Re: RE: Participation versus Interactivity

[WFreitag@aol.com]

>But why can't these production / consumption relationships be essentially
>hermaphroditic?  

They can be. In a hermaphroditic relationship the asymmetries are temporary, 
but they still exist (and they're still the key to meaningful interaction). 
If I walk your dog on even days and you walk my dog on odd days, the 
relationship is overall symmetrical, but on any given day someone is the 
walker and someone is the walkee.

When time is involved, I think there may be a relationship between the 
duration of a given asymmetry and the grain size (not the overall size) of 
the project. If we're setting up a camp site, I can help you put up your tent 
and ten minutes later you can help me put up my tent. If we're building a 
Quaker village, you can supervise the raising of your barn and a week later I 
can supervise the raising of your barn. But it won't work if we switch roles 
every ten minutes. If we're building a skyscraper, it won't work if we switch 
roles every week.

If you switch gamemasters every session, then you'll most likely get 
narrative coherence with a one-session grain size (e.g. weekly episodes). If 
you switch gamemasters every six months, then you have a chance for narrative 
coherence with a six month grain size (e.g. novel-length story arcs). If you 
stick with one GM perpetually, then the possibility of even longer-term 
narrative coherence arises.

>I agree that these asymmetries may have been causing
>problems in my freeform PBEM RPG, but I don't see the necessity of it.

Perhaps not. I don't know much detail about what you experienced there. I can 
only speculate.

>What about musicians?  Not all bands revolve around a dominant lead, even if
>most do.

There are at least two possible cases here: a band whose dominant lead 
changes with time, and a band that truly _never_ has a dominant lead. (I 
assume you're talking specifically about leadership during composition or 
improvisation. Performance of a work by rote doesn't really involve any of 
these issues).

I think the first case is more common. Consider a good improv jazz group. 
Overall there may be no dominant lead, but at any given moment the band is 
following the lead of one of the musicians. It's usually pretty clear which 
one, even to the unskilled observer. The grain size of the musical coherence 
is short, the duration of one musician's time as "leader" or less. But the 
appeal of the music doesn't depend on long-term coherence; the interplay as 
leadership is traded off makes the music interesting in a different way. The 
style of the music and the style of its creation go hand in hand. Improv 
symphonies are few and far between.

As for groups being truly leaderless, I can't say. If the musicians are 
sufficiently skilled to pull it off, my ability to detect whether or not 
they're following one member's lead at any given moment has been left far 
behind. In other words I can't distinguish between "so good they don't need a 
leader" and "so good I can't tell who's the leader."

>However, egalitarianism does take more skill and more energy on the
>part of the authors.

Yes, we clearly agree on that.

>I always thought of my GM job as being "the last
>line of defense."  When nobody is producing content, I make sure I am.  
Without
>my leadership and swift kick in the butt, the project dies.  Now, if I
>had 2 other authors who were equally vested in the project, who had the same
>level of ideological committment...?

I'd volunteer, but that would be actually doing something. I prefer to just 
yak about it. :-)

Just kidding. I do volunteer, if you're interested in trying this experiment.

- W