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I was very unhappy with Mike Holmes' conclusions in The Roots of Sim II (in his post of February 9th, if it has continued), so I'm starting a new thread to push for a new term, a new distinction, that marks simulationism as distinct rather than default.

The attitude generally seems to be that at any moment at which you are not actively pursuing narrativism or gamism, you are "defaulting" to a simulationist mode. I don't believe the Creative Agenda model intended this, and I don't think it's true.

It is generally agreed that all modes of role playing are founded on Exploration, that this is what we are doing, in that we are creating events in the Shared Imaginary Space through exploration. What a Creative Agenda means is, this is what we are attempting to explore.

In Narrativism, we are exploring Premise; we seek to resolve conflicts of a moral, ethical, or personal nature into answers, and so explore moral and, if you'll permit me, spiritual truth. The thing we hope to gain is meaningful stories, or in a single word, Answers.

In Gamism, we are exploring challenge; we seek to overcome obstacles of a sort which tests our abilities as players--whether we can solve the puzzles ourselves or tactically organize our character actions to defeat the enemies, it's about proving our own abilities. The thing we hope to gain is Glory.

It has been correctly observed that when we are not actively pursuing Answers or Victory we are still role playing; we are still exploring. The mistake that is made is that this means we have fallen into Simulationism by default. That's not at all true.

Creative Agenda might be compared to steering a car. When I drive, my hands are almost always on the wheel (well, at least one of them). When I come to a bend in the road, I turn the wheel; when I come to a turn I wish to make, I turn the wheel more sharply; when the road is slick or odd, I may hold the wheel straight. Most of the time that I am driving, the car is going straight, and would continue to do so without my assistance. If the road is straight and level and my alignment is good, I could let go of the steering wheel and continue to go in the correct direction. Yet my hand is on the wheel because I am responsible for steering the car even when that means nothing more than keeping my hand on the wheel until it's time to turn it again, preventing it from going off course rather than keeping it on course.

I say that this is like Creative Agenda because during narrativist and gamist play we are not always steering the car; but we are always keeping our hands on the wheel. We're still playing narrativist or gamist when we're not actively doing "it", it's just that at the moment we're going straight and don't need to do anything but rest our hands on the wheel and let it move forward.

Why isn't this simulationist play? It is not simulationist play because at those moment we are not pursuing simulationist goals or objectives; we are still pursuing narrativist or gamist goals or objectives, but doing so in a quiet exploratory mode.

If I'm right, then there's an "it" that defines simulationism, something that is actively pursued in the simulationist model (consciously or unconsciously, just as in the other models) which is not merely exploration and yet is like exploration.

There is. I would like to call it Discovery. It is the pursuit of knowledge about the setting, character, situation, system, or color--not the mere testing of it for gamist ends, nor the examination of it for narrativist ends, but the study of it for simulationist ends. Gamism seeks Glory; Narrativism seeks Answers; for Simulationism, "It" is Understanding.

This is why the Beeg Horseshoe theory doesn't work; this is why I find Mike's conclusions in the cited thread lacking. They fail to recognize that the pursuit of understanding is the specific positive goal of Simulationism. If you are not seeking that as an end in itself, then you are not playing Simulationist; you are merely in the quiet exploration mode in whichever Creative Agendum you are pursuing.

Simulationism is not the default mode into which we fall when we don't play the others; it is a positive mode which must be entered by choice to the same degree as the others. It is something we do.

I do hope we can grasp this idea that simulationism isn't some second-class member of the triumvirate. It is every bit as focused and independent as its companions.

--M. J. Young

This speaks to me. On the one hand, I've always disliked negative definitions, on the other, I very much feel something present--as opposed to two things absent--when playing S. So, I agree that it should be possible to get a positive definition on S play.

As a side-effect, that would make GNS-classification a lot more reliable. We currently have a G-test and an N-test, and if you fail both, you must be playing S. Not having any redudancy when the tests are both abstract and based on concepts that are necessarily somewhat fuzzy

• makes reliable classification difficult. Having an S-test would go a long way to help that.
  
  Discovery is, I think, a hole-in-one for the positive property. Discovery for the sake of discovery, as opposed to discovery in service of some other goal. I've found that one way to get people thinking about why they want to discover is to ask them, "What do you like better, a good question or a good answer?"
  
  Some people see questions as precursors to answers, others see answers as the way to ask even more interesting questions. A similar question would be, "What is more interesting, the journey or the destination?"
  
  SR
  --
  
• In the non-pejorative sense of Fuzzy Set Theory.

MJ, I'm trying to make Simulationism the most important mode, not some "second-class" thing. I'm trying to make Gamism and Narrativism the "second-class" things to the primary form of play Simulationism. This is why I say that I'm against the Beeg Horseshoe theory as it stands. I don't know how you could read all that I've posted, and not see that. The entire point of the last thread was to discredit the idea that sim was somehow the product of bad or accidental play, but a positive thing.

Forgive the ad hominem, but it sounds to me like you have some paranoid fantasy that I'm some shill for the opposing side who's trying to pull a fast one on everyone, and convince them that sim is bad because it's better than the rest. I've tried to explain this before, but still you persist in seeing me as doing the opposite of my intent. Why do you insist that by looking at the fact that Sim is defined as prioritizing exploration, the primary activity of RPGs, that this means that Sim must somehow be a secondary activity? My whole point in the previous post is that, without exploration, we're not roleplaying. So Sim, then, is ensuring that we're roleplaying. A very postitive thing, IMO.

Your position is unfathomable to me. It's like I've espoused some political position like a Pro-life in order to protect innocent lives, and you're telling me that I'm threatening innocent lives by adopting it. I don't want people to denigrate Sim, I want them to realize that they need to understand that it's always a priority. Inescapable. Unlike Gamism and Narrativism which only show up in an identifiable way occasionally.

As for the wheel analogy, we don't know if the hand is on the wheel or not, nor do we care. That speaks to motives, and the theory is behavioral. All that matters is that some players complain if the car to go one way, and others complain if the car to go another. As long as the car goes a direction that everyone likes, nobody cares how it gets there. That's exactly my point. Maybe you are actively supporting exploration, maybe you're doing something else, but until the car makes a turn, it doesn't matter. IOW, I have no problem with your model to that point. I've said that Sim is something like "default" (actually never used that term, that's yours), but that's just to get people to understand. In actuality, it doesn't matter if it is "default" or an active choice. In the end, its the choice that we're making almost all the time.

The GM says, there's a street. You say your character crosses it. No gamism there, no narrativism, just exploration. You didn't say "I jump to the moon", because that wouldn't be plausible. You have the character perform a plausible action because you're prioritizing exploration. Note, you could take that moment to play gamist or narrativist, say, asking for a contest to dodge some oncoming traffic, or narrating how your character thought about his current moral dillemma and came to a decision about it as part of crossing the street. But you don't ususally do that, you just cross the street. It's the majority of everyone's play.

Now, the problem I have with the idea of Discovery as a concept, is that it's a goal. GNS isn't about goals, or motivations. Those things don't matter, because there's no way to know if the behaviors involved in persuing these goals will conflict. Basically, you're trying to make GNS more than it is overall by assigning goals to the play. Making it an entirely different model that you're espousing at that point.

I wouldn't say right off that your model is wrong, but I think you'd have to posit it as something else entirely before we could even discuss it sensibly. It could even be a part of CA for all I know. It's just not GNS. For it to be so, you'd have to point to some behavior that was discovery based that was different, somehow, than exploring.

GNS accurately discusses the points where potential group friction occurs, IMO. One of them is the point where a player decides to take the exploratory approach over the gamism or narrativism approach at some point. All I've said, is that, Simulationism is going with the exploration approach at that point, and that I feel that this is done not to spite gamism or narrativism (which indeed would make it an immature act), but because if we're to have any gamism or narrativism at all (assuming that you want them at all, which you might not), you must prioritize exploration to some extent at all times.

