Quote from: jhkimNeither the rgfa stances nor the Forge stances are very consistent in what they are distinguishing, in my opinion.  Really, I think that the theater/film analogy is problematic and if you want to develop the concepts here more, it would be better to drop it.

QFT

It's why, to me, the first question is really to the person trying to create the category.  What is it you're trying to distinguish? And again, if you're going by how people "direct" their characters - that is, what are their motivations for determining how their characters act/speak - what are the possible options?

• Actor - do players decide what their characters are going to do/say based on how they want to portray it to the group? I'd love an example.  I understand they may affect a certain performance once they decide, but does that influence the actual decision?  I mean "Oh I know, I want to act mad, so my character will be mad now." Is that motivation used?
  
• Audience - ummm...see above.
• Author - now we're getting down to it - you use information not available to your character when deciding what your character does/says.
• IC - you make decisions based on what your character knows/sees.

What others exist?

Quote from: jhkimFirst of all, I agree that "fun" doesn't work as a category.  People find many different kinds of thing fun.  Moreover, fun is more than just different kinds of input.

Yeah, I didn't mean to use it as a category, per se.  More of a generalization. The whole list was meant to be kind of top line things to be added to and then broken down into details.

Having said that, and having been just about to further the explanation, I find that fun is so different to so many people, you're right - ace it. If you ask someone why they make their character do X, and they say "Because it's fun for me," you haven't dug deep enough yet.

Quote from: James J SkachTony - please please please don't take it the wrong way.  It was not meant to say your way of thinking was wrong, but why software guys tend to like to try to break things down this way - almost obsessively.

I didn't take offense ... sorry if I came across that way.  I think you're right that the metaphors that people learn about how processes are organized have a way of informing the way they see processes later.  I've done standard programming, but I've also done neural nets and distributed computing, and quite a bit of work with relational databases.  With that kind of confused muddle, I don't really have any one metaphor that leaps up and demands attention ... it's always a clamoring chorus.

Quote from: John MorrowCorrect.  Is that what you think is going on inside of your brain?

I think that current models of cognition and computing probably, at best, approximate the actual workings of the brain as well as a map scrawled in crayon can approximate a real world territory.  If I had to make my particular scrawl, I would make a guess for this process (what I've heard referred to as "abductive reasoning") would look like multiple distributed agents all vying for attention from each other and from other higher level agents.  Even what we think of as static data (memories) probably have agency ... that's why memories can ambush us in association with other things.

But man alive, we've tangented off of the original subject, right?

I think what I started out trying to say was that positive categories ("If you're considering meta-game concerns and creating fiction then you're in Author stance") are more useful to me than negative categories ("If you're not thinking about anything outside of your character's viewpoint then you're in IC stance").  

Basically, I can lay claim to a whole bunch of positive things ... like a little check-list ... "Yeah, I'm usually doing that ... and that ... oh, not that though! ... but I do that ..."  By comparison, I can't see myself in any of the negative things:  "Well, no ... I guess I'm thinking about A, so I'm not in mode X ... but I'm also thinking about B, so I'm not in mode Y.  Sheesh!  I'm not in any of these modes!"

Given that, I get ... heh ... sorta testy when the negative modes are correlated with positive features that I would like to attribute to my play.  Like, the description (from the first FAQ) of IC as "the position which the player adopts in order to play his character believably and satisfyingly."  I have to look at that and say to myself "Hey ... are they saying I don't play my character believably and satisfyingly?  Aw, SNAP!"

Quote from: TonyLBIt's not that I can't figure it out.  It's that you're asking to break a holistic process down into individual pieces.  I've been saying that, pretty plainly I think, for PAGES now.

I don't consider it impossible to break this sort of holistic process down into individual pieces.  In my experience, it simply isn't impossible.  I can look into my subconscious black box and at least get clues to what I'm doing.  And I think this is often vary useful to be able to do.  

Why?

Because so long as it's a holistic process, you can't explain it to me and if I don't just get it, I'm not going to understand it.  And because I don't understand how you think when you role-play, it would be very difficult for me to understand what techniques might or might not work for you.

For example, years ago, on r.g.f.a, a lot of the diceless advocates explained that they just decide what happens next.  While it's very possible that they "just decide", I can't do that.  As I mentioned elsewhere, that's such a problem for me that I roll dice to decide things, but it might be useful if I could understand how other people do it.  Maybe I could learn something from it.  But I never did because it never got beyond "just decide" or "just pick what's fun", which didn't really tell me anything.

Quote from: TonyLBI play the piano.  When I started playing the piano, I could tell you what order I chose to place my fingers on a chord:  I'd get the index finger first, then the middle, then the ring (if necessary) then the pinky.

