RPG Errata: Manyfold, and How You Play

The second section of Manyfold is geared towards providing a glossary of terms players can use to describe “how they play.” It does this through “Stances,” a term first formulated by Kevin Hardwick and Sarah Kahn on the rec.games.frp.advocacy group on USEnet, around 1996. Levi then builds off their work to come up with five different stances that a player might change between during a single RPG session.

What exactly is a “stance?” Manyfold defines it as “The attitude of the player towards play at any given moment.” The easiest shorthand to consider might be combat: at any given time in your average combat focused RPG, one player is taking their turn, one player is GMing, and the other players are watching. These are three different stances, as the player whose turn it is engages with the game differently than the player who’s waiting for their turn, and both engage differently than the GM, who is playing the monsters.

The five stances Manyfold details are as follows:

Audience Stance

The simplest stance, this is what a player is doing when it’s not “their turn.” They are observing the play of others and reacting accordingly.

Author Stance

This is the stance players engage in when they are considering the game-narrative, guiding the play towards satisfying story outcomes.

Character Stance

This is when a player is thinking “what would I do if I were my character?” The player is attempting to model an alter ego, and do so accurately.

Player Stance

This is the stance a player engages with when they are playing an RPG as if it were a boardgame, and trying to win. It’s system focused, considering probabilities, strategies, and “skilled play.”

Performer Stance

This is playing your character for dramatic effect, giving dying words, emotive vows, or otherwise…well, performing.

What are my thoughts? Some obviously good ideas here, recognizable because I agree with them.

Player and Author stance are direct parallels to my game- and meta-narrative framework. Game versus story is a hallmark of my treatise, and these two stances are simply whether the player sees the RPG as more of a game or more of a story.

Audience stance is also perfect; remember when I discussed RPGs as a form of theatre where the actors and audience were one and the same? Audience Stance is what happens when you’re more the audience than a performer.

Character stance is interesting, and Performer stance is where it gets a bit…muddy. Part of me wonders exactly what the difference is between Character stance and Performer stance. Obviously, you can engage with Character stance by saying “George picks up the gun, holds it to Frank’s head, and threatens him,” while engaging with the Performer stance might involve voices, dialogue, and broad gestures…but both of these stances are engaged with building the story rather than playing the game. Are they both sub-stances of one larger “story” stance?

One could say that similar to how the Player and Author stances are two sides of the same coin, Audience and Performer stances are two either-or options, but that’s not satisfying to me. Are you not in Audience stance if no one is performing? No; I’d call it a third option with how to engage with RPGs. We’ve all had observers come just to watch people play — heck, most of us have watched Let’s Plays, and Critical Role is an institution all its own — and that brings up another issue: can a player engage with more than one stance at once?

Streamers and content-creators are obviously performing for an audience, they can’t not be. Does that mean they can’t be engaging with the RPG as a game or a story? Or is that all part and parcel of the gig? Does that mean a player can be in Performer, Player, and Author stance all at once?

And what about the GM? In my framework, they’re just another player. What are their stances?

With these questions in mind, I came up with the following

Audience Stance

The stance where a player is observing play and providing attention.

Game Stance

This is the stance where a player is engaging with the RPG as a game rather than a story. The player is considering mechanics and tactics rather than narrative: asking “what are my available options” rather than “what would my character do?” (Renamed from Player stance, because players is already an important descriptor.)

Character Stance

This stance is when a player engages with the RPG as something of a simulation, considering their character as a distinct person with their own thoughts. The player may ask “What would this person do,” or they might ask “what would I do if I were this character,” but in both cases they are ignoring both the rules of narrative and system, opting instead to play the character as “realistically” as possible.

Creator Stance

This is the stance players engage with when they are helping build the world outside their own characters. When they come up with complications after rolling a weak hit, spend a FATE point to establish a fact about the scene, or provide a description of the world as imagined in their backstory, they are in Creator stance. This is the stance largely inhabited by the GM, whenever they provide details and descriptions of the world as the characters see it.

