiction. We sort of know what we're both talking about, but there's a lot of wiggle room there.

Drunken post concluded. Signing off.
Title: Re: Creative Agenda and GNS
Post by: Simon C on September 12, 2010, 01:22:38 AM
Vincent,

That's maybe true, but also pretty unsatisfying as an answer.

I mean, every rpg text I've read starts with the assumtion that there will be an engaging and coherant fictional world created in play. None of them (except for a very few) talk explicitly about winners and losers. Does that mean that I haven't read any Step on Up supporting texts? That every group playing Step on Up is drifting the rules?

I get even more confused thinking about Right to Dream.

But, whetever. It's not that interesting a question. What seems far more interesting to me is, given the huge range of creative agendas encompassed by Story Now, how do we talk more productively in order to foster better design and play? Is there a framework, a model, a system, for thinking about these creative agendas?
Title: Re: Creative Agenda and GNS
Post by: lumpley on September 12, 2010, 09:24:35 AM
There's no such framework. As far as I'm concerned, this is the live conversation.
Title: Re: Creative Agenda and GNS
Post by: misuba on September 13, 2010, 04:12:57 PM
every rpg text I've read starts with the assumtion that there will be an engaging and coherant fictional world created in play. None of them (except for a very few) talk explicitly about winners and losers. Does that mean that I haven't read any Step on Up supporting texts?
GNS was addressed to RPG instances of play, not to RPG texts.
Title: Re: Creative Agenda and GNS
Post by: Motipha on September 13, 2010, 06:25:07 PM
ok, maybe this will highlight an element of step-on-up, and why it's not Story now, and why that conflict is a bad thing and something that needs to be differentiated.

In a D&D game back in the day, our DM described what to everything we could tell was a troll.  had all the behaviours of, looked like it, we as a group agreed yep, troll.  Cool, kill with fire, bob's your uncle.

Except that our DM had decided that, because he thought it was unrealistic that our characters could recognize monsters just because us as players recognized them, he was deliberately misleading us.  turns out it was something else of equal challenge but with completely different weaknesses and strengths.

I can't speak for the other players, but I for one was pissed when I figured out what was going on.  not because it "broke the fiction" that this thing wasn't a troll, but because if we had a particular approach and tactic laid out all about beating a troll.  Yes the description and all that was done in fiction terms, but what was the driving force in that game for me as a player was to win, and I felt that I was cheated of that by a cheap trick.  And while what he did was really fucking problematic on a Social contract level, it also was because his desire from the game was different from mine/ours.

This is, most definitely, not Story now.  Did it matter to me that the fiction make some sort of coherent sense?  sure, for aesthetic reasons.  But primarily it was about overcoming the challenge.

Simon, can you see why what I described is NOT Story Now play even though things are done in a fictional setting with fictional coherence?  now, maybe if I had been bothered by the fact that the monster was misdescribed, had somehow made the story less interesting, or had broken my fictional conception of the world, then I could see the argument.  but really what was broken about it was that it was the DM deliberately messing with a tactical advantage I gained by changing a detail in the world.

Come to think of it when I play like this I view making coherent fiction as a strategic obstacle:  how do I explain my real-world knowledge in a way that makes sense fictionally, so that I can use it in game?  I'm trying to make coherent fiction because doing that is a rule of the game, not because it is why I'm playing.
Title: Re: Creative Agenda and GNS
Post by: Simon C on September 13, 2010, 08:43:12 PM
Motipha,

You're confusing me saying I don't find GNS useful with me saying I don't believe there are creative agendas. I'm on the creative agenda train, I'm just not getting off at the GNS station.

There's certainly an interesting discussion to be had about what role the fiction plays in games where players are more invested in displaying tactical skill and in-game knowledge. I'm unsatisfied with the explanation that it exists just as a space to manipulate for advantage. Unreliable currencies (such as are garnered by judgements of the fiction) are unsatisfying for hard-core competitive play.

Mike,

Hence why I say "Step on Up supporting" texts. If (I genuinely don't know) there are no texts that explicitly support Step on Up play, people could still be playing Step on Up by drifting game rules in play to support their creative agenda.