SR, the entire GNS model is based on negative descriptions. There's no way around this. I mean, all three can be said to have their positive aspects exploration, challenge, theme. But when it comes down to it, its all about what annoys people. Nobody ever said, "That guy creates too much theme," or, "Hey, stop exploring!" No, what they say is, "You didn't use good tactics," or, "You aren't being realistic." This is very important. To that extent, a "Narrativist" is that person who notes when players aren't doing their best to create theme, rather doing something else. So, very much, the definition of Narrativism is "not doing something else". The mutual exculsivity of the three modes, is what makes them potentially problematic. Hence, to an extent, all modes are defined by that which they aren't. Simulationism is as much "not doing gamism or narrativistm" as much as it's "prioritizing exploration." Just as gamism is not only "addressing player challenge" but also "not doing simulationism or narrativism."

Mike

Don't ask me why, but the following quote made me think of this topic, form this thread (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=9548&start=15&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=)

Quote from: Shreyas SampatIt is an interesting setting, not a detailed one, that is a plus. Detail does not correlate with interesting, either.

I'd like to ask what the role of detail is in Simulationism.

Very simply, for some people, plausibility or whatever you want to call that special property of RPGs that put you in them, doesn't come without a certain level of detail.

Remember that across all agendas there are many different sub-categorizations. There's no "right" way for everybody to get their support for exploration, just many different ways. Detail is one.

Mike

Quote from: Mike HolmesVery simply, for some people, plausibility or whatever you want to call that special property of RPGs that put you in them, doesn't come without a certain level of detail.

Hmm. Unfortunately, this covers all the agendas. Detail in Narrativism help produce plausibility in whatever events occur. Detail in Gamism would identify elements of tacticle/strategic purpose. In either the detail made just be flavoring. What does it do for Sim?

Detail in Sim helps to support the shared imagined reality, the Dream.  The richer the details the greater the chance that a player will find the Imagined Reality experience rich as well.  There is no one to one corrolation on this, just a tendency.

Aure Entaluva,

Silmenume

Quote from: Jack Spencer JrHmm. Unfortunately, this covers all the agendas. Detail in Narrativism help produce plausibility in whatever events occur. Detail in Gamism would identify elements of tacticle/strategic purpose. In either the detail made just be flavoring. What does it do for Sim?

I'm tempted to reply snarkily, Jack. It's like you're unwilling to do the reading. Exploration is that thing that Monopoly doesn't have. If detail supports sim for one player (and it might not for you, hence your problem understanding this), it means that it's there to create that thing that doesn't exist in Monopoly. The exploration sense itself. The feeling that the shared imaginative space has some sort of reality to it.

If you don't even feel that, then I wonder why you bother playing RPGs at all. See Ron's hard questions about Gamism and Narrativism.

Oh, wait, I forgot, you don't actually play RPGs, do you?

Oops. Ended up sarky anyhow.

Mike

Let me start by apologizing to Mike for any confusion I might have with his posts. I will confess that that is a very long thread that sprang quite a bit over the weekend (I have a commitment that keeps me away on Saturdays), and I was having a bit of trouble sorting it all out in my own mind.

However, I still disagree with his position as described here.

Mike appears to be saying that whenever we are not prioritizing Nar or Gam agenda we are prioritizing a Sim agendum. I am saying that exploration as the core medium of what we are doing is distinct from exploration (which I am calling discovery) prioritized.

I do recognize that Mike is one of the leading proponents of simulationism as a valid mode of play; he saw it before I did, I think, although that's going back a few years. I may have this wrong at some point; but I don't think this is that point.

Quote from: Mike HolmesWhy do you insist that by looking at the fact that Sim is defined as prioritizing exploration, the primary activity of RPGs, that this means that Sim must somehow be a secondary activity? My whole point in the previous post is that, without exploration, we're not roleplaying. So Sim, then, is ensuring that we're roleplaying. A very postitive thing, IMO.

It would be a very positive thing, perhaps, if it were true; and yet at the same time, if it were true, it would be taking us back to "simulationism is exploration plus nothing", the poor kid sister of the other two girls in the family, "exploration plus moral conflict" and "exploration plus challenge".

Simulationism is exploration plus exploration, as it were; that's why Ron calls it "Exploration Squared". It is not what we do when we aren't doing the other two; it is not what we do that supports the other two. Exploration alone, the creating of the shared imaginary space, is not sufficient to be simulationism. It has to go beyond that, to be exploration with an objective of discovery for its own sake.

Quote from: As an example, MikeThe GM says, there's a street. You say your character crosses it. No gamism there, no narrativism, just exploration. You didn't say "I jump to the moon", because that wouldn't be plausible. You have the character perform a plausible action because you're prioritizing exploration.

This, I think, is where we are diverging. At that moment, in this example, you are not prioritizing anything. Why did you have the character cross the street? To get to the other side? To what end? To find out what was there. To what end? I don't know. But ultimately it is that question that matters to your creative agendum. Generally you probably didn't know what else to do, so you're marking time--which is mere exploration, not prioritization of exploration. If you went across the street to see if you could learn something about the villain, then you are still prioritizing whatever you were prioritizing before when you confronted the villain. If you crossed the street to get to the weapons store, you're still involved in prioritizing whatever it is that is involved in that. If your inn is across the street and you are returning to it--why did you cross the street?

If you crossed the street only because the referee said it was in front of you and that's the direction you were going, you're not prioritizing anything; you're barely even exploring, although you are exploring. It's not your priority.

All Creative Agenda are founded on the preliminary foundation that we are exploring; they then define what and why we are exploring. In essence, a Creative Agenda is the answer to the question, why are we playing this game at all tonight? What do we hope to gain from it, what inherent reward do we hope to receive? It doesn't answer the question, why did we cross the street that was in front of us (unless there is some clear connection). It assumes that we are doing exploration for some purpose.

Yes, the evidence for Creative Agendum is behavioral; however, as has been hashed out here many times before, that behavior is a means of impugning motive.

Ron's example of the two trumpet players goes to the heart of this: it isn't the guy who says he wants to be a great trumpet player, nor the guy who thinks he wants to be a great trumpet player. The guy who goes out and plays, practices, spends time becoming great--that is the guy, the only guy, who wanted to be a great trumpet player, really. Thus we discover who wants to be a great trumpet player by which of them does what is necessary to be a great trumpet player.

In the same way, we discover who truly has the intention of playing narrativist or gamist or simulationist not based on what they say but on what they actually do; yet what they do tells us what it is they wanted to do,  gives us that motive, that goal, that agendum. Intent is part of the model; it is the part that is derived from the behavior. We observe the behavior, and we conclude from what the players do that they are trying to achieve a particular outcome, which means that they have the intention of doing so. They might think they have a different intent, but it is the actions that tell us their real intent. To say that someone is narrativist is to say that he plays in a manner that reveals he is trying to reap the kinds of rewards that are gained from effective narrativist play.

Thus what matters is not whether crossing the street doesn't happen to further a narrativist or gamist agendum in any evident way; it is not simulationist unless it furthers a simulationist agendum in an evident way. It is no different from "He pulls the trigger on the gun." Completely out of context, that means nothing; it could equally be said in gamist, narrativist, or simulationist play. What if he says it while alone in the study? What if it is specified that he is testing whether the gun works? That does not make it simulationist.

• He pulled the trigger on the gun; the hammer shifted. "Good" he said; "it works. Let me load it and go track down that monster; I can beat it with this."
• He pulled the trigger on the gun; in his mind he pictured Devon, who had taken everything from him. He imagined Devon standing in front of him, pointed the barrel at that image in his mind, and considered whether he had it within himself to kill a man. Not any man--this man. Maybe he could.
• He pulled the trigger on the gun. Fancy it still working after all this time sitting in the drawer; his great-grandfather's revolver was famous in its time. Ol' Pete Brannigan, they called him, one of the more successful marshals to patrol this county. He had brought in or brought down more outlaws than his three predecessors. This gun probably would still be serviceable; maybe a bit of cleaning, some oiling, get some ammo--it would be a great link to his past, might help him learn more about his ancestors and their place around here.[/list:u]
  Exploration is not Simulationist unless it prioritizes discovery. It is not that when we don't have a specific Gamist or Narrativist reason to do something and so do whatever is most realistic, that's simulationist. That's merely basic exploration.
  

