I remember having had a conversation with Vincent Baker, Gregor Vuga, Daniel Berg and other people about this technical term, and I'd like to keep track of it for future use, so here's basically what was told in that thread on Story Games.
From The Forge's provisional glossary.
Positioning
A Character Component. Behavioral, social, and
contextual statements about a character. Formerly (and confusingly)
called Metagame.
So what are we talking about.
Vincent replied to me in a nanosecond:
"From Shock:Human Contact character creation last night: I wrote on my
character sheet "I'm a child soldier in Kumeh Hydraulics' assault
force." This is a piece of my character's positioning - a behavioral,
social, and/or contextual statement about my character's position in the
setting"
So why is this important and how can it be a problem? And more specifically, why are traditional roleplayers obsessed with avoiding what they call metagaming but, according to Ron Edwards should be called 'positioning'? Because the problem arises when 'what the character knows' and 'what the player knows' clash causing a shortcircuit.
Again, Vincent saved the day with a perfectly clear explanation.
Here's sort of the typical setup with positioning and effectiveness:
I'm a knight. Knights get +2 to hit. I get +2 to hit!
"Knights get +2 to hit" is a currency rule: it establishes a relationship between one component of a character ("I'm a knight," positioning) and another ("I get +2 to hit," effectiveness).
Here's how knowing something can work, and can cause problems:
My
knight knows that the beast of Dunford Ridge is vulnerable to silver,
so he loads his musket with a silver ball. He inflicts double damage!
"My
knight knows that the beast of Dunford Ridge is vulnerable to silver,
so he loads his musket with a silver ball" is, yes, positioning. There's
a currency rule in play - "if you attack something with a material it's
vulnerable to, you do double damage" - so this small detail of
positioning becomes increased effectiveness, the double damage. So far
so good.
But what about this?
As a player, I know that
the beast of Dunford Ridge is vulnerable to silver, but my knight
character doesn't. Nevertheless, he loads his musket with a silver ball.
He inflicts double damage!
Here I've short-circuited the
currency rule, which is supposed to turn character knowledge into
increased effectiveness. All my friends shout at me that I'm cheating!
The
real culprit isn't "metagaming," but the combination of two factors.
Factor 1 is the currency rule, "if you attack something with a material
it's vulnerable to, you do double damage." Factor 2 is the circumstance
where I, as a player, happen to already know that the beast of Dunford
Ridge is vulnerable to silver, before my character knows it. Together,
they create a conflict of interest for me as a player: I want to do
double damage, and I want to have my character act with internal
integrity, but now I have to choose between the two.
You can
attack the problem two ways, then: you can take on the problem of
player's vs character's knowledge, or you can take on the problem of the
currency rule. There's no single ideal solution; there are a million
solutions (one per game design) and you choose the one that best suits
your precise needs. The fights start when someone takes one solution,
like "make sure that the player doesn't know anything the character
doesn't know," and insists that it IS the single ideal solution, or else
that it's NEVER a suitable solution.
One further interesting thought comes from David Berg:
I'm guessing Vincent covered your quandary. For thoroughness' sake,
though, I'll add that Positioning covers some in-game stuff that never
makes it to the level of interacting with any currencies, such as:A noble NPC tells the characters he'd be grateful to them for ridding his lands of a monster.They do it.Now
they've got a rich dude who likes them. Depending on how the GM
interprets that relationship, that could mean they have access to all
sorts of cool stuff like maps, writs, money, horses, armor, and other
rich dudes.It may seem a little odd to think of "friends with noble" as a character component, but that's Positioning to a tee.(Nerdy aside: That example still affects currencies, they're just in-fiction currencies like "influence in the gameworld", rather than capital-C game
Currencies, which effect mechanical adjustments. And if you invent a
stat for "influence in the gameworld", then the former just became the
latter!)
Yet more insight on Vincent's site here:
http://www.lumpley.com/comment.php?entry=606
The original discussion on Story Games:
http://story-games.com/forums/comments.php?DiscussionID=13393
