Quote from: John MorrowWhat i mean is that when the character's behavior changes over time, is it being driven by the needs of the game or story rather than by reasons within the characters themselves.

Haven't we already had this discussion?

Quote from: TonyLBOn a side-note:  I don't see how you could bear to walk away from this.  It strikes me as so perfect.  You've got a character who will not surrender, and a fight he can't possibly win.

He didn't leave his post to run to save himself.  In fact, he felt that he was committing suicide by leaving because he knew he'd deserve to be hung for desertion and fully expects to die for his trouble.

The reason he deserted was that the setting provided another option for him that made more sense.

The unfriendly neighbors of the village my character was working for are culturally very similar to my character and my character felt he had very good odds of convincing them to act against the elves even if the village he was protecting wouldn't.  Even if they didn't buy the story about the elven ruins, they were looking for an excuse to invade and my character decided to give them one.

It was a sort of "I have to destroy the village to save it" line of reasoning that all made perfect sense in character once my character was convinced that the village was going to be destroyed by the elves, anyway.  Basically, he felt they had a better chance being conquered and dominated by their rigid but not evil neighbors than being at the mercy of the (from my character's perspective) evil elves.

Quote from: TonyLBIn your place, I would have steered the situation right toward this ending, and fought.  Who could possibly ask for more?

There was no way to do that without breaking the internal character model.  My characters logical course of action was clear.  While I'm disappointed he didn't make it to the end, it was the right thing to do in character and the other players seemed to think it was a pretty cool curve ball.

ADDED:  I should add that there was a historical even in the setting that was very important to my character concept and the situation he wound up in had strong resonance with that historical event in my character's mind.

Quote from: TonyLBHaven't we already had this discussion?

I'm not sure how to explain what I'm getting at and the question may be meaningless from your perspective so I'll drop it.  

Simply put, the changes that happen in my characters generally occur because of changes in the way the character thinks.  Where I nudge the character to behave a certain way for meta-game reasons, the two have a distinctly different feel for me.  And unless I successfully disguise the nudges as thinking from inside of the character, the character notices the difference, too.

Quote from: John MorrowThere was no way to do that without breaking the internal character model.  My characters logical course of action was clear.

Yeah, I get that, and it definitely sounds like a terrific game.  I just couldn't help noticing that we form our characters with an eye toward doing very different things.

I can't remember the last character I played where saying "My characters logical course of action was clear," would be the end of the decision-making process.  I tend to play people who, in the crunch, know the sensible, logical thing to do ... and then do something else, because of who they are.

Quote from: John MorrowSimply put, the changes that happen in my characters generally occur because of changes in the way the character thinks.  Where I nudge the character to behave a certain way for meta-game reasons, the two have a distinctly different feel for me.  And unless I successfully disguise the nudges as thinking from inside of the character, the character notices the difference, too.

Yeah, but that's the dichotomy you keep offering and I keep declining:  a decision that makes sense for the character, or one that aids the metagame.  I find the change I can make to the character that grows out of him naturally and serves the metagame purpose.  It's what I do.

Quote from: James McMurrayFor the Player stance and Character stance: these don't seem different from the already common IC/OOC split. What's different enough about them to warrant their use? Or alternatively, what's nonfunctional about IC and OOC as they're currently (and pretty universally) known?

They're not nonfunctional, but they have multiple senses, and the stances were an attempt to discuss specific senses.

I don't think I can explain it any better than I have in some earlier posts in this thread.

Quote from: TonyLBYeah, but that's the dichotomy you keep offering and I keep declining:  a decision that makes sense for the character, or one that aids the metagame.  I find the change I can make to the character that grows out of him naturally and serves the metagame purpose.  It's what I do.

Here I'm talking about something a bit different that might help explain the disconnect between our two perspectives.

(ADDED: To make it clear, I'm talking about how and why I do things from here on.  I'm not suggesting that you do things this way.)

For me, the meta-game has no existence for my character.  The character deals with the events of the game within the SIS on their own terms.  

The player is aware of the meta-game and can see that a series of events is rolling toward disaster.  The player can't introduce that meta-game knowledge directly into the character because the meta-game doesn't exist for the character.  

