Quote from: TonyLBIs that "Author" stance then, in this terminology?

If I understand your question, then I think so.

Quote from: TonyLBOh dude ... do you realize how judgmental and dismissive that came across?  I'm assuming that you didn't mean it that way, but ... dude.  You know that this is part of the way I play my characters, and you want to make your only example be people who are identified only by the fact that they're doing a crappy job of roleplaying?  And I thought we were getting along so well ...

Well, clearly I'm not talking about you so please don't take it personally.

I'm talking about what I think looking at a character purely from outside of the SIS might look like.  You've said that you take the character into consideration.  What I'm asking is suppose you didn't even think about what your character would do or who they were (information within the SIS) and just made decisions based on what seemed fun.  Does that make any sense?

Quote from: TonyLBWell, I described having a single state of mind that operated in both modes simultaneously.  You're describing switching back and forth.  So ... no, it's not really the same thing, I don't think.  I mean ... just for example, you really wouldn't talk about synergies between IC and Author stances if you adhere to the switching model, would you?

I'm basing the switch diagnosis on what you said earlier.  Earlier, you said,

Quote from: TonyLB"What my character would do" is not, usually, a single brightly lit path. There are a wide variety of responses that a character could plausibly have. Often, several of them are clearly also going to be fun as all hell on levels other than simply 'It's fun to play my character.' Some paths are going to put the other players on the spot, or put me on the spot, or show us something about the nature of ... I dunno ... cheese, or something.

So, among the things that my character could equally plausibly do, I choose the one that's fun. Best of both worlds.

What that suggests to me is that (A) you filter out what your character could plausibly do and then (B) filter those options based on what's the most fun.  Perhaps I'm reading too much into it.  But do you have any sense that one happens more than the other or do they seem to happen at the same time?  Do all of the things your character plausibly do pop readily into your mind (suggesting that you filter that independently and possibly) or is it easier to think of all the fun things your character might do (suggesting you filter that independently and possibly first)?  Or both, suggestion that you filter both independently and then find the intersection of the sets.  Or if neither comes readily to mind, perhaps you combine the filters.

Quote from: TonyLBWow ... that's an interesting way to say that ... starting from the social contract, and then working your way out to behaviors, rather than vice versa.

My assumption was that it was a filter on the player's choices and like any other filter (the character, the setting, the rules, what's fun) it could in theory be applied at any point in the series of filters to limit the options a player wil consider.  In other words, I'm sure that some people filter out certain choices fairly early in the process for social contract reasons (e.g., romance doesn't even get considered because the group doesn't do romance) while other people apply the social contract filter late int he process (e.g., I'll decide what my character does in character and then apply a light social contract filter that might block the choice just before it goes out).

So maybe that's what we need to be looking at is a series of decision filters (or boundaries or whatever you want to call them) that constrain the player's options until they come up with a decision about what their character does.  To a certain degree, that's even what I'm using thinking in character for -- a filter through which I look at the game.

Quote from: John MorrowWhat I'm asking is suppose you didn't even think about what your character would do or who they were (information within the SIS) and just made decisions based on what seemed fun.  Does that make any sense?

Not really, no.  How could you implement any decisions without going by way of IC stance?  Author mode is (if I understand these definitions correctly) entirely outside of the fiction of the game.  The moment you say "Brag cuts the orcs head off," whatever your motivation, you're in IC stance, aren't you?

Quote from: John MorrowBut do you have any sense that one happens more than the other or do they seem to happen at the same time?

My sense is that they are two facets of the same mental process.  It is not merely that they do happen at the same time, but that I would be in a different mental state if they could happen individually.

That's why I'm such a fan of games where the in-character material supports the system, and the system supports the in-character material ... without it, I feel like ... well, like I was having two unrelated images flashed at me, one in each eye, and being asked to work off of that.  It can be a little crazy-making.

Quote from: TonyLBNot really, no.  How could you implement any decisions without going by way of IC stance?

By treating your character as a pawn with no personality and simply playing off of the other players.  That horrible example I provided earlier, basically.

Quote from: TonyLBAuthor mode is (if I understand these definitions correctly) entirely outside of the fiction of the game.  The moment you say "Brag cuts the orcs head off," whatever your motivation, you're in IC stance, aren't you?

