This five-piece video series is my raw material for the ongoing project, to generate a real text for what on earth this role-playing ‘thing’ might actually be. It’s the abstract part, coming at it with both extensive experience but also completely without the familiar in-hobby vocabulary or investments.
It’s really abstract! I know that, it’s supposed to be. The eventual plan includes how to integrate it with examples of real play, or perhaps to have an accompanying or even lab text which is built of examples.
Help me out by causing trouble: say “what about” or “but why” or “no it isn’t,” or any kind of reflection or response. Include the time-stamp for the point in the video you’re talking about.
Addition: April 2021. Here is the Italian translation.
27 responses to “Discuss: Phenomenology”
And the following four videos!
2: Making it go
3: What happens
4: Guts and garters
5: Playing on purpose
[August 2020 edit: the link in the main post now goes to the five-video playlist, starting with #1]
I notice that The Right To Dream's absent in part 5. I'm cool with it. What's your current thinking?
On it.
And on reflection, I realized something – that although I am not quite ready to say, "you couldn't pay me to dive into that cesspool again," I am perfectly happy to say I'll only do it for pay. Here's my plan:
1. You and I do a dialogue about it, recorded, basically interviewing each other – asking the things interviewers never seem to manage, too, seeking to discover points of disagreement as well as more general clarity.
2. It'll include a Q&A session as well, perhaps a structured discussion, that others can do. These "others" can be the up-to-six people, so this is a paid Seminar activity. Begins with just you and me, finishes with the group panel/activity.
We could do the just-us part separately if we want, and post it here as an introductory thing, maybe so as many people see it as possible and gear up as best they can (they'd better).
Let me know what you think!
Sounds fun!
Sounds fun!
Ha! Filmed! Tension,
Ha! Filmed! Tension, apprehension, and dissension have begun.
The dialogue
A following video response from me
Phenomenological Description of Group Creation
This is a topic of great personal intellectual interest to me. I'd like to try to bring what I've learned about the phenomenology of group creativity to the gaming medium. And work out a good way to describe it.
I'll make what contributions I can.
There has been qualitative research into the topic that informs my thinking about the subject and I'd like to see what bearing it has on the gaming experience.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00808/full
Jazz improvisers' shared understanding: a case study
http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2017-09874-001
The construction of meaning within free improvising groups: A qualitative psychological investigation.
https://www.academia.edu/35102728/Collective_intentionality_and_plural_pre-reflective_self-awareness.pdf
Collective intentionality and plural pre-reflective self-awareness.pdf
Again, I will see what I can to about applying this stuff rather than slinging quotations.
I'm looking forward to more application, for sure. At the Patreon, Santiago and I had an extensive conversation about our Cold Soldier game which I haven't brought over here yet. It seems to me to be an excellent fourth on your list. It'll be a Seminar post for sure, maybe even a paid activity for people to join a "let's extend this" discussion.
One-half of my brain sputters indignantly at putting something else on the scheduled things to post ("Don't you think you should pace it a bit? Like a lot?") and the other is already considering pedagogy for the activity.
Improvisational Communication Scaffold
Just in case this was a dropped post – let me know what text you wanted in there, and I'll paste it in.
CHANGE
I feel like "change" is one of the themes that really need more elaboration. I like that it is included in the series and explored a bit, but I think there is so much more to say. I'm thinking, specifically, about discussions such as the meaning of games related to the change they convey in the players, dynamics and aesthetics (ie. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c06uoVVFZd4) and how to drive that change. It is an important theme also in screenwriting in which the change during a scene is pivotal to the feeling of the whole movie/series. This makes me think that change might be central in every instance in which we deal with fiction. Does someone have any opinion about this or any link/discussion about this theme? Thanks
Hi! There’s a lot packed in
Hi! There's a lot packed in there so I will need to focus a little. I'll stay strictly with role-playing games, which is not to say they have special properties for this issue, but because movies and other mass media tend to dominate discussions and gum up the joint with their idioms.
The first topic I'd point to is my diagrams discussion. A game's diagram does not present the totality of fictional change during play, of course, but it does show the procedures which interrelate to bring about a lot of that change. Since games' diagrams can be remarkably different, that helps to show what sorts of change are especially boosted or likely during play.
