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February 03, 2005
Causation/Correlation
Okay, so elsewhere Vincent wrote:
Who needs continuity, in-game causality and integrity? Everybody.
To which I say: not me! That is: I don't need continuity, in-game causality, or integrity. I like 'em, but they aren't necessary.
RPGs are a place where the postmodern idea of competing texts in a permanent state of instability of interpretation is just an honest, literally true description of the state of affairs. There's the rules, the game setting, the player's journals, the GM's adventure notes, what the players think is going on, what the GM thinks is going on, what people actually say -- and ALL of those are radically inconsistent with each other, and with themselves.
This is a fundamental and inevitable part of gaming. If you like, a controversial way of saying this is that there is no such thing as a shared imagined space. There's just a pile of texts, and we dig things out of them to make new things, and those new things get tossed into the heap too, with no superior status to anything that came before.
One particular set of social conventions for taking stuff out of the pile of stuff is "continuity, in-game causality, and integrity", but they are not mandatory strategies. I've run and played in really fun games that have broken every subset of those three rules.
One way of actually doing this is to adopt the technique of deconstruction: start with what you value (say, causation), then identify it as the superior member of some binary opposition (say, causation versus correlation). Now, think about how to invert the opposition so as to privilege the subordinate concept (here, correlation).
Running with this idea: we want to come up with an rpg that privileges correlation over causation. So, starting with the superstructure of a conventional rpg (ie, players, setting, plot, etc), let's think about what a "correlative" rpg might entail. What shall we correlate? How about the plot? So, we want the plot of each PC's narrative to correlate with every other PC's plot. That is, everything that happens in one PC's plot should have an analogical equal in another PC's plot.
So, we run the game in turns, with a different player going first in each turn. For simplicity's sake, let's say that the first person uses a nice conflict resolution system like Dogs, which requires stating a conflict and then measures it out. Now, each player after that must first, state a conflict for his or her PC that has an analogy to that first conflict. And then they play out a scene, using exactly the same sequence of raises, reversals, etc that the first character did.
If you have 3 players, you now get three stories that exactly parallel each other. This is how we make sure correlation happens. (Also, observe that causation doesn't go away -- it just gets pushed into the margins, in the same way that recurring motifs and parallel structure have to live in the interstices of a conventional game.)
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Comments
Interesting stuff, Neel. You assert that you don't need any of those things, but can you give us a sense of how or why a game that privileged correlation over causation might be fun?
The Vincent-link doesn't seem to be working. (We used to link to "Forge threads of the week", now we link to Vincent's blog. See? The diaspora in action...)
Posted by: Rob at Feb 3, 2005 10:42:41 PM
It would be fun because you would be making these stories with parallel structure. I mean, how cool would it be to have three variations of the same PC, in three different millieus (say Johann the Teutonic Knight, Joanna the dotcom CEO, and Juan the Spanish conquistador), and then put them in the same plot to mess around with questions of what's the same and different between now and then? It's an oddball constraint, and improv proves those are pretty much always fun.
In the past, I did this thing with some of my friends that we called "playing for the neat bits". Someone would come up with their PC, and what was happening there, and then we'd play through the scene (with everyone else playing the NPCs). The PC's player was the "GM", to the extent it mattered. The rule was that it didn't have to make any sense at all, but it did have to be something emotionally resonant for the player who set the scene. Continuity? Causality? None of that was there -- it was like animating bits of REM sleep. It was weird, and very fascinating.
I don't know what's up with the Vincent link.
Posted by: Neel Krishnaswami at Feb 3, 2005 11:00:25 PM
The problem with the Vincent link is that there's two "http://" bits at the front of it, as opposed to just the normal one. Not sure offhand how to fix this in your particular blog system, but would look at previously inserted links for hints.
Posted by: Tom Parker at Feb 4, 2005 7:09:20 AM
No idea how I missed this comment of Vincent's, or I would have called him on it. Causality is only useful as long as it serves an interesting story. Otherwise, I chuck it and go with the surreal outcome.
My favorite 60 seconds of role-playing ever was non-causal in the extreme. I'm running a game of Trollbabe, and we've got a tense scene going on. Another player wants in, even though his character's a ways away.
