Over on Actor/Author/Director, John Morrow brought up the r.g.f.a. definitions from which that model was developed (or corrupted if one prefers):

Quote from: John MorrowIn r.g.f.a, the Actor stance described a player who was actually acting -- that is, the player who made choices as a performance to the other players and the GM.  Their choices need not necessary be "in character".  They may simply be what the player considers entertaining and fun to play.

The Audience stance described the player who observes the game from an omniscient perspective.  It's the level at which a player appreciates the big picture story from the outside, like the audience appreciates a book or movie.

The Author stance is the stance from which players and GM contruct the SIS.  It's writing things into the SIS rather than making decisions about what they do.

The In-Character Stance is making decisions from the perspective of a character.  There are two versions.  The first version is the third person basic In-Character or IC stance in which decisions are made for the character by considering the character.  The second version is the first person Deep IC or Immersive stance, in which the player experiences the game and think In Character.

Now these are damn cool things, and I want to discuss them, but I'd also like to stick with the conversation we were having there.  So ... 'New Thread!'  This way I can have my cake and eat it too.

The first thing I notice about this, and I'd love to get clarified from someone who knows better than me (which in this case is just about everyone) is that the definitions seem to assume that the actions of the character are not part of the SIS (I presume "Shared Imaginary Space").  That is to say, the Author stance is "writing things into the SIS rather than making decisions about what they [the characters] do" (bolding mine).

In my sense of the words, making decisions about what the characters do is a big part of defining the SIS, so I'm really unclear about how you draw that distinction.  If you decide, as the King, to create a secret police to terrorize and purify the populace ... is that Author stance?  Or is Author stance just the stuff that you do writing up the secret police without acting through the agency of the King (like, between-session diaries and such)?

The second thing that really grabs at my notice is the two categories of "Actor" (acting the character) and "In-Character" (making decisions).  I totally don't get the relationship between these two categories.  Do they overlap?  Is one a subset of the other?  Whassup there?  I need some guidance

A little clarification here would go a long way toward my being able to discuss the concepts.  Thanks in advance!

Quote from: TonyLBOver on Actor/Author/Director, John Morrow brought up the r.g.f.a. definitions from which that model was developed (or corrupted if one prefers):

Rather than my paraphrase, I suggest looking at actual r.g.f.a definitions from the two (not identical) FAQs here:

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.frp.advocacy/msg/fc1c371f8ef26300?dmode=source

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.frp.advocacy/msg/c958d5bdaeeb635a?dmode=source

Quote from: TonyLBThe first thing I notice about this, and I'd love to get clarified from someone who knows better than me (which in this case is just about everyone) is that the definitions seem to assume that the actions of the character are not part of the SIS (I presume "Shared Imaginary Space").  That is to say, the Author stance is "writing things into the SIS rather than making decisions about what they [the characters] do" (bolding mine).

While this particular model was never a focus of mine, I think there were a few reasons for that.  I think the r.g.f.a models often approached things from a player perspective rather than a GM perspective which influences what the model cares about.  I think the assumption was probably that control of a character was within the player's sole sphere of influence rather than in a shared space.  It's a different scope for what's considered shared based on who has control instead of who is interpreting it or using it.  Either way, the distinction between manipulating the SIS through your character as an entity within that SIS that has to follow it's rules and manipulating the SIS in ways beyond what the character can do within the SIS is an important one and even the Forge model distinguishes it.

Quote from: TonyLBIn my sense of the words, making decisions about what the characters do is a big part of defining the SIS, so I'm really unclear about how you draw that distinction.  If you decide, as the King, to create a secret police to terrorize and purify the populace ... is that Author stance?  Or is Author stance just the stuff that you do writing up the secret police without acting through the agency of the King (like, between-session diaries and such)?

Here is where I think it helps not to look at things from just a single model because that model will cause you to frame issues a certain way.  The Forge model was designed, in my opinion, to advocate distributed control.  As such, it's framed to encourage people to think of the entire imaginary space as a shared space that the participants divvy up control over.  The r.g.f.a model was designed from a different perspective and in the context off a more traditional GM/Player divide.  As such, it assumes that the "shared" part is what's outside of the character that the player is  assumed to control.  Thinking about the SIS as if it were a real place, it's the distinction between being a mortal and a deity, affecting things as a part of the SIS or from an omniscient perspective.

