What an amazingly interesting post, Bill. I'm just going to take up one little part of it here - I hope others will do the same, because there's so much here to talk about.
Ron wrote: "I suggest with great fervor that combat is only one form of conflict, and character survival is only one in-game metric for success." And you replied: "Well, ok, I buy the argument as it pertains to character survival. But as it relates to combat, I am less convinced and await enlightenment."
Here are two games which to me really indicate different Gamist competition possibilities: Robin Laws' 'Pantheon', which has these weird little story games where you score points for doing funny things with the stories, and Ron Edwards' 'Elfs', where player conflict and character conflict run side by side in all kinds of ways that involve Gamist competition but need not necessarily involve fighting. In fact, the game seems to support a funny kind of competition in slapstick in a really cool way, to judge by the rpg.net reviews (no play experience yet myself). But anyway both of these seem to facilitate Gamism, and the competition does not center around combat in either one, although in Elfs combat situations are certainly one of many ways to get the game's Step On Up going.
Or, more topically, have a look at the Great Ork Gods playtest... The attribute Oog is used purely as a "score," it has no in game currency value whatsoever, it brings no benefits beyond "I got it.... and you don't."
And for the other points... Bill, i think this isn't just one of the great posts on Ron's essays. I think it's about a dozen. Magic 8-ball says "Responses will follow in spearate baby threads." But, given time, you could feed discussion for about a month with thsi baby alone...
What Pete said. Split this, and split frequently.
Assuming that this will become the "alternate gamism" thread, my position is that combat is merely traditional ane filial. That is, tradition is the form we see gamism in because of D&D. Had the first RPG instead been Buildings & Businesses, I'd be trying to tell people now that they ought to try combat instead of business competiton as a model for RPG gamism (and if you don't think that's a compelling enough arena for competition, I refer you to the current TV show, "The Apprentice").
This doesn't mean that there's any imperative to go this way. Just that people have ignored a wide open ground for far too long for no particularly good reason at all.
Mike
Hi Bill,
I finally managed to get a few minutes to go through your post! I regret that I have to take it fairly piecemeal. For now, I'll keep all my responses in this thread, in a kind of "responses to your reactions" way, and if you or anyone else wants to take a sub-topic to a new thread, that would be fine.
Here's a general point. You use lots of non-role-playing analogies in your post, and usually you qualify them as being "heresy" or expecting some kind of disapproval. Dude, I use non-RPG analogies all the time, like the basketball thing in the Gamism essay. As long as we understand that we're using them only for points of analogy and reference, all is well.
Regarding Narrativist vs. Simulationist agendas:QuoteIs Narrative play better facilitated by a game world filled with question marks? Or do some things need to be established to even have a game world? What's the cutoff?
I think some things need to be established even to have a game-world. The section "where do little Premises come from" is specifically about this point. Even Universalis starts with a Tenets step in order to accomplish this specific thing. As for where the cutoff is between not-enough and too-much, that will vary greatly by group, by instance, and by whatever else could factor in there. Consider that to be a very spinnable dial.
QuoteIs discovery of pre-determined elements anathema to Narrativism? Is employing this technique the equivalent of knocking off that module and returning to the chassis (i.e. necessarily Simulationism)?
My answer is "No" to both questions. You do not have to throw prep and plans out the window in order to play Narrativist. That would be removing a great deal of content from play and turn the whole endeavor into improv, which to my thinking shares only a teeny element of overlap with role-playing of any mode.
One clarifier, actually: discovery of pre-determined elements
as a priority is indeed not very facilitative to Narrativist play. As a technique or component among many others, though, it's a fine thing.
QuoteOk. Does the adversity that a Narrativist GM serves up necessarily challenge the limits of character behavior as an expression of their identity, or is that particular to Sorcerer? Or is it an element of Narrativist diversity?
That's merely a technique, which indeed happens to be a feature of Sorcerer, not a defining feature of Narrativist play. Also, just as food for thought, one might target the center of a character's behavioral tendencies, rather than the edges. And finally, who's to say that it's the GM who "serves up" the adversity? Adversity for a character can arise from and/or be fine-tuned by any person at the table, most particularly including that character's player. Remember that in Sorcerer, the Kicker is written by the player, not the GM.
