The Big Model
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The Big Model is a body of role-playing game theory developed primarily by Ron Edwards. It serves as a capstone and organizing principle to the amorphous body of work commonly referred to as GNS Theory.
[edit] Structure of the Model
The key concept involved is the eponymous Big Model, which attempts to contextualize the many different aspects of the role-playing game hobby in a set of meaningful, hierarchical relationships. The model organizes these phenomena into four nested 'boxes' with the contents of each inner box considered within the aegis of the outer box. A "skewer" that thrusts through the set of boxes identifies creative agenda.
The smallest box contains Ephemera, the actual events and statements made at the table; these are instances of Techniques, which are governing practices of behavior. Techniques are how players perform Exploration, the basic act of roleplaying, and Exploration is itself an expression of the Social Contract. The Creative Agenda is a pervasive concept that pierces through all four boxes, 'fixing' the mode of play in place.
Or to put it in simpler terms, a group of friends gets together (Social Contract) and decides to play a roleplaying game about superheroes in love (Exploration). They use a set of tools (Techniques) to do things in the game (Ephemera). The decisions that they make in terms of what things to explore and how to explore them compose their Creative Agenda.
[edit] Social Contract
The Social Contract is the context within which all of roleplaying occurs. This is an obvious but important point, since it recognizes that all actions at the roleplaying table are social actions and part of how the players at the table relate to each other as real people. The relationships between the people around the table affect everything else that occurs.
[edit] Exploration
The Big Model defines roleplaying as Exploration: the imagining of fictitious events, places, and people. Exploring fictional content is the basis and fundamental definition of all roleplay.
There are five "elements" of exploration, or five things that players will explore. All five are always present, although different games will emphasize and prioritize some over others. The five elements of exploration are character, setting, color, situation, and system.
[edit] Character
Characters are the people in the fiction of the roleplaying game. Often each player has one player character over which they have special authority and responsibilities; other characters in the fiction are called non-player characters. Players may enjoy exploring character by discovering what characters do when confronted with difficult situations, why they do the things they do, or how they do them.
[edit] Setting
The setting is the imaginary place and time in which the game is set. The setting may be "real" in the sense that it is based off of a historical period or the modern day. Players explore the setting not only by asking and answering "what's over that hill?" but also by developing the relationships of setting elements like government, economics, interpersonal relationships, and the like.
[edit] Color
Color comprises all the details which give the game a certain flavor but do not affect the development of a situation; color might be rocketships and aliens, rapiers and musketeers, or the grit and grime of the streets of New York. Players explore color by invoking all five senses (the air is crisp, the room is painted in dark colors) as well as establishing and reinforcing relationships (a knight's blazon is displayed all over his castle).
[edit] Situation
With only characters, setting, and color, players will have a set piece which could do something interesting but has no reason to. The game's situation is an unstable juxtaposition of the other elements which sets the fictional events in motion. The situation of Romeo and Juliet, for instance, is "two noble households, both alike in dignity" and "two star-cross'd lovers." It's the stuff that is happening in the game. Players explore situation by discovering and developing relationships between characters, setting elements, and events, and by taking action to affect those relationships for good or ill.
[edit] System
Situation is the juxtaposition of elements in motion; system is the procedures by which those elements change and develop. System is best described by the Lumpley Principle, which states that "system is the means by which the players at the table decide what happens in the fiction." Players can explore the system by working out the range of possibilities that are available to them.
[edit] Techniques
In simplest terms, techniques are what the players do at the table. This may include how players create the characters they portray in the game, how players roll dice to resolve the outcome of events, or how the situation develops as the game progresses. Techniques often differ greatly from one published game to the next; at its simplest, one may call for rolling dice while another calls for drawing cards. Each set of techniques directs the ephemera of the game and directly impacts the elements of exploration.
[edit] Ephemera
Whereas techniques describe the procedures of play, ephemera are the actual events at the table. Ephemera includes what the players say, what dice they roll, what the dice results are, how they react to each other's contributions, and much, much more. Ephemera is the "meat" of play, the medium by which the rest of the game operates.
[edit] Creative Agenda
Just as it is possible to tell multiple stories about a single series of events, it is possible to play multiple games about identical subject matter. Players in a game about the knights of the round table, for instance, might play for a number of reasons. They may want to become the most renowned knight of the realm, they may want to tell an engaging story about what it means to be a knight, or they may want to experience what it would be like to be a knight. Each of these reasons for play is different, and will affect what happens in the game and at the table. This "reason for play" is the creative agenda, and it is best understood as a skewer which pierces through all four boxes of the Big Model, connecting selected options in each level and fixing them in place.