It's the perspective of standing outside looking in.  It's the omniscient perspective.  It's analogous to an author writing a book.  I'm not sure it classifies the statement but the reason why the statement was made.  If Brag cuts off the orc's head because that's what Brag would do, that's IC.  If Brag cuts off the orc's head because that's the most fun for the player, then it's Author.  If the player does it for both reasons, it could be both.

Quote from: TonyLBMy sense is that they are two facets of the same mental process.  It is not merely that they do happen at the same time, but that I would be in a different mental state if they could happen individually.

Can you frame an example based on a situation where "what the character would do" conflicts with what's fun, as in the examples I gave of a player's in character choices running up against the social contract of the group.  It might make the interplay between the two concerns more clear when they are in conflict with each it.

Quote from: TonyLBThat's why I'm such a fan of games where the in-character material supports the system, and the system supports the in-character material ... without it, I feel like ... well, like I was having two unrelated images flashed at me, one in each eye, and being asked to work off of that.  It can be a little crazy-making.

Can you explain this in more detail?  I'm not sure I understand what you are talking about.

Quote from: John MorrowBy treating your character as a pawn with no personality and simply playing off of the other players.  That horrible example I provided earlier, basically.

I thought, by the FAQ, that the choice to have (say) Brag cut the head off an orc could be made in Author mode, but that the actual execution always had to be in IC.  Isn't that where all this rapid switching is supposed to come in?

I'm not throwing my hands in the air and saying "Oh me oh my, how could somebody think that way?" I'm saying that by the definitions I've been handed, playing the game solely Author mode is literally impossible.  Am I missing something?

Quote from: John MorrowCan you frame an example based on a situation where "what the character would do" conflicts with what's fun, as in the examples I gave of a player's in character choices running up against the social contract of the group.  It might make the interplay between the two concerns more clear when they are in conflict with each it.

You're ... you're asking me to frame an example where my style of play breaks down.  You get that, right?  So I've racked my mind for actual examples, but I got nothing.  I'll fictionalize something for you, then tell you how I worked it out in real life:   We're playing Tenra Bansho Zero, with pre-generated characters and a fairly straightforward walk-through of several combats.  I'm playing a young Taoist girl of high social standing and no combat skills.  Here's where it becomes totally fictional:  I feel that there is no consistent action this character can take that doesn't involve asserting her station over the lower-class fighters of the other players.  And, moreover, I can't think of a way to make that fun.  So I step entirely out of game and say "Guys, I can't have fun with this character without breaking her to pieces.  Anyone have any ideas on how to maintain her society training without totally ruining our fun?"... but in actual fact, what happened is ...   I'm playing a young Taoist girl of high social standing and no combat skills.  I immediately and unequivocally beg the indulgence of the fighters, pointing out how completely in their power my character is physically ... how dependent she is upon their support and protection.  Couched in formal language and ritual humility it was totally a natural thing for her to do.  In doing so, I draw the other players to concede, contrari-wise, that they, rough and ready brawlers that they are, are completely dependent upon me to negotiate the finer points of etiquette and ethics (a nasty and important tangle in the world we're playing in, even (we decide) when confronting ogres and demons).  We all end up with our spheres clearly defined, and I end up with my in-character attitudes and my meta-game resources and desires happily aligned, all as a natural outgrowth of selecting one possible choice that grows naturally out of the character as it was provided to me.This is how I do things.  I don't choose Author and then IC.  I don't balance one against the other.  I find the way that I can have both, in the same moment, always.

Quote from: TonyLBRight.  But I don't think either of those is (for instance) "Well, this character is a farm-boy with dreams of greatness, so obviously he's going to rise to the occasion when he is called to a heroic journey."  And yet, that is still deciding what the character would do based on what's known about them and what's happening to them ... but it's doing it from a perspective entirely outside the game-world, viewing the character as a piece of fiction with the properties of fiction, rather than (solely) a fictional person with the properties of a real person.

Since the FAQ is saying quite clearly that decisions about the character can only be made from within the game-world ... I just don't know how to reconcile that.

If it says that, it isn't what anybody I remember ever meant.  Clearly, decisions can be made from viewpoints outside the game world, and people do it often.

I'm not entirely clear on what piece of verbiage is giving you the impression that it meant otherwise, but that may be because I read the original discussions and am supplying some inobvious piece of context.  (It wouldn't be the first time that happened.)

I'd call the example you just gave author stance.  The farmboy isn't thinking that stuff.

