There’s a common adage in the world of story games, introduced through the text of Vincent Baker’s Dogs in the Vineyard: Say yes or roll the dice. Follow the link to read his words on the subject, and then meet me back here.
Vincent’s writing assumes two things: that conflict produces meaningful story, and that saying no gets in the way of producing meaningful story. It’s the second of these two assumptions that I want to draw into question for a moment. Does saying no to a player or a character block meaningful story?
It definitely does some of the time. Let’s say that we’re telling a story about a pistol-wielding archeologist adventurer, and I say that he leaps from the cliff and lands in front of a cluster of evil henchmen, ready for a fight. I’ve got a great idea for where to take this scene, and it’s pregnant with action and struggle. And you say, “well, let’s discuss whether you’d actually be able to survive that kind of fall.” That’s blocking (what my example self considers to be) exciting conflict and meaningful story. It doesn’t add anything to the story, it doesn’t prompt my character to make decisions under duress and it doesn’t change our options. It limits, and it replaces a zinger of a story conflict (will I be able to fight down these sinister henchmen?) with what is at best a crappy story conflict (will I get the chance to face off against these henchmen, like I want to?) and at worst a crappy social conflict (why won’t you just let me do this cool thing?).
So, I’m going to agree that saying no can be detrimental to creating meaningful stories. That’s nearing on unarguable. However, is there also space for blocking/denying/saying no/delaying to be a useful tool in stories? I would say yes. I’m going to reverse my argument before making it, though. There are ways to hear no which are useful to producing good stories, regardless of whether saying it was a good idea. I’m going to walk through a few of the ways I’ve heard “no” surface in story games, and how to make use of them.
Hearing no at a player level
“I don’t see it.”
Willem Larsen introduced me to this phrase. It’s something he uses in group character creation, so that you can have an entire group participating in the creation of a character, but still allow that character’s owner agency and control. This phrase says “I can’t envision what you said plausibly and organically building upon what has already been said / my vision”. It’s elegant in that the speaker assumes responsibility for the disconnect, and it doesn’t necessarily end communication. Try to hear this as “No, but… show me what you’re envisioning.”
The two things that you can do in the face of “I don’t see it” are to acknowledge that there is a gap in the shared imagined space, and work to bridge that gap. The bridging might take the place of differently articulating your contributions (if the gap is one of undestanding), or retreating a narration that breaks someone else’s immersion/belief/investment/plausibility (if the gap is one of expectation).
“No. That’s dumb.”
This phrase doesn’t need much unpacking. Sometimes an idea is not a good idea, and it’s not about a failure of vision. I’ve heard this kind of no over several of my ideas in the past: having the teen gang ride hover-bikes, having my character attempt to assassinate another character in the first scene. I’ve watched people shoot down ideas in the stage before play (the planning/prep stage) several times. Sometimes, this shuts a player down. Sometimes, it forces a player to take a step back, re-evaluate where the group is at, and try to match up their own expectations. Try to hear this as ”No, and… you should take a moment and check your expectations.”
Ultimately, this is someone attempting to protect the artistic integrity of something they’re involved in, and that’s important. The way they’re going about it is problematic, in that they might damage the social integrity, but there are still ways to take this feedback and use it. Hear this as a concern about the final product. They are saying that they don’t want to have to build upon a suggestion they don’t like, and as artists, that is their perogative.
In a sustained, real-time, improvised artistic medium like story gaming, it is assumed that some of the things we introduce will sound dumb. This is natural, realistic and totally fine. To an extent, we must work with the contributions of others even when they aren’t radiant and brilliant, but to an extent we also have the right to exert our standards. If someone deems a contribution subpar, accept that maybe it is. And accept that as being natural, realistic and totally fine. Kill your darling. Listen to the group, hear that there is a difference in expectation, try to find the page that others are on and occupy it, and see if you can infer preference from the block you’ve just received.
“That crosses a line.” or “I’m not comfortable with that.”
There are times when no communicates a comfort differential. Sometimes a member of the group won’t have the established tust necessary to take the story in a certain direction. Sometimes they worry that a certain direction would be triggering, upsetting or too similar to their real lives. No can communicate that someone is not comfortable with I Will Not Abandon You play. Check with yourself about whether this is because the person feels unsafe with the group (something to work on) or unsafe with the subject (something to respect).
Hearing no at a character level
“You don’t find what you’re looking for.” or “It doesn’t work.”
