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I think the notion of the actor can be developed into a powerful analytical tool. In order to give the reader a better understanding of the concept, I will provide some more examples.

(The following seven paragraphs were written by Simon Petterson)
Consider The Shab al-Hiri Roach. On the surface, this game appears to be competitive. There's even a win condition. The one who has the most Reputation at the end of the game wins. The problem is, if you really play the game to win, the game will break apart in a matter of minutes.

An example of this is the framing of conflicts. You get extra dice for every named character you narrate into the scene on your side. There's no limit on the number, here, so the logical thing to do, if you're playing to win, is to narrate in a heap of named characters into every conflict. Yet, nobody does this, as it would ruin the game.

In the same way, the logical thing to do when framing a conflict is to always twist the story so that both your Enthusiasms and your Expertise come into play, in every single conflict. This isn't so hard to do, if you're willing to let the story suffer, and it's enough with one type of conflict that fulfills that criterion, because then you can repeat it over and over again. However, this would also lead to boring play.

And again, trying to resist the roach's command. This demands that you sacrifice a point of Reputation for no mechanical benefit whatsoever. Since the actual story has no real way of influencing the mechanics, this would always be a bad choice if you play to win. And yet, people do this in play.

If you take only the player into consideration, the explanation would simply have to be that people don't play the game with the goal of winning. However, this is not really true. People do frame conflicts that are to their advantage, even if they don't go so far as to twist the story to do it. There are two conflicting goals here, that are both pursued simultaneously.

The explanation to this phenomenon can be found in the theory of the virtual actor. the player is mostly interested in creating a good story, but for this to happen, there needs to be conflict and competition. However, this competition needs to be kept in check so that it does not ruin the game. Thus, the player is constantly driving towards the goal of the good story, but he is pushed to make certain decisions by the actor, who is trying to win the game.

An example of this is the setting of scenes and the staking of Reputation. These two cannot be performed by the same "entity". The player is interested in the story, and as such, has no interest in the number of Reputation set at stake, since this has no effect on the story. The actor, on the other hand, is trying to win, and cannot be allowed to frame the scene, or all those things exemplified above will occur. The solution is, then, to let the player set the scene, and the actor evaluate the risks involved, and stake a number of Reputation appropriately.

Another example: On Swedish rpg forum www.rollspel.nu, criticism has sometimes been raised against what has been called "my-turn-to-say-something points", i e, some kind of currency used within the game by players to gain extra narrative rights (like the "drama points" in the Buffy RPG). Often, these self-same points can also be used to gain tactical advantages within the framework of the rules, such as, for instance, a bonus to an attack roll. The criticism is based on the seeming incommensurability between these two uses: there is no sense in having one kind of currency which gives the character either power over the story — used to introduce cool ideas and make the story better — or tactical advantages that help the characters along, since these two goals, better story and tactical advantage, are often opposed to each other. This has led some to wholly reject the use of my-turn-to-say-something points in their game design, claiming that they could not possibly work. However, I think it's an empirical fact that they do work, and that we need to try to understand why, if the criticism is right, this is still the case. And here, once again, the actor comes along to help us. On my hypothesis, the solution to the mystery would simply be this: the player, when using my-turn-to-say-something points, simply constructs an actor which takes care of one aspect of the point use — either the "better story" or the "tactical advantage" aspect — while he takes care of the other aspect himself.


In a common style of play which could perhaps be described as "setting-heavy simulationism", borrowing a little GNS terminology, an important aspect of the enjoyment derived from the game lies in the sense of being "transported" to another word. This experience necessitates the "suspension of disbelief", an important part of which is to act in accordance with what the knowledge and attitudes the character could be assumed to possess (i e avoid "metagaming) and in other ways behave as if the world was a real world and not the creation of a fickle GM. Presumably, however, this kind of behavior is seldom the ultimate agenda of the player (if it is, the game becomes something akin to "deep immersion", which I discuss below). More likely, the "in character" agenda is transferred to an actor, leaving the player free to follow his own ultimate goals when they coincide with this agenda.

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Is there always an actor? My intuition is "no". In fact, I believe that certain styles of play can be characterized by their lack of an actor. I'm thinking here, primarily, of highly competitive gamist play, on the one hand, and what could perhaps be termed "deep immersion", on the other.