• The character, as mortal within the SIS (Forge sense), is IC (player thinking about the character) or Deep IC (player thinking in character).
• The GM or players, directly manipulating the SIS (Forge sense) like a deity might from the outside, is Author
• The GM or players playing to the other participants in the game entirely outside of the SIS (Forge sense) like a performance is Actor
• The GM or players observing events in the SIS (Forge sense) is Audience

This is a place where the Forge sense of SIS, from the perspective of what everyone is imagining, is probably more accurate and useful.

Quote from: TonyLBThe second thing that really grabs at my notice is the two categories of "Actor" (acting the character) and "In-Character" (making decisions).  I totally don't get the relationship between these two categories.  Do they overlap?  Is one a subset of the other?  Whassup there?  I need some guidance

Well, there are actually three categories there.  Actor, In Character (third person), and Deep In Character (first person).  If you look at the FAQs, you'll find lines like, "In any RPG, the participants will leap back and forth between these four stances so quickly and intuitively that they are likely to be unaware that they are doing so at all."  (though how easily players switch between stances and how distruptive that is can vary from player to player)  

In other words, these stances are designed to discuss the frame of mind the player is in when making decisions, their "stance" or perspective, more than their control.  The distinction between "Actor" and "In Character" (either sense) is that "In Character" deal with the SIS while "Actor" is aware of portrayal of that character at the table.

In other words, the player may think, "My character is really angry," by thinking about their character or thinking in character.  That's IC.  The player may start shouting and banging the table to make their character's anger clear to the other players and GM.  If that's done with portrayal to the other participants in mind, it's Actor.  There seem to be some variations on this in the two FAQs that are probably worth looking at but that's my take on it.  I also think the line can be blurred if the IC thinking simply bleeds through into how the player acts instead of being done on purpose.

For example, I'll sometimes use accents for my characters to make them distinct.  I tend to play the game while thinking in character as much as possible but the accent is external to that and I have to do it on purpose to some degree.  The accent is for the benefit of the other players to help them distingush my character from me.  Sometimes, if I don't think about it at all, the accent disappears.  As such, I think that's an Actor mode (r.g.f.a sense) thing that I'm doing.

Quote from: TonyLBA little clarification here would go a long way toward my being able to discuss the concepts.  Thanks in advance!

Read the FAQs above.  Their descriptions are a lot longer and more authoritative than mine.

Maybe I'm missing something. What makes this more than just fancy words for the way things work at a gaming table?

I'm going to go dig into the FAQs, but in the meantime, I'm struck by stuff like this...

Quote from: John MorrowThe Forge model was designed, in my opinion, to advocate distributed control.  As such, it's framed to encourage people to think of the entire imaginary space as a shared space that the participants divvy up control over.  The r.g.f.a model was designed from a different perspective and in the context off a more traditional GM/Player divide.

I'd like to point out that I'm much happier just hearing about these ideas in their own context.  If you're trying to explain it all by reference to the Forge because you think that will make me more comfortable then, really, you don't have to try so hard.  It runs the risk of getting into a discussion of Forge-thought, and really I don't think that's going to help this thread at all.  Maybe a later compare-and-contrast thread, 'kay?

Quote from: James McMurrayMaybe I'm missing something. What makes this more than just fancy words for the way things work at a gaming table?

That's what theory is - any theory. It helps some people to think in this way - taking it apart and seeing what it is made of. Other people not so much.

-clash

Quote from: John MorrowIn other words, the player may think, "My character is really angry," by thinking about their character or thinking in character.  That's IC.  The player may start shouting and banging the table to make their character's anger clear to the other players and GM.  If that's done with portrayal to the other participants in mind, it's Actor.  There seem to be some variations on this in the two FAQs that are probably worth looking at but that's my take on it.  I also think the line can be blurred if the IC thinking simply bleeds through into how the player acts instead of being done on purpose.

Yeah ... the two FAQs are inconsistent.  In fact, I'm not at all sure that each FAQ is not slightly inconsistent within itself, between the Actor description as it references the "In-Character" description and the In-Character description itself.

I'm seeing at least two different distinctions being drawn:

• Actor is about portraying the character, not about deciding what the character is, whereas IC is about deciding what the character is and does, regardless of how it is portrayed.
  
• Actor is about playing a character (including both portrayal and decisions) with conscious recognition of out-of-game elements, whereas IC is about playing the character (both portrayal and decisions) while not consciously referring to any out-of-game elements.

As hard as it is for me to get on the same page with everyone else about one definition, it's even more challenging to get on the same page with you about the fuzziness.  Do you think we're understanding the FAQ-as-it-exists in roughly the same way?

Quote from: flyingmiceThat's what theory is - any theory. It helps some people to think in this way - taking it apart and seeing what it is made of. Other people not so much.