Antagonist Stance

Engaged with when the player wants to provide opposition to the protagonists, the Antagonist stance primarily sees the player thinking of obstacles and working against the main flow of the RPG. Whether playing as monsters, describing traps, or portraying a particularly spiky king’s advisor, this is largely the purview of the GM in combative play-styles. When engaged with this stance, the player is actively trying to either prevent the other players from succeeding, or make things dramatically difficult for the characters — often times their own!

Story Stance

Players engage with the Story stance when they recognize the RPG is primarily a story. In this manner, they take part in character actions and offer suggestions in an attempt to follow (or play off of) the rules of Narrative to create an emotive or engaging story.

Support Stance

With the advent of Troupe games, players may find themselves in situations where “their” character isn’t around. Sometimes a GM might give an NPC to a player, or hand off some of the GM bookkeeping. Even more simply, sometimes the “spotlight” is on another character, and it is clear this is “their scene.” In all of these situations, a player is engaging in the Support Stance, where their actions are couched as a means of supporting a different player at the table, or the game as a whole. Perhaps they’re the henchfolk who’s carrying the torch while their regular character is resting at the inn. Maybe they’re playing the Orcs while the GM handles the more complicated Lizardfolk. Maybe they’re the designated healer who’s keeping the one player with the holy sword alive long enough to kill the demon. Maybe they’re doing little more than biting their tongue because it’s her turn to say the bad-ass line.

One of the nice things about stances is you can use them as descriptors. A player who is currently engaged in the Story Stance is a Story-player. Game-players are focused on stats and dice, while Creator-players can be the GM along with anyone who has the opportunity to establish the world.

My version of Character Stance is also noteworthy, as it pointedly bypasses the story versus system dynamic. Is there another kind of narrative I’m not paying attention to? Is “simulation” a kind of RPG play worthy of exploration? I’m not sure. In some cases, focusing on your character as a real person can support the kind of story you want to tell. Since, as I’ve said before, RPGs often create a particular kind of story,¹ playing your character realistically is really the only option for creating narrative.

Another aspect of this that I haven’t talked about yet is “depth.” Going deep into a stance is what happens when engaging with the stance itself is enjoyable. When a player delights in providing a challenging and love-to-hate villain, they’re in a deep Antagonist stance. When they get wrapped up in a scene of their character in a high-stakes argument with another, they’re in deep Character stance. When the table becomes a flow of back-and-forth describing of an elaborate ball-room, that’s deep Creator stance.

But what is depth, really? I want to talk about a parallel I’ve used before: I want to talk about “subspace.”

In the BDSM kink community, subspace is an altered mental state caused by the sudden powerful release of pleasure hormones. I won’t get into the science of it, but subspace is a kind of dreamy haze, where your mind enters a trance-like high and everything goes “soft.”

Based on different descriptions, I’ve found parallels with something I’ve experienced when I get super focused on something. Whether writing, playing a game, or sometimes just zoning out, my brain stops. I’m still thinking, still reacting to the world around me, but everything goes kind of distant while I wholly devote myself to this thing. Then, I look at the clock and realize hours have passed while I was doing whatever I was doing. It’s a fragile space, easily broken by friction in either what I’m doing or distractions from the outside world.

This is the essence of Immersion. Mental flow, when easy, is an intoxicating and peaceful experience, one that allows people to feel safe and comfortable in their play. This is why so many “how to be a good role-player” lists include learning the rules as a vital component. Knowing your character sheet and being aware of your options also is important.

But here’s the major point of friction that is most important: Safety Tools. The X card stops whatever is happening, cold. Safe-words yank people out of subspace. This isn’t a bad thing about safewords, it’s the only way subspace can work. Ask any kinkster about the people who “don’t like safe-words because they spoil the spontaneity,” and be prepared to get an earful.

But I’m not going to spend much more time on that…if you still have issues with RPGs using safety tools, I don’t know what to tell you. Find a different hobby, I guess.

So, with that out of the way, next time we can look at the next section in Manyfold, Designed Support.