QuoteI mean ... I think I understand the claim that people are switching back and forth on a nano-second by nano-second basis ... but I don't feel that when I play.  What I feel like is that I've got both things in mind at the same time.

I guess I'm in search of the justification for why the "Switching" model over anything else.  It's stated so plainly ... just "This is what happens" ... that I don't really know whether there's some further justification hidden away, or whether it's just an axiom that got thrown out and nobody ever challenged.

Well, I suppose it happened because the people who became aware of stances also noticed switching between them -- how would one notice them, except by contrast?

Rgfa had a number of people who liked to channel their worlds and characters, but who didn't always find those states easy to achieve or maintain, and they'd notice when they got cracked out of the state they wanted to be in.  Which doesn't necessarily make switching the last word on the subject, or a match for everyone's experience.  Just that it's the way it occurred to some people to describe theirs.

I notice switches, but I don't notice every possible combination of them I might see from the four-stance grouping, and I do notice one or two that never made it formally onto the list.

For instance, for me author and actor are effectively indistinguishable, and I frequently refer to the author+actor combination because of this.  I suspect it might be different if we played face to face, so that when I was in actor stance I was doing physical things in order to portraying the character to the other players, whereas when I was in author stance I was thinking about things from an OOC perspective and declaring them in words.  But since we play online we're always typing at each other, and there isn't really a stance switch for me there in practice.

I am never in gameplayer's stance in an RPG.  It's a state of mind I assume when playing other games, and there's a lot about classic RPGs that would suggest that I might assume this stance, but in practice I never do.  Apparently I can think like a gameplayer or roleplay, but not at the same time.  Other people can do both, and would find the lack of support for gaming-as-such in my campaigns a fatal flaw.  (It's really hard to think about how to support an approach I never take myself.)

I usually prefer to be as deeply IC as I can manage when playing a character, and if I'm dealing with some other aspect of the world, I want to be channelling.  I definitely notice, and do not much like, things that force me out of character stance or which break my ability to channel the world.

For example, though I have since come by ways to improve it, I used to find combat online highly unsatisfactory.  I was on dialup for a long time, playing in text-only chat, and I had a hard time visualizing or describing positions and movement without diagrams.  That I was struggling to understand things that my character could simply see was distracting enough to force me out of character stance.  I'd be conscious of a sense of disconnection from the character, and also conscious of the arbitrariness of the decisions I was having to make strictly in author stance.  The experience of combat felt unreal: I was not perceiving at all what the character would think and feel, nor could I imagine who was where in the world around him.  It was as if I'd been reading an absorbing novel and suddenly come across half a chapter with sentences so badly constructed the confusion jerked me out of the story.

An effect like this, I notice.  I'm not so likely to notice a seamless slide between differing perspectives, when that happens.  Or to start a discussion about something that never causes me any difficulty.

Quote from: KeranI'm not entirely clear on what piece of verbiage is giving you the impression that it meant otherwise, but that may be because I read the original discussions and am supplying some inobvious piece of context.  (It wouldn't be the first time that happened.)

It was this:Like the previous three stances, the Author Stance exists outside
of the in-game reality.  It is an external position from which the game
is viewed for the purpose of making decisions about its progress and its
play.... but further discussion has convinced me that I was misinterpreting.  I'm still pretty new to these definitions   I'm now on the same page with you in feeling that the decision that the farm-boy will rise to the occasion is clearly labelled as "Author" (whatever else it might also, simultaneously, be) ... though I think that the actual act of him rising to the occasion must occur in "IC" (again, whatever else it might be at the same time).

Quote from: TonyLBNot really, no.  How could you implement any decisions without going by way of IC stance?  Author mode is (if I understand these definitions correctly) entirely outside of the fiction of the game.  The moment you say "Brag cuts the orcs head off," whatever your motivation, you're in IC stance, aren't you?

Not as I understood or used it.  You're in IC stance if you're thinking from the character's perspective when you say it.  You could as easily have been in author, thinking from your own perspective as a player.

