I just finished my second show, and I'd really like some feedback on whether I'm explaining the topics well, sound quality, my visual aids, or the order I'm planning to teach theory and design in.
I listened to the first part of the latest one. It's late here, though and I'm tired... so no big analysis. Good music. Good explanations of the ideas being described. I'll check more of it out when I get a chance.
I'd suggest sticking with one item per episode with lots and lots of AP examples to display how it has been illustrated during your own play experience.
So you were both able to follow the content even with the occasional word getting cut off for some reason? I think show two was better on that front but I'm still working on figuring out what I'm doing wrong.
Judd, you are saying stick with the format I have, but you feel I need to include more examples? If so, point taken.
I'd also say, stick with one topic at a time. It's very easy to over-complicate theory as you discuss it. However, as important as actual play examples can be, I hold the best way for your listeners to understand theory is for them to relate it with their own play. Try to find the tools to help make that happen, and you'll find people better able to not only know theory, but understand and use it.
For example, with the nested big model you could add something like this:
Here's an exercise: when you come to a break in game take a moment and consider what just happened in the fiction at the table. - that's the ephemera. But how did that just happen, what did people do to bring about those last few moments? - that's the techniques. Now think about where the game was going with those moments. - that's the exploration. Lastly, how did you all decide that you wanted the game to head that way? - that's the social contract. Now try it again a few times, maybe even in the middle of play. That way you'll get a sense for what changes and what doesn't.
In my experience actual play examples are only one limited way to connect people's real play with theory.
Great idea. I'll see if my brain is able to come up with similiar ways to pointing at a persons own experience. Can I steal that example for when I tackle the big model as an episode?
I enjoyed listening to your discussion, but I wanted the whole thing to be much tighter in its structure, by which I mean that I wanted it to be more narrowly focused around the central argument, and I wanted that argument to be front-loaded in the overall flow of the talk, rather than sandwiched between inconsequentialities.
When I say narrowly focused around a front-loaded central argument, I don't mean that you can't have an expansive scope. I just mean that your scope should be determined by the point you're trying to make. I hear your central idea as being that conflict resolution emphasizes drama and task resolution emphasizes the physics of the "real" (i.e., game) world. Let me just check in with you: is this the point you were trying to make? If so, good, because I got it. Am I convinced? Not necessarily--I might believe that conflict resolution highlights my guy's kewlness more than anything else. A stronger way of presenting the argument might have been to start with the vignette of play you used, pick out the task resolution in it, and then show us how it typified the characteristics of task resolution. Then you could have re-imagined the vignette as conflict resolution, and showed us what that would have highlighted in play. All that preliminary stuff (response to feedback and definitions) could have been moved to the end of your talk, brought in as part of the main section ("The evil sword was a 'maguffin' [McGuffin]--a plot device that serves to motivate character action because everybody wants it, but whose nature is never really specified"), or skipped altogether--if it doesn't help you demonstrate your point about conflict and task resolution, why bother including it?
I think a narrower focus will also help you figure out what it is that you're trying to say, and home in like a laser beam on what's important to create a compelling talk about it.
Now, you may have structured your talk the way you did in conscious or unconscious adherence to the conventions of the podcast, whatever they are, or of the classroom lecture, or some other model for one-to-many communication. But those conventions are there for you to break. Break them. Do the thing that lets you say something real.
I let this set a bit as I was uncomfortable answering right away. I figured out that I was worried about coming off patronizing, or overly defensive. So hopefully that won't happen now.
Alright. First things first, thanks a lot for your criticism. I appreciate you passionate response. I think I may have failed to communicate properly, however. My goal for the show is to serve as a starting point for learning RPG theory and design. I'm starting with Forgie ideas, the Big Model, and GNS theory. The main reason is because I've spent years first lurking and then slowly posting over at the Forge and still don't understand some things.
I've had a hard time because there is no method of teaching the ideas. Much of the theory has been created in open discussions and debate. This is a good way to develop theory, but an incredible hurdle for new folks to overcome as they have to go through a bunch of debate they weren't involved in. There may be nuances in those discussions they can't understand. There aren't many pointers for where to start in these discussions. I just don't think it's a good way to learn.
So there are Theory Shamans out there who have an intense lexicon of terms and unexplained thoughts which makes it hard for newer folks to get involved in the conversation. I'm seeing in my local area that this high learning curve is causing folks to write off the ideas due to perceived elitism, and egg-head-ism. There are also folks like long distance friends of mine who just don't have the time to dedicate to all that digging and discussion. This has made it very hard to introduce games I like, the few times a year we see each other, when they're mystified by things like Conflict resolution, and stances other than actor stance, etc. Add to this I have heard some podcasts using GNS theory wrongly, and I felt there was really an unmet need in the community. (Note: I'm not trying to take anything away from folks who have been trying to teach via their blogs.)
What's all that got to do with anything? The show is intended to serve as a basic teaching device. I don't see my primary mission as attempting to argue strongly and convince people, but to say these are the ideas, and what you decide about them is fine. I also see it as taking other peoples thoughts about what I talked about, and saying, "Here's what other people think." Additionally, I think the theory will stand on it's own merits. I'm seeing the podcast as a stepping off point into that fireside chat with the Shamans. Hopefully if that goes well then one day I may get into moving the podcast into another fire to gather around.