In a game like D&D, there's a rule for almost every circumstance. In case there isn't, the GM has complete adjudicatory power. These properties of the D&D system makes the use of an actor unnecessary, and in fact, I would not be afraid of suggesting that this was indeed the purpose of designing them such (even though the concept of the actor was most likely not explicitly held in mind). It could probably be argued from the perspective of a player used to this kind of rules that a game that necessitates the use of an actor is broken. In such a game as D&D, all players can have a remorselessly antagonistic agenda (antagonistic towards the GM, that is), and the game will work just fine even if all decisions are made in accordance with this agenda. D&D-style play, then, is a style of play that removes the actor by placing all decisions in the hands of the player.

Deep immersion could, a bit vaguely, be characterized as a style of play where the player attempts to "identify" with his character in all respects, to act like him, react like him, feel like him and think like him. The Turku manifesto comes to mind. In this style of play, there would be no need of an actor, since the player simply always acts like his character would be presumed to act. Deep immersion, then, is a style of play that gets rid of the actor by placing all decisions in the hands of the character.

(5)
That's all I've got, for now. However, I think this idea has potential to be elaborated further. Moreover, I believe that the actor is only one of a potentially large number of similar structures and patterns at work in the actual practice of roleplaying, that could be unearthed with further study and deeper analysis.

I am indebted to Simon Pettersson, Mikael Bergström and Arvid Axbrink for helping me elaborate these ideas, and to Simon in particular for providing me with the Roach example.

/Karl Bergman

Darn it, board ate my long post.

Quick version: I disagree that Polaris conflict statements are anything but player versus player. I have one vision of what should happen next, the mistaken has a different vision, the conflict mechanic helps resolve this "conflict" between player-level visions.

Similarly, a board game like advanced heroquest makes it clear that fate points are to be used to help out characters, because the characters beating the dungeon and surviving is how the player "wins"

It's games like Prime Time Adventures that throw me for a loop because we often times have players who want their characters to fail. Should they spend fan mail against themselves in conflicts?

Posted By: CalvinoHowever, the system is not built for antagonism between players. It has no checks and balances, no central GM authority with final say on matters. All is very loosely held and allows for very much fiddling. And in fact, it is, as I previously noted, more or less presupposed that players will in fact act in concert to make a good story.

Isn't this true of something like...oh...a pickup basketball game? There' s no referee and there is definitely player vs. player antagonism, but having a fun game relies on everyone following certain agreed upon rules. The fun depends entirely upon competing players cooperating within system.

After sleeping on it, another thought on antagonism and Polaris. You are forbidden/strongly discouraged in Polaris to make statements that you believe makes the narrative (slightly) worse, solely because you think the other player will think it makes the narrative extremely worse. It's not a zero sum game, where whatever hurts the player across from you must necessarily benefit you and vice versa. However, you are allowed to be "selfish" to a large extent. Introduce whatever YOU want into the narrative. If the other player objects, he has the tools to protect himself or amend your statement. With the exception of major hotbutton issues that should of been clarified before the game (no torture, rape, etc.) nobody has to read minds or wuss-out in description and so forth for fear of making things less satisfactory for the other players.

Interesting. I think the best game systems not only have paradoxes, but rely upon them to generate the tension, because tension makes for fun.

So, yeah, paradox is a good thing.

Interesting!

I'm not sure about the whole "actor" framework, but there is a point in trying to figure out how collaboration and competition coexist in RPGs. Perhaps there is a good analysis of how this works somewhere, written by someone, but I've never seen one. Has anyone else here? Post a link, please!

The contrast is really obvious when looking at the GM role in a traditional RPG. The GM provides adversity for the players, but only within the framework of a collaborative endeavour. The GM is not trying to 'win' but merely to provide challenge and enjoy the back-and-forth.

When we sit down to play Polaris, we engage in conflict not because we're trying to win something, but because we trust that the process will create something interesting. It's kind of like the GM example.

