Text and Hubris

I took my lunch in order to listen to Justin Reich speak at the Berkman Center. He is the author of an upcoming study that examines how the proliferation of open and free educational resources online could affect the educational divide in terms of income equality. Specifically, he looked at wiki creation and use across a variety of schools at different socioeconomic levels. These wikis were then scored against a standardized metric in order to determine their value.

What he determined was not terribly surprising. Schools with a higher socioeconomic demographics made better use of the wiki technology and more directly targeted that use to student achievement and development. Does this mean these free resources are a problem? Absolutely not, and Reich went on in-depth discussing how the data itself raises more questions than answers both in terms of data collection and analysis. One area of particular note was the need for intra-school research where technology use is evaluated in various economic strata within the same school.

What it does indicate is that we can’t simply expect free resources to suddenly be the panacea to a much deeper problem. It also indicates the need, as Reich mentioned, for targeted and developed educational strategies as opposed to a “dump and hope” method. Without a structure to encourage and develop the skills to utilize material presented, those who might benefit the most will simply continue to be left behind.

Child of the ‘net as I am, I was hoping his presentation would already be available from the Berkman Center. Unfortunately, physics and the duties of interns don’t follow the same schedule. That said, there are several incredible talks already available from their archive [ http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/interactive ]. I strongly suggest watching Justin’s talk when it becomes available.

Justin’s blog can be found here: [ http://edtechresearcher.org/ ]. It includes his Wiki Quality Instrument tools used for evaluating educational wikis.

Woah! Lance Mannion linked to my post. That’s definitely a nice thing to see. Unfortunately, I’ve been pretty quiet this week. I’ve been trying to wrap things up before Spring Break. I am glad I was able to make time for his talk, though. It was well worth it.

In other news, I got to witness a brief battle in the age old war of prose vs. poetry today as I listened to a short lecture on the use of rhythm in prose. It wasn’t that the lecturer (a prose partisan, to be sure) was actually wrong. He wasn’t. I just didn’t feel he was complete enough. Essentially, he discussed how prose uses rhythm and word placement to emphasize specific words or phrases and how that can alter the feel or meaning of a paragraph. In this case we were examining the effect of different translations of the same work. While all of this was rather evident, what caught my attention was his description of the musical nature of prose that allowed it to count rests as beats in the rhythm. He conspicuously left that ability out of poetry and even went as far as to show how poetry does not include rests in its definition of meter.

On the latter point, I believe he is correct. In technical terms, a pause is not counted. We do have hypermetrical lines and headless iambs but those are still roughly categorized according to a generalized metrical structure. I don’t see an issue with this, though. The meter is a guide not a declaration of sound or even a distinct rhythm. All music in 4/4 does not sound the same. The rests and pauses exist as readily in poetry as they do in prose. End-stops, caesuras, white space, along with word choice and word placement all provide the poet with a full arsenal of tools capable of defining and playing with pauses and spaces in his or her work.

As is usual with these discussions, I always end up feeling like a little kid watching mommy and daddy fight. They really don’t need to. One of the interesting developments in some of the more recent works that I have been reading, both online and off, has been their melding of poetry and prose. This melding isn’t even all that new anymore and I don’t think it’s a trend that will be stopping anytime soon. If anything, our increasingly networked minds seem to crave these moments of text that press on the definition of prose and poetry and expand them outward into new and exciting forms.

For me, that’s the space to be in.

My last post was on removing the game from roleplay. Today, I am going to talk about the problems with that and possible scenarios to overcome them.

We all know the reason why a game structure exists. It exists because there needs to be a way to resolve conflict and disagreements that arise in all stories (most of you know this as the “I shot you” “No, you didn’t” issue). Game structure acts as a method of adjudicating these conflicts in order to keep the story going.

This was all fine and good until people started to realize that by focusing on the game structure they could, essentially, make their character capable of never being hit. In this sense, the rules actually act to make the “I hit you!” “No, you didn’t!” problem worse. Now each player is concentrated on making sure their character is optimally built to hit and not be hit and modern games (I’m looking at you 4th Ed) emphasize this to no end.

That is why the term “game balance” exists. The enemies are slotted to match up with characters of a certain level who have spent their points in a game appropriate manner. The idea of story is all but dead, there is only the stat and the counter-stat.

Of course, people realized this and a whole myriad of systems rose up trying to find a way around the issue. Honestly, I have not found one that has succeeded. There have been a lot of attempts. Diceless systems such as the Amber system were less than successful primarily because they removed the chance element but kept the conflict-challenge element. This is the worst of all possible worlds in my mind. The dice pools and story concepts of White Wolf systems were solid and the removal of levels was a great thing. Unfortunately, the same issues rose in combining certain skills, powers, and traits. People sought out the best combination and forgot about story. Beyond this, White Wolf micromanaged their world concept to such an extent that players and Storytellers had little choice but to exist solely inside the World of Darkness. There were very few people out there who were creating new worlds with the White Wolf system. WoTC has pretty much failed from day one. The OGL was genius, but they’ve already blown any credit they deserve there. They made a card game and they should have stuck to that. When I go looking for a solid story, I don’t look to HASBRO. Sorcerer was an excellent game, but the system was so tied to a single concept that it made for good play but offered little in the way of creative flexibility when it came to the worlds. I’ve looked at the aspect system that FATE has which really sounds like a modification of the FUDGE rules to fit other systems. The flexibility of FUDGE and True20 are the main reason I tend to use them as systems now, but even they fall short. I’m not going to cover every game system I have played simply because this paragraph is already overly long. Suffice it to say that no system has yet found a way to hold to the narrative angle without the GM enforcing strictly.

So what do you do? If you remove the game structure entirely, you end up with a bunch of people trying to tell a story that falls apart. Players lose that care about their characters and the story suffers. If you include a game structure, you end up with players doing whatever they can to make their characters “succeed” even if that involves the manipulation of meta-content. There is no easy way out, but I’ll offer a few ideas.

The first option is called the “get good players and a GM option.” This was my standard argument for many years. If you have great players and a great GM this is a pointless article. If you like the narrative/collaborative style, you’re all playing it already. The system isn’t an issue in this regard because most you already ignore anything that conflicts with the story at large. This is a great option for experienced and established players, but how do you add new players? Narrative roleplay is a niche within a niche and both niches are growing smaller. GM’s need to reach out to bring in new players if only to help keep this concept of storytelling alive. The first option just doesn’t work here.

The next option is to try to make a system work. Shoehorn in rules and stretch rule concepts to such a degree that the narrative can work. Of course, this will only work in your specific story and conflicts will still arise. A GM can manage this dissonance to some degree but after awhile the system becomes a greater and greater hindrance to the story. Ultimately, if the game survives, you will descend into a freeform style which is right back where we started.

The last option is too look seriously at creating a structure that works to manage the story. This is not simply a character creation issue. This must be a whole new look at the idea of storytelling in general. I mean this both from a tabletop perspective and from a networked perspective. Honestly, I am talking about the re-emergence of storytelling in general.

This will be part of my project for next year. I will be looking at storytelling concepts both from the traditional gaming community and from a more general perspective. How do we tell stories? Why? How do we add to stories and what new opportunities in storytelling are out there? I really believe that we have just started to scratch the surface of this topic. Hopefully, what I discover will be of value to myself and everyone else who reads this.