Big model

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Big Model is a role-playing theory that was developed by Ron Edwards between 1999 and 2005 in interaction with the Internet forum "The Forge". The "Big Model" looks at the processes involved in role play and differentiates between a large number of individual acts and techniques. Often the big model is equated with the GNS theory. The Big Model contains the GNS subdivisions as different versions of the Creative Agenda, but is not based on it.

The big model

The Big Model consists of the elements: Social Contract, Exploration, Techniques and Ephemera, which are nested within one another. All of these elements are permeated by the Creative Agenda. 

   [ Social Contract [ Exploration [ Techniques [ Ephemera ] ] ] ]
          |------------- Creative Agenda -------------|

Social Contract (social contract; group contract)

The entire role play is viewed as a social process. The playgroup, consisting of the players (this term always includes the game master in this context), has negotiated a group contract. This element encompasses the entire role play as it determines the social interaction. The contract includes all social circumstances and rules that apply during the game. Even things as obvious as game-related logistics are included in the social contract. The negotiation takes place only in small parts explicitly and is often not perceived as such by the players.

exploration

To create the imaginary happening together and to explore the game world is described by the term exploration. For many players, this part of the game is the experience of the game world. Exploration happens when the players negotiate the contents of the common imagination - character, setting and situation, with the respective associated color - among themselves. The lumpley principle (named after Vincent "lumpley" Baker) applies, i.e. H. all elements that are to be brought into this imaginary space are suggested by a player or by the rules of the game and negotiated at the gaming table. The rules by which this negotiation process takes place are the system. Often some players are authorized to bring certain elements into the imagination space. For example, a character player has the power to describe his character's actions; In many games, the game master also has the right to shape the world as he sees fit. Other elements, especially those that cannot be predicted, are usually introduced with aids such as dice or cards, i.e. mechanical random number generators.

Shared imagined space (shared imagination space)

Shared Imagined Space, SIS for short, describes everything that all players imagine in role play. It is the imaginary play that arises from exploration. Since the performance spaces of the individual players differ, the SIS only contains those elements that are present in all performances and are approximately the same. In a sense, it is the intersection of the imaginative spaces of all players.

The five elements of exploration

Exploration is influenced by five elements that all players perceive. Each of these elements is always present, but can vary in strength. The determining elements are system, character, setting, situation and color.

  • 1. System : System is not to be confused with the mechanical rules as they are in a set of rules. Forge theory calls these "Mechanics" or "Mechanisms". Rather, the system describes the totality of the rules of the game and means by which the contents of the common imagination are negotiated by the fellow players.
    The term system also includes Jonathan Tweets three forms of "task" resolution (situation resolution / task resolution) to determine the outcome of an event. Edwards wrote that an RPG should use the task solving method or combination of multiple systems that is most appropriate to the GNS perspective of the game.

The three task solution forms are:

  • Drama : the game master decides the outcome
  • Fortune : chance decides the result (especially through the use of dice )
  • Karma : a fixed value decides the result (especially by comparing values)

It is believed that the main reason Edwards exchanged the "drama" of the threefold model for GNS for "narrativism" was to avoid confusion with "drama" as a system of problem solving. It is a kind of paradigm of the forge to clearly define all negotiation rules in order to avoid arguments and misunderstandings. Therefore, many Forge theories (e.g. IIEE (Intent, Initiation, Execution, and Effect), Points of Contact, Reward System / Cycle, Currency, Layering, etc.) deal with the elements of the system. With the emergence of the “bricolage” idea, however, a counter-movement also emerged.
Further points are:

  • 2. Character (Character): A fictional person with their characteristics and traits.
  • 3. Setting (scene): The game world in which the characters move, including a point in time at which the action takes place.
  • 4. Situation : The meeting of characters and setting elements in events and the resulting interactions.
  • 5. Color : Sets the basic atmosphere. If you change the color elements, the action stays the same, but it feels different.

Techniques

Techniques are repeatable procedures that (regardless of whether they are written down or not) are used to influence the shared imagination. This can involve throwing dice, drawing cards, describing an imaginary action or the like. A well-known example of techniques are the stances. The totality of the techniques used is the system.

Stances (viewpoints)

It defines four points of view a player can have regarding making decisions about their character:

  • Actor : decides based on what his character knows
  • Author : Decides based on what the player wants for his character, then retroactively explains why his character made that decision
  • Director : makes decisions that affect the environment more than the character (in the game usually represented by a game master)
  • Pawn : decides based on what he as a player wants for his character without providing an explanation as to why his character would make that decision

Ephemera (mayflies)

Describes the specific applications of the techniques. Ephemera are the bottom layer of the role play process. They are, quite simply, the things that fellow players do and say while they are exploring. A certain roll of the dice, a sentence or the elimination of life points are examples of ephemera.

