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Fiasco AP

Started by StormBringer, November 26, 2010, 01:28:51 PM

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Bill White

Hey SB -- I want you to know that I admire your rhetorical technique of asserting that, when someone responds to you telling you that they have a tough time taking you seriously or whatever, it is ultimately a concession of defeat on their part since, by responding, they are in fact taking you seriously. It presents people with an interesting double bind, in that if they then refuse to respond, you can say that they are unable to face you rawr. It's a win-win for you; you can't lose! -- Bill White

Aos

You are posting in a troll thread.

Metal Earth

Cosmic Tales- Webcomic

Benoist


BWA

Quote from: Aos;423438Victory is yours; you need only reach out and take it.

I don't know. If someone told me about the crazy shit StormBringer was saying on this thread, I wouldn't believe it. "Why," I would ask, my voice thick with disdainful incredulity, "would someone start a thread to complain repeatedly, bitterly, and in a near-apoplectic state of rage, about a game that he didn't own, hadn't read, and had no intention of ever playing? It makes no sense."

Yet here is StormBringer's thread, literally senseless in every meaning of the word. Perhaps he is an online performance artist who works exclusively in the medium of dyspeptic fury, and we are all colors in his palette. Or perhaps he is genuinely deranged.

Either way, I wouldn't have believed it if I'd never read it.  Hats off to crazy!
"In the end, my strategy worked. And the strategy was simple: Truth. Bringing the poisons out to the surface, again and again. Never once letting the fucker get away with it, never once letting one of his lies go unchallenged." -- RPGPundit

StormBringer

Quote from: BWA;423440I don't know. If someone told me about the crazy shit StormBringer was saying on this thread, I wouldn't believe it. "Why," I would ask, my voice thick with disdainful incredulity, "would someone start a thread to complain repeatedly, bitterly, and in a near-apoplectic state of rage, about a game that he didn't own, hadn't read, and had no intention of ever playing? It makes no sense."

Yet here is StormBringer's thread, literally senseless in every meaning of the word. Perhaps he is an online performance artist who works exclusively in the medium of dyspeptic fury, and we are all colors in his palette. Or perhaps he is genuinely deranged.

Either way, I wouldn't have believed it if I'd never read it.  Hats off to crazy!
Excellent!  Every mischaracterization possible in one neat post!  The next time you mention that you are 'sincerely interested' in a question, I will remember that you are making that offer in bad faith.

Also, guess what?  You don't get to decide what gets discussed around here.  You only get to decide whether or not to participate.  I mean, you will never meet me, yet you decide "to complain repeatedly, bitterly, and in a near-apoplectic state of rage" about a person you will never even know in person.  
Is Fiasco so critically important to your self-identity that you are unable to discuss the merest criticism without a full on hate-fueled rage about the person making the criticism?
If you read the above post, you owe me $20 for tutoring fees

\'Let them call me rebel, and welcome, I have no concern for it, but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul.\'
- Thomas Paine
\'Everything doesn\'t need

StormBringer

Quote from: Bill White;423437Hey SB -- I want you to know that I admire your rhetorical technique of asserting that, when someone responds to you telling you that they have a tough time taking you seriously or whatever, it is ultimately a concession of defeat on their part since, by responding, they are in fact taking you seriously. It presents people with an interesting double bind, in that if they then refuse to respond, you can say that they are unable to face you rawr. It's a win-win for you; you can't lose! -- Bill White

Let me get this straight, you think the best way to have a discussion is to avoid engaging in the discussion altogether?

Because not taking someone seriously means you ignore them.  It doesn't mean that you make every frantic effort to paint them in the worst light possible, because that means you take them very seriously, so much so that not only must their argument be thwarted, but it must be seen that any other argument they make will be rejected out of hand.

It's not a rhetorical 'trick' to point out that people refusing to honestly defend an argument are avoiding any and all possible discussion about that argument.

In other words, it's not a 'win' because of a rhetorical trick, it's a 'win' because your premises were shitty to begin with, and the follow up arguments were laughably insufficient.