But that's all about the far less interesting subject.

Here's what I find interesting and useful:

I think there are three broad aspects of play that contribute to creative agenda - three sources of enjoyment that in combination (not exclusively) make up a creative agenda. Here's what I think they are:

Quote
Theme
When you play a game, you produce fiction, when you look at that fiction, when you "read" it as a text, it has a meaning - a message. It has a theme. Like, if your young farm boy grows up to kill a dragon and marry a princess, it has themes about personal agency, heroism, and so on. If you play unscrupulous mercenaries murdering orcs for pay, it says another thing, about the value of the lives of "other" peoples, and such. Doesn't matter what you intend to say with your game, there's a meaning there. Some groups pay attention to and appreciate that meaning as they're playing. Some do that more than others.

Some groups enjoy play where the meaning is explicit and negotiated during play - you don't know what the meaning of the game will be until you play it, but you care about which way it goes.

Other groups want the theme to be more like an organising principle: a single question we set up at the start and then find out the answer to in play: Can good overcome evil? What price loyalty?

And some other groups want the theme to be a statement that's reinforced through play (they might not say that, but they do). Like "Good always triumphs" or "Other cultures are sub-human" or something like that.

Experience
When you play a game, it makes you feel certain things. Like in AW you feel like you've been punched in the gut when you've gotta make some hard call. Or in The Mountain Witch you feel tingly and suspicious when you think about what the other characters' Dark Fates are. Or in Bliss Stage you feel weirdly exposed and intimate the first time you go into the Dream. Some groups care more about the experience of play than others.

Some groups appreciate feeling very close to how their character feels. Play is for feeling strong emotions, for making tough decisions, for seeing how it feels to be in particular circumstances. Good players get close to their character.

Some groups appreciate feeling closer to the other players when they play. Play helps you understand people differently, or helps you reinforce social bonds. Good players are emotionally vulnerable in play (or at least amiable and amicable).

Performance
When you play, you're displaying skills: improvisational skills, acting and oratorial skills, tactical skills. Also knowledge of the game's rules, the game's setting, and so on.

Some groups appreciate a well-performed character. You act out a powerful scene, and everyone else finds it convincing and enjoyable. You talk in-character for an hour, and everyone is like *high five*.

Some groups appreciate tactical skill. You moved your dude into the right square, maximising your chances of hitting the monster. Everyone nods, being like "right on". Often those same groups appreciate clever use of in-game knowledge, like, "I took sleep because it's the best spell" or "I brought fire-arrows, to use against those trolls".

Every group will have its own way of appreciating the three things above. Some of them will get a lot of attention, and some of them will get very little. They're all important to the experience of play though.

I think that talking about these three things is useful to explaining play and design.


Title: Re: Creative Agenda and GNS
Post by: Jeff Russell on September 13, 2010, 09:06:05 PM
Simon, very thought provoking stuff! I'm processing that, but at first glance those three criteria seem useful and interesting. Sorry I don't have anything constructive to say just yet.
Title: Re: Creative Agenda and GNS
Post by: lumpley on September 13, 2010, 10:04:24 PM
Well, but theme isn't present in all roleplaying. Raw thematic matter - passions and conflicts - is common, but not universal. Passionate characters escalating through conflicts to crisis and resolution, far less so.

They're cool things! They fit into the Big Model as "this is what it's like, sometimes, when you're grooving on fulfilling a coherent creative agenda."

Calling them "creative agenda" themselves, though, is a misuse of the term, and is probably just holding back the conversations you want to have. We're having this dumb conversation instead.
Title: Re: Creative Agenda and GNS
Post by: lumpley on September 13, 2010, 10:15:15 PM
Just to show that I'm genuinely not hostile, here's something I wrote that I'm super proud of that fits into the same noble, worthy, design-fruitful "this is what it's like, sometimes, when you're grooving on fulfilling a coherent creative agenda" territory:
http://lumpley.com/comment.php?entry=22

Title: Re: Creative Agenda and GNS
Post by: Simon C on September 13, 2010, 10:29:15 PM
Oh yeah, they're totally not creative agendas in of themselves, they're just some things that are fun about roleplaying games.

