Reporting Back: Game Design In 48 Minutes

5 10 2009

This Saturday, I ran a game design panel with Brad Murray, one of the authors of Diaspora. We were surprised and delighted to fill every chair in the room. Granted, there were 15 chairs in the room. I’d like to share my outline and discuss how the conversation unfolded, because I think it worked really well. The text in italics is the stuff on the outline we handed out, and the plain-face text is my post-panel thoughts.

1.) Designs Should Have A Guiding Vision (2 minutes)

The plan: In general, discuss the idea of designing a game to deliver a certain set of goals. What does your game do, in terms of… stories, characters, setting, situation, mechanics, play experience?

After opening with some introductions, we dived into the idea that a game should have a guiding vision, that it should seek to deliver something specific. Although this might be a Forge-centric idea, we didn’t discuss it in a Forge-centric way – Vampire: the Requiem has a guiding vision, and that is a major boon to the game. Introducing this idea not as revolutionary, but as something intrinsic to all design work, was helpful in unifying our audience.

2.) Take An Audience Game Pitch, Answer “The Big 3″ (7 minutes)

Audience Pitch: What is your game about? Now, what is it really about?
What is your game about? What do the characters do? What do the players do?

We asked the audience members to share a game idea that someone was working on, that we could workshop throughout the discussion. One guy put forward an idea that he said “wasn’t really a roleplaying game, but more of a baseball simulation exercise”. We took that and ran with it. The guy’s game was a two-player game: pitcher vs batting line-up.

We asked him what his game was about (baseball simulation), then dove into what interested him about baseball simulation to get at what the game was really about (the tension and the psychological mind games at work between the batter and pitcher). We presented the “big three” (what is your game about? what do the characters do? what do the players do?), and learned that both character & player are locked in the mind game component. We probed to find out what else the players do, and learned that they managed resources (batting line-ups, fan support, mechanical resources).

3.) Mechanics Should Support What The Game Is About (10 minutes)


Discuss the notion that mechanics support what the game is about, and structure an intended experience. Talk about things that the designer could do to facilitate their goals. Be sure to question the necessity of given mechanics: Do you need a GM? How about stats? Do you need dice? If so, why? Audience Pitch: What system/mechanics will support this design?

Here, we had about a 15-minute round-table, exploring mechanics that would supporting the evolving game. The discussion came around to the use of decks of playing cards, with suits representing different tactics and the number representing effectiveness. We introduced the idea that the players would take the deck of cards and from it build a deck of ~30 cards (so that if I want to throw lots of curveballs, I take all the clubs and widdle down on the other suits) – this would be part of the resource management aspect.

We had a boon in this game in that we were STARTING OUT with a GMless design, built for only two players. We were miles ahead of the curve to begin with. However, that let us focus on even more interesting questions: do you need a random element in your game to simulate how random the situation in the fiction is? In the end, we ditched the necessity for dice in determining whether batting was successful, though we integrated a secret card-bidding element.

At the tail end of this conversation, I tossed out a question: would there be a “you can’t focus because your wife is having an affair” card? The audience cheered that idea on, and the idea that hearts would correspond to out-of-game dramas was introduced.

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Categories : Reporting Back

Elegance & the Death of Clever

21 09 2009

I’m currently working on a game called The Night It Died, which is about the breakdown of a community, and the exploration of what its participants do in its dying moments. It’s the game I’m writing to play SLC! Punk, and in a way I’ve been working on this game since 2006 (albeit under different names: Guttersnipe, later Boulevard).

One of the struggles I’ve been having is figuring out how to set up the general structure of the game in order to deliver the experience I’m envisioning. I’ve thought up several systems, and then trashed them wholecloth. Why? Because they were clever. And when something is clever, it isn’t elegant.

Clever mechanics do something in a cool way, and they noticeably change play. That sentence sounds nice, perhaps it even sounds like a compliment. Let’s unpack how it isn’t. The first key word here is “noticeably”. Clever mechanics are flashy, attention-grabbing and immediate. They demand that you pay attention to them, and especially that you pay attention to how clever they are. The second key word, compounding the issue, is “cool”. Clever mechanics hook you in; they are exciting.