But I didn't make any characterization of a 'win' or 'loss' on this topic, that was all you, champ.  I am still perfectly willing to get back to the actual conversation here, because what a few refugees from Story-Games or the Forge or where ever find worthy of being 'taken seriously' do not set the standard for acceptable discussion.
If you read the above post, you owe me $20 for tutoring fees

\'Let them call me rebel, and welcome, I have no concern for it, but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul.\'
- Thomas Paine
\'Everything doesn\'t need

Shazbot79

Quote from: StormBringer;423419You mean, 'response in kind'?  You wandered in here to shit all over the thread and now you are upset because you didn't shut down big, bad StormBringer?

You really need to come down out of your own head once in a while.

Unfortunately there's nothing anyone can do to shut down big, bad Stormbringer.

But I was referring to your tendency to avoid engaging in actual discussion through pompous rhetorical gimmicks and filibustering.

And perhaps I did just come here to shit on your thread...but you start them just to shit on this forum.
Your superior intellect is no match for our primitive weapons!

Bill White

Oh, I'm happy to engage with the argument on its merits. Just let me make sure I understand what your position is. I think I've seen the following claims:

  • Fiasco is not a game.
  • Fiasco is a game, but not a role-playing game.
  • Fiasco is a badly designed role-playing game.
  • Fiasco is both badly designed and not an RPG.

Just for the sake of argument, which of these is your actual position? Or if I've mis-characterized your actual position, what is it again?

StormBringer

Quote from: Shazbot79;423464But I was referring to your tendency to avoid engaging in actual discussion through pompous rhetorical gimmicks and filibustering.

And how does this pertain to this particular thread?
If you read the above post, you owe me $20 for tutoring fees

\'Let them call me rebel, and welcome, I have no concern for it, but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul.\'
- Thomas Paine
\'Everything doesn\'t need

Shazbot79

Quote from: StormBringer;423467And how does this pertain to this particular thread?

I doubt anyone needs me to point this out.

They're well aware of how you side step contrary information that is inconvenient for you whenever someone who knows what they are talking about proves you flat-out wrong.

Since your tendency is to redefine the argument eveytime it's not going your way is nothing but a cheap ploy to avoid being shown for the blustering buffoon you are.

So I will say this again:

Fiasco is a roleplaying game that emulates the genre of black comedies...particularly of the "small-time caper gone wrong" subset. The rules are designed precisely to achieve this end. I fail to see how this is anymore restrictive than "Dwarves can't be Wizards" or any perks/flaws system int he games you play.

It is a game in every sense of the word. There are players, goals, rules, and randomizers.

It is a roleplaying game, because the players interact with the world through their characters' decisions.

Furthermore, the game is immersive, because there is little to know disassociation between the gameworld and the rules.

I know this because I own and have played the game.

If I'm wrong, then prove it, or admit your full of shit and shut the fuck up.
Your superior intellect is no match for our primitive weapons!

StormBringer

Quote from: Bill White;423465Oh, I'm happy to engage with the argument on its merits. Just let me make sure I understand what your position is. I think I've seen the following claims:

  • Fiasco is not a game.
  • Fiasco is a game, but not a role-playing game.
  • Fiasco is a badly designed role-playing game.
  • Fiasco is both badly designed and not an RPG.

Just for the sake of argument, which of these is your actual position? Or if I've mis-characterized your actual position, what is it again?
Without quotes, there is no way of knowing how you came up with that list.  The second item contradicts the first, and the third contradicts the first two.  I presume you aren't claiming I hold all of those positions.

I don't consider it a game in its own right.  It has some game-like elements, but it is best considered as an exercise in collective story writing.  Certainly, a decent enough sub-system to be using within a traditional game.

As to 'role-playing', that is also quite limited.  Limited, in fact, to the kind of role that generally fails in the end due to personal foibles; even the ancient Greeks didn't watch Tragedies all the time.  This limits re-play value, as the method of downfall may differ from playset to playset, but in the end, it's generally all downfall.  That specificity is the real factor that keep Fiasco firmly in the realm of 'boardgame'.  They even sell a nice mat for just that purpose.