-clash

Ah. I thought perhaps I was missing some sort of revelation. If there's nothing new to discuss here than the terminology, I'll leave you folks to your fun.

Quote from: TonyLBI'd like to point out that I'm much happier just hearing about these ideas in their own context.  If you're trying to explain it all by reference to the Forge because you think that will make me more comfortable then, really, you don't have to try so hard.

Well, it seemed like you were contrasting and I felt the contrast would be ueful.  

Quote from: TonyLBIt runs the risk of getting into a discussion of Forge-thought, and really I don't think that's going to help this thread at all.  Maybe a later compare-and-contrast thread, 'kay?

Well, I don't think all Forge-thought is wrong.  As I pointed out, I think the Forge concept of SIS is probably better than the version you flagged.  

I'll try to stay away from Forge-though if you try to consider the stuff in the FAQ as best you can without Forge-thought, too.

Quote from: James McMurrayAh. I thought perhaps I was missing some sort of revelation. If there's nothing new to discuss here than the terminology, I'll leave you folks to your fun.

Really, a great deal of rgfa terminology arose from the need to explain differences of perspective to people with different paradigms of what people do while playing RPGs, and what elements of interaction are crucial to their enjoyment. I think that use as analytical tools was secondary, especially in the early days.

For example you have this classic clash: one player's thief climbs up onto a ledge that the other PC's can't reach, and explores a side passage. He discovers 10 gold pieces and a ruby worth 1000 gp. Returning to the party, he hides the jewel in his clothes and shares the gold among the other members of the party. An argument arises when he refuses to share the jewel. Later in the session, the rest of the party ties him up and confiscates the jewel. Now both parties go onto Usenet and complain. One side says the other party members had no way of knowing about the jewel, so they shouldn't be insisting he hand it over, let alone take "in-game" action based on that knowledge. The other side says that "in-game" vs. "out of game" doesn't even make sense. In order to explain the difference in perspective, concepts like stance and metagame are then introduced.

Quote from: James McMurrayMaybe I'm missing something. What makes this more than just fancy words for the way things work at a gaming table?

Nothing.  We happened to want to discuss the way things work at a gaming table.  It proved to be useful in some cases to consider what state of mind the player is in while portraying a character's actions, or determining what their actions would be.

Cool. I never needed fancy words but I appreciate the explanation.

Quote from: TonyLBYeah ... the two FAQs are inconsistent.  In fact, I'm not at all sure that each FAQ is not slightly inconsistent within itself, between the Actor description as it references the "In-Character" description and the In-Character description itself.

I think the first FAQ is more definitive and closer to the source.  I included the second one because it makes the distinction between IC and Deep IC (which came later) but I think that otherwise, it's pretty mangled.  Maybe I shouldn't have included it.

Quote from: TonyLBI'm seeing at least two different distinctions being drawn:

• Actor is about portraying the character, not about deciding what the character is, whereas IC is about deciding what the character is and does, regardless of how it is portrayed.
  
• Actor is about playing a character (including both portrayal and decisions) with conscious recognition of out-of-game elements, whereas IC is about playing the character (both portrayal and decisions) while not consciously referring to any out-of-game elements.

As hard as it is for me to get on the same page with everyone else about one definition, it's even more challenging to get on the same page with you about the fuzziness.  Do you think we're understanding the FAQ-as-it-exists in roughly the same way?

Go with this one:


Actor Stance
        The position from which the game is viewed when the player makes a
meta-game decision to further his portrayal of his character by
consciously attempting to mimic the character's actions, tonal quality,
facial expressions, gestures, or other physical manifestations of
character.  This is an important aspect of LARP, but even in table-top
gaming it often manifests: when, for example, a player stands up in a
sedentary table-top game, it is often an indication that he has
momentarily adopted the stance of Actor.
        The Actor Stance is the one in which the player contemplates what
he can do to portray his character more effectively to the other
participants in the game.  It is therefore by nature a meta-game stance,
removed from the internal reality of the game.


In fact, let's stick with the first FAQ and just keep in mind that during discussions of the In-Character stance, the distinction between thinking about a character and thinking in character was divided.

Hey John, are you sure about that?  Because the listing of IC in the FAQ you're directing me toward is:In-Character Stance
The view of the game from within the inside of the game world and
its reality, usually from within the mind of a character living within
that reality.  This is the stance of the *character,* not the player, and
it encompasses only those things seen from the character's point of view.
It is the stance commonly associated with "play itself," as opposed to
the meta-game, and is the position which the player adopts in order to
play his character believably and satisfyingly.You're saying that this definition is supposed to happily include the notion of somebody who is thinking about their character from outside the game-world entirely, as a piece of fiction which has certain properties?