Well, but theme isn't present in all roleplaying. Raw thematic matter - passions and conflicts - is common, but not universal. Passionate characters escalating through conflicts to crisis and resolution, far less so.

I dunno. By the Big Model definition of theme, then sure, absolutely. But in the literary criticsm sense (which I might be horribly misusing), I think any work can be read as a text and you can glean meaning from it. Passionate characters etc. aren't a requirement for a work to mean something, right? They're just an awesome (possibly the only) way to have that meaning be explicit and relevant and negotiated in play.

Here's what I'm getting at: We play our bunch of dudes, all sword-bearing psycopaths, barely even personalities, let alone protagonists. We send them out murdering folk who look different from them, just because it's fun for us to show off our skills at that. I think that means something. I think the violence isn't just backdrop, I think it's central to the experience of the game. It's fun because it's us, me and my buddies, triumphing over the things that are not us.

People who just want to show off their tactical skills play chess.

I dunno. Is this making any sense? It's frustrating because I feel like there's this connection missing between what you're saying and what I'm hearing, and vice versa, and in person I'd be like "oh shit, of course!" and you'd be like "sheesh, finally", and then we'd high five.
Title: Re: Creative Agenda and GNS
Post by: Simon C on September 13, 2010, 10:33:18 PM
Crossposted!

Oh yeah, I'm not getting hostility, maybe just frustration that this is still an issue after all these years.

I don't have any emotional investment in proving GNS wrong or anything. I'm cool with that. What I'm thinking is that there's not good language for talking about creative agenda more finely than those broad categories, and it would be cool if there was, because I feel like there are whole worlds of design out there that we don't even know how to talk about.
Title: Re: Creative Agenda and GNS
Post by: lumpley on September 13, 2010, 10:47:28 PM
People who just want to show off their tactical skills play chess.

I used to say the same thing to Ben Lehman! He showed me that D&D (Moldvoy) is in fact a really fun game. Chess, Canasta, Pit, Apples To Apples, D&D, Uno, Roborally, Mechaton - each and all uniquely fun, uniquely demanding, honest-to-god games.

The role of coherent fiction, often including raw thematic matter (but it's not a requirement), is one of the things that makes D&D a really fun, interesting game.

But anyway! Let me start a new thread, I'll spill what I've been thinking about framework. It's much more difficult stuff than GNS is, as befits.
Title: Re: Creative Agenda and GNS
Post by: Simon C on September 13, 2010, 11:40:47 PM
Hilarious! It was playing lots of Moldvay D&D that convinced me of the opposite!
Title: Re: Creative Agenda and GNS
Post by: Chris on September 17, 2010, 11:36:53 AM
GNS was addressed to RPG instances of play, not to RPG texts.

I've heard this. But either system influences and facilitates creative agenda or system doesn't matter. We can't have it both ways.

Title: Re: Creative Agenda and GNS
Post by: Michael Pfaff on September 17, 2010, 11:52:26 AM
GNS was addressed to RPG instances of play, not to RPG texts.

I've heard this. But either system influences and facilitates creative agenda or system doesn't matter. We can't have it both ways.



Amen.
Title: Re: Creative Agenda and GNS
Post by: lumpley on September 17, 2010, 12:44:42 PM
It's not complicated, but it's not direct either. GNS describes play. Play may or may not follow formal rules, which may or may not come from a game text.

You can look at a game text and say "if you follow these rules, you'll get Story Now play," or whatever, but Story Now applies to play, not to what's in the text.
Title: Re: Creative Agenda and GNS
Post by: Chris on September 17, 2010, 01:51:30 PM
It's not complicated, but it's not direct either. GNS describes play. Play may or may not follow formal rules, which may or may not come from a game text.

You can look at a game text and say "if you follow these rules, you'll get Story Now play," or whatever, but Story Now applies to play, not to what's in the text.

