Gente Che Gioca > Sotto il cofano
Deriva off-topic del thread sulla Creative Agenda
Moreno Roncucci:
--- Citazione ---[cite] Radagast:[/cite]
--- Citazione ---[cite] Moreno Roncucci:[/cite]Quindi: potrebbero benissimo "rimanere fedeli al loro personaggio" senza fare i robottini. Come? Guardino un po' di film o leggano romanzi, e vedano come.
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Sì, ma lui sta parlando di un "gioco" coerentemente simulativo. Da quando in qua nelle simulazioni si prende esempio dalla letteratura?
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Aspetta che vado a prendere un bastone più pesante. Con i chiodi. :twisted:
Moreno Roncucci:
Magari sono i post troppo lunghi che confondono. Vediamo di essere concisi.
Pensare di ricavare la creative agenda da:
1) quello che avviene nel "mondo di gioco" o "nella storia"
2) quello che avviene in una singola scena.
3) da quanto si "interpretano i personaggi" o ci si "immedesima".
...è una [size=24]EMERITA BOIATA![/size]
[size=9]Ed è scritto ESPLICITAMENTE, praticamente con questo livello di "pane al pane e vino al vino", direttamente nell'essay di Edwards sul narrativismo, con tanto di esempio pratico... :? [/size]
Chissà che in questa maniera si capisca... :roll:
Radagast:
--- Citazione ---[cite] Moreno Roncucci:[/cite]Magari sono i post troppo lunghi che confondono. Vediamo di essere concisi.
Pensare di ricavare la creative agenda da:
1) quello che avviene nel "mondo di gioco" o "nella storia"
2) quello che avviene in una singola scena.
3) da quanto si "interpretano i personaggi" o ci si "immedesima".
...è una [size=24]EMERITA BOIATA![/size]
[size=9]Ed è scritto ESPLICITAMENTE, praticamente con questo livello di "pane al pane e vino al vino", direttamente nell'essay di Edwards sul narrativismo, con tanto di esempio pratico... :? [/size]
Chissà che in questa maniera si capisca... :roll:
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Vabbè, su questa cosa ovviamente si può essere più o meno d'accordo, ma mi immedesimerò in un seguace di Edwards e la do per buona. Quello che non ho capito è perché gli dici che in un "gioco" simulativo bisogna prendere esempio dalla letteratura. ^_^
Moreno Roncucci:
Anzi, citiamoli proprio i testi di riferimento...
Da "Narrativism: Story Now" (Edwards, 2003):
[size=18]Story[/size]
Long ago, I concluded that "story" as a role-playing term was standing in for several different processes and goals, some of which were incompatible. Here's the terms-breakdown I'll be using from now on.
All role-playing necessarily produces a sequence of imaginary events. Go ahead and role-play, and write down what happened to the characters, where they went, and what they did. I'll call that event-summary the "transcript." But some transcripts have, as Pooh might put it, a "little something," specifically a theme: a judgmental point, perceivable as a certain charge they generate for the listener or reader. If a transcript has one (or rather, if it does that), I'll call it a story.
Let's say that the following transcript, which also happens to be a story, arose from one or more sessions of role-playing.
Lord Gyrax rules over a realm in which a big dragon has begun to ravage the countryside. The lord prepares himself to deal with it, perhaps trying to settle some internal strife among his followers or allies. He also meets this beautiful, mysterious woman named Javenne who aids him at times, and they develop a romance. Then he learns that she and the dragon are one and the same, as she's been cursed to become a dragon periodically in a kind of Ladyhawke situation, and he must decide whether to kill her. Meanwhile, she struggles to control the curse, using her dragon-powers to quell an uprising in the realm led by a traitorous ally. Eventually he goes to the Underworld instead and confronts the god who cursed her, and trades his youth to the god to lift the curse. He returns, and the curse is detached from her, but still rampaging around as a dragon. So they slay the dragon together, and return as a couple, still united although he's now all old, to his home.
The real question: after reading the transcript and recognizing it as a story, what can be said about the Creative Agenda that was involved during the role-playing? The answer is, absolutely nothing. We don't know whether people played it Gamist, Simulationist, or Narrativist, or any combination of the three. A story can be produced through any Creative Agenda. The mere presence of story as the product of role-playing is not a GNS-based issue.
Come si definisce quindi il narrativismo (Story now)?
[size=18]Story Now[/size]
Story Now requires that at least one engaging issue or problematic feature of human existence be addressed in the process of role-playing. "Address" means:
* Establishing the issue's Explorative expressions in the game-world, "fixing" them into imaginary place.
* Developing the issue as a source of continued conflict, perhaps changing any number of things about it, such as which side is being taken by a given character, or providing more depth to why the antagonistic side of the issue exists at all.
* Resolving the issue through the decisions of the players of the protagonists, as well as various features and constraints of the circumstances.