QuoteIndulge me. What is an example of a character acting out of profile, derailing a Simulationist agenda? If someone could do 1st ed. AD&D (if that's Sim), that would help me understand better.
Bearing in mind that playing early D&D and AD&D (pre-1980, say) cannot be easily classified - I'd have to know
tons of stuff about your group and circumstances and examples of play - let's try it.
Presuming (these are very important) the following:
- The group is committed to a fantasy setting they have built through a couple of years of intensive play, beginning while they were learning the rules and now progressed to a heavily mapped and well-understood fantasy city a lot like Leiber's Lankhmar. They are not at all interested in competitive level-up, and everyone typically works to make sure everyone else isn't hosed by momentarily mis-remembering a rule. In other words, they are not especially, if at all, Gamist.
- The group is committed to a number of setting-specific interpretations of certain rules about thief and assassin alignments. Assassins must be Evil, hence there are no Good assassins
ever, hence thieves (similarly constrained to be Neutral) and assassins have a number of potential values-clashes. So the group is very focused on jockeying and negotiating among thieves' and assassins' guilds during the game. [Note that they are using the original rules as a creative constraint; this group has done so without much self-reflecting and considers themselves to be playing the game "as written" despite ignoring numerous rules that are irrelevant to their Sim/Setting agenda.]
Then:
- A player decides to have his assassin character (a) default on a job, (b) save the thieves' guildmaster's daughter from goblins, (c) return her to her real mother who'd thought she was dead, and (d) die in a hail of crossbow bolts between the city guard and his ex-compatriots, because it buys time for the mother and daughter to escape secretly from the city.
Bear in mind that a great deal of this whole setting and the situations the GM presents are predicated on assassins being necessarily Evil. And being Evil is, for this group, a social-contract agreement that you
will play your character a certain way (they are ignoring the section in the DM Guide which openly addresses "wandering" play among alignments). The GM takes these alignments into account when prepping adventures, and everyone is used to the idea that when your character's alignment is invoked, he or she delivers.
Basically, by acting as described above, the player has fucked up the scenario, the GM's plans, the agreement among everyone else, and so on. "You're not playing a paladin, damn it!" "What's the point of playing an assassin if you're going to do that?" "What, you don't understand Evil?" My point is not that they are pointing to the
rules (which they might be doing literally, albeit futilely), they are actually pointing to their own shared [Social Contract [Exploration [Creative Agenda]]]
historical agreement. The player has not only broken the "How we play alignments" agreement, but most especially the "alignments play a role in the social and political conflicts of this setting" agreement, which is the whole foundation of playing at all, for this group.
That's this group, of course. In another group, cries of joy and huzzah might arise. In yet another ... etc, etc.
Does that help at all?
QuoteJust curious: if you have a system with characters summarized by a one-line issue, an explicit procedure to improvize situation (in a chain of causality) relevant to those issues, . . . is it necessarily Nar? Or instead, is it one of these Sims in Nar's clothing?
Neither. Or could be either. Or anything. You've merely presented a couple of techniques, not an agenda that can be analyzed.
Quoteis less metagame necessarily less bolt-on agenda?
(We're still discussing primarily Simulationist issues.) Historically, yes; conceptually/theoretically, no.
Lots o'Gamism next.Your deer-hunting example is a good one, because build-up counts as part of the process. While you're waiting and being all concentrated and focused, you are still indeed hunting. You don't, for example, pull out the skin-mags and speak to Rosie Palms. You don't knit. You don't do a little dance. No, you're hunting. Waiting, enduring the frost, being still are all part of the hunting.
Situation may take a bit to form in Gamist play, but it needs to
be forming, or in action. You must, so to speak, be in deer territory.
QuoteHere's a zinger: does challenge necessarily denote Gamism? If not, would challenge "in the context of competition" flip the switch?
Zinger-schminger. The question's nonsensical. First you check whether Step On Up is occuring; if yes, then just stick the "Challenge" label onto the Situation. That's all there is to it. You can't go in reverse.
Can you propose a situation in which all manner of
opportuntity for Gamist play is available? Sure, but that doesn't
make the play Gamist; only Stepping On Up does that.
QuoteWhat is reasonable to expect in terms of a mature Gamist attitude? Engaged by the in-game challenges (e.g. kill the dragon) but detached from the metagame consequences (e.g. my friends all witness my defeat)?