Sure and I get the distinction. But it seems like a small and mostly unneeded one. Once we're in agreement about this point:

Apocalypse World's design contributes to play that fulfills a Story Now creative agenda. If you try to play Step On Up or Right To Dream with Apocalypse World, you'll find that you have to fight with the rules all the time, ignore them, recast them, and finally you'll adapt them or throw them out.

...then I think it's safe to say that Apocalypse World is a Story Now game, or at the very least, a Story Now-style game. If you can build a game with a certain CA in mind, then I think it's more than okay to identify that game as that certain CA type, as long as everyone understands that "hey, sure, you can play this game with a different agenda, but results may vary".

Because right now, we're at the point where we say "Hey, this isn't a Story Now game and calling it that is totally wrong because Story Now is how you play, not what you play, so stop calling it that, but if you play it with any other agenda it won't really work". Which is very confusing for people who don't spend all their free time reading RPG boards like me. :)
Title: Re: Creative Agenda and GNS
Post by: Gregor Vuga on September 18, 2010, 11:20:30 AM
Simon! I think I can sort of understand what's going on here and what your problem is with some of the distinctions. I'll attempt to interpret what I see. I might be way off-track, but whatever. If this clears the mists for you a bit, awesome. If not or if I'm dead wrong, or both, eh.

Quote
When you look at any instance of play, overwhelming, to a great degree, the participants are focused on creating interesting and coherant fiction.

Even in the most hard-core, pawn-stance, play-your-fighter-right-or-we-send-you-home, three-hours-of-combat-five-minutes-of-talking game, the orcs are orcs and they stay orcs for the duration of the game, and it matters that they're orcs and not goblins, and not just because the numbers are different, but because we said they were orcs and you can't change that now. And what's that for? Why go to all that effort (and it is an effort) if it doesn't support what's supposed to be the point of the game?
Yes, even the most hard-core, pawn-stance, step-on-up game will have (more or less) coherent fiction. What's that for?

It's for roleplaying. It's a roleplaying game.

If we think of creative agendas like these broad, umbrella terms that cover a lot of ground, yes, they show different ways to play. But they're all about different ways to play roleplaying games, yeah?

If I say science fiction, I could be thinking District 9 or Star Wars or Space 1999, right, but I'm still talking about science fiction.

If I say roleplaying, I could be thinking of step-on-up play or rtd play or story now play, but I'm still thinking about roleplaying. The coherent fiction is there even if we play D&D like chess, because it's still a RPG. It starts to drift, but we're still onboard regarding that.

It's like saying "why is Star Wars science fiction, there isn't any science in it" or something.

I don't know if I'm explaining myself well, but I'm trying.

Quote
I mean, every rpg text I've read starts with the assumtion that there will be an engaging and coherant fictional world created in play. None of them (except for a very few) talk explicitly about winners and losers. Does that mean that I haven't read any Step on Up supporting texts? That every group playing Step on Up is drifting the rules?

I get even more confused thinking about Right to Dream.

Ok, yeah, still the same. I believe "an engaging and coherent fictional world" is part of roleplaying, not any creative agenda in particular. It's like when someone answered Jared Sorensen "Exploration." to the "What is your game about?" question and Jared said something like "That's stupid, all games are about exploration." Exploration being, in this instance, in my opinion, exploration of a fiction, of a fictional enviroment, fictional world.

As for texts, few if any of them address their agenda so explicitly. Few are even designed with an agenda in mind. Do you see any explicit "This game is about creating theme by putting characters in untenable situations" in Dogs or AW? Likewise, D&D isn't going to tell you "this is a game about winners", but it's there. It's about facing challenges and using your resources the best way possible to beat those challenges.

Right to Dream is the most problematic of the bunch. I'm not exactly sure why, but if I understand Vincent's interpretation of RTD correctly, it's about wish-fulfilment. It's a "don't mess with my fantasy", "original character do not steal" type of thing. I'm not sure how a game text would address that. Not there yet.