Me: "So, the skin-changer and Kweli are fighting on the side of this hill. Matt, how do you enter the scene?"
Matt: "From above."
It was perfect.
Posted by: Clinton R. Nixon at Feb 4, 2005 7:56:26 AM
Yea, SIS as intertextuality! I love it. I keep wanting to pull out some Native American Studies stuff and argue that SIS is really "the Middle Ground" (a concept by Richard White, about the intercultural space that exists between two different peoples in contact).
Posted by: Jonathan Walton at Feb 4, 2005 1:02:44 PM
I've said elsewhere that your standards for causality, continuity, game-world integrity depend on your local group's tastes and needs at the moment.
Thus I agree fully with all of the above!
Posted by: Vincent at Feb 4, 2005 4:56:20 PM
Hi Vincent, I originally wrote this down in the context of your "what next?" post, and then I thought, hey, using deconstruction as a brainstorming tool is worth a post of its own.
Posted by: Neel Krishnaswami at Feb 4, 2005 8:24:25 PM
Jonathan: I like that Richard White/Middle Ground reference. Maybe I'll crack out the 20-siders in my next Early American History seminar...
Posted by: Rob at Feb 5, 2005 8:55:30 AM
So, Rob, Jonathan, the two of you are so totally allowed to explain that to me.
Posted by: Neel Krishnaswami at Feb 5, 2005 3:37:29 PM
In passing...
Neel wrote:
One way of actually doing this is to adopt the technique of deconstruction: start with what you value (say, causation), then identify it as the superior member of some binary opposition (say, causation versus correlation). Now, think about how to invert the opposition so as to privilege the subordinate concept (here, correlation).I think it's worth noting that this conception of deconstructive technique is in a number of respects importantly at odds with Derrida's conception. It fits pretty well the literary deconstructive mode, however. Just a piece of extra precision, which I think is necessary if we're going to talk about things like deconstruction around here.
Posted by: Chris Lehrich at Feb 5, 2005 10:11:15 PM
For Neel, from Richard White's The Middle Ground (Cambridge, 1991). This should really be a new post and a new discussion, but I don't have posting privileges. Maybe someone who does (Neel?) would stick this up front? The best stuff is in the second quoted paragraph and the line immediately following, but I thought it important to provide some context. The italics added are mine.
- In this story, the accomodation I speak of is not acculturation under a new name. As commonly used, "acculturation" describes a process in which one group becomes more like another by borrowing discrete cultural traits. Acculturation proceeds under conditions in which a dominant group is largely able to dictate correct behavior to a subordinate group. The process of accomodation described in this book certainly involves cultural change, but it takes place on what I call the middle ground. The middle ground is the place in between: in between cultures, peoples, and in between empires and the nonstate world of villages. It is a place where many of the North American subjects and allies of empires lived. It is the area between the historical foreground of European invasion and occupation and the background of Indian defeat and retreat.
On the middle ground diverse peoples adjust their differences through what amounts to a process of creative, and often expedient, misunderstandings. People try to persuade others who are different from themselves by appealing to what they perceive to be the values and practices of those of others. They often misinterpret and distort both the values and the practices of those they deal with, but from these misunderstandings arise new meanings and through them new practices -- the shared meanings and practices of the middle ground.
This accomodation took place because for long periods of time in large parts of the colonial world whites could neither dictate to Indians nor ignore them. Whites needed Indians as allies, as partners in exchange, as sexual partners, as friendly neighbors...
Lots of cool ideas to talk about here. Just the major points that stick out in my mind:
1) SIS is generated through a process of misunderstanding leading to new shared meanings. Neel's gestured near this before with his talk of Shared Symbolic Language.
2) Roleplaying texts often try to dictate the meaning of certain actions or events. I.e. "If you roll a Natural 20, that's a Death Blow!" But do these actually get adopted into the new language-of-misunderstanding?
3) Seems to me, especially from the recent Forge thread on the numerous ways that people misunderstood D&D back in the day, that game texts are a key participant in the misunderstanding process that leads to the shared language.
4) Accomodation in SIS takes place when you cannot dictate to or ignore other people. When you NEED them. This could be an interesting design principle, pushing for individual player agency.
That better, Neel?
Posted by: Jonathan Walton at Feb 6, 2005 3:57:31 AM