So the the player must adapt the information into something that makes sense in character.  That might mean nudging the character to spot the SIS manifestation of the meta-game issue.  It might mean nudging how the character feels about something or what they see or don't see.  But it's not just changing how I decide the character is going to behave.  

I have to actually change how the character thinks, because that's what make the character go and supports the independent character thought process.  So the introduction of meta-game information into the character isn't simply making a decision for me.  It means rewriting a characters mind to work differently and think differently.  If I do a bad job, parts of the mind won't fit with other parts of the mind and they'll feel alien and wrong.  It can result in the collapse of a character or an insane character.

For example, if I need my character to like an NPC that my character should hate, I can just insert, "You like this NPC," into my characters mindscape.  But if the character's natural thought process decides that it should hate the character, the character will wonder where the thought to like the character came from.  

In order to make sure the character likes the NPC, I not only need to insert the thought to like the NPC but I also need to rewrite the character's mind so they won't just go back to disliking the NPC if they think about it because there may be complex reasons why they would like or dislike an NPC.  The things I insert have to be harmonized with the way the character thinks.  If they aren't, they don't match the rest of the stuff in the character's brain and the character notices the difference.

That's why it was easier for me to have my character not notice that the other PC was a Druid than to just give my character warm fuzzy thoughts about Druids because making my character like Druids would require major reworking about how my character thinks about elves and the humans that serve them, and so on.  I would have had to rework large hunks of my character's mind to explain why the character hates elves but likes Druids in character.  I suppose I could have made my character pity the humans who served the elves but there were game back-story issues that would have made that fairly complicated.  In the end, it was easier to just not notice.  

(By the way, have you seen the movie The Forgotten?  The in character feeling of having their memory manipulated externally when it's not successful feels not unlike what the main character in that movie felt.)

Quote from: James J SkachLet me be more clear about my stance...umm..position.

I, too, distinguish between the two; however, I do so within the concept of Character.  That is, to me, they are both being in-character, just one more so than the other. Externally they will be proximate, while internally they might be different.

But let's assume, for the moment, that we're either:
trying to diagnose a group problem
trying to design a game

To me, in those cases, the external proximity is close enough for union/government work, as they say. It's also why I say that you then branch out if, and only if, it's required because the first pass doesn't answer your question.

I don't know if habitually playing in shallow IC has much effect on either of these, because the people I know who care a lot about stance are a bunch of immersionists who want to play in deep IC.  And playing for deep IC can have major effects on both of these things.

For instance, I run for people who like to play in deep IC.  We haven't had any problems in my current campaign.  But let's imagine that two of the characters were clashing in a way nobody thought would be fun to play through.  One of the items that is not in my toolbox is telling a deep IC player, "Well, just make your character react some other way."  Because they probably can't do it without breaking the character in a way that destroys the point of playing.

As far as design goes, there are also some fairly common tendencies among deep IC players.  They don't like mechanics that distract them from what the character is thinking and feeling.  Exactly what people consider distracting varies, but some fairly common dislikes include mechanics that involve managing things that don't exist in the fictional world (like drama points), mechanics with high handling time, or mechanics that determine a character's reactions or behavior.

A number of Forge games have mechanics that demand author-stance play, and these tend to be bad designs for deep IC players.

Quote from: TonyLBKeran:  Is the model supposed to be more certain and definite than an actual human being?

No.  Let me try to explain how it works (or, in some respects, how I think it works).

First thing: there are ways in which 'model' is no bad word for it, and ways in which it's pretty lousy.  Problem is, I haven't come up with a better one for most uses.  

The word suggests correctly that it's something like a weather simulation -- that if I give it inputs, it will perform complex processing and give me outputs.  Unfortunately, it also tends to suggest formal, rule-based definition, which is not correct.  I don't have a bunch of rules in my head for deterministically predicting how an immersible character will behave; I have a construct that largely operates in my subconscious mind.  Its workings are not directly accessible to me.
 
I often don't know in advance -- to the point where it's been a standing source of amusement in my campaigns -- how an immersible character is going to behave.  That's part of the point of playing one -- if I could tell you reliably what the character would do in response to any stimulus, I'd be bored out of my skull.

I can make educated guesses how the character will behave, and often, but not always, I guess right.  Well, I can make educated guesses about how I'm going to behave, and often -- but again, not always -- I guess right.  The character can make choices, but doesn't seem to be able to choose all of his reactions; I can make choices, but don't seem to be able to choose all of my reactions.