  Quote from: He alsoGNS isn't about goals, or motivations. Those things don't matter, because there's no way to know if the behaviors involved in persuing these goals will conflict. Basically, you're trying to make GNS more than it is overall by assigning goals to the play.

  You were there, Mike, when System Does Matter turned theory on its head. Back then what we now call "Creative Agenda" were called "GNS goals". The model has always been about what players are trying to get from play; that means intent. That language was dropped, altered several times, because people confusing what they think they want and what they say they want with what they really want. What you really want is determined by what you do, not what you say or what you think; it is not less a goal or motive or intent because of that.
  
  In fact, the theory cannot get away from this aspect. The new term, Agenda still means what you are trying to achieve, what your objective is. We work backwards from behavior to intent, but it is still about reaching intent.
  

  Quote from: HeIt's just not GNS. For it to be so, you'd have to point to some behavior that was discovery based that was different, somehow, than exploring.

  That sounds like a valid challenge; yet as I try to think of something that is discovery-based that is not exploring, I realize that the question collapses. After all, there is nothing about creating theme from premise that is not exploring, and nothing about meeting challenge with ability that is not exploring--all these things are exploring, and nothing more than exploring; they are just exploring focused on different factors, done for different reasons. Simulationism has nothing that is different than exploring; but neither do narrativism or gamism. It is not that we explore, but what we explore and how we explore and, most importantly, why we explore. All I have to show is that discovery is a behavior that is different from the kinds of exploration that characterize gamism and narrativism, and that's simple to do. Narrativism explores for the purpose of addressing premise and revealing theme (even when you're just crossing the street and don't see how that does so). Gamism explores for the purpose of meeting challenge and impressing friends (again, even when you're just crossing the street with no certainty where it will take you next). Simulationism explores for the purpose of discovering new knowledge as an end in itself (even if you're just crossing the street to get to the other side).
  
  I see you saying that simulationism is all exploration, and I don't see GNS saying that at all. I see GNS saying that all of roleplaying, ever gamist, narrativist, or simulationist choice, is exploration harnessed toward a specific goal. Exploration that does not appear to be harnessed toward a goal, part of an agendum, is still part of the overall agendum--it doesn't suddenly become simulationism by virtue of not being something else. It's just exploration in which the true goal is not apparent.
  
  Am I misunderstanding you?
  
  --M. J. Young

I may be way off-base here -- Mike, correct me if I am -- but I thought the point of the street-crossing example was precisely intent.  There's a kind of passivity, I suppose, in Sim, because the reason to cross the street is simply to explore.

I cross the street.  Why?  To see what's on the other side?  Why?  Because I don't already know, and I'd like to see what the GM has in mind.  Why?  Repeat last answer, ad nauseam.

Seems to me that Mike is saying this:

Nar: I cross the street -- to address the Premise currently at stake.
Gam: I cross the street -- to win (okay, I know, to step up...).
Sim: I cross the street -- to see what else there is to do.

I think the point is that the last is implicit in the other two.  That is:

Nar: I cross the street -- to address the Premise -- and I believe or hope or think that what I will find there will help me to do this.
Gam: I cross the street -- to win -- and I believe or hope or think that what I will find there will help me to do this.
Sim: I cross the street -- to see what I will find there.

Since both Nar and Gam must explore the other side of the street to achieve their goals, but for Sim simply crossing the street meets the primary goal, therefore Sim is implicit in Nar and Gam and thus the foundation of gaming.

Have I got that right, Mike?

Chris Lehrich

Quote from: Mike HolmesSR, the entire GNS model is based on negative descriptions.

Oops. Mike, I apologize for expressing myself poorly. I hadn't realized that you could read the `negative' two ways. You are arguing that in actual play, GNS incompatibilities will usually manifest as negative statements phrased in one of the other modes and I agree with you.

My argument was that I can arrange an experiment where I present a variety of games with varying levels of challenge to a set of people and detect the people with G-preference. Similarly, I can arrange an experiment with varying levels of premise and detect the people with N-preference. In the present state of the of the theory, the only experiment I can perform to detect people with S-preference is to run both experiments above and select the people who where neither detetected as G nor as N.

Yes, I'm aware that the sub-categories within G and N as well as color-preferences make these experiments large, complicated and tricky to do right, but that doesn't change the basic fact that a skilled social scientist should be able to perform these experiments.

Having a positive test for S would, I believe, make the model clearer, because you have a redundant test to thought-experiment with. This can greatly help someone trying to come to grips with the model.

Also, having a positive S-test would make it possible to more easily talk about S/N and S/G hybrids, which I now frequently see devolve into a discussion whether the exploration is subsumed under the G or N part or whether it is a ding an sich. A good S-test would answer that and the discussion could move on.

SR
PS: Mike, the `SR' bit is a 15-year old joke that you're welcome to throw back at me, but `Rob' is also fine.
---

Quote from: clehrich
Sim: I cross the street -- to see what I will find there.

How about,

• "I cross the street because I'm not sure the street-crossing rules will work in this case and I want to know."
  
• "I cross the street because my character would do that."
  
• "I cross the street because last time I didn't and I want to know the difference it makes."
  
• "I cross the street because my character is drunk and the coin-flip said `cross'."
  
• "I cross the street because I'm really curious what's on the other side."[/list:u]
  The last one speaks directly to what I will find there and all of the above are ultimately about finding things out, but several are a lot more active and/or indirect than your formulation suggests.
  
  More briefly, I think your statement is correct but potentially misleading.
  
  SR
  --

Quote from: M. J. YoungSimulationism is exploration plus exploration, as it were; that's why Ron calls it "Exploration Squared". It is not what we do when we aren't doing the other two; it is not what we do that supports the other two. Exploration alone, the creating of the shared imaginary space, is not sufficient to be simulationism. It has to go beyond that, to be exploration with an objective of discovery for its own sake.

Quote from: As an example, MikeThe GM says, there's a street. You say your character crosses it. No gamism there, no narrativism, just exploration. You didn't say "I jump to the moon", because that wouldn't be plausible. You have the character perform a plausible action because you're prioritizing exploration.

This, I think, is where we are diverging. At that moment, in this example, you are not prioritizing anything. Why did you have the character cross the street? To get to the other side? To what end? To find out what was there. To what end? I don't know. But ultimately it is that question that matters to your creative agendum. Generally you probably didn't know what else to do, so you're marking time--which is mere exploration, not prioritization of exploration. If you went across the street to see if you could learn something about the villain, then you are still prioritizing whatever you were prioritizing before when you confronted the villain. If you crossed the street to get to the weapons store, you're still involved in prioritizing whatever it is that is involved in that. If your inn is across the street and you are returning to it--why did you cross the street?

If you crossed the street only because the referee said it was in front of you and that's the direction you were going, you're not prioritizing anything; you're barely even exploring, although you are exploring. It's not your priority.

I agree with M. J.'s post in full.

But let me point out an implication: suppose an instance of play consists entirely of such "not prioritizing anything" behavior. Such play, I believe based on experience, does exist (and is often seen for play with modules). Such play, I believe, is "really" role playing (and a lot of people appear to believe so too). It can be quite functional and even enjoyable. Think of it as being a more engaging way of experiencing a basically non-interactive story (by the module author or by the GM) than reading the module text or listening to a storyteller reciting it would be.

The thing is, as Agenda theory is currently posed, "zilchplay" (as I call it) ends up getting (mistakenly, I believe) categorized as Simualtionism, since on examining it one does see exploration going on (albeit of the non-creative "imagine the elements the GM is describing and trigger my standard character behaviors at the expected times" variety), while Step On Up and Story Now priorities are absent. It's not exploration-squared, it's "exploration plus nothing" as M. J. described it. The most easily observable hallmark of zilchplay is that the players don't do unexpected things, either because they aren't interested in doing so or they're not permitted to do so.