You have a brilliant idea for how to address the story situation that presents itself. You share your plan, expecting it to go through. Someone else playing the story game (or, telling the story) says that your plan fails. They don’t offer a dramatic twist, they don’t offer conflict (in the form of some force with conflicting goals interrupting your character’s efforts), they just say no. You’re left looking at a still-locked-door, or an empty desk drawer, or some other impasse.
This is another player in the group looking at a situation and seeing a way to make it more pregnant and dramatic. If your character failed to pick the door lock and get into the office that way, maybe they need to smash a window. Maybe they need to take the night guard hostage and force him around by the scruff of his neck. This can be interpreted as a preference that the character should exasperate resources, burn bridges, get desperate or escalate the situation in order to get what they want. Try to hear this as, “No, because… I want you to have to earn this one.” It’s delaying the payoff to make it greater.
Now, this no can quickly lead to dysfunction. Maybe they’ve given you no clear indicate how to push or escalate. Maybe they’re actually saying “No, that’s dumb” (ie, saying no to you, not your character), and they’re choosing to mask that in fictional terms. Maybe they’re delaying your fun. Maybe you hate riddles. I’m not advocating the use of this no, I’m merely suggesting that there are constructive interpretations of it.
“No, you can’t do that.” (without the opportunity for conflict)
This is the same as “I don’t see it”, but wrongly targeted at the character and not the player. Interpret it as a no at the player level.
“No, someone else is going to try to stop you.”
There is a conflict of interest. This is the no that we, as story gamers (especially of the indie, Forge-inspired tradition), codify and work with pretty regularly. Try to hear this as “No, unless… you earn it from me.” And then try to earn it, probably through the game mechanics.
* * * * *
There are other ways that we hear no in story games: “Not yet”, “Perhaps we should make this a conflict” and “Why do you want to introduce that?” all carry with them a different no. I’m not sure how to interpret them productively (that, or I’m just uninterested in talking about them).
I’m not sure how useful saying no is. But I’m pretty confident that learning how to hear no is one of the most useful things that a collaborator of any type, especially a story gamer, can do.
But maybe that’s just dumb, and you can’t see it, and I don’t find the answer, and someone on the internet wants to stop me.
…in which I theory drop “Say Yes or Roll the Dice”, “System”, “SIS”, “I Will Not Abandon You vs. Nobody Gets Hurt” and repurpose “Yes, and…” and “Yes, but…”
Who the hell am I becoming? I hate theory discussions and jargon.
Well, actually, SYoRtD and IWNAYvs.NGH and System (the Lumpley Principle) are my favourite pieces of theorism, aside from sockets.
That’s neat.
I once decided that there were two sorts of useful block: blocking for realism and blocking for challenge, AIMIMBSBPU.
Blocking for realism is when someone says “I’m going to pick the lock” and someone else says “Dude, you’re a fisherman, how would you know how to do that?”. Really useful in games that depend on realism; really unhelpful in others.
Blocking for challenge is when someone says “I’m going to pick the lock” and someone, probably the GM, says “Nah, that’s a military-grade lock, you’ll never get through that”. It has the implication of “try harder, think of something else”.
Graham
I love how Archipelago does it.
“Do it differently, please”
“More detail, please”
It’s a GM-less game, but that technique has worked very well at our gaming table.
http://norwegianstyle.wordpress.com/2007/12/06/archipelago/
Graham,
Useful distinction.
Chris,
I’m going to use those.
“Do it differently, please” is sort of an iteration of Grahams “blocking for challenge”, in terms of how you react effectively to hearing that.
I really, really, really want to play Archipelago sometime soon.
Your article mentioned some things off-hand that I’d really love to see how you address at article-length for themselves, like: “Vincent’s writing assumes two things: that conflict produces meaningful story, and that saying no gets in the way of producing meaningful story. It’s the second of these two assumptions that I want to draw into question for a moment.” I’d really like to see what you come up with for the first point some time. It’s become an issue for me, but I must confess, I don’t know if I really know any alternatives right now.
I am sure gaming with me has given you all sorts of practice with these techniques. ‘Coz what I really meant was ‘no, and you should over time reflect on a meta level about what ‘no’ means and post about it in your blog.’ I am glad you finally managed to hear it constructively!
Jason,
In a conceited, unproductive line? Ribbon Drive is my anti-conflict manifesto, and you should eagerly await its release (upcoming!).