What could a good analogy be? Maybe two players playing chess in a peculiar way: as they play, every few turns one player will say to the other, "I'm gaining a strong advantage over you. Maybe this would be a good time to remove one Rook on my side?" The players aren't playing to prove who is better--they just want to be involved in an interesting chess match and enjoy watching it develop.

The collaborative agreement to create story and face challenge is overarching, whereas elements of conflict engaged within the story are entered in some sort of limbo between collaboration and competition.

In a game like Polaris, the players trust each other to act out certain roles--namely, that the Heart will attempt to push their protagonist in a certain direction, and that the Mistaken will resist them or throw threats at them.

When you and I sit down and set stakes in a conflict, then roll the dice to see which happens, even if we're each hoping for a certain outcome, we're both happy knowing that, _even if we don't get our way in this conflict_, the game will be fun--when your character fails, you can still feel like you're "winning", smiling and laughing and enjoying the process. As soon as we came up with negative and positive stakes we were both excited about, we knew we would "win" no matter what.

We're not really competing. We're just sticking to an agreement to compete within a certain role in the game. "I, Paul T., hereby vow to take action in the game so as to further the desires of [this character] and, within their abilities, oppose [that character]."

After that, we're trusting the process of the game system to produce something enjoyable. That push to create conflict and competition is the fuel for the process, not strictly directed at another player.

(Yes, this is not applicable to all RPGs.)

I'm not sure it greatly helps the idea to posit a sort of mediating entity like your "actor"--certainly that seems to have led to no shortage of confusion, in the comments above--but I've definitely noticed this phenomenon too. It seems to me that when I'm involved in RP, I have several different attitudes or mental processes that I alternate between, not all of which "talk to" one another: one moment might be immersion in the imagined thoughts of the character, the next a weighing of tactical options, the next a thought about narrative direction. If I were to focus on one to the exclusion of the rest, an easy mistake to make at times, the game would suffer.

It seems to have something to do with stance, and something to do with creative agenda: how people shift between and reconcile the different options in those areas of play.

So is the concept similar to "good sportsmanship" in, say, basketball? There's the imaginary "sportsman" and that's how we keep the game from turning into a bone-breaking slugfest?

I posit that this isn't actually at all like the author/narrator split. Rather, it's just that people are not totally asocial, and games (all games, including sports) are designed to ride on top of a pre-existing social structure rather than be played by totally asocial beings interested only in victory conditions. (we might pretend to be totally asocial beings interested only in victory conditions for the purposes of playing a game -- for instance, when we play chess. But assuming it as the baseline of human behavior, and classifying any divergence from it as "voluntary split personality" seems odd to me.)

yrs--
--Ben

Posted By: Calvinobut rather, to that wild brute who wants to win no matter what.

Does anyone else feel a sense of irony talking about victory in a discussion of Polaris of all things?

There seems to be confusion about the Roach winning condition. The winner is the player with the character with the highest reputation and who is not a slave to the Roach. There's no "best way" to play the game as you can be Roach infested by drawing a card, so I think the analysis is faulty. The last time I played I won because I was the ONLY free of the Roach fx, there was no way I could have played for that.

Winning in Roach is also thematic re the setting's "academic ambitions" - it drives the game, because Reputation can also be gambled in conflict, plsu ultimately your academic character is striving for the highest Reputation, his/her status among his/her peers.

There is an important NB on page 25 that makes this discussion (about the Roach) redundant:
"It should be noted that "winning" the Shab-al-Hiri Roach is like "winning" a mustard gas barrage <...> Don't fixate on victory, fixate on crafting Scenes that will be outrageous, memorable, and fun to play.

<
I don't see how that matters. Sure, there's an element of chance that can keep you from winning. But there's an element of chance in Poker, as well. Does that mean that there is no "best way" of playing Poker, because you can be dealt crappy cards throughout the game?

I think I was trying to say that if you are playing Roach to win you are missing the point - it's going against the designer's intention to try and find a "best way" to play (Which, I aussume, is just another way of saying "winning").