Clever mechanics put themselves on your radar. They announce themselves, demonstrate themselves, and require your enthusiasm. If something is flashy and prominent, there are two options: it’s either the focal point, or it’s a distraction.

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Categories : Practical Theory

Housekeeping Redux

30 08 2009

Every once in a while, I feel like it’s a good idea to check in with readers on a few things. As I’ve started posting regularly again, now seems like a good time.

1.) Since last housekeeping post, I’ve changed the layout and removed nested comments. As far as site accessibility/functionality, how do you feel that this is working?

2.) If you read this blog regularly, post a comment letting me know that. Especially if you don’t regularly post.

3.) I’m currently the President of the Vancouver Gaming Guild, and thus am at the intersection of nonprofit organizing and story games. Are you interested in exploring thoughts like: how to support volunteers, how to foster community, how to support gaming in your area?

3b.) I’m going to be leading an Appreciative Inquiry process for the VGG soon, redefining the mission statement and building a new set of core focuses. Would a documentation of this process (say, 1,000-2,000 words) be interesting? It’d give me an avenue to discussing facilitation and story-based communication, while grounded in a shared interest: supporting gamers in our communities.

4.) How am I doing so far with this blog? What works? What needs improvement?

5.) Out of the following topics, what sounds most interesting to you: identity issues, further exploration of sockets and play priorities, discussions about community, exploring the stories we tell ourselves about fear & death, conversations about cooking, about free food, actual play reports from story games, conversations about ethics.

6.) Are you most interested in experience-grounded posts, technique-grounded posts or theory-grounded posts?

7.) Is there value in putting a Donate button on this site?


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How to yell a poem & tell a game.

10 08 2009

I like poetry. I especially like performance poetry.
But sometimes it feels like we’re playing to format (*) and not to content.

I’ve often gone to poetry slams and seen good poems put down by bad poems that are delivered as per the form’s standard: exactly three minutes, build-and-then-invert-your-message-and-then-crescendo, get jittery as you lead up to your climax, address it to “you” (that never-a-stranger, always-a-stranger audience member that sits inside the spotlight.) When you have 12 poets going up in a row, you have the following happening: an overdose of imagery and impact, leaving the audience desensitized to a soft voice or a subtle line; a culture of confessional one-upmanship, in order to keep the audience’s attention and to distinguish yourself as somehow more than the other poets who’ve come and gone; a shift over the course of the evening from poetic appreciation to frenetic, untargeted energy. And sometimes you lose track of what you’re actually looking for. The result is that you feel cheated by the moment.

Poetry Slams are not an anomaly in this regard. They just seem to have a bit more self-awareness of this condition than do other social art forms. Another place where I’ve seen this rear its head is in story games, in two specific ways. The first is a “push to conflict” mentality. Many games necessitate each and every scene to build up to and resolve a conflict mechanically (popular examples: Primetime Adventures, Shock: Social Science Fiction). The second is a “bring the awesome” mentality, where rocket-mecha jesus is a better addition to the story than a soft-spoken preacher, because it’s MORE AWESOME!!!!!

Sometimes, we deny ourselves the moving experiences we’re looking for, while simultaneously paying lip service to them. I’ve talked to people about their experiences with Dogs in the Vineyard, and many have told me about game sessions where people rushed into conflict with each other, escalated to guns and decimated the first town they walked into, because other people’s excited play reports had informed them that the game was about destroying innocent people. Dogs in the Vineyard is actually about trying to resolve difficult situations, and watching ideologies come face to face with real life. Which sometimes results in the destruction of innocent people. We’ve (for any values of “we” you find useful) established a culture of play that revels in the dramatic reveal over the dramatic tension, the breaking point over the establishing point. We push to conflict, we make it awesome, we bring the pain, we play close to home, we… miss the point. We put characters we don’t know into conflicts that don’t mean anything to us as people. We get lost in the fever of it all.