But nowadays that breakdown doesn't exist for me.  It's not that I've gotten so fast at it that I do it subconsciously.  It is that part of learning the piano is to stop letting each finger do its own thing.  I put my hand down in the right chord position, because that's the unit of thought.  The same way you learn to see a group of letters as a word without sounding it out.  The same way you learn to use both legs, together, to run.

Yeah, I know that.  I touch type.  I run.  I can talk.  I do all sorts of things holistically, too.  I even understand that pressing a cord can become a trained atomic instruction.  But that doesn't mean it doesn't have components working inside.  Now let me give you some examples of what I mean.

First, you had to be taught to play the piano (just as I had to be taught to touch type).  That means that somebody or a book was able to explain to you how to position your fingers and move your hand to play a certain cord.  Maybe they even taught you a trick or two about how to keep your hand in the right position or know where it is on the keyboard.  You probably don't even think about that today but what you do automatically now still reflects what did deliberately then.  If I ask you to tell me how to play a certain cord, I suspect you can tell me which fingers have to be applied to certain keys in order to do so.  If nobody took the time to break playing the piano down into pieces that could be explained to others, it would be very difficult for people to learn how to play.  They'd all have to teach themselves through trial and error.

Now, you are hung up on the fact that I was asking which happens first.  Clearly, you normally move everything at once, and that's fine.  Moving one finger before the other isn't part of playing a cord properly.  It was an artifact of having to think about what you were doing.  And that brings me to the next point.

In my experience, you can learn a great deal about what you do automatically by observing what happens when automatic doesn't work.  I learned a lot about how I drive while driving on the other side of the road in Australia.  I learn a great deal about how I type when I type on a keyboard that's too small.  I learn a great deal about how I create phonemes with my mouth when I try to speak another language.  

For example, when I had trouble making turns while driving on the other side of the road, I realized that the way I take a turn is to identify where I want the car to wind up and then aim for that spot.  Thus to make turns and wind up in the proper lane, I had to carefully think to make sure the lane I was going to wind up in was the right one.  When I type on too small of a keyboard, I can tell by how I miss the keys on a small keyboard how I'm positioning my hands on the keyboard, and I can tell from trying to speak Japanese that I create certain phonemes in a certain way.

For example, I had a Chinese co-worker who was having the stereotypical "L" problem.  She couldn't say, for example, "Al".  I spent a few minutes with her and thought about how I make an "L" and asked her about (and looked at) how she made an "L" and I realized that she was making what sounded like the same sound with a totally different tongue position.  Once I told her where to put her tongue for an American "L", she could pronounce things she couldn't pronounce before.  

Normally, nobody thinks about how they make sounds with their mouth when they think (Peanuts had a classic strip where Linus freaks Lucy out by asking her if she knows where her tongue is).  I could have said, "I just say 'L'" and left it at that.  But then we wouldn't have learned anything about why she couldn't say something I could easily say.  Instead, I slowed down my speech, thought about what my tongue was doing, and then I could explain it to her, so that she could try doing the same thing.  Similarly, I had to get her to explain to me what she was doing.

My point here is that if you can't explain what you are doing in any more detail, there is only so much I can understand about what you are doing.  It's not only a black box to you but it's a black box to me.  Maybe that's where we have to leave it.  But I don't like to start there.

Quote from: TonyLBHuman beings are not programmed in top-down, compartmental fashion.  I get that your programming experience makes the metaphor powerful for you, but it's the wrong metaphor.

I care less about the sequence (which you seem the most hung up on) and more about the ability to identify the components of the process.  I'm willing to accept that you do it all at once.  And it would be nice if you could explain how you do that, but that requires at least talking about components.  If the best you can do is, "I just do it," then I'm not going to know if I could figure out how to do what you do or at least understand what you do any more than I could learn how to play the piano or at least understand it if, when I asked you how you play a certain cord, you say, "I just do it."

ADDED: Maybe explaining what you did before you were able to do it all at once would explain how you practiced yourself into what you do.

Quote from: TonyLBIf I had to make my particular scrawl, I would make a guess for this process (what I've heard referred to as "abductive reasoning") would look like multiple distributed agents all vying for attention from each other and from other higher level agents.  Even what we think of as static data (memories) probably have agency ... that's why memories can ambush us in association with other things.

That fairly closely matches how I think of things.  It also seems to match what scans of brains while people think show (thoughts and feelings that compete for control).  

Quote from: TonyLBBut man alive, we've tangented off of the original subject, right?