My less conceited, more productive response: Yeah, I’d love to post about that, but I really need to wrap my head around Sockets a bit better. Sockets are one of the few pieces of theorism/jargon that I really find useful (complete list being: IWNAY and NGH, say yes/roll the dice, Shared Imagined Space, Lumpley Principle, Sockets). So, when I get that on a practical, useful level a bit better, I’ll try creating such a post.
Daniel,
Yeah. In all honesty, your blocks/no’s have had a huge effect on my outlook here. You are unashamed of the genuine critique you bring to things, and your critiques are almost always spot on. It’s put me on my toes before, but it’s also inspired me to learn how to hear criticism. Because it’s useful.
Yes, I do very much want to play Ribbon Drive. I read the phrase “walking away” in the description–any oblique Daniel Quinn reference in that, by any chance? Even if not, it sounds like it has a lot of the same themes that mean so much to me in movies like Fight Club, American Beauty, or Office Space, so I really look forward to getting a chance to play it. Maybe practicing walking away in a game a few times will work up the nerve to do it for realz, eh?
I very much look forward to such a post, though I wouldn’t mind hearing what you have to say about Sockets, either. Frankly, I don’t know if I really got it, because it doesn’t seem terribly useful to me. I guess it seems to me like a fuller description of what GNS pointed at: that different people want different things from their game (I never entirely bought the implicit notion that you could only want three things from your game). Either I’ve missed a whole level of profundity in that simple statement, or I’ve misunderstood it completely, I think.
My impression of sockets is that they don’t describe what people want from the game but rather the means through which they try to get what they want. Three different players may all share a creative agenda while focusing on different inputs & modes of perspective when it comes to their actual interaction with the game.
Yeah, Daniel’s got the same impression I do.
I wrote a huge thing about how I would prefer CA be discussed, but then remember that this is the internet and deleted it all.
Sockets are useful because they are asking and answering the question “how do people relate to play?”
Joe,
Great post. A very complicated issue. It’s big enough that I’m not really sure where to insert myself into it… but we’ll see what I can manage.
In my group Storyjam NW, we treat all “no”s as “I don’t see it”. In fact, we explicitly make the time-out sign (which puts us in what we call the meta-game) and say “I don’t see it”. I think that our definition of “I don’t see it” is broader, though.
For us, I don’t see it could mean the following things:
“I don’t see it yet, so could you talk about your vision some more and help me understand?”
“I don’t think that fits with my understanding of the story we’re agreeing to create together. Here’s why: xxx. What do you think?”
“That exceeds my current Requested Vulnerability Threshold. Can you do it again but tone it back or have someone else offer me support at the same time?” (or, conversely, try to hit me harder)
“Wait, I’ve got a different idea that I think would make this scene totally awesome! Can we give it a try?
Others too, I’m sure.
For whatever reason, I think that we so far haven’t usually been explicitly using the meta-game signal for the last one or for “hit me harder”. Probably because they aren’t very vulnerable. Maybe we should try to move there, though.
Whoever is setting the current scene (those of you who don’t know, we do a scene-by-scene player rotation down here in Eugene Storyjam… hmm, just realized we don’t have a name for that rotating player role…) generally has the sort of, mediation role. But these discussions could happen between anyone at any given time… said mediator may not be involved at all if discussion goes really smoothly, even though they set the scene.
A final note on a way we say “No”: I mentioned this above with the Requested Vulnerability Threshold thing. We have each have 3 poker chips of different colors. They mean “Bring me down”, “Challenge me”, or “Help me awesomely excel”. Depending on which one you put on top, you’re asking for one of those three things from the group for your character in the story and for yourself as a player in the group.
I think this might be something that would slow down a truly fluid, explicitly communicative group of master storyjammers. However, as a mechanic for the long journey between conventional gaming and true group mastery of storyjamming, I’m finding the RVT chips to be a very handy aid to awareness of each player’s “No.”
You may pick up that one theme here is that in our group, the division between character and player is not as definite as for many others. Vulnerability is vulnerability, and a story becomes vulnerable when it holds some important parts of the personal narrative within it. Fictional control provides part of the safety of a story, but other means like the RVT chips and like all our meanings of “I don’t see it” provide safety for the PERSON, both the piece of them in the story/character and the piece of them invested in the social entity of the group.