Angsty fun for all involved, to be sure.  Admittedly, it does appear to do that very well.  The final question becomes:  why is that its own first cause?  I have read countless claims that doing the one thing really well is the ideal goal for game design.  Even if this was the top-of-the-line Coen movie emulator, why is that more important than having a versatile system that allows for more varied game-play?
If you read the above post, you owe me $20 for tutoring fees

\'Let them call me rebel, and welcome, I have no concern for it, but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul.\'
- Thomas Paine
\'Everything doesn\'t need

BWA

Quote from: StormBringer;423444Is Fiasco so critically important to your self-identity that you are unable to discuss the merest criticism without a full on hate-fueled rage about the person making the criticism?

Huh. I guess it is? I never thought about it that way. I apologize for my hate-fueled rage. A madness took me.

Also, if Jason Morningstar is still reading this thread, I'd like to point out that Fiasco is super-shitty as a "collaborative story-writing tool". Maybe you could work on that, so we could get some use out of this terrible non-game.
"In the end, my strategy worked. And the strategy was simple: Truth. Bringing the poisons out to the surface, again and again. Never once letting the fucker get away with it, never once letting one of his lies go unchallenged." -- RPGPundit

Bill White

#117
Hey SB -- Thanks for clarifying. I disagree that it's not a game, but the point that I made earlier was that "game" is actually a fuzzy concept. Here's the definition that I alluded to earlier; it is from ludologist Jesper Juul's book Half-Real (note that Juul is mainly interested in video games).

QuoteThe game definition I propose has six features:

  • Rules: Games are rule-based.
  • Variable, quantifiable outcome: Games have variable, quantifiable outcomes.
  • Valorization of outcome: The different potential outcomes of the game are assigned different values, some positive and some negative.
  • Player effort: The player exerts effort in order to influence the outcome (Games are challenging).
  • Player attached to outcome: The player is emotionally attached to the outcome of the game in the sense that a player will be winner and "happy" in case of a positive outcome, but a loser and "unhappy" in case of a negative outcome.
  • Negotiable consequences: The same game [set of rules] can be played with or without real-life consequences.

Based on that definition, Juul goes on to identify table-top role-playing as a "borderline case"--a quasi-game, if you like--because it has flexible rather than fixed rules (I think this is an allusion to the presence of a GM). Ironically, then, by Juul's definition, Fiasco is more game-like than D&D, at least in that one respect.

I notice that the second element in Juul's definition comes close to your complaint about Fiasco that "it's generally all downfall"--that the outcome, in other words, is not variable. But notice how that second element cascades into the third, fourth and fifth: the fact that outcomes are quantifiable means that (3rd element) they can be ranged along a scale from most positive to most negative, and so (4th element) players will strive to achieve the most positive outcome, to the point that (5th element) players will feel good if they get a positive outcome ("win") and bad if they get a negative one ("lose").

This notion of quantifiable outcomes is important, since it's directly relevant to your charge about Fiasco. Notice that Juul seems to imply that to be a "true game" (rather than a borderline case) all players must rank the possible outcomes in the same way--this seems to be what he means by "quantifiable": it's another word for "objective." But it's interesting that one of the things that's built into game theory in economics (you know, von Neumann and those guys) is that players may assign utilities to payoffs asymmetrically (i.e., one player may consider a given outcome to have a different value than another player does). The possibility that such situations exist means that some game-theoretic games will have stable strategy sets such that all players rationally make the same moves every game--this is called a Nash equilibrium. But Juul is talking about the playful sort of game, rather than the serious sort that the game theorists often talk about, like deterrence in nuclear warfighting. So Juul is talking about games in a different way. A kind of structured playfulness is ultimately what identifies something as a game.

The notion of "quantifiable, variable" outcomes is thus connected to the idea that in a game some people win and some people lose (and that winning and losing have some emotional resonance but not necessarily any other real-world consequence for the players).

So if it can be stipulated that some players "win" (i.e., have positive outcomes) and some players "lose" (i.e., have negative outcomes) when they play Fiasco, then we will have established that Fiasco is likely to be a game, given that we know (a) it has fixed rules but (b) doesn't have fixed real-world consequences, and that the presence of winners and losers implies the existence of (c) similarly valued or "valorized" positive and negative outcomes.