The second topic is what you asked: what do I mean by change. I mean really, really basic and understandable things, like, if some guy in our fiction is threatened by the CIA, does he or doesn't he get assassinated, or his life ruined, or his goals shattered. Or if my paladin goes into the dungeon, does or doesn't he get hurt, does or doesn't he gain a level, does or doesn't he die, does or doesn't he save someone.
The best way to deal with that is an example. I ask you to present, preferably from a real game experience, the before-and-after of whatever documents are used during play. In most role-playing, that's a character, but there are plenty that use group sheets or other similar things. So whatever it is for that game – show me what it looked like at the start and what it looked like after enough play to show it on that document.
Hi Alexander. I’ve prepared a
Hi Alexander. I've prepared a video response and will post it soon, as soon as it's done exporting and uploading and processing and whatever the hell it is that these buttons I push mean.
In the meantime, and I ask you to do this before viewing the reply, I would like to know something. Why do you care? Why bother investigating any such question as a purpose of play? Why enter into this discussion with Zak, or with me, or whoever, i.e., with anybody? This is a personal question, not "why does one care," but you. Why?
Thanks! I appreciate all of
Thanks! I appreciate all of that.
Well, here's my response, maybe a little pointed, maybe not the way I'd reply on some other day, but today, how it turned out.
I will respond with another
I will respond with another video. Please be patient.
Second response, and the
Second response, and the conclusion of this particular exchange, but not a shutdown, as you'll see.
Gordon cross-posted with me, so in perhaps severe fashion, please do not reply to him here either.
I'll direct your attention as well to the Site Etiquette rules, linked at the bottom of the sidebar.
Veteran of the Synechdoce Wars
Hi Alexander (and Ron, obviously),
This seems like familiar ground to me – a scary, blasted-wasteland battleground that I can only imagine leaves Ron filled with weariness, and reluctant to visit due to the risk of expanding the devastation. As a veteran of that battlefield, I offer this: your marco and micro are NOT different views on the SAME thing, they are simply views on different things. Purpose of play IS disconnected (definitionally and conceptually, without preventing some non-rigorous association) from anything atomic. It's defined that way for what looked like good reasons at the time – reasons which still look good to me all these years later.
Which is NOT to say the atomic doesn’t exist, isn’t important, or even that it can’t be useful as we consider the overall purpose (though warning: here there be dragons/deceptions galore) of play. So, to my eye, your concern over that micro/atomic stuff makes sense: yes, they’re there, and yes, they’re important. And they ARE in the GNS/Big Model. They are NOT, however, *in* the Purpose-bucket. Though, like everything else, they *can* (again, non-rigorously) influence and/or be informed by that bucket.
An RPG player can say “I like xxx to happen with the dice in play”, and it’s a preference about … Techniques? (if I’m remembering my Big Model terminology right) Preferences about Techniques matter, but they’re not about the purpose of play. “Something I like” can be applied to lots of things that happen during/around an RPG session; “why I do this (this time) at all” is defined as something distinct from a sum/evaluation of things-I-like. As such, it's probably gotta be tied to some pretty big-picture human behavior, maybe explaining why we see so few of 'em.
Hmm… perhaps an example of how I think about it? Let’s look at competing, the human behavior of trying to “win.” This is something humans can pretty much ALWAYS do. If you look at some “micro” thing in RPG-play, maybe you see someone trying to win. Maybe it’s literal, in terms of the games-rules. Or not – human completion takes myriad forms. Managing all those potential micro-competitions can be a big deal, obviously. But at NO point do we cross some line and say “oh, the purpose of play must be competition!” because of all those micro-events (which probably aren't "only" any one thing anyway).
Determining if competition was the purpose of play – at this point, I’m clueless about the reasons to pick a particular term/description (Gamism, Step On Up) over another, and just have to trust that someone who’s engaging in this conversation can map a term like “competition” onto RPG play – may be partially informed by those micro-things, but it remains a thing of its own. The whole is indeed more than the sum of its parts, and is in fact defined as a thing distinct from any set of parts labeled … well, labeled in any way, but in particular distinct from any set of parts that look like micro-competition or micro-story creation.
I hope that makes sense – there are pages and pages of discussion at the Forge trying to establish the distinction between any micro(s) and the purpose, usually trying very hard to not diss micros in the process.