Quote from: TonyLBYou're ... you're asking me to frame an example where my style of play breaks down.  You get that, right?  So I've racked my mind for actual examples, but I got nothing.  I'll fictionalize something for you, then tell you how I worked it out in real life:   We're playing Tenra Bansho Zero, with pre-generated characters and a fairly straightforward walk-through of several combats.  I'm playing a young Taoist girl of high social standing and no combat skills.  Here's where it becomes totally fictional:  I feel that there is no consistent action this character can take that doesn't involve asserting her station over the lower-class fighters of the other players.  And, moreover, I can't think of a way to make that fun.  So I step entirely out of game and say "Guys, I can't have fun with this character without breaking her to pieces.  Anyone have any ideas on how to maintain her society training without totally ruining our fun?"... but in actual fact, what happened is ...   I'm playing a young Taoist girl of high social standing and no combat skills.  I immediately and unequivocally beg the indulgence of the fighters, pointing out how completely in their power my character is physically ... how dependent she is upon their support and protection.  Couched in formal language and ritual humility it was totally a natural thing for her to do.  In doing so, I draw the other players to concede, contrari-wise, that they, rough and ready brawlers that they are, are completely dependent upon me to negotiate the finer points of etiquette and ethics (a nasty and important tangle in the world we're playing in, even (we decide) when confronting ogres and demons).  We all end up with our spheres clearly defined, and I end up with my in-character attitudes and my meta-game resources and desires happily aligned, all as a natural outgrowth of selecting one possible choice that grows naturally out of the character as it was provided to me.This is how I do things.  I don't choose Author and then IC.  I don't balance one against the other.  I find the way that I can have both, in the same moment, always.

OK.  This is one of the places where rgfa thinking tends to have embedded assumptions that aren't necessarily true, and the theoretical structure can break down if they aren't.  Even if the theory itself is OK, sometimes the surrounding discussion doesn't hang together.

The embedded assumption is that the nature of the character, and the nature of the world, are fixed in advance -- that your models are complete, determinate, definite.  And if your models are complete, determinate, definite, then you must be changing them in play to make an accommodation for the other players; you must be violating their integrity, their pre-existing nature.

Or, to put it another way: there's a fairly horrible embedded assumption that Out of Character is an exact synonym for Contrary to Character; that Out of World is an exact synonym for Contrary to World.

If you have indeterminate models -- if your character really might behave either way and you have no in-world way to decide -- then of course you must make the decision as to how she actually behaves for player-world reasons.  And of course in a case like this, it's nonsense to say that either way she might behave is contrary to her character.

Rgfa theory will sometimes trip over this distinction, and explode messily when it hits the ground.

It isn't entirely clear to me whether you made this determination about how the character would behave in author stance or character.  I would tend to assign "consciously made the decision in order to make the game work better" to author and "spontaneously subconsciously created the character's attitudes" to character stance; and I don't know that they're mutually exclusive.

Quote from: TonyLBIt was this:

Code Select Expand

Like the previous three stances, the Author Stance exists outside
of the in-game reality.  It is an external position from which the game
is viewed for the purpose of making decisions about its progress and its
play.... but further discussion has convinced me that I was misinterpreting.  I'm still pretty new to these definitions   I'm now on the same page with you in feeling that the decision that the farm-boy will rise to the occasion is clearly labelled as "Author" (whatever else it might also, simultaneously, be) ... though I think that the actual act of him rising to the occasion must occur in "IC" (again, whatever else it might be at the same time).

Oh, I see.  That is rather ambiguous.

Can I attempt to distinguish here between an in-character subjective perspective, something happening in the fictional world, and an in-world motivation for a decision?  Any of these might be described as 'IC', and I think the ambiguity of IC might be causing some problems here.

An IC stance: I'm thinking like the character, looking through the character's eyes, imagining what it's like to be the character as well as I can.

An in-world event: It takes place in the fictional construct; it's an event in the story, not something that happened in the GM's living room.  

An in-world motivation for an in-world event: the event happened because an in-world cause made it happen, not because I was thinking it would make the game better.

If I'm playing from an in-character stance, if I'm thinking like the character, then what the character does is an in-world event, and it also has an in-world cause -- the character's attitudes and abilities.  This is IC in three senses.

If I've just ruled that an area is a prairie rather than a forest because it's in the rainshadow of the mountains, then the existence of the prairie is in-world, and so is my reason for putting a prairie there.  But I'm not thinking like any particular character when I make this decision.  This is IC in two senses.

If I say that an assassin has tried to kill the prince because I think it will make for a good plotline, then the event itself is in-world, but my motivation wasn't, and I wasn't thinking from any particular character when I made the decision, either.  This is IC in only one sense.