Before the character reacts to something, or chooses something, it often seems as if it might have gone either way.  For instance, I do not know whether the warlord of Debroa, Khameris, will decide to kill Shazemar if he ever discovers what Shazemar's situation is.  He has not discovered it, and there are strong arguments both ways.  I can't tell you which will prevail with him.  If he ever finds out, I am guessing that he will debate with himself for a while, ask his wife what she thinks, and come to a decision.  I no more know in advance what his decision will be than I know what my own decisions will be before I have made them.

But after he decides -- if the matter ever comes before him -- then I know, just as my own decisions are known after I have made them, even though I don't know in advance.  I will have stepped into Khameris' mindset and considered, in a manner as faithful to his viewpoint (if he were real) as I can manage.

What I won't have done is say, "I don't want Shazemar dead, so I'll say Khameris decides not to kill him."  My conscious intereference in the subconscious character construct, particularly about something the character feels strongly about, will make it impossible for me to suspend disbelief in anything I play with that character afterward.  The "real" Khameris will have frozen at the point before I interfered; everything I play after the corrupt pivotal decision will feel fake, and will probably have to be consciously manufactured without much subconscious creative assistance.  Some deep IC players describe this as the character turning to cardboard.  And it isn't fun to play them, once they have.

For some people, if this happens, the character is broken forever: they'll never regain that deep IC mindset again.  I never lose my ability to call up an immersible character, but I can't make the subconscious processes accept the OOCly intruding decision as something the character really did, so it makes it very difficult to keep playing in that campaign.

Now sometimes it would be a lot easier if I could simply adjust the character, yes.  But it doesn't seem to be in my power to change the conditions under which I can achieve deep IC, and I consider deep IC well worth its price.

I have other sorts of models where I can get away with some conscious interjection.

Quote from: KeranBut after he decides -- if the matter ever comes before him -- then I know, just as my own decisions are known after I have made them, even though I don't know in advance.  I will have stepped into Khameris' mindset and considered, in a manner as faithful to his viewpoint (if he were real) as I can manage.

So you're saying that in the actual moment there is only one possible course available to the character?

I don't think real human beings work that way.  That's the appeal of stories where people are given a second chance at a critical choice:  Christmas Carol, for instance.  We recognize that our courses aren't fixed ... that the story of Scrooge dying miserly and alone is as real and true to his character as the story of his repenting and becoming a man of charity.

(Note:  I'm not saying that Scrooge's change was internally motivated ... clearly, there was a lot of external influence on him.  What I'm saying is that such stories appeal to us because they put the manifold nature of human behavior under a microscope and make it visible in big, broad strokes)

Quote from: John MorrowI have to actually change how the character thinks, because that's what make the character go and supports the independent character thought process.  So the introduction of meta-game information into the character isn't simply making a decision for me.  It means rewriting a characters mind to work differently and think differently.

Right.  So here's how I operate:  I do this through action.  I tell the story of how the characters mind was changed.

My guy doesn't wake up one morning thinking that the Druid is okay ... that would be lame.  But I do keep a weather eye out for opportunities to steer the situation into a good place for us to tell a story of how my guy and the Druid face an experience together that changes how they think of each other.

Quote from: TonyLBMy guy doesn't wake up one morning thinking that the Druid is okay ... that would be lame.  But I do keep a weather eye out for opportunities to steer the situation into a good place for us to tell a story of how my guy and the Druid face an experience together that changes how they think of each other.

Well, yeah, that was part of what I was doing in that D&D  game.  Part of what makes that somewhat difficult for me is, like I said, the character doesn't know about the meta-game.  So when I'm thinking deeply in character and the player-level consciousness is at a minimum, I may not be on the lookout for, or notice, ever opportunity that would help.  Another part of what makes this difficult, and part of what I was trying to explain, is that to "steer" the character, things have to be injected into the character's mindspace so that they seem like native thoughts and not alien thoughts to the character.  For some things that's easier than others.  

