Validation may be a poor choice — perhaps Complicate or Qualify, instead. But then I’d need to redo that diagram, and Illustrator makes my poor little laptop chug.

I will be trying to get an Actual Play analysis done using Interaction Model terms. (It would have to be AP and not a design, since this models play, not designs, which is a pretty important distinction.) Because this is so freaking micro-detail, though, I fear that five minutes of play would take up ten pages worth of words. Which is not to say that I won’t do it. I just miss lj-cut here in Bloggerland.

As for what I get out of it, I’ll admit, this is almost purely a design tool, trying to atomize what we do at the table to better design rules to govern, guide, and inspire that process. The recognition that Articulation and Validation are separate but often parallel processes, for instance, suggests to me lots of potential — character failures that are player successes, player successes unassociated with character tasks or conflicts, or on the other hand, binding the two together explicitly. While GNS and its derivations were explicitly created in order to help you make your home game experience better, the Interaction Model is to help designers get a good look at what is happening procedurally. Players not interested in design may get some mileage out of it — in fact I’m pretty sure they will, if only in terms of a new perspective — but my intent is on this side of the game book, as it were.

I do think ‘Validation’ is the wrong word, though, or maybe I’m just missing the connotations you’re aiming for. I feel like another term would do a much better job of matching the interaction you’re trying to describe.

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Mostly, I’d love to see this model applied directly to some actual play — or actual game designs. A breakdown of how various games (or one particular game) deal with the Interactions would probably go a long way to making this seem less like a theoretical exercise and more like a practically useful tool for understanding RPGs.

I suppose that was the crux of my reaction to the first one, lessened considerably now that I’ve come to appreciate the model a bit more: what does this model do? What kind of analysis is it good at? What insights might it provide? One thing that makes a lot of the initial Forge stuff exciting to me is that I immediately see how and where it applies — and more importantly, how it explains certain problems and issues that come up a lot.

It may be that I don’t get this reaction from this model simply because the Forge stuff got there first, but I’m still interested in hearing what particular insights/points of analysis prompted you to come up with this model. What does it help explain for you?