Generally speaking, the only person who can answer a "what is reasonable" question of this kind is you, personally. People and groups vary all over the map. More specifically, your proposed answer puzzles me greatly: if one is detached from the metagame consequences, no Step On Up is possible
at all. The whole point of Gamist play is to be invested in such consequences.
Many people who aren't interested in Gamist play, or who have only done so in an adolescent context, only conceive of such investment as Wimpiness and the Hard Core. I argue that this viewpoint is a tad limited.
QuoteQuoteBeware of end-runs which permit a Challenge to be solved without the requisite Step On Up ability or competence. Playtest the game multiple times with people who are determined to beat it.
The second sentence I understand. Will someone plain-speak the first one?
H'm, seems pretty clear to me ... Can you win without demonstrating personal strategy or guts? Just because you picked the (here's one of those analogies) the Channel-Fireball feature? Then the game system's broken.
And on to Narrativism.QuoteConsider a character whose defining interest is to save enough money to put her son through college so he can have a better life than she did. The GM says, "At work, your associate relates, through tears, how her son, your son's friend, emptied out her checking account and ran off. You return home and find a note from your son. He's left on a road trip to Mexico with that ne'er do well!" Premise? Or just a bit of pulp fiction?
Neither. This is merely Situation. We don't know whether a "defining interest" is involved until we see what the character
does, and even that won't be a Premise unless the people at the table get invested in it.
Quoteit sounds like Ron is saying a campaign should be stamped with something like "Is love worth dying for?" Or maybe each character gets their own stamp, like everyone gets a fortune cookie at a Chinese restaurant. I take the source issue to be Narrativist diversity, but does this value-study syntax strike anyone else as being a bit dry?
Two things. First, your perception that I'm talking about "stamping" a Premise-label onto play needs some revising. I'm not talking about what we say to one another while or before we play, I'm talking about what our play is doing whether we notice it or not.
Second, sure it's dry. This is an analytical essay, not an inspirational tract. The essay is nothing
but dry, boring, definitive descriptions. By contrast, my supplements for Sorcerer are biased, focused, with any luck inspirational, and totally dismissive toward anything but Narrativist play. That's because they're supplements for Sorcerer. Does that make sense at all?
QuoteSo we can still say, "Ok, you're in a bar. This guy with an eye patch sits down at your table and says in a gravelly voice, 'I've a need for sword hands,'" right? And can the players still do things like go to the market or visit the alchemist shop? Just to see what's there?
Uh-huh. I confess to being very puzzled at what you imagined people might be doing if they
weren't doing that. Perhaps a touch of synecdoche is going on, in the sense that you're thinking that only Simulationist play is "really" role-playing in the sense of using shared imagination as the medium.
QuoteDoes this mean that it's Premise if it matters to the players?
It's only Premise if it matters to the players. In this sense, Story Now and Step On Up are 100% identical, and a certain case is being made for the same relative to The Right to Dream in a neighboring thread or two. Oh, and the GM is a player too.
QuoteI think, also, an important GM duty for this type of play is to be continuously presenting something worth making a decision about. (Which sounds exhausting.)
Nah! It's way easy, actually. It's only exhausting if you make the little error you're making and concentrate this duty in the hands of one person.
QuoteQuoteI submit that trying to resolve conflicts by hoping that the accumulated successful tasks will turn out to be about what you want, is an unreliable and unsatisfying way to role-play when developing Narrativist protagonism.
I can see myself making this pitfall. Is Fortune in the Middle the best tonic? Or is there a more general, logical opposite?
Fortune-in-the-middle is only one option, although it is a good one. You're right to scent another, more general one, though - always turn to the Reward system, the single most important part of System in general, relative to Creative Agenda.
QuoteCan there be modules a la AD&D for Narrativist games? Or would that be antithetical to the style of play?
There's a whole thread goin' on about this now. You'll have to provide a far more focused reference point than "modules a la AD&D," though.
QuoteQuoteA related tendency is to rely on restraint, stating or implying that "good players wouldn't do that!" I suggest two alternative approaches: (1) that System provide "rebound" or consequences to make the variety of choices interesting, and (2) stating explict Creative Agenda expectations up front.