I think this theory is looking at resolving the potential confusion on the player's part about what the implications of having a win condition are. On the one hand, the existence of a win condition implies you ought to be trying to win, and if you're really trying, then you ought to be using the best possible strategy. But if you use the most effective strategy for gaining reputation, the game isn't as much fun as it otherwise. So then, maybe you're not supposed to attempt to reach the win condition and instead shoot for good story? But then, why is the win condition there? It's a double-bind for the players -- which doesn't make it bad, just apparently paradoxical, from a theoretical perspective. I've played the game, I know it works, but I still can't explain how these go together (until now.)

This piece of theory looks at it and says "Yes, the players have two apparently contradictory goals. But it's not a contradiction, and the game can work with both being pursued at once, because the goals are being pursued on two different levels." One of those levels is me as a real person who enjoys stories. The other level is me as a player, an abstract concept that excludes large parts of my eating and shitting reality. Because it excludes so much of my reality, it is in a sense virtual. Those parts of me that fit into "me as a player" can be lumped together, and called a virtual person/actor (in the same way that "me as a character" is a virtual person/actor.)

And then it makes sense! I, as a player, am aiming to win. But I, as a person, am aiming for a good, enjoyable story. And person-me can constrain the choices of player-me to make sure that good story results, while still leaving me a decent shot at winning. The virtual actor concept serves to add a bit of distance between person-me and player-me, so that I can see that one is constraining the other.

The Roach has always been a fine game, whether I understood how story and winning interacted or not. Now I feel like I have a handle on why the apparent paradox doesn't destroy the experience. Sweet!

I find this theory very interesting, and it makes a lot of sense to me

I often find myself watching players in games feeling a strong tension between what they as the player think might be in their own best interests to do, and what the character wishes to do. The more immersive the game the more of an issue that can be, to the level of players rejecting mechanical advantage because they can't imagine that their character would choose to act in a way suitable of taking that advantage (e.g. "Yes I know I've got a 75% chance of a shot to the eye that would do twice as much damage, but my character has never hurt anyone so badly in real life and he just wouldn't so it, he'll just hit him in the stomach").

That sort of behaviour only makes sense if the player chooses to act primarily as the character and not themselves at that point. This is not the same as choosing not to be gamist, because at other points when they feel the character motivation is neutral on something they will happily perform some boring activity for XP, make a metagame based choice, and so forth.

Having a rule system with a shared currency that is used in different ways for the best interests of the player and the character brings this contrast into sharper focus, but I think it is a factor of most gaming that is not purely 'gamist'. (On the other hand I have played, briefly, with people who never experienced this actor role at all, being totally gamist and doing things purely for the mechanical advantage with no regard for character motivation. Such an experience only hilights that something different is going on in most people's play)

Max says exactly what I wanted to say, but a lot better. His understanding of Karl's theory matches mine, I think.

And Jason, I didn't mean any disrespect to your game. I shouldn't have said "better game", but rather "a game I'd have liked better". I think that the reason for my problems with the Roach is that I come from a different RPG and theory background. Because of said Rising on our forums, there has been a lot of talk about what contitutes good "gamey" design, and how you design a rules system in which the player decisions influence the mechanical outcome in a tactically challenging way (which, since our tradition is based on Basic Roleplaying rather than D&D, is not very common in Swedish trad designs). So when there's a win condition, I automatically see it as a challenge. So I approached the Roach much as I'd approach a combat in D&D (which, incidentally, I've barely even set eyes on). Play to win. But then I found that as play progressed, I wasn't really doing all I could to win. And it felt very paradoxical to me, especially when I looked at the game from a theoretical viewpoint. Hence my need for Karl's theory to get a grip on how the game works.

Make sense?

The most important contribution this made to my understanding is that there are levels of virtuality. It's not just "real life" and "the fiction" -- there are gradations of the virtual. Given that my theory work lately has been precisely with levels, I'm busy processing the overlap between the two.

I'm not sure quite why you see that as the fulcrum Callan. To me it's the fact that people can and do shift back and forth between character best interests / motivation and player best interests / motivation all the time, with a whole grey area in between where you juggle both.

This bit of theory certainly can be tied into that notion of "unfun=not intended," but I don't think the theory stems from it. The observation that different things may be going on at different levels is where the actor notion comes from. Once we've got that idea, then we can talk about whether there's conflict between them, and how that relates to design intent and how the game is played. We can also talk about personal desires vs. person-as-player desires vs. person-as-system-user desires vs. person-as-character desires, which are (a) much broader, and (b) related to design only tangentially.