The Big Model currently recognizes three kinds of creative agenda: simulationism, also known as "The Right to Dream;" gamism, also known as "Step on Up;" and narrativism, also known as "Story Now."
[edit] Simulationism
The Right to Dream focuses on the elements of exploration as things unto themselves. This creative agenda emphasizes appreciation for nuanced development of character, setting, and color to no other end than creating a holistically consistent experience. While one simulationist creative agenda may emphasize realism, another may attempt to emulate "four-color" superhero action. Whatever the target, the goal is to create an experience that neatly fits its parameters.
[edit] Gamism
By contrast, Step on Up considers the elements of exploration as an arena for proving the abilities of the players. This creative agenda emphasizes clever use of tactics, resource management, and character victory.
[edit] Narrativism
Lastly, Story Now attempts to use the elements of exploration to create an engaging story that addresses a "premise" to produce theme. Premise here is defined in accordance with Lajos Egri's The Art of Dramatic Writing and is usually framed as a statement (Friends are worth dying for) or a question (Are friends worth dying for?). In narrativist play, most or all of the decisions made by the players will reflect on the premise, proposing answers to the question.
[edit] Utility of the Big Model
The Big Model is primarily concerned with categorizing the elements of the roleplaying experience into a hierarchy, the better to understand the dependencies of those elements.
The main benefit of creative agenda is that it focuses play along unified lines. Players who attempt to play the same game with differing creative agenda run a very high risk of ruining each other's entertainment. The player attempting to Step on Up will overwhelm another player's narrativist decisions with misplaced competition; the player following Story Now will consistently take actions which are not optimal strategies, spoiling the other player's gamist decisions.
[edit] Criticism of the Big Model
The Big Model is far from universally accepted among roleplayers or game designers. For example, because it was developed later as a description, it was not used to help design the majority of popular roleplaying games, such as Dungeons and Dragons or the World of Darkness, though it factors heavily as a design tool in many indie role-playing games. It certainly seems possible to design and play games successfully without referring to the Big Model. Thus, while influential within sectors of the roleplaying games community, it is unclear whether or not the Big Model can be considered to be anything more than an artifact of the community's fringes.
Criticisms of the Big Model take several forms:
- Some critiques accuse the Big Model of being an apparatus that devalues "everyday" roleplaying (represented by games such as D&D). In this context, the Big Model is accused of leading to designs that do not address the interests of most roleplaying game hobbyists, and is therefore invalid on practical grounds.
- The Big Model is a totalist theory — that is, it attempts to encompass the entire corpus of roleplaying into itself. Critics note that in the arts, theoretical models possess subjective aesthetic and political biases. By attempting to encompass everything that comes up in a roleplaying game, the model allegedly ignores, trivializes and suppresses issues that it cannot explain or provide practical tools to affect. For example, the problem of racism at the gaming table is often subsumed into the Social Contract, even though its social impact transcends gameplay and it possesses a social dynamic notably different from agreeing to play elves in an RPG. Within a purely roleplaying context, the Big Model is accused of failing to address Immersionist play because it supposedly does not obey the model's conceptual categories. Connected with the problem of totalism is the accusation that the Big Model is overly vague and its terms are so broad as to be effectively meaningless. Finally, totalism leads to the Big Model being treated like an assumed, objective fact, when it is subjective and non-falsifiable.
- A related criticism is that, because the model is based on behavioral models, it works well for talking about the activity in a game, but works poorly for talking about issues like the emotional subjective states around a game. Because of this issue, the Big Model may have trouble dealing with play issues such as Immersionist play, where feeling a certain way — subjective and not behavioral — is the point.
- The Big Model is culturally and practically disconnected from the broad study of the arts, making it irrelevant except as an intellectual exercise by adherents. Critics note that The Big Model does not appear to address the academic, political and aesthetic concerns common to Literature and Theatre, despite the fact that outside of roleplaying, members of other arts communities can and do share ideas.
- The Big Model is accused of promulgating opinions about roleplaying which do not represent the experiences of all or even most roleplayers. Critics report instances of groups pursuing multiple creative agendas without onerous results (see Socket Theory). Immersionist roleplayers also report using an agenda and playstyle markedly different from those effectively supported by the Big Model.