How do you facilitate better play over bigger play? How do you remove the one-upmanship of poetry/story games/social interactions? How do you keep your focus on the elements you’re actually looking for? Christian talks about games that focus on non-competitive/escalative elements. Jonathan talks about a culture of play that puts fiction first.

I’m going to suggest something: that the issue is a focus on format over content. In the example of slam poetry, people write the 3-minute angry poem that builds-drops-builds-twists-explodes, even if the content doesn’t demand it. In the example of story games, people push to conflict and race to face-stabby play, even if the content doesn’t demand it.

The tricky thing is that I’m not talking about transitioning away from any school of game design (from focused-structure to open design, for example). “Format” doesn’t simply mean “rules”. To suggest that freeform, story jamming or “rules lite systems” will avoid the pitfall of format-over-content is to miss part of the point. Format includes: rules, expected structure, expected pay-off, assumed roles and genre stand-bys. We are eager to affirm that what we’re experiencing conforms to and exceeds our expectations. The trap in this is that we begin to live in our expectations rather than our experiences. And then we begin to create affirmations of our expectations, rather than just focusing on creating our art.

We get excited about the promise of good content. We create formats to deliver the best content possible. And then we get lost in the format, to the point where some of our best content gets washed over and disregarded. The questions: How do we keep our expected outcomes from dictating our actual play? How do we appreciate elegance in the face of something easier? How do we keep fiction first, and stay rooted in what we’re actually creating? How do we put content before format?


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Categories : Unpacking

No.

29 05 2009

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


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Hunting Rabbits (Shh…)

19 05 2009

I’m currently working on a story game called Ribbon Drive. It’s taken my heart by storm, and I’m really excited about its upcoming release. Ribbon Drive is a game where you tell a story about a road trip, and all the meaning and contemplation that pours out of it. It’s a game about letting go on the open road. The game uses mix CDs as a driving force to shape play.

One of the most successful parts of play, I’ve found, is the opening. We shuffle the mix CDs. We draw one at random, put it in the machine, and press play. We listen to to the first song in silence. Afterwards, we pause the CD and interpret how that first song lends to a road trip premise. We use it as a foundation point for our story. Why has this stage been successful? Well, all we’re asking is that you listen to a song (which had an equal opportunity of being your song, and might well be) and think about it. Participation seems to require very little.

But here’s what I’ve noticed: being both present and silent is very hard for some people, myself included. There’ve been games of Ribbon Drive where I’ve put down the lyrics to the song while it played; people who felt most comfortable tracking the words would do so. In games where I didn’t offer this thing to do, where your options were to either close your eyes or look around the room, the vibe I got was significantly different. It was a bit anxious, in that people seemed a little less comfortable in their own skin. There was reservation about sharing their opinions afterwards.

Being both present and silent is hard. Experiment: try to meet and hold someone’s gaze for fifteen seconds, without either of you saying anything. You can repeat this experiment as many times a day as you like. See how many people break this gaze. See how often you break this gaze. Does it feel comfortable and natural? My answers are, pretty invariably: almost everyone; almost every time someone else doesn’t; no.

Silence, as a form of communication, is underexplored, because it is difficult and often misread. I’m not talking about shutting up, nor am I talking about the silent treatment(ie, using silence to communicate how you are unengaged), but rather silence as a tool for active, engaged participation. Before I get farther into why this might be difficult for us, let’s look at how silence could be used as a tool.

Silence Can Demonstrate Agreement. Silence can demonstrate the absence of objections, the support of the speaker. It can demonstrate your belief that their argument is without necessary additions or revisions. Danger: this silence can also be a sign that a communicator lacks confidence that they and their concerns will be met fairly.

Silence Can Demonstrate Engaged Listening. Silence can demonstrate that one is focused on listening and appreciating. If the speaker has paused or stopped, and the listener is still silent, this could be seen as a signal that the listener is interested in hearing more. Danger: this silence could also be seen as non-participatory listening, and might be used when the listener is incapable of meaningful engagement.