Which probably brings us to the question of Simulation (here used as a poorly-defined label for “the thing that seems to be a problem”). I’m torn between desiring and dreading an in depth discussion (in no small part because on Simulation, I do NOT know a current, possibly-right answer). For now, let me duck the issue and ask: when you say your game wants to take simulation of the fantasy genre to a new level, what do you mean? How is a new level of simulation something to be desired, as opposed to just being a great game inspired by x, y, z cool fantasy-stuff? I mean, I know this isn’t how you mean to use the term, but … my reaction to “simulate the fantasy genre” is “hell no – I want to CREATE great fantasy, not simulate anything!”
Or maybe here isn’t a great place to answer those questions, so convert that last paragraph to what I’d like to see answered in the description of an Actual Play post for your game.
I know that's tl;dr, but I have no summary, so … I'll just stop.
It feels weird to post this so long after the videos came out, but here goes.
I found the Phenomenology videos thought-provoking and even inspiring in their presentation of tabletop role playing games as a new medium of expression. I appreciated the focus on enjoyment as a reason for studying RPGs conceptually, as well as being an indicator of effective play. I’ve always felt more potential enjoyment in TTRPGs than actual lived enjoyment in play, frankly.
Missing pieces – not missing so much as just things I’d like to see explored more explicitly.
“shared imagined space” – was implicit throughout but this is an expression I’ve seen used and feel it deserves special consideration conceptually. In addition to the procedural murk mentioned in the videos, I have found that mismatched shared imagined space is a source of murk that manifests as silence, indecision, confusion, insecurity i.e. lack of enjoyment. How is the shared imagined space shared (exposition, minis and battle maps, shared pop culture references, etc.)? How does the GM know that the players actually know what they need to know, and can retain it? (in this regard I am a strong proponent of over communication even to the point of not much caring about metagaming – I digress).
“how roleplaying is learned” – was touched on wrt the role of texts as pedagogy vs tools in play. Echoing the above … how is the “shared imagined rule set” created, learned, etc. I see fruitful parallels between RPG rules and natural languages. How do you learn complex procedures incrementally without trying to absorb them all beforehand (not possible as one can only grasp the ‘grammatical’ and idiomatic nuances of procedures in play).
Not “misses”, just observations:
“games” – at first I thought the lack of mention of games at all at the start was an obvious miss but I later realized this was intentional i.e. these aren’t games but more like creative social activities to incrementally develop shared fiction using game-like procedures that produce an experience that is vivid, engaging, and fair. An explicit game aspect enters only as potential purpose of play with respect to challenge, awareness of loss conditions etc.
“transparent authorship” – similarly I thought the idea that role playing required, by definition, transparency in the process of shared authorship contradicted 90% of the history of the hobby. But then I saw this was also intentional, and that the purpose of the videos was to present an ideal – to identify and define this social art form – and to argue (I think) that any activity that subverted player agency to force a pre-determined narrative (whether authored beforehand or during play itself as improvised contrivances) was by definition *not* part of this activity. I may be misstating or exaggerating that point. I do recall thinking that maybe the videos took it too far and that some forms of predetermined narrative could still be enjoyed as role playing. [Cut to outside of the “Adept Play” saloon – Kevin comes flying through the glass and lands in heap on the dusty ground]
Hi! I hope you’re pleased to know that I think you’re spot-on.
At the time I made these videos, your points about “shared imagined space” and “how role-playing is learned” were very much on mind, and in the latter case, very much as questions. I’ve spent the past five years working through them, and I think my course People and Play nails at least what I think is going on with the medium as such, and it’s now better integrated with the range of rules-design than was evident in this presentation. I’ve also developed a new course I haven’t offered yet, called Free Radical, in which pedagogy is addressed for anyone with any familiarity with the activity.
For your last point – far from it, you’re still right on target. My better-developed-now notions include the concept of explicitly locked-down content, which is to say, what cannot change so that other things changes are highlighted. The question isn’t whether some content may be fixed or what it is or how much, but rather, what isn’t, and how it develops or changes during play.
It’s been few years since I first listened to “Phenomenology” and during consequent years I repeated the effort to understand them many times.
This January I went on “People & Play” course and after this few months of contemplating it I re-watched “Phenomenology” and it just clicked! I’m not sure what part was I lacking, but the context from P&P helped me interpret what was unclear.