Can it really be that easy? Yes, Narrativism is that easy. The Now refers to the people, during actual play, focusing their imagination to create those emotional moments of decision-making and action, and paying attention to one another as they do it. To do that, they relate to "the story" very much as authors do for novels, as playwrights do for plays, and screenwriters do for film at the creative moment or moments. Think of the Now as meaning, "in the moment," or "engaged in doing it," in terms of input and emotional feedback among one another. The Now also means "get to it," in which "it" refers to any Explorative element or combination of elements that increases the enjoyment of that issue I'm talking about.
There cannot be any "the story" during Narrativist play, because to have such a thing (fixed plot or pre-agreed theme) is to remove the whole point: the creative moments of addressing the issue(s). Story Now has a great deal in common with Step On Up, particularly in the social expectation to contribute, but in this case the real people's attention is directed toward one another's insights toward the issue, rather than toward strategy and guts.
Ho aggiunto qualche grassetto, per far notare meglio che si parla (1) delle persone reali attorno al tavolo, e di cosa fanno LORO, non i personaggi, e (2) che si parla del gioco complessivo, non di una singola scena.
Che cos'è invece il Gamismo (Step on up)?
Da "Gamism: Step On Up" (Ron Edwards, 2003):
The definition at last
A few paragraphs back, I promised a definition for Gamism and here it is. It operates at two levels: the real, social people and the imaginative, in-game situation.
1. The players, armed with their understanding of the game and their strategic acumen, have to Step On Up. Step On Up requires strategizing, guts, and performance from the real people in the real world. This is the inherent "meaning" or agenda of Gamist play (analogous to the Dream in Simulationist play).
Gamist play, socially speaking, demands performance with risk, conducted and perceived by the people at the table. What's actually at risk can vary - for this level, though, it must be a social, real-people thing, usually a minor amount of recognition or esteem. The commitment to, or willingness to accept this risk is the key - it's analogous to committing to the sincerity of The Dream for Simulationist play. This is the whole core of the essay, that such a commitment is fun and perfectly viable for role-playing, just as it's viable for nearly any other sphere of human activity.
2. The in-game characters, armed with their skills, priorities, and so on, have to face a Challenge, which is to say, a specific Situation in the imaginary game-world. Challenge is about the strategizing, guts, and performance of the characters in this imaginary game-world.
For the characters, it's a risky situation in the game-world; in addition to that all-important risk, it can be as fabulous, elaborate, and thematic as any other sort of role-playing. Challenge is merely plain old Situation - it only gets a new name because of the necessary attention it must receive in Gamist play. Strategizing in and among the Challenge is the material, or arena, for whatever brand of Step On Up is operating.
Gamist play and design is very diverse, partly due to the relative emphases of these two layers, as well as how they are best met in that particular game. At the crudest lens-setting, one can contrast those who emphasize Challenge and drop the Step On Up to a faint roar, as opposed to those who diminish the Challenge - it's always there, though - and focus on the Step On Up.
E ora vediamo il simulazionismo...
Quin non c'è una definizione semplice come nei casi precedenti (il provisional glossary la dà come "Commitment to the imagined events of play, specifically their in-game causes and pre-established thematic elements"), ma prendendo alcuni brani sparsi...
Da "Simulationism: The Right to Dream" (Ron Edwards, 2002)
Baseline Simulationist practice
The five elements of role-playing as laid out in my GNS essay are obviously where we start. Modelling them is the ideal. My first point about that is that the model need not be static; dynamic characters and settings, for instance, are perfectly valid Simulationist elements. My second point is that different types of Simulationist play can address very different things, ranging from a focus on characters' most deep-psychology processes, to a focus on the kinetic impact and physiological effects of weapons, to a focus on economic trends and politics, and more. I'll go into this lots more later.
The second point is that the mechanics-emphasis of the modelling system are also highly variable: it can handled strictly verbally (Drama), through the agency of charts and arrows, or through the agency of dice/Fortune mechanics. Any combination of these or anything like them are fine; what matters is that within the system, causality is clear, handled without metagame intrusion and without confusion on anyone's part. That's why it's often referred to as "the engine," and unlike other modes of play, the engine, upon being activated and further employed by players and GM, is expected to be the authoritative motive force for the game to "go."
The game engine, whatever it might be, is not to be messed with. It is causality among the five elements of play. Whether everyone has to get the engine in terms of its functions varies among games and among groups, but recognizing its authority as the causal agent is a big part of play. (To repeat, the engine's extent and detail aren't the point; I could be talking about a notecard of brief "stay in character" requirements or a 300-page set of probability charts.) By the way, moving the GM into a position of authority over the rules/system is a derived state of the rules' authority; I'll discuss that later.
Many Simulationist systems also emphasize modularity - you've got the baseline engine for what happens, so for specialty phenomena, whatever new rules go on top must not violate or devalue that baseline. When a system is very strong in this regard, it's what most people call "universal" or "generic," by which they mean customizable through addition.