No really.  It all comes down to how people think about what they are doing when they role-play.  We are just going to a much deeper level.

Quote from: TonyLBI think what I started out trying to say was that positive categories ("If you're considering meta-game concerns and creating fiction then you're in Author stance") are more useful to me than negative categories ("If you're not thinking about anything outside of your character's viewpoint then you're in IC stance").

OK.  Then you should probably reframe the filter/mask to be another metaphor, then, because it's really all a way to describe set theory and finding a single set or the intersection between two or more sets.  Think of them as possibilities, perhaps.

Quote from: TonyLBBasically, I can lay claim to a whole bunch of positive things ... like a little check-list ... "Yeah, I'm usually doing that ... and that ... oh, not that though! ... but I do that ..."  By comparison, I can't see myself in any of the negative things:  "Well, no ... I guess I'm thinking about A, so I'm not in mode X ... but I'm also thinking about B, so I'm not in mode Y.  Sheesh!  I'm not in any of these modes!"

Maybe you should try describing the various perspectives and interests as independent agents, much as you described the mind working.

Quote from: TonyLBGiven that, I get ... heh ... sorta testy when the negative modes are correlated with positive features that I would like to attribute to my play.  Like, the description (from the first FAQ) of IC as "the position which the player adopts in order to play his character believably and satisfyingly."  I have to look at that and say to myself "Hey ... are they saying I don't play my character believably and satisfyingly?  Aw, SNAP!"

Well, that goes back to the core debate of r.g.f.a.  Just as the bias on The Forge was toward Narrativism, the bias on r.g.f.a was toward deeply in character play.  But also bear in mind that if you are considering the character and what they are thinking, you are including the IC element in your role-playing.

Quote from: John MorrowFirst, you had to be taught to play the piano (just as I had to be taught to touch type).  That means that somebody or a book was able to explain to you how to position your fingers and move your hand to play a certain cord.  Maybe they even taught you a trick or two about how to keep your hand in the right position or know where it is on the keyboard.  You probably don't even think about that today but what you do automatically now still reflects what did deliberately then.  If I ask you to tell me how to play a certain cord, I suspect you can tell me which fingers have to be applied to certain keys in order to do so.  If nobody took the time to break playing the piano down into pieces that could be explained to others, it would be very difficult for people to learn how to play.  They'd all have to teach themselves through trial and error.

But the skills of playing the piano are not the same as the teaching tools.  The teaching tools ("Put this finger here, then this finger here ... good!") may help somebody to get to the point where they can learn the actual holistic skill ... but that doesn't mean that the skill is the same as the teaching tools all put together.  It's not.

If I wanted to give you the opportunity to learn the way I think, I would probably give recommendations like this:

• List the patterns that your character naturally makes in the story.  What sort of effects can you easily achieve using him?  "Blag can start an argument any time he wants!  He's that annoying!"
• List the patterns in the story that lead to things that you like.  What elements of story make the game fun for you?  "I love the skulking ... sneaking through the corridors of a greater force really gives me a sense that my hero is sticking up for the little guy everywhere ... the guys that can't afford to just fight out in the open."
• Circle every element that appears in both columns.  Those are the tools you have to play with.
• Change the character a little bit, and repeat the exercise.  Do you have more tools now, or less?
  
• Change your goals a little bit, and repeat the exercise.  Do you have more tools now, or less?

This might well help you to get closer to the way I think about games.  But it's not what I do.  It's just a convenient exercise that I suspect might get a person into the head-space where they could figure out for themselves the way that all of those factors juggle together and bounce off of each other.

My piano teacher taught me by pointing out where each finger goes, one by one ... but that's not what a pianist does.  It's just an exercise that gets you to the place where you can learn what a pianist does for yourself.

Quote from: John MorrowWell, that goes back to the core debate of r.g.f.a.  Just as the bias on The Forge was toward Narrativism, the bias on r.g.f.a was toward deeply in character play.  But also bear in mind that if you are considering the character and what they are thinking, you are including the IC element in your role-playing.

And I'd be fine, see, if the IC definitions were strictly positive like that.  If I could say "Yes, I am considering my character, and therefore I am IC (as well as Actor and Author and Audience) in this moment," then I wouldn't have any motive to grouse if they wanted to say that IC was essential to satisfying roleplay, ethical behavior and sexual attractiveness.  'Cuz look!  I've got what it takes!

But when it's defined by a negative, like "This is the stance of the *character,* not the player, and it encompasses only those things seen from the character's point of view" then they're saying that my melange of different motivations means I'm not IC, and I don't get all the good stuff.