Silence Can Demonstrate Ongoing Consideration. Silence can demonstrate that one is taking time to mull over the idea and consider its applications before challenging it or moving on. Silence could signify that one is interested in this idea to the extent that they would prefer to stay with it, rather than keep advancing the conversation. Danger: this silence could also mean that the ideas aren’t worth engaging, or that the silent party is unsure how to engage a response.

Silence Can Demonstrate Your Priorities. Silence can carry the very powerful message that you care more about hearing another’s ideas than sharing your own. This is a form of permission-granting similar to Silence Can Demonstrate Agreement, but coupled with a statement of preference. Danger: this silence can also demonstrate that you feel your priorities are invalid, or that you won’t be given due spotlight (and so are resigned to another’s communicative priorities).

How do we utilize silence’s strengths while avoiding its pitfalls?


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Do Over: Blank The Police [SWTO]

8 05 2009

The [SWTO] in this post’s title stands for Stories We Tell Ourselves. It’s a tag I’m going to be using in the future as well, in posts with the same agenda as this one: to explore part of our shared narrative/shared interpretation of the everyday world. I’m very curious about the ways in which story is used to shape the collective unconscious, how we already use story as an everyday tool, and how we can disrupt these stories.

We all tell ourselves stories about the police. Variably, they are swine, neighbourhood superheroes, the thin blue line, the establishment (/the man), regular men and women, facists drunk with power. They are the only strangers you can trust. They are enemies and you must stay vigilant. Taser-happy, unethical thugs. Stalwart men and women. The only thing between us and them. The epitome of law. An upstanding profession. Abusers of power. An old boy’s club. Interested in progressive, restorative, community-focused law enforcement. Interested only in propigating a stagnant system founded on ownership and punishment. Whatever. Introduce new descriptors ad naseum.

Communities (in the cliquiest sense of the word) define themselves, in part, through the stories they tell about police (and law enforcement in general). “The police are fascist swine” is a story you can tell yourself in order to confirm values and an identity. When others tell this story with you, they are forming community.

I ride transit without paying; this is technically illegal. Since July (when I stopped buying passes), I’ve saved abuot $600. Vancouver has transit police (all other cities in Canada only have transit security; not actual police task forces designated to ticketing traipsers). There have been numerous times where I’ve been riding on a Skytrain, and just as the doors were about to close, two transit cops walk on. I spend the next stop thinking to myself, “Please, don’t inspect tickets right now.” If I get caught, I run a $170 fine. So far, I have not been given a ticket. Nine months of riding at least 4 buses a day has resulted in no fines.

This experience has altered the story I tell myself about cops. It’s convinced me that I am smarter than them. It’s also convinced me that cops (and laws) are malleable, since I’ve talked my way out of a ticket more than once. Finally, the fact that I’ve saved $600 (enough for 3-4 full fine tickets) has convinced me that breaking the law is so profitable, that even if I get caught I save money. Is this a particularly useful or helpful story, that I’ve crafted for myself? No. But it’s dovetailed pretty tightly with a few other situations in my life: the kind of friends I’ve been making, my decision to move towards unemployment, my generally wanting to opt-out of “the system”, my shift in workplace attitude (because the story I tell myself about police feeds into the story I tell myself about establishment, authority and hierarchy).

I’ve been creating a story of invincibility, and part of that is the notion that even if I get caught I win. The interesting thing is that this story completely bypasses a bunch of really big discussions: the legitimacy of law enforcement; the unethical nature of my actions; the fact that I’m ripping off a service that I actually advocate. Because I encounter my story so often in the real world, I confirm it daily. I confirm it without having to confirm the situation (which includes big concepts like ethics, criminality, social order, responsibility to public property). Stories can act as a bypass on real-world situations. In the comments to “Imaginary Funerals”, Julian introduced the concept of mental models of reality: we construct simulations (mental models) of future events so as to choose the best outcomes, and to make future-affecting decisions. The interesting thing about stories is that confirming them often enough allows us to stay within the realm of the mental model. In order to live in modern society, we must always do this to an extent.