Of course, I can’t be sure I grasped every sentence 100% clear, but now I see “Phenomenology” as a deconstruction of play to its basics, with historical annotation but clearly showing where we do something very open and wide, and universal but historically used it for narrow themes/target audience.
I especially admire the way “character” was defined (if I remember correctly in P&P the definition was even broader) so it encapsulates any being we use to interact with the fictional world.
The idea of simply listening, processing and reincorporating as a medium of play is also a great point of view. I can totally see it in new games like Meguey’s and Vincent’s “Wolf King’s Son” or more freeform games (I played “Fool’s Journey”, one-page freeform rpg about tarot-reading with a friend last month) where we really don’t need much more than a dialog between us to create meaningful play.
I’ve listened to “Phenomenology” many times over the years (with commentary videos) but only now I was capable of interpreting what obvious mistakes I made with concentrating so hard on “making it go” and staying with the text, making the play impossible to reach its purpose (well it of course worked for me when I play with people really into “by the book play”, equally engaged in it as me, but it was really hard for me to find a pleasure in playing outside this bubble).
During P&P course, Ron told us to give ourselves a few months to grasp the lessons and make some active learning during consequent sessions. I can see how the course and “Phenomenology” affected my viewpoint and helped see the real bare bones of our hobby. It’s much simpler now, than thinking with other huge models I had in my head before.
I surely need to revise also the materials from our course, as there are some subtle aspects I’m still digesting, but I can say it was worth the time and helped me understand the hobby more.
Thanks Ron!
Thanks to you! I appreciate the chance to showcase my teaching goals: not for some instant Hollywood moment, but for the long haul of reflection and development, after the course is over and ongoing.
Here’s a point to consider: it’s true, given the medium, that play is completely possible and functional through the organization of authorities alone (“how we talk”) … but systemic elaborations, constraints, and triggered parsing all provide qualities. It’s just like music: sure, we “could” use only the bare minimum of available instrumentation and sure, maybe, theoretically, we’d be making more basic or pure music … but maybe not. speaking for myself, I don’t think music is “more” or “less” of itself based on how much or how little we elaborate its process, and I think the analogy to role-playing is exact.
I look forward to any play you’d like to share here, and I’m sure I can learn from it.
I revisited these videos after a chance mention of them on the Discord. After having bathed in the concepts for a few years through some of the courses, seminars, workshops, and posts, all I can do is nod. Yes, of course, this is what it is, and these presentations describe it clearly.
The purpose of play presentation is clear to me but also at this point feels like a “so what”, the reasons for feeling thus being also made clear in the presentation. I confess I have no idea what Vincent is talking about regarding the purpose of play being at a different level, and in my view he’s hung up on firmly situating RPGs as *games* and needing that as a framework, which I suppose there’s nothing *wrong* with–except that such strict categorization can sometimes blind people to the activity itself because they get hung up on what “game” means to them. Vincent is clearly not in this sort of trouble, in any case.
Something that pleasantly surprised me, coming back to this post, was this:
“the ongoing project, to generate a real text for what on earth this role-playing ‘thing’ might actually be”
I have been lately thinking to myself, “we need a text, Ron!” I’ve not said anything of the sort out loud because obviously you are working on a ton of things that is at the heart of all of this, and must precede the creation of such a text, and obviously saying such a thing is the same as saying “do more”, which is ridiculous.
That said–I hope that you did actually mean “a text” in the traditional sense, and I hope that is still a part of the plan, however far down the road it is.
I remain unconvinced, at present, that a written text would be valuable. Imagine if I had written up Phenomenology in text, and that was “it,” done, What Ron Says …
1. It would not contain what I’ve continued to learn. The understanding of uncertainty rather than conflict, the precise framing of reincorporation and listening, the recognition of situation in practice, the focus on playful play with design as a side effect …
I wrote System Does Matter and the three GNS essays as a heuristic device and that is the single thing which absolutely failed to happen. Even putting aside raw illiteracy, i.e., the inability to perceive anything actually in those essays, there was no way to stave off the perception that this was some kind of RPG Torah by a self-elected prophet, instead of a snapshot of an ongoing discussion and learning process.