If you managed to read through all that, then good work! As always, I’d be happy to continue the conversation here, over email, or on the phone. Hope things are going swell for you, and write me about GoPlayNW when you know what your plans are.
Hey Julian,
Cool. The RVT thing sounds a little more like Antagonism Chips than Vulnerability Chips (not that the two are divorced, by any means).
Why do I say that? First of all, because “how much will this character [and my attachment to it] be hurt” is one measure of vulnerability, and those permissions are a form of being vulnerable…
But vulnerability also exists in being present for a scene that includes something difficult/triggering. Having someone narrate a sexy, enticing character putting the moves on your bashful literary critic character involves a vulnerability (all things romantic/sexual in roleplaying involve a certain vulnerability that things violent/antagonistic don’t*). *All things non-antagonistic involve a certain vulnerability that all things antagonistic don’t. Self-reflection involves vulnerability, and being comfortable challenging someone’s self-reflection involves a big vulnerability on both sides (one that doesn’t feel adequately represented in your RVT thing).
And, so… I think that the RVT thing is truly brilliant. I want to use it, somehow. But I don’t see it as being a gauge for vulnerability, in all its very-important-to-our-craft array.I see it as a gauge for antagonism and control.
Thoughts?
Hmm…
So maybe there are 3 categories of vulnerable involvement in the scene.
1) I am playing and empathizing with a character who is vulnerable in a way that also makes me vulnerable.
2) I am helping to create a scene in about things that make me vulnerable, though I don’t have a special character who is vulnerable.
3) I am present at and implicitly supporting the production of a scene about things that make vulnerable, though I am not actively involved.
I think that any of these can be powerful and impactful, depending on a number of factors, but I think that other things being equal, the first category will hit quite a bit harder than the other two. That is my experience and I think that does seem to be research support for such a phenomenon. Which is not to say that the other two roles are not important; in fact, by playing at 2 and 3, we pass 1 around the group and give everyone time to shine.
As far as narrative production goes, the RVT chips do seem to only explicitly measure the 1st category of vulnerability. Luckily, this is also the most vulnerable one, like a canary in a mineshaft. I think. Also, ideally, they are only an aid to verbal communication which is absolutely a finer and more precise tool.
I may have forgot to mention this, but these Vulnerability Chips also AUTOMATICALLY WITHOUT EXPLICIT INSTRUCTION begin to carry over to the “meta-game”. If I’m showing “red”, people will likely be less gentle and cautious with me, Julian as well as with my character.
Thoughts?
Julian,
Cool.
I want to post about Sockets As Vulnerability Preferences soon, because you’ve got me thinking about that now. In short: If I have a strong Character Socket, I’m going to be most at risk (as a player) when you are challenging my character. If I have an aesthetic or scene Socket, though, the case becomes blurry. Anyways, I’ll post more on the subject soon.
I haven’t heard about these Sockets before. I’m looking forward to it.
very well put, joe.
i am mostly posting to show that i read your blog and enjoy it. additionally, i have a comment:
i think that the “it doesn’t work” version of No is often said by trad-gamers not to try and bring in more interesting details to the story, and nor exactly because they feel as if this individual character should work harder to get this specific thing…
more that their entire world view is that things, in general, are difficult, and it would be unrealistic to simply give the characters what they want. plus they don’t want to be seen as a push-over.
summary: i have played with bitter people, who are very concerned with others’ opinions of them.
Well said about the world-view bit, Jackson! Your average gamer becomes an incredibly pessimistic, dare I say conservative person the moment he starts playing in an RPG.
Joe, I’d be careful not to conflate the actions of the characters, and the players’ decisions about them, with the comfort level of the players themselves. I think the examples you gave more or less account for this distinction, but it sounds like you conflate “Yes, or roll the dice” with “Agree to it, or express your disagreement through a fallible medium [i.e. roll the dice to see if your No actually sticks? That's dumb!]“.
I think Vincent’s whole deal with “Yes, or” is based around an attitude towards losing in RPGs, and encouraging creativity. Actual violations of the social contract necessitate a player-to-player discussion, and I think your bullet-points are addressing SC violation (even if the violation is simply an act of bad taste), while Vincent was saying “within the field of play, say yes or use mechanics to contest it. Now things will go more smoothly!”
It’s not about liking everything other people do; it’s about getting away from the mindset that you must go to some mechanical decision-making device every time *anything* happens, as opposed to every time there’s an actual conflict of interest. This ties in with conflict vs. task resolution, too.
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