If zilchplay is Simulationism, then Mike Holmes and his beeg horseshoe are essentially correct. If zilchplay is not Simulationism (and it does exist, and is role playing), then M. J. is correct and the standard interpretation of Agenda Theory stands, but the classes of Creative Agenda must include "none of the above" in addition to G, N, and S.

- Walt, making another sally in his ongoing campaign to split Sim

Walt, that's getting close. "Split sim" how? This response intends to cover MJ's response as well.

Zilchplay is irrellevant to both my model and the original one in one way. Because in both models the only thing that creates an agenda or an annoyance, are those moments that aren't zilchplay. So, sans that, the original model says that Sim is a moment where you could have promoted gamism or narrativism, but you didn't. That's a negative view, however.

If you had a moment where you could go gamist, and did, then how would you know it? I mean, play can be congruent (zilchplay is), so if you're playing such that sim and gam are both supported, then you don't really know the priority at that point. Right? It can only be that you don't support sim, when it becomes obvious that you're playing gamist, right?

But what does that mean?

If sim is just more exploration, and gamism and narativism have exploration, then how can you fail to support sim when playing in these forms? Where would the conflict come in? Because you're not supporting that "extra" exploration that makes it "squared"? I'm not buying it.


No, I agree with MJ that when you do gamism or narrativism that you're not doing something, something that's unique to sim. He wants to call it discovery, but I don't think that we need another term. I think that it's exploration. That you when you're playing gamist, or narrativist, you're not exploring. You're dropping that exploratory feel. Else you're playing congruently, and there's no conflict at all.

Ron does have his "Dream" thing - is that the same as your "discovery" MJ? Interesting that nobody has brought that up so far. I too find it lacking in describing what's going on in RPGs.

Anyhow, either I'm with MJ that if exploration underlies all play that there's something unique to sim that is supported by it that's not being identified, and being put off as exploration squared. Or, exploration does not underlie all play, and is dropped by gamism and narrativism.

I ascribe to the latter view. That "real" gamism, and "real" narrativism are characterized by moments where the game temporarily fails to have that quality that characterizes RPGs, exploration.

Now all the gamists and narrativists will get up in arms about this. But what my original point is, is that I think that these conflicts are rare. That is, I don't think almost anyone plays gamist or narrativist per se. I think they play some hybrid overall supported by exploration. That the moments that they "fail" to explore are short enough that they don't really constitute a failure in the long run. They are hybrid.

Sim is the same. I don't think that anyone "fails" to do gamism or narrativism completely. These are all prioritizations, and as such, include the other forms implicitly. Meaning that Sim is just that form that reinforces the feel of RPGs, while not retreating from gamism or narrativism (and not not retreating if you can see what I mean).

All modes are sorta Hybridized. That is, they have elements of more than one mode. If Hybrid means "equally prioritized" then we should avoid that term, and instead call it Mixed or something. Ron talks about modes "In support" of each other. That's probably what we're talking about here. Essentially a lot of what I'm saying that it's no longer so simple as to be able to look at a mode and say, aha, sim!. You have to look at the supporting modes. When you postulate play that's sim with gamism supporting, suddenly it becomes obvious that sim isn't a retreat from gamism. It's doing something important in addition to gamism.

What's the important part? Lots of exploration.

Any help?

Rob, sorry about the SR thing. I disagree that you can create tests that test for G that aren't essentially tests of Not S and Not N. Same with N. GNS is about conflcits. The only time something is effectively G or N or S is when it's not something else, so that it makes someone annoyed. Like I say above, it's not really gamist until a simulationist is pissed off. If it's not pissing off the simulationist, then it's functionally hybrid. By definition.

Mike

I'm not sure that I would categorize "zilchplay" as congruent. From a N or G standpoint that sort of play can be seen as "not getting in the game", not being focused and engaged in play.

Does "zilchplay" correspond to S in that manner? I dunno, still contemplating some of the ideas in this thread.

-Chris

It's "congruent" in that nobody who's looking for support of any mode will complain about it. Unless, interestingly, they were "purely" narrativist or gamist. In which case, they'd say that this play is completely ancillary. Like theories of directing movies that bemoan the scene where the guy drives up, gets out of the car, and walks inside the building. To those people, you're not "really playing" then. Because to them the exploration elements are useless. They really want to play a game or write a novel.

To the extent that's true, Zilch is more closely related to exploration and sim that any other mode.

Mike

Quote from: Mike HolmesWalt, that's getting close. "Split sim" how?

Well, that's an interesting question. It's not so much splitting Sim as an end in itself, but rather as a consequence of splitting Exploration, in such a way as to clearly distinguish between the exploration that's inherent in all role playing and the exploration that's "exploration squared" in Agenda Theory Simulationism. The same problem you're wrestling with, it seems.

My earlier attempt to do that was in terms of creative vs. noncreative. This ran afoul of a problem: for some, "creative" contribution to the shared imagined space seemed to automatically imply overt director-stance proclamations out of the blue (leading to the conclusion that the distinction was only a stance issue), while others seemed to construe any player expression about the shared imagined space (including, presumably, "my character crosses the street") as exhibiting creativity (leading to the conclusion that non-creative exploration can only occur outside of role playing).

So, now I'm looking for another way to express the distinction. I'm currently considering putting it in terms of the expected vs. the unexpected. This seems whimsical at first, but it actually, to me, seems to tie in with a lot of fundamental concepts involved in role playing:

- A player's decision can only reveal anything I didn't already know or believe about that player's Agenda if it is unexpected. Think about it.

- A while ago I observed that Creative Agenda only seems meaningful when it is contingent or "at risk" -- that is, I can only Step On Up when there is risk that I will not succeed; creating Story Now requires enough expressive freedom to allow the possibility of creating a poor story; and in my Sim experiences the most interesting exploration has occurred when the safety nets preventing the breaking of fidelity or internal consistency have been thinnest -- not because breaking fidelity/consistency is a good thing, but because the explored elements are more interesting if the participants have authority powerful enough that they could break it if misused. That is, precisely, the power to introduce the unexpected.

- The introduction of the unexpected is one of the strongest reasons for creating a shared imagined space with other participants, rather than to just imagine and create (write, etc.) by myself. It's logical therefore that who does what that's unexpected in play will be particularly important when I'm judging whether the experience was rewarding to me.

Zilchplay is then, very fundamentally, role playing without doing anything unexpected. (Unexpected by whom? The other participants. In a traditionally structured game, it's far more likely that the GM is expected to surprise the players but not vice versa. It's still zilchplay for the players if they're the only ones being surprised during play. A zilchplaying GM might be possible but is certainly much rarer. But I believe this is consistent with reality; I think more GMs have non-zilchplay (especially Sim) creative agendas than players do.)

QuoteZilchplay is irrellevant to both my model and the original one in one way. Because in both models the only thing that creates an agenda or an annoyance, are those moments that aren't zilchplay.

Very true. In fact, if you call the zilchplay moments "not role playing," then the whole idea drops out of the frame and leaves the original theory, which applies to role playing only, untouched. However, zilchplay is not "not role playing" in the same way that deciding on pizza toppings is "not role playing." Zilchplay is a form of imagining of character, system, etc., it is an activity with intrisic aesthetic appeal for many, and it is role playing by most people's understanding.

So, the hypothesis is that zilchplay IS exploration. The moments that create Agenda -- let's say, the moments that create your Agenda  -- are the moments when you do something unexpected to the shared imagined space and the other players react to it. So you can envision a ground state of ongoing zilchplay. Against that background there might occur moments that reveal or define Agenda: making a decison that addresses Premise (which by definition cannot be a foregone conclusion, and is therefore not expected), rising to a challenge (a challenge has no Step On Up if the manner of addressing it is fixed -- win or lose, there's little social esteem at stake in going through the motions, so it's what unexpected actions are taken that's key), or acting to add unexpected creation or discovery to the shared imagined space. So you have a baseline of exploration/zilchplay, plus some combination of Agenda-expressing moments that add either Step On Up, Story Now, or More Exploration. That's GNS, pretty much as we know it, except that the Z in there should be acknowledged.