2. Could anyone here, me included, have managed any degree of understanding – and more important, improved competency and enjoyment – without directly engaging with the phenomena of play? As perceived in others’ play, in recordings and writings, or as experienced via coursework or related activities? And in either case, interspersed with playing, permitting back and forth reflection at one’s own pace?
I think the answer is absolutely not, especially since I did in fact see two-plus decades of the failure of that to happen, since people were dealing with perceived competing authoritative texts (regardless of the authors’ constant exhortations not to do that). Today, I see no benefit at all in having some Little Colored-Whatever Book that you can give to some fellow role-player who seems confused, and it will Open Their Eyes, absent any commitment or vulnerability or effort which you brought to your own learning experience. It will not work.
At my most extreme, I think of the phrase “inscription on the body,” and repurpose it from its negative form, i.e., the evidence of abuse by the powerful. Instead, given that we do a fun and wonderful thing, together (wow!) … and then consider this sort of inscription, what it has wrought (and continues to do so) upon who we are, how we feel, and what we do. In at least one sector of my mind, that would be the “text” which matters most to me, across any number of people.
Or perhaps, who knows, the body of work itself becomes a text, eventually – probably long after you or I have any use for it, and with minimal hope for it to be any good. Or perhaps a middle form is possible, in which the rudimentary academy of this website evolves into a more developed and understandably usable form … thus a “text” in the sense of an active, rather dynamic curriculum … but without any Read It Once Now You Know section, no matter how much or how many people ask for it.
So, I’m someone who shares the impulse of wanting a comprehensive text covering the material Ron’s developing in workshops and courses. However, I think it’s important to review our motives for wanting that. One motive is simply to have a convenient one-stop place to be able to review the things we’ve already been exposed to in the courses, workshops and this site. That’s a pretty reasonable motive for us but a pretty big ask of Ron. I think between being able to review the site and especially the soon to be available workshop recordings we’ll be covered.
But let’s look at what Ron called “some Little Colored-Whatever Book that you can give to some fellow role-player who seems confused, and it will Open Their Eyes.” Is this what we want? Yes, of course it is. Let’s be honest. We want something to point at and say, “read this, it will change your perspective on RPGs forever.” But can a textbook do that?
For some reason, we desperately want texts to work like downloadable modules that we just consume and then instantly have a perfect shared basis of understanding with anyone who has also installed the module. But texts (tragically?) don’t work that way. They’re a tool and tools have to be used.
Now, people know for a long time I wanted to write a supplementary text about playing Sorcerer. My primary goal was to connect some dots people weren’t getting from the core book alone. Ron’s own annotations have since connected a lot of those dots, even a lot of my own missing dot connections. And yet the urge to write about Sorcerer in some comprehensive way has never gone away.
One morning in 2020 I woke up apropo of nothing suddenly realizing that the text I was trying to write wasn’t about understanding Sorcerer, but about trying to inspire others to play it. But more broadly to inspire people to go on the kind of journey I’ve been on for the last quarter century. Centering that journey around Sorcerer is largely a historical artifact. For someone else it could just as easily be some other game. I realized that I had been conflating understanding with inspiration. If I could just explain it to you, you would “get it” and be inspired.
Lots of games have technical “how to” manuals to help people improve play. Chess and Bridge are two examples that come to mind that have extensive texts full of insights and exercises to improve your understanding of the game. But do you know who those books are for? People who are already seriously committed to playing Chess and Bridge. They’re for people who want to do the work of improving their game. You’re not going to hand one of these books to someone and have them suddenly be moved to dedicate time to the joys of Chess or Bridge.
You know what does inspire people? Autobiographical memoirs that center a particular problem and a particular set of experiences and revelations that helped the author or people they knew through that problem. The degree to which one finds such a book useful corresponds directly to the degree to which you relate to their problems and their journey. And I don’t think that’s such a terrible thing.
To some extent that’s what’s already happening here at Adept Play. We’re all writing up personal insights and learning moments. But individual posts are confined to individual moments of play. If you’re really interested in doing what I call “rescue ops” into the hobby where we find the bored, frustrated, unsatisfied, serotonin deprived gamers and drag them out of the swamp then we need more of these comprehensive self-reflection texts that detail our own escapes from that swamp. And they need to be from more than one person with more than one version of that story.
