Over on tigerbunny’s lj, I suggested giving and resisting as the way you meet either a pull or a push (where giving is either in the sense of a gift (as a response to a pull), or in the sense of falling back (in response to a push). I know its a very bad idea to try to introduce teh same word in two completely different senses into technical discourse, but I just like it.

Jonathon Walton and mo

Monarda = beebalm

to whom it may concern

I have a weird metaphor for push-pull that has been running round my mind today, which maybe has the advantage of being less competition based than Aikido or Judo or push-hands (since I think pull is related to collaborative play, it might be good to give it a collaborative metaphor):

In between the players is the imaginary space. At the start of the game, the space is full of bread dough. As the game goes on, the players stick things into to the dough. There are two different styles of putting something into the dough. In one style, I push things into the dough, challenging anyone else to prevent me from doing so. In another style, I pull open the bread dough, creating a space, where anyone else can easily put something if they want to.

In push style, other players can either try to block what I put forward, or they can passively allow it to be added, but they never help me put anything into the dough.

In pull style, I offer the other players help in putting in something that I am interested in. They can refuse my offer, or they can accept my offer, and add something to the dough.

Does that add anything?

If I’m invited I’m not pushing, what am I doing? Entering? I suppose the counterpoint would then be yielding — if someone pushes and I give way.

Good analogy. I especially like: Without my partner, I would not have been able to take that path.

xenopulse: Have you playtested yet? Is there a released copy I could skim?

Matt: Ah, Brand was a little to hard on himself around the game. It was the weekend before coming back to work after a long vacation and neither of us we’re focused. We just got our wires crossed, and it was aggravated by trying to do something new. We will likely play again. Besides the relationship between Warder (my major) and Chapel (the lover with whom she has a four point muse to make him leave her) is just to tragic not to play with again.

Judd: The AP of Pull is coming. Just got to have an hour or two to think it through and my work hates my hobby.

John: Thanks for the links. i had a glance at Mark’s but haven’t had a chance to look at yours yet. I will definately tomorrow.

Jonathan: Thanks for the shout out over on 20 x 20. Thanks for the links. I’ll chase them down tomorrow and have a looksee.

Funny that about Nobilis. I wonder why? Your way of playing sounds better to me.. maybe I’ll wave it at Brand.

Thanks everybody!

Mo: Ha! You know me all too well, apparently. That’s hilarious! Especially, of course, because the new roleplaying journal I edit is called Push, which just makes me a walking contradiction. But, yes, I tend to dislike confrontational or competative consensus creation, which gives me some clue as to why I had such trouble in one of Luke Crane’s recent convention games. Hmm… more to think about.

I have no idea who Monarda is. All the other Laws are named after flowers, though, so that’s probably a safe bet.

It’s interesting that you had so much trouble with resource management in Nobilis, because my (mostly female) players have tended to have resource issues, being afriad to spend points even when they have bunches, forgetting that they’re even there, etc. Often, we ended up mostly ignoring them, simply using them as a general guideline for how much crazy shit we could do without resting or taking a break. Our current IRC game seems to be taking a similar approach.

Mark Woodhouse responded with “Pushing and Pulling At Credibility and Power”

and rather than try to branch off the comments here, I have my own post, entitled “Push/Pull and Additive/Negational”.

Let me see if I can find any links. I’m not sure if people have written extensively on this subject. In fact, I’ve been meaning to post on the Forge in AP and describe things, but it’s quite a bit of ground to cover.

Yes, I read that and I’m still not sure I follow.

I need some more AP of push and pull, I think.

Did you look at the pull discussion on coownership on anyway?

I heard only a brief bit about the Nine Worlds experiment gone awry. I heard (and hope) you’ll give it another try. If you do, I’d love to hear about how you handle Muses. Because, as I read your post I kept thinking “Yeah, but Muses PULL.” And then Brand said as much. Well, he’s got it right — they mix it up. Pull to push, so to speak.

But, generally, I think this is a really interesting way to think about the issue … and challenges my man-brain.

I recognize the yin/yang techniques as where I am most comfortable running as GM. It’s not that push doesn’t work, since so many games are about power and winning, but it is fun to do the ‘Enticement’ mechanic.

Can you send me some links to information about that kind of game? I used to have friends who were heavily into it, but its been years since I looked at it heavily.

In RPGs, we can either resolve conflicts or create oprotunites for others to resolve conflicts. DitV is a good example of this. The GM creates a situation, but it is the players that set the stakes.

Claire: Those are some good ideas. They’re the kind of thing that I was referring to on my very first post: approaching the idea of socially engineering (system supported) virtuous cycles in RPGs. It’s the reason I started thinking about a blog in the first place. Nice to know there are lots of people generating lots of ideas like this.

Jonathan: That’s hysterical, I was bang on. I know I don’t know you yet from a hole in the ground, (what we’ve talked in like, four posts?) but just today when talking with Brand about this post and the response to it, I said to him: “You know who I bet is a pull player? Jonathan Walton.” No idea what exactly led me to it, but pulling/yin play and receptiveness of character in my mind are linked, and it just seemed to fit you.

I enjoyed a lot of parts of Nobilis, but had some difficulties with its resource management bits – something that tends to distract and preoccupy my brain. I’m thinking these days that maybe with what we’ve learned since we last played it (3 years ago) that maybe we could make it work well with a couple little tweaks.

I think Rebecca Borgstrom is mighty neato too.

In theatre improv, we had a variation of the Monarda Law (who’s Monarda? I immediarely think Miranda and expect someone to jump out and say “You have the right to say Yes.” “You have the right to roll the dice.” “Anything you blog may be used against you in a game of Dogs.”) that was pretty much: Don’t ever say No. Re-direct to action.

Emily: I haven’t forgotten your questions, still musing. I think what I’ll do is just work through the ideas from them and the other comments and my original ideas, into my next post.