And your honor that finding is in evidence! Here's BWA talking about his Fiasco game on rpg.net (emphasis added):

QuoteMy favorite bit here was the character with the worst fate - the lady-cop who was arrested following an attempted double murder of her cheating gay husband and his con-man lover. The last scene ended with her singing "I'm Proud to be an American", so each scene of her montage consisted of the cops (in Atlantic City and back home) and the prison guards all singing that song and saluting her while they arrested, processed and jailed her. It was awesome.

There's a player relishing the negative consequences another PC received--I'd say that counts as emotional attachment to the outcome of the game. Now, I suppose you could argue that BWA wasn't really "attached" to the character outcome in the same way as the winner of a chess match is attached to his or her victory or loss, but I'm going to assert that that's a difference in degree rather than kind.

To sum up: What a game is has been variously defined by different authorities, but one way of defining games is as rule-bound processes that produce outcomes that are valued by and emotionally resonant to players for their own sake rather than necessarily for their real-world consequentiality. When we look around, we see players valuing the outcomes of Fiasco for their own sake, and so we start to suspect that it's a game.

I know that's a long way to go to get to, "Hey, yeah, I think it's a game," but I wanted to be thorough. Now, I notice that at the end of your last post you slide away from "it's not a game" to "it's more like a board game," but I thought I'd tackle the more fundamental problem first. Given that, I suspect that your real complaint is that it's not a role-playing game. To which I reply the same way I did the first time I thought that's what you were saying: the way this site works, it isn't, which is why this thread is in "Other Games." Anywhere else on the Internet, you could probably get away with calling it an RPG, because it's got characters that you tell a story with, regardless of your degree of immersion in those characters.

-- Bill

StormBringer

Quote from: Bill White;423508Hey SB -- Thanks for clarifying. I disagree that it's not a game, but the point that I made earlier was that "game" is actually a fuzzy concept. Here's the definition that I alluded to earlier; it is from ludologist Jesper Juul's book Half-Real (note that Juul is mainly interested in video games).
I agree, his essay leans towards video-games heavily, but there are some principles we can extract.  What constitutes a 'game' is fairly different between video-games and regular games; comparing them can be useful, but I think using one to discuss the other is something of a mistake.  Nonetheless, I am willing to continue with this as a framework.

QuoteBased on that definition, Juul goes on to identify table-top role-playing as a "borderline case"--a quasi-game, if you like--because it has flexible rather than fixed rules (I think this is an allusion to the presence of a GM). Ironically, then, by Juul's definition, Fiasco is more game-like than D&D, at least in that one respect.
I disagree that it is an allusion to the GM; Monopoly has some well known house-rules as well as a fixed set of rules.  Without going line-by-line, I suspect there is a roughly equal ratio in both games.  In any case, Chess has a large number of variant rules (the vast majority of which only chess enthusiasts are aware).  It is more rigid within a particular set of rules, but the variety of rules rivals anything in the RPG world.

I believe there is likely some discussion of the rules that is pertinent to determination of how closely one adheres to 'game'; it sounds like this is a case where the authour is stretching things a bit to make a distinction for video-games.  It sounds more like the author is defining the boundary between 'programming' and 'game rules'.

QuoteI notice that the second element in Juul's definition comes close to your complaint about Fiasco that "it's generally all downfall"--that the outcome, in other words, is not variable. But notice how that second element cascades into the third, fourth and fifth: the fact that outcomes are quantifiable means that (3rd element) they can be ranged along a scale from most positive to most negative, and so (4th element) players will strive to achieve the most positive outcome, to the point that (5th element) players will feel good if they get a positive outcome ("win") and bad if they get a negative one ("lose").
I think those are stretching things a bit.  Any outcome is quantifiable, really, and 'most positive' is almost intentionally subverted in Fiasco.  'Closest to the stated goal of the game' would probably be a better way to discuss that.  I'm wary of assigning emotional attachment to the outcome of the game as well; they are inherently social, so an outcome that is not strictly a victory for a given player may not necessarily elicit a 'negative emotion' in the same manner as a video-game that is essentially a solo activity.