Because, just looking at it, the description seems pretty hostile to that whole notion.  But maybe I'm reading it from a biased point of view.

Quote from: TonyLBThe first thing I notice about this, and I'd love to get clarified from someone who knows better than me (which in this case is just about everyone) is that the definitions seem to assume that the actions of the character are not part of the SIS (I presume "Shared Imaginary Space").  That is to say, the Author stance is "writing things into the SIS rather than making decisions about what they [the characters] do" (bolding mine).

Saying that the actions of the character are not part of the Shared Imagination Space makes no sense to me if by Shared Imagination Space you mean what we usually called the world: the entire fictional construct.  Sometimes people would use 'world' to mean strictly the setting, but usually it meant the setting and the NPCs and the PCs all together.  Sometimes people contrasted the characters and (the rest of the) world, but I don't remember anybody having any problem figuring out what was meant in context: disambiguation wasn't a problem.  The fictional actions of the fictional characters are part of the fictional world.

Forge thinking and rgfa thinking proceed from different baselines.

• Forge thinking: We're talking about who has the authority to make what stick in the group social activity.
• Rgfa thinking: We're talking about what's going on inside people's heads.

The reason for this is that rgfa theory basically started out as an attempt to explain to people who favored dramatic plotting and GM authorial manipulation that, no, some of us didn't want the most exciting action movie plot the GM could come up with.  We wanted the subjective experiences of You are Another Particular Person and You are in Another Place and Time.  So a lot of the discussion and terminology slanted toward considering what subjective states people end up in, how they get there, and how to produce and maintain the ones they find the most fun.

• Author stance: An OOC stance.  You're thinking about the game from the perspective of an author.  "My character would be placed in an interesting dilemma if she overheard part of the others' conversation, so I'll have her walk past the living room."
• Actor stance: An OOC stance.  You're thinking about the game from the perspective of an actor trying to portray a character.  "My character is angry and won't admit it, so I'll have him answer with polite words, but in a tense voice."
• Audience stance: An OOC stance.  You're thinking about the game from the perspective of a member of the audience (or a reader).  "She's found out they're betraying her -- I really want to see how she's going to respond to that."
• Character stance: An IC stance.  You're thinking about the game from the perspective of the character.  "If they realize I've guessed what they're planning, they'll move their operation off the station.  I'd better not let on until I can get some hard evidence."

I happened to use 3rd person for the OOC stances and 1st person for character stance because it's easier to illustrate the point that way, but note that whether one is playing in character stance doesn't actually have anything to do with which part of speech one is using to describe the character's actions.  We use third person pretty much all the time in my online games, for instance, because it's a natural format in chat, even when we're playing in character stance.

Variants of the above:

• Deep IC, or immersion: A variety of character stance in which you not only consciously think like the character, but to some extent feel as the character feels.  'Channelling' the character; creating the character's reactions subconsciously rather than consciously, so that it feels more as if one is discovering what the character is thinking and feeling than as if one is making the stuff up deliberately.
• Channelling the world: Technically this is a variant of author stance, in that one isn't taking the perspective of a character, and one is making decisions about the state of the world, but it feels closer to deep IC than to consciously making decisions about the setting or NPCs.  One subconsciously models the state of the world, so that one seems to be discovering what's happening, rather than making it up.  A common stance for some GMs.

Some other ideas that were floated after the original four stances:

• Director's stance: A proposed OOC stance meant to refer to using authorial powers beyond one's own character, to make decisions about what's happening in the setting.  This didn't often get used in practice because subjectively it isn't really a different perspective from author stance; it didn't turn out to be a particularly useful distinction.  (It might have been useful if rgfa stances had been about who has the resolving power for what, but they're not.)
• Gameplayer's stance:  An OOC stance; obviously, it's thinking about the game from the perspective of someone playing one.  "If I use up all my fate points now I might not have enough left for the climactic fight."

Some people find it much more enjoyable to play from some stances than others; or they may find some stances difficult or impossible to achieve; or they may be able to flip back and forth easily between some stances, but find other transitions difficult, disruptive or impossible.  Different people find that different techniques help or hinder getting into various stances.  For example, some people prefer to play in deep IC, but find having to firewall difficult or disruptive to the state, so these people may prefer a style of game in which they don't see or hear anything that their character doesn't.  Other people who like to play in deep IC find firewalling easy and non-disruptive, so they may prefer to watch the entire story unfold, whether their character is onstage or not.