But if Z is Simulationism, then we have the horseshoe. That is, a baseline of exploration/Simulationism, with Agenda-expressing moments that add either Step On Up, Story Now, or More Simulationism. Sim becomes universal; the other Agendas become "Sim plus." That's the beeg horseshoe.

(Note: One big pitfall in this whole concept is the distinction between the unexpected and the unpredictable -- to wit, dice rolls. My current thinking is that randomness doesn't amount to unexected-ness: I might be surprised by a roll of 01 on d100, but the 1 in 100 chance of that result isn't unexpected. But that doesn't really resolve the issue.)

QuoteSo, sans that, the original model says that Sim is a moment where you could have promoted gamism or narrativism, but you didn't. That's a negative view, however.

I don't think the original model really says that. As I currently understand it, Sim is where you groove on the exploration a whole bunch. And the whole idea of the significance of "moments" is pretty much discounted.

The problem is categorizing zilchplay as Sim (it's still "grooving on exploration" in a very passive way), which makes everything else look like Sim+, which leads to the confusion.

QuoteIf you had a moment where you could go gamist, and did, then how would you know it? I mean, play can be congruent (zilchplay is), so if you're playing such that sim and gam are both supported, then you don't really know the priority at that point. Right? It can only be that you don't support sim, when it becomes obvious that you're playing gamist, right?

But what does that mean?

The previously quoted paragraph sends you off the rails; this is where the fiery crash ensues. Zilchplay is indeed congruent (indeed, a question I expect to wrestle with in the future is whether congruent play must be zilchplay). But in my version, you can recognize Sim when you see non-zilchplay (or approximately, players doing the unexpected) that is not Gamist or Narrativist (or approximately, players doing the unexpected to enhance exploration). I'm trying to define zilchplay as something observable other than the lack of an agenda per se (which would make it all circular, zilchplay isn't sim because it isn't sim) which is why I've been mulling the whole doing-only-the-expected idea.

QuoteIf sim is just more exploration, and gamism and narativism have exploration, then how can you fail to support sim when playing in these forms? Where would the conflict come in? Because you're not supporting that "extra" exploration that makes it "squared"? I'm not buying it.

Because of where you're putting the constraints on where players inject their signal (or noise). Focusing on a Premise is a severe constraint on one's doing many types of unexpected things in or to the shared imagined space. (Otherise, why not just run away from Master and see whether the castle next door has a better working environment?)

QuoteNo, I agree with MJ that when you do gamism or narrativism that you're not doing something, something that's unique to sim. He wants to call it discovery, but I don't think that we need another term. I think that it's exploration. That you when you're playing gamist, or narrativist, you're not exploring. You're dropping that exploratory feel. Else you're playing congruently, and there's no conflict at all.

I agree with this, I just used different terms. I keep the broad meaning of "exploring" but make a subset of exporation (zilchplay) irrelevant to distinguishing between agendas. Exploration-squared is player engagement with exploration such that players are sufficiently involved to make unexpected decisions in its pursuit.

- Walt

I think we're mostly saying the same things. I agree that Sim can only be detected in cases where gamism and narrativism are rejected (and that those also share the same qualities). My point you quoted was just to say that the other modes are the same in this way, to prove that there must be something special to sim (exploration).

So your split theory is that Sim is about encountering (creating, or discovering another's creation) of something unexpected? How must that neccessarily conflict with narrativism and gamism? If it's only "the unexpected that is also exploration" then I'm failing to see it as independent of exploration, or, indeed by the definition of exploration, of any other form of play. If it's unexpected sim stuff, you're creating a tautology.

What am I missing?

Mike

On another thread, (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=9642) Sean wrote:

Quote3) The 'Freitag theory', also discussed in the other thread: GNSZ, where people just play without any particular agenda in addition to the other three modes. This seems like implausible psychology to me, since surely you're trying to get something out of your play, no matter how incoherent, attenuated, or just plain weak your desires are, but who knows...

The distinction I'm trying to make is not what the player is getting out of their play, it's what they're putting into it.

Zilchplay has an agenda; it's being told a story while engaging in manipluation of some arcana that makes it appear and feel that you're doing something of greater import than that. (The folks schooled in Ritual Discourse should find that pretty familiar ground.)

Mike, the split theory (which is rough and unfinished, remember) is that Sim is about making unexpected (to others) changes in the shared imagined space (not necessarily the setting, of course; most usually, the situation). "Encountering" or discovering another's creation of the unexpected doesn't count, otherwise watching a movie (if you hadn't seen it before) would be Sim.

I don't think that must necessarily conflict with Nar and Gam. And "doing the unexpected that is also exploration" is distinct from exploration in general because (and only because) of the "doing" part. However, you are correct about the related point: I haven't shown that this activity as thus described is unique to Simulationism, and in fact I don't think it is. This leaves us with a still-negative Sim: "doing the unexpected in exploration that is not Gam or Nar."

The only way I know to remove the negative altogether is to look past the player's act and infer its purpose or, if that is too ineffable a concept, its meaning when interpreted as self-expression. If the unexpected action is about addressing a Premise, it's Narrativist behavior, even if as a side effect it changes/adds-to the shared imagined space. If the unexpected action is about changing or adding to the shared imagined space, it's Simulationist. If the action is not unexpected, if it's prescribed or formulaic or otherwise already known in advance, then it cannot really be about anything (even if it has the effect in play of changing or adding to the shared imagined space); i.e. it's zilchplay.

Of course, what any single player action is "about" is going to be impossible to intepret, just as you can't tell what an essay is about by looking at any single word (or even, most likely, any one entire sentence or pargraph) out of context. That's why, I believe, current Agenda theory doesn't describe Agenda as being discernable or applicable on the scale if individual player actions or moments in play.

- Walt

I was going to post this right after M.J. popped up this thread, but I was busy and tired.  Shame on me.  I'm going to try to be concise, but I hope my point doesn't become unclear in the process.

I think M.J.'s "it" is the only viable definition, from our current options, that makes sense in the model.

Defining Sim in reference to Exploration isn't going to work.  Exploration Squared, More Exploration, or Exploration Whatever leads us into a circular definition of Sim.  By roleplaying you're Exploring, within that layer rests Creative Agenda - the purpose behind your Exploration.  The purpose behind Exploration can't be Exploration, it's tautological.  

A negative definition of Sim, the priority that isn't Nar/Gam, isn't going to work either.  Doing nothing isn't a goal (Yes, we could argue the details of this, but I hope you take my meaning.  M.J. has already hit this one, so I'm just repeating.).

This is in addition to the arguements that these both bring up about quantity of Exploration.  As if roleplaying is five subroutines you have to distribute processing power across, and that if you could just cut mental resources from Creative Agenda you could pump more into Exploration.  This hinges upon viewing the mental process of roleplaying in a way that I think is incorrect - viewing the actual mental process in the same five little chunks the model groups roleplaying elements into.

Either definition leads to a need to fix Sim; such as with the Beeg Horseshoe Theory, or by being more radical and declaring it doesn't exist.

This "it" has to be able to stand independently within the [Creative Agenda] layer as a clearly conflicting priority.  Is Discovery/Understanding/Knowledge "it"?  I don't know - I don't see Discovery consistently conflicting with theme or challenge, but I'm willing to accept that it's the language and not the concept that's failing.  I remain open-minded, but skeptical, that this "it" exists.  This seems to tie into the fundamental nature of human curiosity.  

M.J., I think you're on the right track and I want to be on that train with you, but I'm uncertain I'll get off at the same stop.

Walt,

What I'm hearing is that zilchplay is exploration without intent, so to speak. Or role-playing that neither engages nor expresses any creative agenda and is in fact reactive to the catalyzing input of another player's expression of their creative agenda, though it may not appear to be so.  

Sounds good, and I'd love to see sim split up into something managable that people could agree exists. But can play really be unmotivated? In the model, as soon as two or three come together and play, you've got creative agenda.  You're positing a world where (perhaps) the most common situation is a game where one person (the gm) has a CA, and most others (the players) don't have one, or at least may get on just fine without one. That's a very different world than the one that gns has been thought to inhabit.

