How to Run a Game (Part 4) - Stances
In the last post, we looked at the agendas people have behind how they play. Some play to win, some play to discover a story, and some play to immerse themselves in a world. But another thing to consider is how they intend to reach those goals and how these types of players might work together, or see friction, as they aim toward their preferred goal.
One of the key ways to look at this is the player's stance. This is basically how they view the characters in the game.
(These are drawn directly from the Forge Definitions)
The cognitive position of a person to a fictional character. Differences among Stances should not be confused with IC (In character) vs. OOC (Out of character) narration.
The person playing a character determines the character's decisions and actions using only knowledge and perceptions that the character would have. This stance does not necessarily include identifying with the character and feeling what he or she "feels," nor does it require in-character dialogue.
The person playing a character determines the character's decisions and actions based on the person's priorities, independently of the character's knowledge and perceptions. Author Stance may or may not include a retroactive "motivation" of the character to perform the actions. When it lacks this feature, it is called Pawn Stance.
The person playing a character determines aspects of the environment relative to the character in some fashion, entirely separately from the character's knowledge or ability to influence events. Therefore the player has not only determined the character's actions, but the context, timing, and spatial circumstances of those actions, or even features of the world separate from the characters. Director Stance is often confused with narration of an in-game event, but the two concepts are not necessarily related.
A subset of Author Stance which lacks the retroactive "motivation" of the character to perform the actions. Often but wrongly identified with Gamist play.
Yeah, there is a lot of jargon in those descriptions, and because they are specifically derived from the Forge glossary, there are a lot of links to other points in Forge theory that have fallen out-of-favour over the years. Generally, they are an expansion on the theory of writer's stance, but expanded because roleplaying is a very different experience compared to writing. This blog post on Socratic Design (from back in 2010), really delves into it well if you're interested. People can switch between stances, but they will often have a favoured one. The person running the game typically assumes "Director stance", as they describe the environment around the characters and set the scene, but this doesn't stop players from trying to step up into this kind of stance... examples might include the player of the rogue who wants there to be a bush to hide behind, or the player of the hacker who wants there to be a local wi-fi network to use their skills. If a person suddenly starts talking in a foreign accent and addresses the session's supporting cast by name, they might be adopting "Actor stance" (but it's hard to know what's going on inside someone's head so it can be difficult to definitively determine this). If a player starts talking about their character in the third person, and refers to attributes and abilities in an abstract sense, they might be adopting "Pawn stance".
Generally, the person running the game guides the types of stances that their players will take. If they use accents, they encourage their players to use accents (and probably adopt Actor stance), but some players are uncomfortable with this and they might resist the idea if forced (especially if they are gamists). If the person running the game tends to talk in numbers and statistics, they'll probably be prompting Director and Pawn stance among their players, which might be great for the gamists and some one the simulationists, but not necessarily the narrativists. Think about what you're trying to do in your game, what kind of play experience you want your players to be a part of. Different stances should be a part of your tool kit, if you have a group that really enjoys engaging in the shared imaginary space using the same stance you can get some really focuused scenes occuring, if you've got players who like different ways of engaging with the session then you can diversify the experience and allow different players to engage in the way they like.
Note that during this series of posts I will strike to avoid saying that one stance is better than another, but I'll admit that I might be subconsciously influenced by I what in prefer in a game. Every group of players will be different, everyone will run games differently. I'm just providing a bit of background theory, a range of tools to help newcomers find their groove when running games of their own, offering suggestions that might indicate how things can go wrong from my time running and suggesting ways to avoid them, or minimize them through the theory and tools provided.
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