Rgfa thinking tended to be dominated by people who both wanted to look at the campaign world through the eyes of a character so far as they could, and who also wanted as many decisions as possible to made for in-world reasons.  So "it's in the fictional world," "the cause of it is in the fictional world," and "it's the way this character is subjectively experiencing the fictional world" are all important senses of 'IC'.  In the stance discussion, the emphasis tends to be inclusive of the character-experience sense -- if I say character stance, I usually mean, to some extent, "The way the character is seeing the world."

How well I can imagine the character's view of the world, thoughts, and feelings determines how deep the character stance is.  On the shallow end, it shades into author stance pretty imperceptibly, so far as I can tell, and I don't think you can draw a hard line between them.

Well, I think the thing I (at least) am getting hung up on in a lot of these discussions is the assumption that people make a single decision for only a single reason.

Like, you talk about saying "This area will be prairie because it's in the rainshadow of the mountains."  One could also, presumably, say something more like "This area will be prairie so that we can have rustic farming communities for the PCs to interact with ... like in Shane!"

It is certainly conceivable that you could make the decision based on only one of those elements.  That's the easiest way to think about people's motivations.  But I think it's also quite possible that you could make the decision based both elements together:  "Oh, hey ... if we have a plains farming community up ahead then it both suits where I'd like the game to go and fits with the lay of the land.  Synergy!"

The "either-or" view of things lends itself easily to thinking of the stances as distinct categories, or as extremes on a spectrum ... but I don't think that's accurate.  I think they're at least somewhat independent of each other.

Does that distinction make sense?

Quote from: TonyLBWow ... that's an interesting way to say that ... starting from the social contract, and then working your way out to behaviors, rather than vice versa.

I'd be much more comfortable saying, instead "There are things that people will let you do without a peep, and other things that will prompt discussions and maybe disagreements.  The sum of those actual boundaries is the social contract, whether it's what you've explicitly agreed to or not."  Which is sort of the same thing, but turned inside out, to put the emphasis on the actual people, where it belongs.

It's bound by the players at the table, just like everything is.

Dont' want to get too nit-picky here, Tony, but we're saying the same thing - as you say from different perspectives.  Placing the social contract at the center or wherever isn't taking the focus off of the people - you can't have a social contract without the people.

I like the way John said it - filters. Whether you start at the individual and work out, or at the social contract and move in, you're still talking about layers of constraints/filters that people apply to themselves.

Hmmm...or do they.  How much is done before anyone ever gets a chance to peep? I wonder...

EDIT: Sorry for the delay - work is really getting me...

Quote from: James J SkachDont' want to get too nit-picky here, Tony, but we're saying the same thing - as you say from different perspectives.  Placing the social contract at the center or wherever isn't taking the focus off of the people - you can't have a social contract without the people.

Okay, cool!  We're on the same page, just looking at it from different edges of the paper.  Or ... something.

Quote from: TonyLBWell, I think the thing I (at least) am getting hung up on in a lot of these discussions is the assumption that people make a single decision for only a single reason.

Like, you talk about saying "This area will be prairie because it's in the rainshadow of the mountains."  One could also, presumably, say something more like "This area will be prairie so that we can have rustic farming communities for the PCs to interact with ... like in Shane!"

It is certainly conceivable that you could make the decision based on only one of those elements.  That's the easiest way to think about people's motivations.  But I think it's also quite possible that you could make the decision based both elements together:  "Oh, hey ... if we have a plains farming community up ahead then it both suits where I'd like the game to go and fits with the lay of the land.  Synergy!"

The "either-or" view of things lends itself easily to thinking of the stances as distinct categories, or as extremes on a spectrum ... but I don't think that's accurate.  I think they're at least somewhat independent of each other.

Does that distinction make sense?

As I was writing a response, something came up in my head.

It only seems to matter - that is, groups have problems, designs aren't good, if there's a conflict amongst these things.  So..

Let's say the area west of the mountains, according to in-world (or reality based weather patterns say) lends itself to being prairie.

• You go with prairie because of in-world considerations.
• You go with prairie becuase of out-world considerations.
• Both - Synergy!

In any of these cases you only have conflict if your decision includes any one motivation that goes against the group dynamic (blech, can't think of a better word - style?) - not all or most.

Because if you went and made it desert for out-world considerations, and your group plays in-world - you've got some 'splainin to do...

At that point, you're only option is to make it prairie?

Quote from: TonyLBWell, I think the thing I (at least) am getting hung up on in a lot of these discussions is the assumption that people make a single decision for only a single reason.

