(Of course I’m a dick when I say it, while you’re saying it in a much nicer way.)

It’s just I run into this one arguement a lot when I lament the lack of social rules in D&D. It kinda goes like this:

Me: “I wish D&D provided better mechanics for resolving social confrontations.”

Everyone Else: “What are you an idiot? Why would you need mechanics to for acting out your character. It’s called ROLE-playing, not ROLL-playing. Try it sometime.”

Me: …

(I really could tell them what idiots they are, but there isn’t a point so I usually don’t unless I’m particularly spiteful that day.)

The thing is the games I design do have broad mechanics that do allow you to accomplish anything. I consider it of the utmost importance that a good system allows the PC to resolve any action he wishes to undertake if the result is uncertain. But more than that, it determines the degree of effect that occurs as a result. It actually surprises me in this day and age that many players don’t even consider this possible, let alone a standard.

Great article.

Helmsman’s last blog post..Coming Back to Alpha Omega

That sounds a whole lot like “meaningful” to me.

Maybe it wasn’t your choices as a player that teased out that meaning, but it was someone’s. In this case, probably the GM’s choices made it meaningful to you.

Under the best circumstances, meaning is shared among players at the table, not kept to oneself. And when you showed the GM how awesome you thought his choice was, perhaps subtly through enthusiasm and your own play, that feedback becomes the stuff of Creative Agenda.

I’m also glad that my “make it plain and be open about where I’m coming from” approach to stuff like this resonates with you. You articulated more or less exactly why I write these kinds of articles, and I often wonder whether they have value to very many readers. It’s encouraging to hear, and much appreciated.

And how have I not been reading your blog all along? This is excellent work, and I have some catching up to do. Welcome to Gnome Stew’s links page.

I’m trying to get at the difference between “the goblins attack” and “the goblins attack because …”

I’m probably using the wrong terms to express my intent. Because all distinctions or non-distinctions between “interesting” and “meaningful” aside, and regardless of whether an incident in play feels story-shaped at the moment it occurs, or whether it becomes part of what a literary person might call a “story” after the fact, what I’m really talking about is that which exists in the space between premise and theme, in the sense in which Ron defined “premise” it in the provisional glossary.

It’s the thing that exists between the spaces where we first heard the name “Darth Vader” in Episode 4 and thought it was cool, in-and-of-itself, and later when it transformed into something even more cool because we learned that “Darth” is a title ascribed to masters of an order of Dark-Force wielding badasses, and then became uber-cool actual thematic meat when eventually we learned that “Vader” is a Nordic word for “father” and thus in the name “Darth Vader” we have the essence of the character and his inner struggles – the Sith Lord and the Father – encapsulated in two simple words that at first were just a really cool name.

What I’m saying is, I was interested when I heard the cool name and saw the cool black armor and heard the cool James Earl Jones voice. That would have been okay by me, even if nothing else ever came of it. If he wasn’t Luke’s father, if he wasn’t the eventual centerpiece of the saga when all was said and done, even if he was just some goof-ass Ming the Fucking Merciless knockoff in cool black armor, that would have been okay.

But when it was given meaning beyond that original interesting moment, when the premise of Darth Vader began to transform into the theme of the whole saga, THAT’s what makes Vader most peoples’ pick for the top 2 or three fictional villains of all time.

I like tagging that kind of thing in play. I like it when the random goblins turned out to have had a reason for attacking. I don’t need to know it in the moment. In fact, my character possibly doesn’t even need to know it by the time the saga is over – although that would be preferable. But in order for it to have felt like a really good experience for me, in some way or another, I will want it to have happened for a reason that weaves somehow into the bigger picture. The “story” if you will.

Once the DM says, “You are walking down the road and a bunch of goblins attack,” they are part of the fiction. They aren’t just effecting the fiction, they’re IT.

Once they begin to burn a village and chip away at players’ hit points they have effected the fiction. Now, whether or not that makes any sense, whether or not goblins have any meaning or are cool at that moment is a whole other kettle of fish.

My angle on “meaningful” here is, as you suggest, focused on the in-game fiction. I’m not talking about meaningfulness to the player – although I totally recognize that as a valid thing and agree with what you’ve written about it. I mean “meaning” in the “impact upon the ongoing narrative” sense, not the creative agenda sense.

Or maybe the more useful way to put in this context is to say that yes, “interesting” and “meaningful” are essentially synonymous in the creative agenda sense, as you are suggesting. And I can enjoy playing in a way that is interesting to me in the creative agenda sense, and is thus meaningful to me as a player. I can – and occasionally do – enjoy making interesting tactical choices and/or interesting choices that remain true to the simulation of the milieu. There are ways to hook me into those that will keep my short-term interest, even if there isn’t any long-term impact on whatever constitutes the game fiction.

i.e a random encounter with a band of goblins could very well be interesting. And thus it would be meaningful to me in that sense. But if it is truly a random encounter, then it might very well have nothing to do with the ongoing narrative, and thus would have no meaning to the characters or narrative impact upon the ongoing fiction.

And I guess that presupposes that I really need to believe that there IS an ongoing narrative in the first place. I”m like Neil Gaiman, I like things to be story-shaped, and I will tend to make up my own story-shaped construction if one is not present. In fact, I usually choose to construe some sort of story even when playing Heroclix. I don’t need to enforce that story on the other participants if they don’t care about it, it is just something I construct in my head so that I’ll be engaged. It’s my socket, I guess.

Which is probably why I’ve said I need at least the presence of “interesting choice” as a baseline. Because I can build off of that, even if it’s in my own head. I’d much rather it come out and impact what’s going on at the table, mind you, but I can at least occasionally satisfy my own tendencies even if it is sublimated, as long as I have a hook to hang something story-shaped on.

Interesting. This opens up whole new cans of worms, I suspect. Thanks Adam for challenging me on this, because it is very helpful and you’ve gotten me to dig deeper.

I am dubious of this “interesting but not meaningful” category. Can you give me an example from your recent play of a choice you made that was “interesting” but did not affect “the world, the fiction, the other characters,” or your character?

The tricky one is “the fiction.” It’s hard to make a choice that affects the fiction in some interesting way without also flagging it with the “meaningful” pennant.

I also want to say that my thoughts about meaningfulness have nothing to do with Premise (or Narrativism in the Forgean sense). When I say players want to make choices that are meaningful to them, I am alluding to something pretty close to Forgean “Creative Agenda,” but not any particular agenda.

If you’re simulating how your Hutt jedi fits into regular culture, then you’ll still want to make meaningful choices. What is “meaningful” to you will be specific and personal to what you want to get out of the game.

Adam