10 by 10 room

“But here’s where I think that there’s an interesting sociological puzzle. What network structures result in strong collective norms? What forces are needed to create those kinds of social network? (This is a classic question of tolerance… we know fairly well that diverse networks have higher levels of tolerance, not surprisingly.) Given that universal unitedness isn’t really going to happen, what are the structural changes that increase norm maintenance?

— danah boyd

Shreyas Sampat recently said, in a response to Jeremiah Genest:

I will say, “I’m not interested in arguing whether or not this proposition is true; rather, I want to think about the world under the assumption that it is.”

Which is a great example of what is sometimes called “feminist epistemology.” Sometimes there are things you can’t prove one way or the other (for example: God exists), but you still want to base further conjecture off of it. So you accept a few facts as given (or say, “assuming X, then Y”) and keep on plowing ahead.

I think most RPG theory discussions would benefit from a similar attitude, without people struggling to undermine each others’ assumptions so often. Look, instead, at the interesting results that occur “if and when X is true.”

Compare: John Harper’s new diagram

Once I had this diagram, I was able to see all the parts, and begin assigning authority and game tasks to each part. Who says what the Situation is? How does a Scene relate to Situation? Who says when a Scene begins and ends? Who says when a conflict begins and ends? How do you know when a situation is “resolved” and how does that resolution supply material for the new Situation? All that kind of stuff.

Contrast: FEMA strategy

“This chart, clearly depicting the agencies responsibilities in the event of a disaster….It begins with a response to a disaster, leads to recovery, mitigation, risk reduction, prevention, preparedness…(dramatic pause) and ends up BACK IN DISASTER!…In truth, FEMA did exactly what they said they were going to do.” – John Stewart

“That’s right, ubiqutious gaming. Because the vast majority of pervasive games to date have no connection with the original design philosophy of ubiquitous computing, from which pervasive computing and pervasive game design flow.”

Jane at AvantGame reveals her double secret dissertation topic. Other pull-quotes include: “So stick that in your ‘this is not a pipe’ and smoke it!”

“If this isn’t the most brilliant thing ever said about playing role-playing games, I’ll eat my shoe.” Clinton comments on Rebecca Borgstrom’s paper, “Structure and Meaning in Roleplaying Game Design”.

I just read it last night, and I recommend it. Some long words, yeah, but actually well-paced and (to me) clear. Let me quote the part that got CRN so excited:

This paper views gaming as a computational process.

Gaming is work, in the sense of effort over time. That work takes the form of processing the raw data—-the set of possible stories applicable to the story’s premise. The players generate additional structure until a single story remains.

Structure is stuff that whittles down the possible stories down to the one that the players end up telling.

I also appreciated reading about her Fair Folk book, and seeing how the in-game structure of the surreal faerie world was to some extent a justification of making those metagame structural problems amongst players now explicit, and under the domain of the rules.

‘So summing up “a scene, plus some conflict” as “bickety-bam, narrativism” seems to me like summing up “you have a plant, it grows” as “bickety-bam, salad.”’ —the arguably vegetarian Ben Lehman on Clinton’s story thread.

“In order to keep Ball from devolving into pure chaos, each game is assigned a Ball King (or Queen, these folks aren’t barbaric, you know).”—Chris describes a Strange Place, and takes that metaphor to NEW HEIGHTS.

“A story is a linked series of events which contains one or more conflicts.” – Clinton R. Nixon on “the most important post ever on my weblog”.

We almost have a sensible, non-objectionable answer to the question What Is A Story?, at least relative to the kinds of stories we want from of our games.