Like, you talk about saying "This area will be prairie because it's in the rainshadow of the mountains."  One could also, presumably, say something more like "This area will be prairie so that we can have rustic farming communities for the PCs to interact with ... like in Shane!"

It is certainly conceivable that you could make the decision based on only one of those elements.  That's the easiest way to think about people's motivations.  But I think it's also quite possible that you could make the decision based both elements together:  "Oh, hey ... if we have a plains farming community up ahead then it both suits where I'd like the game to go and fits with the lay of the land.  Synergy!"

The "either-or" view of things lends itself easily to thinking of the stances as distinct categories, or as extremes on a spectrum ... but I don't think that's accurate.  I think they're at least somewhat independent of each other.

Does that distinction make sense?

Yes, and this is an area where rgfa theory doesn't necessarily do justice to every perspective.

I use the stance descriptions when they capture a distinction I want to make.  For instance, if I was talking to Russell Wallace about some NPCs, I might say something like, "I was playing in author and I really need to get into character.  These NPCs are important and I need to get inside their heads."  (I play better in character stance than in author, so I like to be in character stance whenever I can manage it.) -- It so happens that we did have a conversation about like this.  I didn't necessarily use the stance lingo -- I think my phrasing was closer to "I need to get IC with these people" -- but the fact that we have a common set of concepts built partly on the stance model meant that my usage of 'IC' didn't need disambiguation.  I wasn't telling him that my author-stance portrayal was contary to the characters' natures, or motivated more by dramatic concerns than a desire for in-world consistency; I was telling him that I didn't yet have a grasp of the characters complete enough to give me the most desirable subjective perspective for me to play from.

On the other hand, if I tell you I make most of my resolutions about the state of the world in author stance -- well, it's technically true, but it's sometimes a misleading oversimplification.  The actual procedure is: I channel the result if I can.  If I can't channel, then I attempt to answer the question by consciously reasoning from the things I know about the world to the things I don't.  If that doesn't give me a definitive answer either, then I might break out the dice, choose the most likely outcome, or choose whatever plausible outcome will make for the most interesting play.  (In this case, other aspects of rgfa discussion would make what I was describing reasonably clear, even if the stance categorization isn't doing much useful here.)

Nobody got dogmatic about the narrative stances that I remember, so it didn't prove too much of a problem.  (Some people did get dogmatic about the Threefold, and that did cause a problem.)

There was a certain tendency in rgfa discussion to assume either-or.  Partly, this is an artifact of definition.  If I want to make a distinction clear, I'm probably not going to get the point across if I tell you about the borderline cases where the distinction is breaking down -- if (impossibly) you had no idea what life is, I'd start out by contrasting trees and rocks, rather than by trying to definitively rule on the status of viruses.

But another effect that occurs is that, in roleplaying, some people experience an opposition between elements that others don't experience.  For them, X always varies inversely with Y: for instance, in rgfa it was common for people to find a world less believable, less compelling, less real and engaging, to the extent that they were conscious of the GM's determining what happened in it from conscious dramatic motives.  But not everyone experiences a tradeoff here, and for people who don't, a model that insists that there is one (the Threefold) can come across as either useless or sheer raving nonsense.

Now, it happens to be the case for me that if I have a character I can play in deep IC and I make this character do anything for out-of-world reasons, I am both breaking any current state of deep IC, and impairing or sometimes even destroying my ability to achieve deep IC with that character in the future.  The more pivotal the issue I'm deciding this way is, the worse this damaging effect will be.  If I want to maintain a state of deep IC, I need to refer to my subconscious model of the character, and only to that model -- not to my out-of-world desire to have a particular event happen or not happen.  So I experience a clear distinction between author and character stance here.

I don't experience it everywhere, however.  For instance, when one of the PCs in my present campaign travelled to a castle, I created a captain of the guard on the spot.  I decided that the captain of the guard should know some of the things the PC was interested in discovering both because it was more likely than not that he would know those things, and because I wanted to advance the PC's quest.  I decided that he would be willing to talk, rather than either close-mouthed or too busy, because there was no in-world reason why he shouldn't be, and because I wanted to advance the PC's quest.  My depiction of the captain started primarily in author stance, and then slid into character stance as the session went on and I gained a better sense of the captain's outlook.  I couldn't tell you at what point the character stance aspects eclipsed the author stance, and I don't see any reason not to regard the middle of the conversation as a blend.