My final point is that this mode requires clear player-character/real-person boundaries, in terms of in-character knowledge and metagame knowledge. There's no single set of boundaries that applies to all ways to play Simulationist, but whatever they are in a given instance, they must be clear and abided by.
e poi
Internal Cause is King
Consider Character, Setting, and Situation - and now consider what happens to them, over time. In Simulationist play, cause is the key, the imagined cosmos in action. The way these elements tie together, as well as how they're Colored, are intended to produce "genre" in the general sense of the term, especially since the meaning or point is supposed to emerge without extra attention. It's a tall order: the relationship is supposed to turn out a certain way or set of ways, since what goes on "ought" to go on, based on internal logic instead of intrusive agenda. Since real people decide when to roll, as well as any number of other contextual details, they can take this spec a certain distance. However, the right sort of meaning or point then is expected to emerge from System outcomes, in application.
Clearly, System is a major design element here, as the causal anchor among the other elements. As I outlined in the previous essay, System is mainly composed of character creation, resolution, and reward mechanics.
During character generation, layering and overt currency are frequently employed to engage the player in Simulationist play during the process.
Layering may be employed to establish and identify the character's plausibility in terms of the game-world itself. For a look at the historical differences among games, compare the methods for establishing player-character skill competence in early RuneQuest (Simulationist) with those of Hero Wars (Narrativist). In Hero Wars, the system limits how many of the thirty or so starting abilities are assigned high values (two really good ones and one great one), but not which ones. Whereas in RuneQuest, every skill has a starting-character value based on its commonality and difficulty to learn, and every skill is rated in money regarding learning higher values of competence, based both on difficulty to learn and who teaches the skill. Hero Wars character creation, which is minimally layered, isn't concerned with the implausibility of having a mastery-level in Greatsword be just as "likely" as having it in Farming; RuneQuest character creation, which is maximally layered, emphatically is.
To repeat, the above point is historical. Whether the distinction I've drawn holds for any and all Simulationist play potential, I don't know.
e poi...
For play really to be Simulationist, it can't lose the daydream quality: the pleasure in imagination as such, without agenda. For game design to promote this goal, it must be openly valued and its virtues articulated, not assumed (as it often is) to be "good role-playing" by anyone's standards and hence left unstated. Design should be inspiring and elegant in its own right, promoting the desire to see this Setting or Character unfold, or to see this System do its stuff.
I now offer a couple of points that are probably going to draw some objections.
It's a hard realization: devoted Simulationist play is a fringe interest. It is not the baseline or core of role-playing, which is Exploration. (Here is where my interpretation of the Scarlet Jester's Exploration differs the most from his original presentation.)
Quite a bit of role-playing theory and design has taken a training-wheels approach, especially using Purist for System games like GURPS, in the assumption that role-playing at the Simulationist "level" or "type" is the necessary skill to develop or grow to any other type. I think this is both misguided and patronizing toward Simulationist play, but even worse, it has the opposite effect on new players: selective culling-out of people who bring developed Gamist or Narrativist agendas to the activity.
Another good question is whether the claim is valid that role-playing has been "Sim-dominated" through its history, whether in play or in design. Regarding play, I think all the evidence points to all the GNS modes, and much diversity within those modes, being present since the beginning of the hobby. Regarding design and publishing, I think that we need to distinguish between Simulationist elements vs. coherent design - the former have certainly been widespread, but mainly in incoherent games, with AD&D and Vampire as the chief examples.
Moreno Roncucci:
--- Citazione ---[cite] Radagast:[/cite] Quello che non ho capito è perché gli dici che in un "gioco" simulativo bisogna prendere esempio dalla letteratura. ^_^
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Non solo dalla letteratura. Anche dai film, dai telefilm, dai documentari, etc.
Che c'entra il fatto di giocare simulativo o gamista o narrativista con l'interpretazione del personaggio o con il fatto di giocare come personaggi in una storia e non come l'ochetta del monopoli? Queste sono cose che riguardano il giocare ad un gdr, punto.
Mi pare, a leggere queste cose, di vivere in un racconto di Kafka dove ogni volta che chiedi al bar un vino bianco invece che rosso ti portano una ruota di un paracarro, un pesce affumicato, un quadro impressionista... perchè il cameriere sta sfarfallando e per strani hang-up suoi personali (forse il fatto che ha sempre e solo bevuto vino rosso, e non ha mai provato il bianco ma è sicuro che non è liquido) è convinto che quando chiedi vino bianco, stai uscendo dalla categoria "vino"... =:-I
L'atto del "giocare ad un gdr" e' [size=24]INDIPENDENTE[/size] dalla Creativa Agenda.
La creative agenda non riguarda il fatto che ci sia una storia, che ci sia l'intrpretazione, che ci sia Pippo, Pluto, Paperino, che ci siano i Vampiri, che ci siano le spade.
La Creative Agenda e' [size=24]MA VOI, PERCHE' CAVOLO STATE GIOCANDO?[/size]
Se qualcuno, atterrito di fronte a questa domanda, capisce invece "ma tu giochi ad un gdr o a monopoli", sono problemi suoi e a questo punto direi che me ne lavo pure le mani. Avrei miglior furtuna a convincere qualche folle che no, in realtà lui non è veramente Napoleone Bonaparte...
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