We tell ourselves stories about the world we live in to simplify it, justify our own actions (through abstraction and reduction), and to propagate community surrounding our values.

Law Enforcement and Crime are both hugely story based.


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The Internet Already Exists

6 05 2009

I’m not a fan of people expecting other people to prime themselves for internet conversations.
Come as you are.

But! If you’re interested in reading some of the things that have inspired my thinking lately and in the past…

Play Passionately: Introduction
“To me, a game is most fun when there’s an element of social risk. When playing passionately there are two layers to that risk. The first is the same as any collaborative creative endeavor: Failure. Simply, the game or some part of the game and the created fiction might suck or be no fun. It might take some practice or critical thought to understand exactly what went wrong and how to avoid disappointment in the future.

The second layer of social risk is, perhaps, a bit more controversial. Plainly, you might get hurt or offended. Playing passionately involves an element of emotional vulnerability, putting a little of yourself out onto the table for others to poke and prod. It’s about finding the uncomfortable spaces inside us and deliberately bringing them out into the light. That kind of honesty brings us closer together through vulnerability, trust and shared pain.” – Jesse Burneko

The College of Mythic Cartography: What Does Fluency Mean?
“Notice the distinction there; in our modern culture we value the amount of facts you carry. In an animist culture we value the amount of questions.

In a modern sense, to “know” something means to have an intellectual understanding of it, though the execution of it may elude you. In an animist sense, to “know” something means you feel comfortable in your skin about it, that you can implement this knowledge easily and gracefully. Essentially, this underscores the difference between learning a language, and gaining fluency in a language.” -Willem Larsen

M: The Way It Is (this post is, in my opinion, absolutely beautiful. I don’t read this blog, though.)
“You are not sharing an experience. You are alone. You are not a fucking “protagonist” awaiting contrivances. You can’t have what you want in character. You can’t have what you want out of character. Nobody says yes. You do not get to roll the fucking dice. It isn’t safe, and when I say that I don’t mean the vapid, pathetic usage of “unsafe” that is in fact very fucking safe. You do not know if you are angry, or if the character is angry.

You don’t get to choose.

That’s when you’ll abandon the geek-guilt and stop trying to ape the idiotic 19th Century, High School English conception of story. That’s when you will embrace the form for what it can do. That’s when you will remember. Not invent. Remember.” -Malcolm Sheppard

Roleplaying Theory, Hardcore: A Small Thing About Suspense (scroll down to find it)
“Suspense doesn’t come from uncertain outcomes. I have no doubt, not one shread of measly doubt, that Babe the pig is going to wow the sheepdog trial audience. Neither do you. But we’re on the edge of our seats! What’s up with that?
Suspense comes from putting off the inevitable. What’s up with that is, we know that Babe is going to win, but we don’t know what it will cost.” -Vincent Baker

The Centre for Nonviolent Communication: List of Needs (also, the List of Feelings)
[This list] is meant as a starting place to support anyone who wishes to engage in a process of deepening self-discovery and to facilitate greater understanding and connection between people.

Maybe in spots these are disparate. One is a bitter rant where a designer calls out people from a different school of design. One is story theory. One is a philosophy of learning, another a philosophy of shared narrative. The last is a laundry list of legitimate needs (linked to a list of feelings). But, anyways, I wanted to link-drop them all, so as to give avid readers a common ground to build with me upon.


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Trust, criticism and traipsing

5 05 2009

As far as I can tell, there are two types of creative criticism. The first is preference. To look at a situation and say, “I would like this more if  X.” The second is approval. To look at a situation and say, “I think this is good, because of Y.”