For example, it would have been harder for me to emphasize the "my character intuitively likes the Druid PC" if (A) the player hadn't happened to play the PC with qualities my character would like and could latch on to and (B) my character had learned the other PC was a druid before they had any time to bond as friends (which is why I tried to hide that from the PC as long as possible).  In fact, my character became a guard leader and treated that PC as his second in command.

But let me ask you this.  For a character you are running, what does it mean to "change how they think"?  How do you represent that change in your mind and store it?  How does it influence how you portray the character during play?  (Yes, I know some of this is all holistic for you so just answer as best you can if you can.)

Maybe we are talking about something very similar and perhaps what I'm doing is not all that different in substance but different in the particulars and the fact that the choices that are made in character and those made for meta-game reasons stay quite distinct for me.  Yes, I was nudging the character to not notice what the Druid was and to like the Druid but it was clear to me that I was doing that nudging and that it was done for meta-game reasons.  You seem to be saying that you don't get that clear distinction and it all just gets rolled in to how you play the character, right?

Quote from: John MorrowBut let me ask you this.  For a character you are running, what does it mean to "change how they think"?  How do you represent that change in your mind and store it?  How does it influence how you portray the character during play?  (Yes, I know some of this is all holistic for you so just answer as best you can if you can.)

It's a new, richer, character every time ... not "Here's the base character" and "Here, separately, are all the changes that have been applied," but rather "Here's the character, as he's come to be through experience."

Like, I could create a character from scratch by saying "Yoshi was an obedient young girl, even when her father abused her, but ever since she found the support of her friend, Khaidu, she has been more able to stand up for herself.  Now she looks back on those days with bitterness, and resolves never to let herself be mistreated that way again."  And then I can play that, right?  Is there any question about how one would think in order to play that character ... like, if that were handed to you as a pre-gen?

So, what actually happened in the game I played Yoshi in was that she started out as an obedient young girl with an abusive father.  Then, in-game, she found the support of Khaidu, and that led her to defy her father and become a new person ... specifically, the person described above.

Once she's gone through that experience, she's that new person.  The experience is part of the past that informs who she is now.

But, of course, things could have gone differently.  She could have remained loyal to her father, and repudiated her friend.  And that would make her a new person too, but a different new person.

Am I making any sense here?  Again, I feel like I may be misunderstanding the thrust of the question.

Quote from: TonyLBSo you're saying that in the actual moment there is only one possible course available to the character?

When a player thinking in character and the character has already made a decision, or is strongly inclined to make a specific decision, it is not so much that there is only one possible course available to the character from an abstract perspective but that the character has already chosen or will inevitably choose a particular course of action.  

Quote from: TonyLBI don't think real human beings work that way.  That's the appeal of stories where people are given a second chance at a critical choice:  Christmas Carol, for instance.  We recognize that our courses aren't fixed ... that the story of Scrooge dying miserly and alone is as real and true to his character as the story of his repenting and becoming a man of charity.

Correct.  However, Scrooge has a change of heart, in part, because Dicken's wants him to.  He doesn't have an independent choice.  If I were playing Scrooge in character (and I've recently read over much of the story for an alignment debate elsewhere), it would be entirely possible that a Scrooge could react differently to the ghosts than repentance.  There is a lot of evidence in the story that Scrooge feels morally justified for being the way he is and if the initial encounter with Marley or the first ghost brought out a different part of his personality (e.g., defensiveness) during play, I could see the story producing no change in Scrooge and being a tragedy, instead.  It's like trying to persuade anyone of anything.  Sometimes it doesn't work because something inside of them refuses to go along.

And to be perfectly honest, I'd rather games not always turn out the neat and tidy way.  For example, I played a character that was quickly consumed and died from an addiction.  While there was a certain tragedy and pointlessness to that, I valued the fact that the character was allowed to follow that course and also like the "playing without a net" feeling that creates -- that any outcome is possibly, not just the neat story-like endings.

Years ago, Fujisankei would subtitle the Japanese dramas they showed in the United States (they still show them but no longer subtitle them) and I would watch them (as would my wife and some of my friends).  Not only do those dramas follow a different set of conventions than American programs (they run for about 12 episodes then end -- so they are more mini-series than series) but I've recently found out that we were watching during a period when the dramas had taken a turn toward being quite dark and sometimes even ending an a depressing more than hopeful note (though there were still some comedies and such).