When do you cross out of zilchplay? Is that a personal decision? Is it based on the other players' interest in what you do? If not, how do we discern whether an action is "expected" or not?  A player may put a lot of care and thought and hold attachment to an action that another would judge to be formulaic.  This reminds me of the concept of pastiche, also. How attached to the concept of expected/unexpected are you? Do you see zilchplay as being limited to actions that seem formulaic?

Just trying to get clearer. Hope it's of use.

And cruciel: I agree. Perhaps that's a good approach--determining exactly what the point of conflict is between sim and other priorities.  If it isn't versimilitude (either to a source or to continuity within the game world), since that underscores everything, what else is it that we mean by sim?

I'm starting to wonder if we're boxing ourselves in by thinking in the same categories over and over.

Regards,
Emily

Quote from: Emily CareAnd cruciel: I agree. Perhaps that's a good approach--determining exactly what the point of conflict is between sim and other priorities.  If it isn't versimilitude (either to a source or to continuity within the game world), since that underscores everything, what else is it that we mean by sim?

Heh, thanks.  Yeah, "it" can't be defined by verisimilitude/causality/integrity either.  Symptoms of Sim play sure, but not unique.

QuoteI'm starting to wonder if we're boxing ourselves in by thinking in the same categories over and over.

A new form of Gamer-behavior-by-habit?  Maybe.  Though, prolly not so long as we keep prodding at the walls of the box like this.

Thanks for the input, Walt. I am going to have to consider your Zilchplay category; my initial reaction is that it never adds up to an "instance of play" until something is prioritized, but that sounds silly. More to the point, I'm not persuaded that your characterization of module play goes that direction--you wind up with "let's prioritize exploring what this module is about", and whether it's setting or situation or system (or even character, as in the characters presented in the module) you're focused on exploring some aspect of the shared imaginary space provided by the module that wasn't there without it. This might be "vanilla simulationism"; I'm not sure yet.

Quote from: Mike HolmesSo, sans that, the original model says that Sim is a moment where you could have promoted gamism or narrativism, but you didn't. That's a negative view, however.

Yes, and one I'm rejecting.

Let me pull some actual play examples, stripped to some bare bones, from Multiverser.

• The character has learned of the existence of the spiders in the glass city. He knows that many others have faced these creatures and died merely trying to escape, but he's got the information that has been gathered about them. He wants to fight one of the spiders, and defeat it. So he arms himself, heads to the glass city, and attacks a spider. I know he's playing gamist, not because he's not playing narrativist or simulationist, but because he is prioritizing the challenge of fighting the spiders.
  
  
• The character has met other versers, and been told he will never go home again; his status as an unaging immortal has been described to him, as well as the process of dying and coming to life in new worlds perpetually. Stunned by this, the character begins trying to think of ways he could send a message home. He asks questions about telepathy, about the rumored scriff mail, about any technique that might make it possible to contact his loved ones and let them know he is all right. He struggles with coming to terms with his new identity, whether to embrace what he has been told or reject it. You can't go home again, he has been told, but what does that mean to him? I know he's playing narrativist, not because he isn't playing gamist or simulationist, but because he is prioritizing the issue of who he is if he has been forever exiled from his home and family.
  
  
• The character has discovered the mobile home, a converted truck with a gasoline engine for the electrical generator and a diesel engine for mobility. He needs fuel for it. Remembering that most gasoline engines can be adjusted to run on alcohol, and that alcohol is created by the action of yeast on sugars, he gathers a large amount of the sweet grass, mixes it with some water, adds a bit of yeast, and attempts to ferment and distil fuel. It works; he winds up with a black tarry substance which he discards. This substance hardens to something very rock-like; he realizes he has a building material. He starts to build walls to protect his area against the more dangerous creatures that roam the plain; he builds machines to make cloth, rope, and paper from the fibers of the plants; he builds a kiln to make pottery from the clay-like soil, and a water tower so he can pump water to it and have water pressure here--gradually he builds a city. Studying the native creatures, he realizes one of these has a high concentration of sulphur in its system, an element he has not seen since his arrival. Contriving a way to dig below the water table, he proceeds to search for this and other materials which might be useful in his quest to understand the world in which he is stranded. I know that he is playing simulationist, not because he is not playing gamist or narrativist, but because he is prioritizing efforts to understand and use the world around him.
  
  
• The character arrives at the city known as Umak Tek, where a few versers (and no one else) live. He selects one of the empty houses and places his things there, gets his meals with the others, and hangs out doing nothing all day. He's not prioritizing anything. I know that he's not really into playing the game; he's waiting for me to tell him what he's supposed to be doing, and that's not my job. The game doesn't really start until I find a way to hook him into prioritizing one of the three agenda--zilchplay does not produce an instance of play, it is nothing. It doesn't become an instance of play until the player wants something and acts in a way that will produce it.[/list:u]
  

  Quote from: Mike furtherIf sim is just more exploration, and gamism and narativism have exploration, then how can you fail to support sim when playing in these forms? Where would the conflict come in? Because you're not supporting that "extra" exploration that makes it "squared"? I'm not buying it.

  Maybe Simulationism is more than one thing. Let's look at it this way.
  • When you are exploring premise, that's narrativism.
  • When you are exploring challenge, that's gamism.
  • When you are exploring character, that's simulationism.
  • When you are exploring system, that's simulationism.
  • When you are exploring setting, that's simulationism.
  • When you are exploring situation, that's simulationism.
  • When you are exploring color, that's simulationism.[/list:u]But as I write that, I realize that this is not true; you can explore all those "simulationism" things as gamist or narrativist aspects; but you are then exploring X in support of challenge or exploring X in support of premise. In simulationism, you are exploring X in support of discovery.
    

    Quote from: Mike nextNo, I agree with MJ that when you do gamism or narrativism that you're not doing something, something that's unique to sim. He wants to call it discovery, but I don't think that we need another term....
    
    Ron does have his "Dream" thing - is that the same as your "discovery" MJ? Interesting that nobody has brought that up so far. I too find it lacking in describing what's going on in RPGs.

    I don't think we need another term, really; I think we need to clarify and understand what it is that simulationists are prioritizing. We've got a lot of words we throw around to talk about what gamists are prioritizing, and a few that describe narrativist priorities, but with simulationism we just sort of say, "Um, yeah--exploring to, I don't know, to explore." We are exploring to prioritize something, and that something is discovery, or knowledge, or understanding--it's very much in that vein. We want to learn something, so we explore to discover it.
    
    The Dream probably is what I mean. I think "the dream" may be a bit more tied to immersionism (at least in its flavor) than I expect--there are people whose simulationist experience is enhanced by immersion, but there are those whose simulationist experience is enhanced by pawn stance ("I'll get my guy to do this, and that will reveal something else I want to know; sure, that doesn't sound so much like something he would do, but it gets the information.") But yes, I'd say that Discovery is an effort to find a more concrete word to describe The Dream. In a recent thread, I stumbled on Glory as a better word to describe what it was that gamists were seeking; I don't find Step On Up to mean much to me as a phrase, personally, but it brings out that Challenge is not entirely adequate (although good). Glory is what gamists are after, I think; Discovery is what simulationists are after. I'm not trying to add to terminology, exactly, but to identify this thing that keeps eluding us.
    

    Quote from: MikeAnyhow, either I'm with MJ that if exploration underlies all play that there's something unique to sim that is supported by it that's not being identified, and being put off as exploration squared.

    That's where I think we need to be. It does exist, as they say. As C. S. Lewis once said, the feeling is very specific; it's the language that's vague. We're looking for the right words to identify something in which we are engaged, because it is part of the nature of our thought processes that words focus concepts for us, and without them our concepts tend to be nebulous, and our expressions thereof moreso.
    
    Are we closer?
    
    --M. J. Young

Just noting that I cross-posted with the last three posts, which were all good; I'll be thinking about them.