QuoteThis notion of quantifiable outcomes is important, since it's directly relevant to your charge about Fiasco. Notice that Juul seems to imply that to be a "true game" (rather than a borderline case) all players must rank the possible outcomes in the same way--this seems to be what he means by "quantifiable": it's another word for "objective."
I don't believe that all players of traditional (board) games rank the possible outcomes in the same way.  Some players may not care about the outcome in the least, in fact, and consider it a wholly social exercise.  An activity that even LAN parties can't really duplicate well.

QuoteBut it's interesting that one of the things that's built into game theory in economics (you know, von Neumann and those guys) is that players may assign utilities to payoffs asymmetrically (i.e., one player may consider a given outcome to have a different value than another player does). The possibility that such situations exist means that some game-theoretic games will have stable strategy sets such that all players rationally make the same moves every game--this is called a Nash equilibrium. But Juul is talking about the playful sort of game, rather than the serious sort that the game theorists often talk about, like deterrence in nuclear warfighting. So Juul is talking about games in a different way. A kind of structured playfulness is ultimately what identifies something as a game.
I find that far, far too broad of a definition.  Even as a portion of a definition, it ends up being too broad to really assist in defining the borders.  There is a huge range of emotional investment between 'playful' and 'nuclear deterrence'.

QuoteThe notion of "quantifiable, variable" outcomes is thus connected to the idea that in a game some people win and some people lose (and that winning and losing have some emotional resonance but not necessarily any other real-world consequence for the players).
Again, as with just about any social activity, winning or losing is most often about the furthest thing from the point of participating.

QuoteSo if it can be stipulated that some players "win" (i.e., have positive outcomes) and some players "lose" (i.e., have negative outcomes) when they play Fiasco, then we will have established that Fiasco is likely to be a game, given that we know (a) it has fixed rules but (b) doesn't have fixed real-world consequences, and that the presence of winners and losers implies the existence of (c) similarly valued or "valorized" positive and negative outcomes.
I reject that your premises as being so broad as to encompass nearly any activity that isn't solitary.  In particular, we know a) isn't true.  In this very thread, both myself and the author of the game suggested ignoring certain parts of the rules.

And as Fiasco is not really a competitive activity, I can't agree that anyone in particular can 'win' or 'lose'.  Specifically, one player getting an outcome they prefer has no particular stature over one that doesn't.  I am not entirely sure there is a way for a player to fail in achieving the outcome they planned on, in fact.  

QuoteAnd your honor that finding is in evidence! Here's BWA talking about his Fiasco game on rpg.net (emphasis added):
I appreciate the play reports and all, useful as examples, but the plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'.  I asked for play reports previously to find out if there were any significant number that ended up where all the players more or less came out ahead; ie, their plans didn't blow up in their faces.

Your example doesn't even show that anyone won or lost, it only shows that the catastrophe set up by the player turned out exactly as one would expect it to:
QuoteMy favorite bit here was the character with the worst fate - the  lady-cop who was arrested following an attempted double murder of her  cheating gay husband and his con-man lover. The last scene ended with  her singing "I'm Proud to be an American", so each scene of her montage  consisted of the cops (in Atlantic City and back home) and the prison  guards all singing that song and saluting her while they arrested,  processed and jailed her. It was awesome.                 
Different emphasis mine.

How exactly was that supposed to turn out?  In what way did the player foresee some other outcome for attempting a double-homicide?  What is the point of the sing-along in the 'montage' at all?

No body clearly won, and no body clearly lost.  The player likely got the ending they were looking for, which falls directly in line with the stated goal of Fiasco, which is that things end in disaster.  Which is almost exactly how every single play report turns out, so even if we agreed that there was a 'more positive' and 'more negative' condition to talk about, the 'more positive' one is as rare as hen's teeth.  It's like basing your Scrabble strategy on getting a Bingo on your first turn across a Double Word score using a word with J, X and Z in it.  It just doesn't happen enough to get worked up over.