The good news is we already have at least one stellar example of such a text: Paul Czege’s The Ink That Bleeds and his follow up text Inkscapes. Yes, they’re about journaling games rather than the kinds of RPGs we discuss here but it’s exactly the kind of text I’m talking about. You have no idea how green with envy I am that Paul cracked it.
Did the Ink That Bleeds help me see the value in journaling games? It sure did. Did it inspire me to play journaling games? It did! Maybe not quite at the scale or depth Paul’s adopted but just a little bit. Does it make me want to hand out copies on street corners as a vaccine against the consumerist content stew we’ve been forced to swim in? Hell yeah it does.
We need more books like the Ink That Bleeds from more people about more games. Things that aren’t just technical manuals but actual works of self reflection and personal insight into the joys and benefits of this activity. Only after people connect on an emotional level will the more technical stuff become useful to them.
Wow. I am SO happy that my comment engendered a response so clearly recapitulating my own desires back to myself, and why those desires are misguided. Ron set it up and Jesse spiked it.
Yes, more texts like that, please. The concept of journaling games has not inspired me to look into them, so I haven’t seen what Paul’s doing with them, but I will certainly read those two texts now.
(small point: between the two desires of wanting the knowledge collected for self-review and wanting it as a Gospel to hand to others, there’s another one. One that is still not quite trusting of all this video-and-internet stuff: digital ephemera tends to be just that, and books tend to live on as objects, even if in obscurity. There is a little bit of the anxious archivist in this desire, which I think is reasonable, but it’s certainly quite beside the point)
I am quite negatively inclined toward rescue ops into the hobby, especially as directed toward, as Jesse describes, “the bored, frustrated, unsatisfied, serotonin deprived gamers.” Especially in your terms of dragging them anywhere, which accurately recognizes that regardless of their unhappiness, they are not self-motivated and often actively resist.
My observation over the past three decades suggest that when one tries to do this, the reverse effect is very strong. One plays with them in a fashion they insist upon, one meets them halfway in social and procedural terms, one concedes things one shouldn’t “just for now,” one establishes an ongoing dialogue predicated upon the hope that any time soon, they’ll come around.
Is it any wonder that, over and over, I see the rescuer fall back into the habits of thought and play that they were trying to help the other realize were not working? That the rescuer develops skills of uncritical interpretation and blindness toward the others’ complete lack of effort or interest? That they’ll “listen” only insofar as the rescuer continues to play and do as they do?
Every recovering addict thinks they absolutely must go save their best friend and drug-buddy Johnny, first thing, top priority, emergency. Gotta save Johnny! Get him into this program I’m in, stat! … yes, yes, I know, they say not to go into the old joints and not to associate with old friends, but this is Johnny we’re talking about, he’s so unhappy, look how wretched he is, he’s my best bud, he cares about me and will listen to me, and when he sees how perky and high on life I am, then he’ll get in the program too, and he’ll get clean too, and we’ll do it together! Johnny and me!
… and we find you six months later, shooting up daily in a stinking hallway with Johnny. Probably even still talking about the program and how great it is to be clean, then asking us for a few bucks to tide you over.
But that isn’t a call for total social separation. I think the hobby’s cultural spaces include many people who are inclined toward role-playing as medium open for expression, and who would indeed do exactly that when playing titles from throughout the activity’s history … if they don’t get ruined by the hobby culture or (wisely) flee from it. In this context, playing within the hobby spaces is not too bad a thing, as finding such people is often tremendously effective and exciting, although I advise extreme self-care and a strong immune response toward signals of inclusion.
I should qualify this analogy: real-life opiate addiction is not to be villainized, as the exogenous dosage is far more than any nervous system can be expected to manage. People in this trap also cause a lot less social harm, per person, than a lot of people who aren’t addicts. The heroin-Johnny is not human garbage to me. I am far less sympathetic to people embedded in the toxic social scene that implicates endogenous processes; yes, they are addicts too, but there’s a lot of willful blindness and doubling down going on there. If we’re talking about hobby gaming and the distortion of role-playing inside it, then the next-hot-game Johnny, self-identified “indie” or not, and no matter how bored or miserable, is about as far from a worthy cause as I can imagine … and to get back to the point, no text whatsoever, not even the best possible testimonial in Jesse’s terms, can help them in any way. You could pass it around in buckets-ful and the only thing that will happen is a pusher will appropriate its phrases for a brand on his next hot high-priced bundle of stink.