Now to get into particulars. The reason I was using the idea of "Game Physics", and "Story-neutral" is I have had really good success locally addressing Task based and Conflict based resolution using these ideas. If you aren't convinced, that's fine. I'd love to hear what you disagree with specifically, so I can introduce it as feedback for the next show which will likely not be until mid next week . I have a bad cold and recording myself right now would not be useful for folks.
You are right about the podcasts structure. It is based on Podcast theory, which is to bring the long part last, and the podcast, "Security Now" which is a model as I have learned a lot about computer security from it's structure. I also have a hard time imaging being able to teach well without first defining unfamiliar terms. Can you point at some personal experiences where the method you describe has been useful in learning new ideas, Bill?
I don't want you to think that I'm criticizing your ideas -- far from it. My critique was solely directed at their manner of presentation: I think you can lay them out in a far more compelling way, a way that because of the coherence of your arrangement takes your listeners through a sequence of interlinked ideas that build on each other and thus -- because they are linked -- make more sense, are easier to remember, and more easily applied. I hope you agree that we tend to remember things when they are presented to us in a structured way: a narrative or a mnemonic, for example. A laundry list of terms out of context is easily forgotten, but a term introduced as a definition for something you've just described -- "...and because what we rolled for was whether I got what I wanted, rather than if I did what I said I was going to, that made it 'conflict resolution'"-- is stronger as a teaching tool.
I think I get why podcast theory would suggest that it's a good idea to "bring the long part last": the implication is that you have a bunch of discrete items that a listener is going to attend to or not while doing something else -- jogging on a treadmill, or driving to work, and the listener is thus able to tune in and out as different topics get raised, and so the "long part" is like a feature article in a magazine, better after all the regular departments and other business have been read.
But you're not creating a magazine-like narrowcast. You're trying to explain GNS-related concepts to an audience that you've described as skeptical about the merits and utility of those ideas. So you are making an argument to that audience: this idea is worth something, it's worth knowing, it could be useful to you. Think about what effect you're trying to have an this audience, seriously. You want them to give a game with conflict resolution a chance, right? And you think that if they know what conflict resolution is, for real, then they might, I don't know, play Dogs sometime, right?
Now you say that you're cool with whatever use people make of the ideas that you present. I'm not suggesting that you are trying to force people into anything, nor am I suggesting that you should be. All I am saying is that you want them to listen and give your ideas a chance. There's a better chance of that if the way you present those ideas is engaging to the listener. You want people to be interested, right? You want them to stop pedaling and listen to you, don't you?
Okay. All of that is an argument for more tightly focused individual podcasts, rather than content grab-bags. It turns out that listening is different from reading, in that voices flow while text scans (meaning that it's easy to go back and re-read earlier parts, and that the overall structure of a text is more easily visible to a reader than is the structure of a speech to a listener). So the speaker has to do more to clue listeners in about how the flow of speech is structured, so that the listener is more easily able to anticipate how what is about to be said fits in with what has already been said, and with what's to come.
So my suggestion is not to change your argument (by which I mean only the point you're trying to make, the effect you're trying to have). In fact, exactly the opposite: I want you to make it more pure. Argumentation in speech tends to be "enthymemetic": it proceeds not from definitions or principles laid out like the axioms of a mathematical proof but from a tacitly held common ground of shared knowledge or assumptions. Thus, your argument that "task resolution is game physics" is an enthymeme in that it is a metaphor that makes sense (and requires no further explanation) to audiences that share an understanding that physics arbitrates the outcomes of physical actions (a pretty common understanding). Notice that you needed no syllogistic premises to reach that conclusion, no laying out of prior terms or definitions; in fact, you argued for it inductively by giving us an example in your podcast drawn from your own play. Notice that the "proof" (in the form of the example) came after the conclusion!
So understanding that this powerful metaphor is central to your explanation of task resolution lets you strip away stuff that's irrelevant to making that point, and making it so well that your listeners' intuitive or tacit belief is transformed into conviction. Similarly, finding an appropriate parallel construction for conflict resolution can potentially reinforce your listeners' understanding of both ideas: "Task resolution is game-physics; conflict resolution is story-logic" perhaps. Notice how the double contrast of game with story and physics with logic creates a strong differentiation between the two.
So it's not true that you can't teach well "without first defining unfamiliar terms." You can define them as they come up in the service of the larger teaching point. Laundry lists of unconnected definitions are bad teaching by definition, because they are out-of-context and give no clue as to their proper scope, relevance, or utility. Notice how I taught you what an enthymeme was: I defined it in the moment that it became useful, and gave an example that I knew would be familiar to you. And I did it not because "enthymeme" is a cool term to know (though it is) but because it served the larger teaching point of talking about how argumentation in speech is constituted, which you needed to know in order to get why I want you to focus on presenting the big picture in a compelling way rather than the individual details for completeness's sake.
I admire the project that you've undertaken, and I want it to succeed. My feedback is offered in the hopes that you will not take it as a criticism of your ideas, nor your knowledge, nor your aims. I want you to understand that people are not going to listen just to be nice to you; they are going to listen in the hopes that you will say something to them in a way that gives them something they can take for themselves, and if you don't they are going to stop listening.