Creative agenda

The creative agenda combines the areas of social contract, exploration, techniques and ephemera. It describes the focus of the playgroup and is therefore different from group to group. The important thing here is that a creative agenda is always a fundamental preference for a specific game round. A popular way to describe the Creative Agenda is “playing on purpose”. The basic idea is very simple: if all players have the same goal while playing, there is a higher chance that the game will be a success. However, it is not about evaluating individual players or individual actions within a game.

To find out whether a game round follows a CA, one must observe the round for an instance of play. Unfortunately, there is currently disagreement about what exactly this instance of play is. The only thing that is clear is that it is likely to be one or more sessions. It is also unclear whether different CAs can occur simultaneously in a game round. Because if a group followed several agendas, it would no longer be clear for which creative achievement there would be which feedback from the other players, i.e. H. the group did not follow any agenda. In addition, multiple agendas do not fit a basic preference. In addition, a CA is neither a guarantee of a functioning round of role-playing games, nor does a lack of a Creative Agenda enforce a non-functioning game.

In the Big Model it is initially open which creative agendas there are. It is about the goal of the game, the “aesthetic preference” of a player for a given game round. The GNS theory deals with this question. With her, Ron Edwards defined the three current creative agendas.

Applicability of the Big Model

The big model is primarily concerned with the categorization of the elements of the role-playing experience and tries to order them in their mutual dependencies. The main advantage of the Creative Agenda is that it focuses the game on a common direction. For players who play within a group with different creative agendas, there is a very high risk that none of the people present will have fun.

Criticism of the Big Model

The big model is not widely accepted among role players or game designers. It should be noted that some of the most successful role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons or World of Darkness were created without this theory. Many designers consciously ignore it to this day. The fiercest critics claim it is just a marginal artifact and irrelevant to the hobby.

  • Some criticism accuse the Big Model of devaluing the “everyday” role-playing games (such as Dungeons and Dragons ). The big model leads to designs that neither consider nor satisfy the interests of most role-playing hobbyists. Therefore it would be invalid for practical reasons.
  • With the totalitarian claim to include everything that occurs in a role play, the model allegedly ignores, trivializes and suppresses those questions that it cannot explain. In this context, it is also criticized that terms such as immersion are not taken into account because they cannot be reconciled with the conceptual categories of the model.
  • The scope within an agenda is quite large, so that a game designer hardly has any guidelines for the game design despite an agenda. Also linked to the problem of totalitarianism is the charge that the Big Model is too vague and that its terms are so broad that they are effectively meaningless. This leads to the big model being treated like an objective fact, even if it is subjective and not falsifiable.
  • A related criticism is that the model is based on behavioral models. It works well for talking about the activity in a game, but not for talking about topics such as the emotional subjective perception of a game. The Big Model struggles with subjective issues such as feelings that a game can evoke, as it only examines the behavior of the players.
  • The Big Model is not linked to other theories in the humanities and is therefore not supported by other theories. It is therefore meaningless outside of the role-playing scene.
  • The Big Model is closely linked to certain opinions about role-playing games, so it does not represent the experiences of all or most of the role-players. Critics report cases of groups pursuing multiple creative agendas without stressful occurrences. Other roleplayers complain that they successfully use an agenda or style of play that is not supported by the Big Model. Still others find the theory impractical, as no reliable method is known to judge what creative agenda a group is playing on or whether a group is following one at all.
  • Most of the three forms of the creative agenda do not seem sufficient. Critics often advocate mixed forms, which, however, have always been rejected by Ron Edwards.

Web links

Blogs and forums

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ System Does Matter appears : http://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/system_does_matter.html
  2. ^ Forum of The Forge
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h Ron Edwards: The Provisional Glossary
  4. ↑ The Big Model . Graphic representation by Ron Edwards, 2004 ( PDF , 55 kB).
  5. ↑ Ron Edwards: indie-rpgs.com GNS and Other Matters of Roleplaying Theory, Chapter 1
  6. ↑ Ron Edwards: indie-rpgs.com GNS and Other Matters of Role-playing Theory, Chapter 4
  7. ↑ Ron Edwards: indie-rpgs.com GNS and Other Matters of Role-playing Theory, Chapter 4
  8. ↑ Ron Edwards: indie-rpgs.com GNS and Other Matters of Role-Playing Theory, Chapter 3
  9. ^ Ron Edwards: GNS and Other Matters of Role-playing Theory . On: indie-rpgs.com , 2001.
  10. ↑ rpgtalk.wikia.com English article on RPG Talk