In those dramas, many of the sacred cows of American television weren't so sacred.  Likable characters had their lives ruined and committed suicide or died in pointless accidents.  Characters hurt their loved ones, wrecked their bodies, made horrible mistakes, and wound up never really getting together with the person clearly set up to be their soul mate.  In once case, the main point-of-view character of the show died before the last episode and in another, the main point-of-view character tried to kill herself and ended the series with severe brain damage (she failed to kill herself).

Now, there was definitely a certain "Jesus, Grandpa!  What are you showing me this thing for!?! quality to the experience, but in other ways it was amazingly liberating because it wasn't predictable based on story logic.  When an upset character ran away and toward a busy street once, my wife and I both cringed because it was possible that the character could run out into traffic and get run over.  I'd never have that thought with a normal American TV show.  There are things I can relax and not worry about because the author won't let them happen and things I can predict because, well, that's how the story has to go (e.g., both my wife and I found the end of the recent James Bond movie fairly predictable because the requirements and conventions of the franchise couldn't let the character go in certain directions).  I like not being able to predict where things can go, and that's also probably why I don't really like steering things toward or away from a particular direction, either.  I really like just watching things play out and seeing where the character goes, even if it means running into a busy street and getting run over or dying before the last session.

You'll notice that the changes I mentioned in the D&D game had less to do with story, per se, and more to do with smoothing things over for social/game reasons.  The main reason I tried to smooth over the conflict with the Druid was to produce a smoother running game for the Druid's player and the GM, not so much for them to have a happy ending.  And my main disappointment for my character in that game is less from a story or in character perspective and more from a player perspective (I wish I had my character to "be there" for the end) and a game perspective (I never got to actually use some really cool combat abilities the character had just gotten in combat and likely never will).  I'm actually pretty cool with the character doing what he did, which may be part of why I didn't push harder.

Quote from: TonyLB(Note:  I'm not saying that Scrooge's change was internally motivated ... clearly, there was a lot of external influence on him.  What I'm saying is that such stories appeal to us because they put the manifold nature of human behavior under a microscope and make it visible in big, broad strokes)

Sure.  But in the real world, people don't always change themselves the right way the way Scrooge did.  While there are plenty of people who clean themselves up in rehab or even find the courage to change themselves, there are plenty of  other people who remain trapped in addictions and so on.  Life doesn't always have a storybook ending because people don't always do what's needed to produce one, even when they are strongly shoved in the right direction.  So for me, even pushing a character hard to change is no guarantee that they will, any more than it's a guarantee for a real person, unless I start figure out what's pushing back and change it.  And that's not always possible if the cause is a core part of who the character is and can't easily be changed.

This is part of what I was talking about when I said that the filters/masks that people apply to characters create artificial patterns in the results.  My wife and I found the end of the James Bond movie somewhat predictable because we knew the filter/mask that the writers were applying to what could happen in the story.  Everything was consistent with the characterization and plausible, but it was predictable because the other filter being applied limited things into a very narrow range.  If I were applying a story filter to my character in the D&D game, he wouldn't have deserted.  In one sense, that would have been good but it also would have been what everyone expected, even if I found an in character reason to stay.  The desertion was so stunning to everyone (including the GM) because it not only made perfect sense in character (and the other PCs did have a chance to notice that something was changing and amiss) but wasn't what people expected.  In fact, that was a Scrooge-like change in character, as far as the PCs were concerned (the character was all about duty, command structure, etc.).

So what I'm adding to the picture here is that while I do want to steer my characters away from game destroying choices (e.g., choices that will ruin other PCs, choices that will destroy the setting, choices that will destroy the campaign, etc.) part of why I don't push harder is because I really don't want to.  There is a point at which I feel I'm forcing a storybook ending and I really don't want that. For the most part, I really want to see where the character winds up without me doing too much pushing, one way or the other.

John:  I'm trying to write "There are many possible actions for a character, all valid," and you seem to be somehow reading "Only the action that suits a specific style of story is valid."  That's not what I'm trying to say.

You're sitting here arguing for your right to consider a heartless, vicious Scrooge as a legitimate place to take the character.  You don't have to fight to convince me of that.  I think it's legitimate.  I think lots of things are all legitimate.  That's what I'm trying to say.

How are we miscommunicating so badly here?