The Paradoxical Logic of System

(1)

When we consider an RPG system in and by itself, we are guided in our judgment by a certain set of presuppositions, a theory if you will, about how it will actually be used, at the table, in actual play. This theory might or might not coincide with reality. A greater understanding of how systems are used will assist us when we attempt to assess them, and will also increase our understanding about the dynamics of the gaming table.

The usual, straightforward model would be, that the players come to the table with some, more or less well-defined, creative agenda. They pick a system, often in the form of some pre-written rules-set, and follow it. Hopefully, it contributes towards their fulfilling their creative agenda, in which case they will continue using it. Otherwise, they might discard it or modify it.

I will suggest that a more complex dynamic is in fact in operation when systems are used. I will try to explain this idea by the introduction of something I call a virtual actor, or just an actor. We can understand what the actor is by reference to literary theory. In this field, a distinction is made by the author of a book, and its narrator. The author is the real person, the man or woman of flesh and blood who actually wrote the book. The narrator, on the other hand, is wholly fictitious, virtual: he is the mouth in which the author places the words of the fiction. The narrator is most visible when he refers to himself as "I", as in books narrated in the 1st person, but he crops up elsewhere too. The narrator, then, exists wholly on the plane of the fiction itself.

The actor, similarly, is a virtual individual who exists wholly on the plane of the system. He arises on the initiative of the player in response to the system, and his purpose is to mediate between the player and the system, much like the purpose of the narrator is to mediate between the author and the fiction. What, then, is the purpose of the actor and how does he come about?

(2)

Consider Polaris. Polaris is a game in what could perhaps be called the "story game" tradition and it is more or less explicitly acknowledged that players come to Polaris with the intent of creating and experiencing good stories together, where "good" in these circumstances mean more precisely "chivalric and tragical". People, then, come into the game with a cooperative agenda. However, peculiarly, the game rules presuppose a certain amount of antagonism between the players. The core of the game is the innovative conflict resolution system in which the stakes of the conflict, and thus the dramatical weight of the narrative, is continually raised. In order to make these rules do what they are intended to do, i e, contribute to the creation of an epic, tense narrative, players must make use of the conflict system, which presupposes that they act in opposition to each other.

However, 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.

This, then, seems like a paradox. On the one hand, the system can't handle antagonism, and on the other hand, it requires antagonism in order to do its job properly. Despite this, people seem to be able to enjoy Polaris — I am myself one of them. So how is the paradox resolved? My answer is as follows. In being confronted with this property of system, the player resolves to act in a certain way. He will follow the overall spirit of cooperation and contribution to the common story most of the time, but when time comes to make use of the conflict resolution rules, he will suddenly "change personality" and act as if he had an antagonistic agenda. This "as if" can be expressed in another way: the player creates a virtual persona, the actor, who has an antagonistic agenda, and when this antagonistic agenda is required for the system to work as intended, the player hands over control to the actor.

This, then, is what I mean by an "actor": a virtual persona created by the player in response to the system, who is allowed to make certain decisions according to "his" agenda in order to make the system work as intended. Some things will be immediately apparent: 1) The actor is, for the most part, not made explicit, neither in the rules text nor around the table. It would be interesting to examine to what extent the making explicit of the actor could contribute to the play experience. 2) The actor cannot be equated with the character, since he has meta-knowledge about the game and the rules. 3) By introducing the actor, we have to abandon the simplistic idea, to the extent that we held it before, that system is just an algorithm which one runs through in the hope of getting the desired type of game as output. System actually influences the way players act, play and think. 4) The actor exists on the system plane. He is created in response to the system, to make it work. Each system will give rise to its own actor/s. The actor, then, can be considered a part of the system.

(3)

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.

(4)

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. The ideas put forth in this article were first discussed in this thread (in Swedish).