Quote from: TonyLBAnd I'd be fine, see, if the IC definitions were strictly positive like that.  If I could say "Yes, I am considering my character, and therefore I am IC (as well as Actor and Author and Audience) in this moment," then I wouldn't have any motive to grouse if they wanted to say that IC was essential to satisfying roleplay, ethical behavior and sexual attractiveness.  'Cuz look!  I've got what it takes!

But when it's defined by a negative, like "This is the stance of the *character,* not the player, and it encompasses only those things seen from the character's point of view" then they're saying that my melange of different motivations means I'm not IC, and I don't get all the good stuff.

That's only if the define or you interpret IC as the only way to get the good stuff. And anyone who comes at it like that is bond to piss somebody off...

Please note in the other thread (you know which one ) Player and Character make no judgements on which includes or excludes the good stuff.

Quote from: TonyLBBut the skills of playing the piano are not the same as the teaching tools.  The teaching tools ("Put this finger here, then this finger here ... good!") may help somebody to get to the point where they can learn the actual holistic skill ... but that doesn't mean that the skill is the same as the teaching tools all put together.  It's not.

No, it's not exactly the same, but you can learn a lot about the one from the other, so maybe we can try working with the teaching tools.

Quote from: TonyLBIf I wanted to give you the opportunity to learn the way I think, I would probably give recommendations like this:

• List the patterns that your character naturally makes in the story.  What sort of effects can you easily achieve using him?  "Blag can start an argument any time he wants!  He's that annoying!"
• List the patterns in the story that lead to things that you like.  What elements of story make the game fun for you?  "I love the skulking ... sneaking through the corridors of a greater force really gives me a sense that my hero is sticking up for the little guy everywhere ... the guys that can't afford to just fight out in the open."
• Circle every element that appears in both columns.  Those are the tools you have to play with.
• Change the character a little bit, and repeat the exercise.  Do you have more tools now, or less?
  
• Change your goals a little bit, and repeat the exercise.  Do you have more tools now, or less?

This might well help you to get closer to the way I think about games.  But it's not what I do.  It's just a convenient exercise that I suspect might get a person into the head-space where they could figure out for themselves the way that all of those factors juggle together and bounce off of each other.

And that's a fine explanation and pretty much what I'm looking for, even with the caveat that it's only a pointer toward what you do.  Thanks.  And by defining what your concerns are and how someone might use them to produce the sorts of results you produce holistically, you've at least provided some foundation from which those elements could be discussed.

And this goes back to core concerns that you identified earlier -- playing true to character and making for a fun story.  I'm not going to dig to deeply past that, since you've said that it's not really what you do.  But I do have two other questions.  What's the duration of most of the games you play (hours, sessions, years)?  

Quote from: TonyLBMy piano teacher taught me by pointing out where each finger goes, one by one ... but that's not what a pianist does.  It's just an exercise that gets you to the place where you can learn what a pianist does for yourself.

What's between putting your your fingers where they belong one by one to doing like a real pianist?  How do you transition from the one to the other and what are some of the signs of transition?

Quote from: James J SkachSo you see a distinction between that and someone who doesn't make the leap - that is, someone who doesn't try to be in the character's head, but remains "In Character." Someone who directs the character to do/say things that are solely based on what the character knows/sees as still being In Character?

Because if you do, you're cutting out a lot of people who make decisions in an attempt to remain "in character" who just aren't into making that final step of trying to be the character. Me, for one.

I do distinguish between playing in character, meaning "playing according to the character model -- basing one's actions off the character's knowledge only, playing consistently according to the attitudes and abilities that the character has" and "playing to some extent from the character's headspace."  I do both at different times, and I don't find them to be the same internally.  And I care about the difference in my own play, because I find character stance more fun, and also because I usually play better in character stance.

Caring a lot about internal states is a general rgfa habit, and I am strongly under the impression that making this distinction is part of the point of the stances classification.  (There's no point in inventing new terminology if we're just renaming a distinction that existing terminology already covers -- that'd be pure obfuscation.)

Now if you and I were playing in the same game, I wouldn't care about your internal state, particularly -- what matters to me is that other people's portrayals are believable and interesting.  As long as your character works along those lines, and as long as you're happy with how you're achieving it, I don't care whether you get there in author stance, actor, or character -- I'm happy to treat your process as a black box.  

I regard playing according to the character model, without occupying the character's headspace, as author stance (or maybe actor). I also regard directing a character to behave in a particular fashion for out-of-world reasons as author stance (or maybe actor).  It is competent author stance if the result still impresses the other participants as believable.  If it causes the other players to think, "I can't believe Brog would really do that," then it's incompetent author stance.  (Or, again, actor).