Until we've got the idea that goals can vary on different levels, there's no conversation. After that, if you want to talk about design intent specifically...sweet!

Posted By: CalvinoThe criticism is based on the seeming incommensurability between these two uses: there is no sense in having one kind of currency which gives the character either power over the story — used to introduce cool ideas and make the story better — or tactical advantages that help the characters along, since these two goals, better story and tactical advantage, are often opposed to each other. This has led some to wholly reject the use of my-turn-to-say-something points in their game design, claiming that they could not possibly work. However, I think it's an empirical fact that they do work, and that we need to try to understand why, if the criticism is right, this is still the case. And here, once again, the actor comes along to help us. On my hypothesis, the solution to the mystery would simply be this: the player, when using my-turn-to-say-something points, simply constructs an actor which takes care of one aspect of the point use — either the "better story" or the "tactical advantage" aspect — while he takes care of the other aspect himself.

In rereading this it occurred to me that you don't really need an actor in this case. You just need a player who can choose between these two uses of the currency. Even if the two goals are incommensurable, it is possible to decide which you value more at any particular time and to spend your resources accordingly. The value one places in power over story, on one hand, or tactical advantages, on the other, may be idiosyncratic, but that doesn't mean that the player is unable to prioritize these choices. I'm not sure why the player would need to construct an actor to avoid paradoxical goals in this instance.

Posted By: Callan S.Hi David,

Why are they shifting back and forth? My estimate is that culturally it stems from the idea "If playing a certain way would seem to be unfun, or currently feels unfun, it mustn't be the way the game was intended to play". Since this is in charge of the back and forth, that makes it the fulcrum point.

I'm not seeing where the mention of unfun comes from. I'm saying people switch roles for the most fun, not because the other is unfun. You might pursue the gamist goal where your character is neutral on the subject, and pursue the character's goals to the detribute of gamist excellence the rest of the time, but you are having fun all the time. Where does the unfun come from?

Posted By: Callan S.
As I understand it, that's what the 'actor' is here - it's a persona generated from the above missconception, that gains it's strength from the idea 'It's all about the fun' - even if the actual text is explicitly meant to not be fun. For example, I could write a game which is supposed to be annoying and unfun. However, if I handed it to someone used to playing out this actor, the persona would interpret how it's 'meant' to be, finding some sort of fun interpretation. Of course thats not it's intention, I wrote it it to be annoying and unfun. The actor basically denies the truth of the situation.

I don't think that the author's intentions have any effect on the way the game is played. There's only the game text, after all. Instead of "If it's not fun, it's not the way it's supposed to be played", I'd think of it more in the terms of "If it's not fun, it's not the way we want to play it". If the players want to have fun, and the game rules don't support this, they might create the actor to be able to play it in a fun way. If they don't want to have fun, I don't think this problem would appear.

This brings out an interesting idea: you design a game that's "broken", on purpose. But it's broken in a way that can be fixed in several ways. This would allow the play group to "fix" it in a way that's coherent with their preferred playing style. I'd say that the Roach works in this way, from a certain point of view. You can't always go for both the win and the good story. Some groups may play the game more competitively than others, who go more for the story. It's like a dial, only it's not set consciously.

Maybe this could lead to problems with groups that have divergent preferences within the group itself, though?

I think I might be rambling way off subject here, though.

Posted By: HituroI'm not seeing where the mention of unfun comes from. I'm saying people switch roles for the most fun, not because the other is unfun. You might pursue the gamist goal where your character is neutral on the subject, and pursue the character's goals to the detribute of gamist excellence the rest of the time, but you are having fun all the time. Where does the unfun come from?

Well, any contrast can be used - unfun Vs fun, or average fun Vs the most fun. It doesn't have to be unfun, it can be 'If it's just average fun, that can't be intended - the most fun way of doing it must be the intended way of playing'. Read it through again replacing 'unfun' with 'average fun' and 'fun' with the 'most fun', it still says what I meant to get across.

Also that's in regards to playing it in the 'intended' way, as Karl's original post refered to. It's not in regards to people just openly changing the game.