Regarding (1), I'm all for any technique or design approach that provides for a variety of interesting choices. What is meant by rebound?
A resolution system with "rebound" not only provides feedback for the imaginative expression of what's going on, but also shows you real consequences to your character's in-game actions. No matter what, however the dice fell, stuff happened and the situation is now changed. The Whiff Factor is, by definition, a low-to-absent rebound feature ("I miss. Next round"). So is unstructured Drama resolution ("They attack you." "I kill them").
QuoteI read that Ron's intent or ambition is to compete with other types of social activities (e.g. playing poker, going to clubs, watching Simpsons re-runs, etc.). There are a number of layers of apathy to pierce.
...
I remember having to beg one of my groups to give M:TG a try. They were just more comfortable playing Nintendo and making home videos at the time.
I submit that most people who self-identify as "gamers" or "role-players" are extremely learning-aversive and extremely neophobic. When you turn to people outside of the subculture, you may be astounded at how willing they are to try.
I think I should also explain that I do not intend or have ambition toward role-playing competing with other social activities. My claim is that the hobby/activity already does so and hence, to be a reliable part of one's life, ought to provide at least as much enjoyment and opportunity for positive social feedback. I'm speaking on a personal level, not on a social-change expand-the-hobby level.
I think you'll like the Infamous Five links I recently summarized in Site Discussion.
Whew! There ya go - thanks for reading and writing.
Best,
Ron
It sounds like I've been trying to pigeon hole CA by associating various Techniques. And while some help/hinder more than others, there are few (none?) hard associations.
Quote from: Ron Edwards- A player decides to have his assassin character (a) default on a job, (b) save the thieves' guildmaster's daughter from goblins, (c) return her to her real mother who'd thought she was dead, and (d) die in a hail of crossbow bolts between the city guard and his ex-compatriots, because it buys time for the mother and daughter to escape secretly from the city.
LOL.
Quote from: Ron EdwardsDoes that help at all?
Yes. Enormously.
Quote from: Ron EdwardsZinger-schminger. The question's nonsensical. First you check whether Step On Up is occuring; if yes, then just stick the "Challenge" label onto the Situation. That's all there is to it. You can't go in reverse.
Can you propose a situation in which all manner of opportuntity for Gamist play is available? Sure, but that doesn't make the play Gamist; only Stepping On Up does that.
It sounds like Step On Up is a quality of spirit revealed in a player's response to Situation. i.e. Establishing CA is not a GM duty. (Though it may be revealed by his actions as a player.)
Quote from: Ron EdwardsMore specifically, your proposed answer puzzles me greatly: if one is detached from the metagame consequences, no Step On Up is possible at all. The whole point of Gamist play is to be invested in such consequences.
Many people who aren't interested in Gamist play, or who have only done so in an adolescent context, only conceive of such investment as Wimpiness and the Hard Core. I argue that this viewpoint is a tad limited.
More often than not, I fight hard. I'll back down (without seeming to) if a friend is highly invested and appears to be buckling under the strain, but otherwise, I'd just as soon he take it on the chin. I would like to think my range of aesthetic allows for grainy competition.
However, I find there is a quality of detachment or serenity or unconcern that facilitates finding the limit of your performance capacity. You remain deeply committed to the endeavor, but you also instantaneously release feelings of disappointment. Because the next move is coming up, and you need your mind clear to wield its full power.
I once saw a guy get ejected from a fantasy con in Dallas because he refused to desist dissent of a ruling about a mech's lack of a rotating torso. Clearly there was something at work there other than an empowering viewpoint.
Quote from: Ron EdwardsH'm, seems pretty clear to me ... Can you win without demonstrating personal strategy or guts? Just because you picked the (here's one of those analogies) the Channel-Fireball feature? Then the game system's broken.
(Bing!) Crystal.
Quote from: Ron EdwardsNeither. This is merely Situation. We don't know whether a "defining interest" is involved until we see what the character does, and even that won't be a Premise unless the people at the table get invested in it.
More of my CA/Technique conflation.
Quote from: Ron EdwardsFirst, your perception that I'm talking about "stamping" a Premise-label onto play needs some revising. I'm not talking about what we say to one another while or before we play, I'm talking about what our play is doing whether we notice it or not.