I would regard using 'author' as fundamentally synonymous with "someone who creates a character, or someone who depicts a character behaving in a manner contrary to the character's nature, but not someone who shows a character behaving according to their nature" as a bad practice. Um, in the sense that I couldn't be persuaded to use the word that way at gunpoint. Because that's not what I do what I'm writing fiction -- I don't find it a useful concept of authorship -- and I'm highly allergic to using words to discuss RPGs in a fashion substantially opposed to their meanings in other fictional contexts.

Seems to me these two stance threads should be merged and the terms worked out from the ground up. If you think it's worth the trouble.

Quote from: TonyLBBut when it's defined by a negative, like "This is the stance of the *character,* not the player, and it encompasses only those things seen from the character's point of view" then they're saying that my melange of different motivations means I'm not IC, and I don't get all the good stuff.

The assumption is that meta-game concerns will conflict with in character concerns.  You don't experience that within your holistic process so it doesn't mean much to you, but it does matter to people who make conscious trade-offs.  

For example, in the recent role-playing heavy D&D game I was in, my character was an anti-Elf bigot (the elves in the setting essentially controlled the magic).  One of the other PCs was working for the elves. If, as you put it in your other reply, the pattern my character would have naturally made in the story was left to run it's course without meta-game intervention, it would have been a real short game.  So I purposely decided that my character intuitively liked and trusted the other PC and was going to be dense about noticing that she was a Druid (and worked for the elves).  Thus I use the "fun" meta-game concern to nudge the default (for me) In Character thinking toward something story-friendly though still In Character.  

That worked reasonably well for most of the campaign until it was no longer reasonable for my character to not notice she was a Druid (she was casting more often as her level went up), so felt I had to allow the character to notice.  That still wasn't a total disaster because he liked the other PC enough to cut her some slack.  But then the party found some elven ruins that played right into his bigotry and it became clear that two powerful groups of elves were going to show up to assert control over the situation.  During a pivotal meeting, even the other PC couldn't assure my character that the elves wouldn't just kill everyone to hush up the ruins that they found.

At that point, I could no longer overlook my character's attitudes toward the elves or the indifference of the other PCs toward what (from his perspective) looked like resignation to die at the hands of elves.  So at that point, the In Character perspective asserted itself over playing nice with the party and my character deserted and went over to a hostile neighboring group that he felt might actually do something to stop the elves from swooping in and covering things up.

So basically, for me, there were points in that campaign were there was clear tension between what the character would do (what you called the pattern my character naturally make in the story) and story, game, and social concerns (party cohesion).  To a point, I could use the "fun" concerns to nudge my character down the narrow yet plausible path that would maintain party cohesion but near the end, there was no intersection between what the character would do and keeping the PCs together.  

For you, finding the intersection between what the character would do and having a fun story is done behind the scenes or your holistic approach so you aren't going to be consciously aware of any conflicts or exclusions between the two concerns (they are silently excluded) and it sounds like you've never run into a case where the two could not be reconciled.  If you did, I'd be curious how you'd experience it and deal with it.

But what that means, with respect to this model, is that it's designed to identify and help deal with issues that you don't deal with and problems you don't have.  You don't experience these stances, filters, masks, or whatever you want to call them as discreet things that you choose between consciously.  So perhaps this model just doesn't have much useful to say to you because you don't need it.

Quote from: John MorrowWhat's the duration of most of the games you play (hours, sessions, years)?

Well, these days I'm doing about 50/50 one-shots with possible continuation (i.e. "We'll play these characters for tonight" followed by "Hey, it's a new night, let's play those characters again, they're still cool!") and two-to-three-month short campaigns.

Quote from: John MorrowWhat's between putting your your fingers where they belong one by one to doing like a real pianist?  How do you transition from the one to the other and what are some of the signs of transition?

Well, I'm not a huge expert, but the big thing in my personal experience was that at some point I started to think and operate on whole long strings of muscle movement as single mental objects.  So instead of thinking (for instance) "I need to hit these three notes, then instead of holding it for a third-note I need to hold it for a quarter note, then lightly hit that other note, all alone" I'd think "Okay, I need to switch the melodic line to quarter-beat syncopation here, just before starting the trill of grace-notes," and it happened.

The sign of my being on the training side of that was that I missed individual notes when nothing else is wrong with the music.  On the integrated side, in the rare case that I missed a note then I would likely come out with a whole pile-up of mangled notes in quick succession.

Quote from: droogSeems to me these two stance threads should be merged and the terms worked out from the ground up. If you think it's worth the trouble.

My guess is that once there is some sort of agreement, that should be done in anther thread, if necessary.