QuoteThere's a player relishing the negative consequences another PC received--I'd say that counts as emotional attachment to the outcome of the game. Now, I suppose you could argue that BWA wasn't really "attached" to the character outcome in the same way as the winner of a chess match is attached to his or her victory or loss, but I'm going to assert that that's a difference in degree rather than kind.
In fact, I will say that the event was seen in retrospect as 'awesome'.  At the time, it may have elicited no more than a chuckle from the participants.  On the other hand, they may have been running around the house screaming like maniacs and putting sports fans to shame.  And that is primarily why I find the emotional attachment to the outcome almost wholly irrelevant; as it varies so much from person to person, it can't be anything like universal to finding the boundaries of what is a game.

QuoteTo sum up: What a game is has been variously defined by different authorities, but one way of defining games is as rule-bound processes that produce outcomes that are valued by and emotionally resonant to players for their own sake rather than necessarily for their real-world consequentiality. When we look around, we see players valuing the outcomes of Fiasco for their own sake, and so we start to suspect that it's a game.
'Rule-guided processes' would be a better way to think about it.  There is virtually no game that is more complex than Tic-Tac-Toe which hasn't been altered in some way.  And again, I can't agree to define outcomes as 'valued' by the participants as though those outcomes are completely divorced from the game itself.  I enjoy the hell out of cribbage, and I like to win; I would rather lose a game cribbage playing a friend than win any number of games against a stranger, however.  The same goes for Scrabble, chess, Risk, Settlers of Catan, or just about any other game. I really enjoy the social nature of RPGs for exactly the complete lack of a 'win' condition.

QuoteI know that's a long way to go to get to, "Hey, yeah, I think it's a game," but I wanted to be thorough. Now, I notice that at the end of your last post you slide away from "it's not a game" to "it's more like a board game," but I thought I'd tackle the more fundamental problem first. Given that, I suspect that your real complaint is that it's not a role-playing game. To which I reply the same way I did the first time I thought that's what you were saying: the way this site works, it isn't, which is why this thread is in "Other Games." Anywhere else on the Internet, you could probably get away with calling it an RPG, because it's got characters that you tell a story with, regardless of your degree of immersion in those characters.
I don't think it is too long to get to "I think it's a game", it will certainly help in future discussions.

And I am not entirely sure this would qualify as an RPG most other places on the internet either; there is a reason the Harry Potter or Pokemon IRC channels call themselves 'RP rooms' and not 'RPG rooms'.  They also have characters that are used to tell a story, but they are quite aware they are not playing a game of any sort, despite likely having more restrictive 'guidelines' for participation than Fiasco.  Again, if we come back around to chess, you can easily tell a story about Bishop, his friend Rook, and their loyal companion Knight (and his eight henchmen) defending their King and Kingdom.  It still isn't an RPG by any stretch.

In conclusion, thank you for the rational explanation of your thoughts on this matter, and I would like to note that you utterly failed to confuse 'win condition' with 'outcome' in regards to games, a confusion that crops up far too often.  Kudos to you on that, sir.   :)
If you read the above post, you owe me $20 for tutoring fees

\'Let them call me rebel, and welcome, I have no concern for it, but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul.\'
- Thomas Paine
\'Everything doesn\'t need

BWA

Quote from: StormBringer;424391How exactly was that supposed to turn out?  In what way did the player foresee some other outcome for attempting a double-homicide?  What is the point of the sing-along in the 'montage' at all?

I'm not sure if you actually want to hear about how the game works, but that was my game, so I'll assume you are not just asking rhetorically.

1. It wasn't "supposed" to turn out a certain way. Since you seem to have read at least the preview and a couple AP reports, you're probably aware that, in a given scene, a player can choose either the set-up or the resolution, but not both. So sometimes a player doesn't know if a scene will end badly for their character or not. It depends on what color dice are left on the table, and what the other players want to do. It's almost "game-like", in that sense.

2. See above. The actual morality/legality of your character's actions in the game have no real impact on whether or not you get what's coming to you - just the dice. My character from another game, referenced upthread, who retired wealthy and successful, did all kinds of bad things,

3. Each player narrates a montage at the end of the game, the length of which depends on how many dice they have left. So it's part of the game. I'm not sure what it's "point" was, but it was really funny.
"In the end, my strategy worked. And the strategy was simple: Truth. Bringing the poisons out to the surface, again and again. Never once letting the fucker get away with it, never once letting one of his lies go unchallenged." -- RPGPundit