Play demonstrates CA (i.e. Step On Up, Premise, . . . an (arguably active) motive quality for Sim).
Quote from: Ron EdwardsSecond, sure it's dry. This is an analytical essay, not an inspirational tract. The essay is nothing but dry, boring, definitive descriptions. By contrast, my supplements for Sorcerer are biased, focused, with any luck inspirational, and totally dismissive toward anything but Narrativist play. That's because they're supplements for Sorcerer. Does that make sense at all?
Certainly. This is actually a point I was hoping others would answer to as a way of providing inspiration. (Restrains urge to apologize.)
Quote from: Ron EdwardsUh-huh. I confess to being very puzzled at what you imagined people might be doing if they weren't doing that. Perhaps a touch of synecdoche is going on, in the sense that you're thinking that only Simulationist play is "really" role-playing in the sense of using shared imagination as the medium.
All modes are expressed through the medium of shared imagination. I want to avoid discussing intent. I mean to recognize the viability of every mode. I'm sensing that CA is not something that is . . . pursued? Words fail me. Once again, it occurs to me that CA may be better experienced than understood.
Quote from: Ron EdwardsYou're right to scent another, more general one, though - always turn to the Reward system, the single most important part of System in general, relative to Creative Agenda.
You know, I've never trucked with the value of character advancement in RPG's. It's always struck me as absurd. I mean, if a character's cool because he does something, why rate it? Hell, it
better work. Else, why am I playing him? I mention this as the consequence of Reward.
To me, ideally, Reward should facilitate play
in that session. Else, it's a bit of accounting (phagh!), IMHO.
Quote from: Ron EdwardsA resolution system with "rebound" not only provides feedback for the imaginative expression of what's going on, but also shows you real consequences to your character's in-game actions. No matter what, however the dice fell, stuff happened and the situation is now changed. The Whiff Factor is, by definition, a low-to-absent rebound feature ("I miss. Next round"). So is unstructured Drama resolution ("They attack you." "I kill them").
Would TROS be an example of a system with high rebound as pertains to combat? And Story Engine be an example of a system with overall low rebound?
Quote from: Ron EdwardsI think I should also explain that I do not intend or have ambition toward role-playing competing with other social activities. My claim is that the hobby/activity already does so and hence, to be a reliable part of one's life, ought to provide at least as much enjoyment and opportunity for positive social feedback. I'm speaking on a personal level, not on a social-change expand-the-hobby level.
I understand your position better now. Thx for clearing that up.
Infamous Five Links?! Good God, that's a lot of reading! ;)
Hi Bill,
Excellent conversation!
QuoteEstablishing CA is not a GM duty. (Though it may be revealed by his actions as a player.)
That is exceptionally well said. I wish I'd understood the importance of articulating this idea much, much earlier. I've carried on dialogues with people for months before realizing that they had interpreted my ideas as "what a GM must impose on the players."
QuoteI find there is a quality of detachment or serenity or unconcern that facilitates finding the limit of your performance capacity. You remain deeply committed to the endeavor, but you also instantaneously release feelings of disappointment. Because the next move is coming up, and you need your mind clear to wield its full power.
Yeah, that's true. Investment, yes, but also the willingness to move with the punches and adapt, if possible, to setbacks - and as well, when fairly beaten, to handle it properly. This is the essence of non-Wimpiness, and Wimps will never understand it until they make a 180 emotional adjustment.
Merely "wanting to win" is no particular virtue in a Step On Up situation.
QuoteWould TROS be an example of a system with high rebound as pertains to combat? And Story Engine be an example of a system with overall low rebound?
TROS, absolutely. In fact, TROS, The Burning Wheel, and Sorcerer constitute a kind of interesting "triangle" of providing rebound in very similar ways, when it comes to combat and potentially other complex conflicts. Story Engine is a little tricky in this regard ... in play, I've found its damage system to be rather savage, in the sense that its effects on characters simply remove their most effective/interesting features from play. TROS does
not do this; your character might lose a limb or otherwise be hideously maimed, but his or her Spiritual Attributes will still fire on all cylinders. So I do consider SE "low rebound," but not because "nothing happens" - instead because nothing
useful happens. I wrote Trollbabe to be especially "bouncy" in terms of rebound.
Best,
Ron