As far as I can tell, one is harmful to the artistic process. That one is approval, and the reason lies in the negative space it creates. Approval suggests the existence of disapproval. Even worse than that, approval suggests the legitimacy of seeking external validation for your contributions. To unpack both slightly…

Approval suggests the existence of disapproval. It says, “This is good, because of Y.” It also implies, “If you didn’t do Y, it might not have been good.” This can cause creative paralysis: if you do Y again, it will be good again. If you try something new, it runs the risk of not being good.  It creates safety zones based on what we’ve already seen, and in doing so undermines the safety zone of the unknown. And the unknown is what we’re seeking, right?

Approval suggests the legitimacy of seeking external validation for your contributions. If you give someone approval, you suggest that approval is a useful thing. You also suggest that they didn’t begin with approval. You also suggest that the approval of their ideas is in your control. What do these three things work in tandem to create? A hierarchy.

But, don’t people really like approval? Yes. And if approval didn’t exist as a filter for what is good and what isn’t, wouldn’t our world be saturated by useless shit? Yes. So, doesn’t it stand to reason that approval should be part of the artistic process? No. Approval stunts creativity, creates hierarchies and embellishes fears. It creates a dependency which is not helpful to the artistic process.

Approval creates a dichotomy. Your contributions to our creative endeavour now have the potential to be good or bad. Those are your choices, and they are static. Preference is a language of improvement, of bridging the gap, of movement. It suggests that there is no black or white, just gray. It suggests that you are on the right track, and that there is room to grow, and that the expectation is on you to grow. It puts just as much pressure on you as approval does, but it gives you an avenue for achieving expectation (“how about adding a bit of X?” is constructive; “now do something else to earn my love” is alienating and scary).

Oh! Check this out: Approval builds safety zones around what has already happened, and undermines safety zones around what comes next. Preference builds safety zones around what comes next. It also suggests that, since no approval process is happening, you have intrinsic approval. It eliminates the concept of disapproval. There is only what you have done, what others hope to see next, and what you do next.

Now, some of you are going to notice that approval and preference are just different ways of framing the same thing, and some of you are going to notice that preference has pitfalls as well. And the wisest of you are going to notice that the type of judgment you’re expressing matters less than your words and your attitude. Whatever. None of these are particularly interesting avenues of exploration to me, so perhaps we can just skip them.
And now to apply this to real world examples…


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Setting new priorities

1 05 2009

Now is a good time to start writing somewhere new. I want a place to explore a few things which have recently come to dominate a lot of my mental real estate. These things share a lot of common ground: they are all rooted in making the most of experience, they are all tied into shared narrative, they are all about living more intentionally, and they are all underused arts in our society.

The first is shared story creation. Predominantly, this takes the form of story games. Story games are, to me, about a structured exploration of experiences we’ve never had the opportunity for. I’m going to post again soon sharing some more ideas about the roots and the purposes of story games. This notion of shared story creation also takes other forms though. I’m interested in exploring Theatre of the Oppressed, Guerrilla Theatre, and other forms of participationist and activist theatre. Also, things like how we can use storytelling to re-interpret and re-imagine our everyday lives.

The next is still searching for a definitive tag, but I’m interested in rewilding and urban foraging and stepping out of the binding structures that come with civilization. Basically, how do I live in a city (where I want to be) and yet determine the events of my own life (as opposed to being driven by imposed needs, like money and job security, etc). This is tied into urban foraging, scavenging, gardening, guerrilla gardening, activism, working less, squatting and resourcefulness. It’s also tied into how alternate structures alter our understanding of society, and the narrative we collectively and individually form about our existence and our role in the world.

The third is intentional, narrative-grounded communication. I want to learn from my friends who practice/study Nonviolent Communication, I want to continue to explore Appreciative Inquiry facilitation, and I want to look at other methods and approaches to communication which prioritize sharing experience and finding common ground. I am interested in exploring consensus decision-making and other models of representation. I want to explore how different methods of communication can inform our daily activities.

The final thing that I want to explore in this blog is poetry (performance/slam poetry, mostly) and spoken word. Because I like it a lot.


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Categories : Unpacking, Updates