--M. J. Young

Wouldn't you know, everytime these boards get hot on Sim, I start work again with 15 hour days and can't get involved!

Fascinating reading all!

Aure Entaluva,

Silmenume

Quote from: Mike HolmesIf it's not pissing off the simulationist, then it's functionally hybrid. By definition.

Aha!  Suddenly I understand where I was missing your point.  I agree, pure X-mode means that Y and Z fans willed be pissed for any permutation of X, Y, Z. But what if I want to be able to characterize hybrid play? The way the silly thing I keep in my head works, that's how I get the categories to `click', by exploring their boundaries. The problem I have with getting GNS straightened out in my head is that `piss-off' tests get less and less reliable as you get closer to the boundary between the modes.

I realize that a major force behind GNS is the diagnosis of dysfunction, and to that purpose the `piss-off' tests will work fine, of course. That just doesn't help me very much...

SR
---

That's interesting, Walt. What you describe sounds like low-protagonism exploration. And I suppose what's being debated here, again, is whether

a) low-protagonism (or just low-engagement more generally) exploration is just a mild form of Sim (traditional GNS), or

b) whether all RPGs start out tacking towards this goal, while some choose to go full speed ahead on it, and others tack towards Gam or Nar instead (Mike's rewrite of Beeg Horseshoe, which posits the underlying reality of gaming as a sort of low-grade exploration with elements of all three, and the question is which you want to focus and why), or

c) whether this sort of play shouldn't count as Sim (because there's no 'squared' in the exploration) and rather should be regarded as its own distinct mode (Freitag).


(b) could be made consistent with (c) if we wanted to give the modes a 'hard' reading. On the other hand, I'm trying to push Mike (and at least some of the things he's said imply this, though others may not) towards a softer reading: what he's saying is something like 'RPGing starts out essentially Sim, with elements of the other two modes, and then, if you want, you can really focus on one of those elements to make your gameplay more intense'. In other words, Mike's emphasizing the choice to intensify your gaming as a positive rather than warning abuot the dangers of incoherence as a negative. (There's also this stuff in what he writes about Sim being the 'purest mode' or whatever, but I don't really care about that. Plus even if he's right that all RPing starts out Sim, it's still a genetic fallacy to suppose that that's thereby 'pure' in any positive sense. All meat starts out uncooked.)


I'm trying to look at this thing in terms of the Big Model, where people form a Social Contract to Explore and within that develop a Creative Agenda that they want to pursue (and which, on Ron's view, actually drives their gaming decisions).

Insofar as I see Mike as saying anything different than what I think I've seen Ron saying, it seems to be something like this: the Social Contract to Explore is already a Creative Agenda, whether known to the agents involved or not (who of course can also not be aware that they're forming a social contract or reflected on the fact that what they're doing in a general way is exploration of shared imaginative space, blah blah blah). So that when you set out in a group to Explore there's already a creative agenda involved in some sense, from the very beginning. You might discover more what that agenda is through play, just like you might realize things about the social contract in play, or you might develop your understanding of the possibilities of exploration through play.

Now you might note that some role-players don't seem very clued in about the possibilities of play, or basically just want someone else to tell them a story, or never really get intense or focus on anything. Is this a separate mode? Partly the dispute here is terminological, but: if I understand what Mike's saying right, it can't be a genuinely separate mode on his view. On the other hand, there is room for Z within traditional GNS, but it's a weird sort of room: the players are deviating from Z every time they make any decision which affects game-play. So it has to be full-on GM storytelling plus lots of illusionism. And even then, I suppose, we have to ask about the GMs desires: he doesn't seem to be playing Z, and his desires seem to be dictating what the group's doing. So the game as a whole still seems like it can't be Z: it's just the GM's creative agenda being 'shared' or 'enforced' on the rest of the group.

OK, so these are some of my thoughts on that.

Quote from: M. J. YoungThe character has discovered the mobile home, a converted truck with a gasoline engine for the electrical generator and a diesel engine for mobility. He needs fuel for it. Remembering that most gasoline engines can be adjusted to run on alcohol, and that alcohol is created by the action of yeast on sugars, he gathers a large amount of the sweet grass, mixes it with some water, adds a bit of yeast, and attempts to ferment and distil fuel. It works; he winds up with a black tarry substance which he discards. This substance hardens to something very rock-like; he realizes he has a building material. He starts to build walls to protect his area against the more dangerous creatures that roam the plain; he builds machines to make cloth, rope, and paper from the fibers of the plants; he builds a kiln to make pottery from the clay-like soil, and a water tower so he can pump water to it and have water pressure here--gradually he builds a city. Studying the native creatures, he realizes one of these has a high concentration of sulphur in its system, an element he has not seen since his arrival. Contriving a way to dig below the water table, he proceeds to search for this and other materials which might be useful in his quest to understand the world in which he is stranded. I know that he is playing simulationist, not because he is not playing gamist or narrativist, but because he is prioritizing efforts to understand and use the world around him.
--M. J. Young

Can he not also be "stepping on up" to the challenge of surving the foreign landscape?     Can he not also be trying to survive so he can address the issue present in your example of the narrativist?

Again this comes back to the point of Simulationism not precluding something built on top of it.  What if the spiders from the glass city in your gamist example are the creatures with sulphur in their system in the sim example.  Does going out to kill them then become sim or is it gamist?  What if a situation develops every game session that is resolved by the challenge of combat, and if not the player gets bored, is it still sim or is it gamist?

Even in an old style dungeon hack adventure there are some elements of sim taking place,  they are just fewer and farther between than in most games, there is exploration of a limited setting .  

What I like about the Beeg Horseshoe theory is that it makes me see things as more natural, with preferences blending into one another rather than being three distinct boxes that play styles are thrown into.  Any overlap of the three boxes must create a new box called Hybrid.

Just a quick thought on 5 hours of sleep...

I posit that in very low intensity exploration it is virtually impossible to distinguish agenda precisely because those "agenda decisions/choices" are so infrequent and so low intensity and the social rewards and social reinforcements are so low key that distinguishing data points get lost in the background noise.

As player interests/motivations/drives (emotional investment?) become more focused or intense the "agenda decisions" become more pronounced and play (the exploration action) starts taking on notable CA characteristics.  Where is this transition from "zilchplay" to CA play takes places is a gray area, much the question posited in another post about when is a game "Narrativist" enough not to be considered "Simulationist" anymore.

This low intensity style of play (straight Exploration - not Sim) I would call, and I do not mean this with any negative connotations on any level, a "beer and pretzels" game.  In this style of game the social aspect is the highest reward and the game itself is more or less just an excuse for people to get together in some form of communal activity.  Something akin to penny ante poker.

Aure Entaluva,

Silmenume

Ah - so it's back to the 'social' mode, now, is it?

I don't think 'beer and pretzels' should be used this way, FWIW. "Beer and pretzels" gaming has always pretty clearly denoted low-intensity Gamism in my lexicon. Tunnels and Trolls, OD&D & 1e, WFRP, and even Fantasy Trip all can be used to facilitate this in my experience. I believe there are mechanical features of 3e which tend to ramp up the Gamism out of the 'beer and pretzels' area, as I suspect (no play experience) would Rune. (Like, I might add, penny ante poker - though as with 3e you have to 'work against the system' here to keep it low-intensity, since the chief way to make poker more interesting is to bring more money into it. I made $50 + a week playing poker in high school, played even with some semipro gamblers in grad school, and have a friend who's played in the World Series twice and done OK, so I'm not just talking out of my ass  here - it's a common feature of casual poker games that they tend to get less and less casual as time goes on, which takes conscious effort on the part of most participants to avoid.)

But OK, that's an aside. Silmenume, you seem to be using "Sim" as a kind of term of praise, and I'm not sure that's where we should take it, though it does make your view line up with Walt's in an interesting way. As far as I can see, if a play-group makes decisions, those decisions involve some kind of goals, and though play can be arbitrarily weakly attenuated, we can characterize the direction those goals are taking the group, and since Z (straight exploration) is by definition directionless, whenever the group is doing anything at all that affects the game, they aren't really playing Z.