Quote
Here's what I'm getting at: We play our bunch of dudes, all sword-bearing psycopaths, barely even personalities, let alone protagonists. We send them out murdering folk who look different from them, just because it's fun for us to show off our skills at that. I think that means something. I think the violence isn't just backdrop, I think it's central to the experience of the game. It's fun because it's us, me and my buddies, triumphing over the things that are not us.

People who just want to show off their tactical skills play chess.
To me, that's Step on Up. It's about triumphing, so it's about winning. It's about the satisfaction of using your skills to beat someone or something, to overcome, right?

But because it's a roleplaying game there's also the element of the fiction (which is missing in chess). That doesn't negate what the SoU creative agenda is about.

The whole thing about how much we're IN the fiction and how much we respect it, I think that's sort of a fourth axis to GNS. If GNS is space, then "immersion" or "strenght of fiction" or whatever is time. If we ignore the fiction, if fiction stops to matter, then we're not playing a RPG anymore but a boardgame or whatever. But for the duration of the roleplay, we're roleplaying the the GNS space.




Title: Re: Creative Agenda and GNS
Post by: Simon C on September 18, 2010, 03:26:29 PM
Why are we playing a roleplaying game?
Title: Re: Creative Agenda and GNS
Post by: Chris on September 18, 2010, 09:02:31 PM
Why are we playing a roleplaying game?

Either to pretend to be interesting characters in interesting situations, to move interesting characters in certain ways to achieve a goal set out by the GM or the players themselves, or to vicariously live through interesting characters in an interesting world of the GM's or collective players' creation.
Title: Re: Creative Agenda and GNS
Post by: Simon C on September 18, 2010, 09:55:11 PM
What makes those things interesting?
Title: Re: Creative Agenda and GNS
Post by: Chris on September 18, 2010, 09:58:22 PM
What makes those things interesting?

Your personal interest, whether that's an interest in drama or just in the MC describing the character's tits. Irrelevant to why.
Title: Re: Creative Agenda and GNS
Post by: lumpley on September 18, 2010, 10:17:01 PM
Simon, that's like "why are we playing a card game when we could be playing a board game?" the answer is: the medium - card, board, roleplaying, video game, sport, whatever - is part of the game. It's a constraint on the game's design and it offers unique opportunities for the game's play.

We're playing a roleplaying game because, like a card game and its cards, a board game and its board, a sport and its playing field, this game is a roleplaying game.
Title: Re: Creative Agenda and GNS
Post by: Simon C on September 18, 2010, 11:24:38 PM
Simon, that's like "why are we playing a card game when we could be playing a board game?" the answer is: the medium - card, board, roleplaying, video game, sport, whatever - is part of the game. It's a constraint on the game's design and it offers unique opportunities for the game's play.

I agree.

Why did we choose that medium? Once we've chosen that medium, what makes the subject material interesting? Why is D&D about hard men with big swords going into dark holes in the ground?
Title: Re: Creative Agenda and GNS
Post by: Chris on September 19, 2010, 07:21:22 AM
Oh, man, this thread has officially hit my favorite part of GNS conversations. It's about to get crazy philosophical in here. :)

What makes anything interesting, Simon? Why do you like anything? Guys play DnD, originally, as a game, one you could win or lose. And it was a game and it's still played like that.

You're fishing around for why even hardcore DnD game have story elements. They do because they have characters and characters need a backstory because that's the cultural expectation of playing DnD. No other reason.

A lot of the players on my local boards don't see themselves as roleplayers. They're playing a game and that game is DnD. That includes pretending to be a character, but it's not really why they play. It's just a natural part of "Hey, I have a character. I guess he's thinking this". It's part of us naturally telling stories. But it's not the focus.

But it's a fundamental difference from how I game. And I've been in every configuration of different gaming agendas. And GNS covers them in a broad sense.
Title: Re: Creative Agenda and GNS
Post by: Gregor Vuga on September 19, 2010, 07:28:43 AM
Thinking aloud.