QuoteIn my sense of the words, making decisions about what the characters do is a big part of defining the SIS, so I'm really unclear about how you draw that distinction.  If you decide, as the King, to create a secret police to terrorize and purify the populace ... is that Author stance?  Or is Author stance just the stuff that you do writing up the secret police without acting through the agency of the King (like, between-session diaries and such)?

Exactly what state of mind were you in, when deciding what the King would do?  Were you saying, "I want the King to be a clearly identifiable villain the PCs will strongly oppose -- I want clear lines of good and evil here -- so I'll make him a tyrant?"  Author.  Were you thinking as the King: "If I don't keep control of the dissident elements in the populace, they might ally with my enemy the Duke, and install him on the throne instead."?  Character.

Now as to whether your decision is part of the fictional world or not -- that depends on how you made it.  The King's actions become part of the happenings of the world, of course.  But there's a sense in which your decision-making itself is only part of the world if you made it in character stance.  That is, there is a fictional entity in the fictional world who thought, "I'd better keep the dissidents from allying with the Duke."  But there is no entity in the fictional world who said, "I want the King to be an obvious villain because it'll fit the genre."  That's a player-world decision, metaworld thinking that couldn't enter into the fictional world because there's no one who could have thought it.

The rgfa stances were often used by people who wanted to experience as consistent and vivid and believable a world as they could; and some of them found playing in character stance and sticking closely to in-world cause-and-effect the best way to achieve that You Are Thereness.  So they often would rather that the GM make the King's decision by thinking like the King, if he could manage it.  It's "I want to think and feel as my character really would feel in this situation.  I want the events of the campaign to be what would really happen if the campaign world existed in fact."  (There were other approaches in rgfa, but that one was the predominant one.)

QuoteThe second thing that really grabs at my notice is the two categories of "Actor" (acting the character) and "In-Character" (making decisions).  I totally don't get the relationship between these two categories.  Do they overlap?  Is one a subset of the other?  Whassup there?  I need some guidance

They're quite different, in rgfa thinking, where the in-world/metaworld distinction is of great importance.

If you're in actor stance, you are thinking as a player, OOC, trying to portray the character to the other players.  If you're in character stance, you're "being" the character, thinking like the character, making the character's choices not because of an effect it will have on the other players or the plot, but because that's what the character would do if they in fact existed and really were in that situation.

If I called them the actor's viewpoint and the character's viewpoint, would that be clearer?  I might end up introducing the same character action into the world either way, but I'd gotten there by a different process.

Actor: "I the GM want Russell the player to understand how dazed Shazemar the NPC is, so I'll have Shazemar stare at the cup out-of-focus and miss closing his fingers on it the first time."
Character: "I can't see ... oh, that isn't where I expected it?"

What I subjectively experienced, if I made the decision in character stance, is much different than what I experienced if I made it in actor stance, even if it's the same basic action I describe to the player.

Quote from: TonyLBHey John, are you sure about that?

It's not as bad as it looks.  The reason why I included the second FAQ was that the IC definitions were more developed.  But let me see if I can work with what's in the first one before changing my mind...

Quote from: TonyLBYou're saying that this definition is supposed to happily include the notion of somebody who is thinking about their character from outside the game-world entirely, as a piece of fiction which has certain properties?

Third-person IC is thinking about what the character would do based on what's known about them and what's happening to them.  First-person or "Deep" IC is thinking in character.  Both should produce actions akin to what the character would do if they were a real person and thus are the same category in the first FAQ.  The focus is a single character.  If you step back and consider the metagame beyond the character, that's Author mode.  

Quote from: TonyLBBecause, just looking at it, the description seems pretty hostile to that whole notion.  But maybe I'm reading it from a biased point of view.

Remember that this FAQ also says, "In any RPG, the participants will leap back and forth between these four stances so quickly and intuitively that they are likely to be unaware that they are doing so at all."

What you've been describing would be, in this model, using the IC stance to determine what your character is likely to do and then switching into Author mode to make a choice based on metagame concerns.

In fact, I'm starting to think that a weakness of both of these models is that they seem to mix perspective (how the player is looking at the game) and scope of control (what the player is authorized to change in the game), and those are at least semi-independent variables.

The perspective can be:

• Game Session (independent of the SIS)
• Interpretation (aesthetic judgements about the SIS)
• Setting (the whole SIS)
• Party (the PCs, collectively and individually -- alternately, multiple PCs)
• Character (a single character)
• Mind (a single character's mindscape)

The scope of control can be:

• Game Session (e.g., GM is god and can kick players out)
• Setting
• Character
• Nothing (observation)