Why did we choose that medium? Once we've chosen that medium, what makes the subject material interesting?
I don't think there's an all-encompassing answer to that. It feels like asking "why do you read books?". I believe "exploration" is as good as it gets, we want to discover cool stuff, escape, pretend, be challenged, be frightened, saddened, excited. It's the impulse of the little kid going into the bushes at the end of the garden. It's venture, the pull of the blank space on the map, but coupled with the impulse to fill that empty space. I could write about death of the author and stuff, but maybe that's another thread again. The bottom line is that there is this interplay between a blank space we're filling with our fiction, but at the same time having that fiction separated from us and exploring it as something independent and foreign. The Creative Agendas only come on top of that.

The medium does not have subject material. TV doesn't have subject material. Roleplaying doesn't either. Roleplaying is a medium through which you can explore subject material.

Why is D&D about hard men with big swords going into dark holes in the ground?
Because we have mommy and daddy issues. The mythic underground, a tunnel into Mother Earth, Jung's archetype of the cellar, a dark place filled with monsters of the subconscious, katabasis, an undead lich Father at the bottom.

Only half kidding. :)
Title: Re: Creative Agenda and GNS
Post by: lumpley on September 19, 2010, 08:34:22 AM
The role of passion and conflict in Step On Up play is super interesting, but how am I supposed to talk about it with someone who denies the possibility?
Title: Re: Creative Agenda and GNS
Post by: lumpley on September 19, 2010, 08:48:49 AM
Simon, "hard men with big swords" doesn't necessarily signify any more than the horse-shaped piece in Chess, the "kings" and "queens" in a deck of cards, or the "houses" and "hotels" in Monopoly. It's a mnemonic. It gives texture and landscape to the playing field. It works with the game's rules to communicate and reinforce how to play and how to win.   
Title: Re: Creative Agenda and GNS
Post by: Simon C on September 19, 2010, 04:08:08 PM
The role of passion and conflict in Step On Up play is super interesting, but how am I supposed to talk about it with someone who denies the possibility?

I'm denying what now? Because that sounds super interesting to me too.

Simon, "hard men with big swords" doesn't necessarily signify any more than the horse-shaped piece in Chess, the "kings" and "queens" in a deck of cards, or the "houses" and "hotels" in Monopoly. It's a mnemonic. It gives texture and landscape to the playing field. It works with the game's rules to communicate and reinforce how to play and how to win.   

Really? I don't agree, and frankly it seems a bizarre position. You'd have to at least agree that D&D is richer in this texture and landscape than Chess or Monopoly, and probably richer still than a wargame like Mechaton. I mean, I agree it's the same thing, but why does D&D have so much of it? And why does it have the specific colour it does?

Here's my position: If I and a bunch of my friends enact a narrative about killing a bunch of monsters underground, for example, that means something symbolically. That symbolic meaning isn't accidental, and is part of the reason we chose to do this thing in the first place. Sure, it's not the whole reason, because we also like how it's a fun tactical game. But there are a lot of fun tactical games out there. We chose this one because it is about Dungeons and Dragons.
Title: Re: Creative Agenda and GNS
Post by: lumpley on September 19, 2010, 04:47:59 PM
What do you make of my Storming the Wizard's Tower example (http://apocalypse-world.com/forums/index.php?topic=465.0)?

I can tell you for sure that there was no escalating conflict in it, just a series of escalating logistical challenges.
Title: Re: Creative Agenda and GNS
Post by: Simon C on September 19, 2010, 05:29:32 PM
Hi!

I read it! I'll be able to comment later today. In brief: It reads like a plausible and familiar kind of play. I recognise it. Certainly no escalating conflict.

But! I'm going to ask you questions about how you "win" StWT, and what it felt like when one dude was protecting the other dude, and why one of you didn't just run off and leave the other, and what that would have felt like if you had.

Can I check in that we're still having a productive conversation? I'm enjoying this and I feel like we're still getting somewhere. I feel like I could be all wrong, but I haven't seen how yet, and I have like this sneaking suspicion that I'm not.

But if you're finding this frustrating or boring, let me know. You don't owe me an explanation, so feel free to talk about stuff you're more interested in if you want to.