It is true that if what a group wants is low-intensity gaming, GNS may not be of much use to them. If they're happy just sort of wandering around, making decisions on the spur of the moment, etc., then maybe that's all there is to say about that. But I still think their play could be properly characterized in GNS terms, based on whatever decisions they were making. Maybe it's just important to remember that people can be happy with that, and that 'incoherence' or 'weak attention to Creative Agenda' is only a problem if a group wants to ramp up the intensity of their play in some way.

It's like this: if you see someone playing tennis badly, you ask them: don't you want to do better? Here, hold the racket like this. But then if they say: listen, thanks, man, but I just hack on the weekends, I don't really care about getting any better than I am, then in a sense that's OK, though we might wish they were more devoted to their chosen game. The thing is, since role-playing doesn't _have_ to involve 'winning' and 'losing', people playing low-intensity G, N, or S aren't necessarily 'playing badly' in the way that the tennis hacker is; they're just not interested in some of the deeper Step on Up/Dream/Story-Creating possibilities of what they're doing. They don't want to intensify or cohere whatever G, N, or S is already in their play. But that doesn't mean it's not there.

Jay, that's always been part of the model, as I understand it. Agenda only becomes notable in certain circumstances.


Caldis, you're reading my mind. I'm not even sure that MJ's examples would ammount to "Instances of Play" to Ron. They're more the elements that add to the mix, as I see it.


Sean, simulationism is only "pure" in the sense that nothing has been added to the base element. Any attempt by anyone to see some pro-sim agenda here is doomed to failure, because I play with plenty of narrativism, and, some would say, a potentially dangerous amount of competitive gamism. Note my ideas about how to "game" My Life With Master, a game which others would call purely narrativist.

What I want to see, laid bare, is people think in terms of hybrid models. I don't want them to say anymore "Is my game Sim or Nar?" when it's plainly supportive of both in some ways. That is, Ron is right that there's a priority somewhere, but it doesn't negate the importance of the "supporting" modes of play. Meaning that no mode can be ghetoized as a retreat from another when in fact, they aren't in that the other mode is actually "back-supported" by the first.

I'm glad that you see this as also positivist, Sean, when there is the negativist part of my argument that still says that GNS is all about establishing coherence (or more extrememly as I say avoiding the incoherence of players pissing each other off).

Quotethe Social Contract to Explore is already a Creative Agenda

I think that's just Ron's arrow right there passing from Social Contract, through Exploration, to Creative Agenda. You're just seeing the link. In that way my model doesn't contradict Ron's (in fact, I maintain that my model doesn't do much if any damage to Ron's model, it's about perspective).

Those folks who seem to not have a CA either are playing incoherently (and here's where the term really makes sense), or they're playing under the CA of another player (the GM likely), and just don't realize it.


Rob, it's a common problem that people want GNS to solve every problem. It doesn't, it only provides a foundation at the level between exploration and technique to provide a coherent method of play to players as regards certain issues. In some ways, this is extremely limited, and pushing the theory to be something more than that is likely to make it useless for the small area for which it's already useful. If you want a theory that does more, you'll have to expand it yourself (see Itse's post for an example of a stab at this).


MJ, the only place where I think we disagree is that the something special is something other than Exploration. People may note that in my work with Jack in defining RPGs, that I came up with an idea that RPGs are precisely separable from RPGs in the notion (note not the actuality, but the notion) that players have that elements in the game can do "anything" that seems plausible. That the meechanics of the game ought not constrain the elements to behaving in certain manners, but be tools to allow the participants to adjudicate any action that can be produced in the imagination of the players. This is exploration. This is what defines RPGs. This is what's unique to RPGs, and so precious to me, personally, and, I'd argue, anyone who plays RPGs. And it's what's being promoted when we play "sim". That is, if Sim means anything, it's that we're ensuring that exploration is not lost in the quest for one of the two other modes.

And, as such, since it's defining, I'd say that this is, to an extent, present in all RPG play. I submit that, as soon as you aren't doing this, you'll know in a big way. There's that moment playing a really gamist game of D&D, where it "reverts" to being just a boardgame (note that I think this is rare, but happens).

If this is so important, then why must there be "something more"? I posit that all the discovery stuff that you're pointing out can all be generalized to the idea of exploration.


Emily, when you cross out of ziilchplay is, to an extent, dependent on the individuals playing. That is, for one person, something is more "identifiably" gamist or whatever than it is to another. So, just as with all issues of Creative Agenda, this is something that can only be identified locally - there is no magic answer, "this is it!"


Jason, you're making my arguments for me by pointing out what can't exist. Again, like MJ, I think that you're just failing to see that "it" is just exploration, and therefore why the relationship is special.


Walt, I think you're explaining a phenomenon, but not one that's important to GNS per se, but more Creative Agenda overall. That is the GNS portion of CA is about coherence. So, unless you can show that this is a point of potential conflict, I think you're describing a subset of a mode - as you say splitting Sim. This doesn't create another mode, however, it just further subdivides one that already exists in a manner that it needs to exists for the model.

Mike

Hello,

One of the most important passages in "GNS and related matters of role-playing theory" is this:

QuoteFor a given instance of play, the three modes are exclusive in application. When someone tells me that their role-playing is "all three," what I see from them is this: features of (say) two of the goals appear in concert with, or in service to, the main one, but two or more fully-prioritized goals are not present at the same time. So in the course of Narrativist or Simulationist play, moments or aspects of competition that contribute to the main goal are not Gamism. In the course of Gamist or Simulationist play, moments of thematic commentary that contribute to the main goal are not Narrativism. In the course of Narrativist or Gamist play, moments of attention to plausibility that contribute to the main goal are not Simulationism.

Mike, you're working from the idea that reinforcing these "little" GNSes is a great and powerful thing, and that trying to cull them (in terms of play or design) is a bad idea. I tend to agree with you.

The only difference - and frankly, it's a tiny and terminological difference, which I have no intention of trying to resolve - is that I tend not to call them by GNS categories at all. You would like to do so, I think - revising my harsh "is not" statements in the quotes to "is too, but not problematically." This goes back to our general tastes in that I prefer to think about large-scale trends and you prefer to think about atomic causal units, and again, I don't really see it as a major issue.

I'm posting this to show everyone that Mike and I tend to agree about these things, even if we also tend to communicate about them differently and for slightly different purposes.

I also think that the M.J./Mike dialogue about the "something else" of Simulationism is worth considering, and understanding where everyone's coming from. I tend to go a little more toward M.J. - that Exploration alone is not actually role-playing at all and that Simulationist play does something with Exploration ... in fact, I was under the impression that my term "the Dream" indicated as much.

But again, I am not speaking as GNS-meister but as a fully equal (and possibly fully-equally-clueless) member of the dialogues. I don't really feel the need to convince anyone of my particular point of view on the issue.

Best,
Ron

Yep, we're on the same page. The only problem that I have with the "little g" sort of description is that it's hard to discuss. I'd like it to have it's own terminological set.

Any ideas anyone?

Mike

Quote from: Mike HolmesJason, you're making my arguments for me by pointing out what can't exist. Again, like MJ, I think that you're just failing to see that "it" is just exploration, and therefore why the relationship is special.

Oh, I don't mind if I'm making your point for you.  I'm just trying to point out the challenges defining "it" needs to overcome.  If "it" exists, then the independent GNS priority model holds.  If "it" doesn't exist, then The Beeg Horseshoe or some other fix for Sim is needed.

I'm on the fence as far as "it" goes.  I don't think I've seen "it", nor seen evidence against it (at least so much as I could identify it).

Hi Jason,

It seems to me that you might be reading too much into the idea of the "independence" concept. I deliberately left the cognitive or creative interrelationships among GNS  priorities untouched in my first big essay, and my subsequent three essays have focused on how they have been observed to inter-related in practice, historically.

How they really interrelate in terms of baseline concepts and potential has always been left blank. For example, I never proposed nor supported the idea of a "triangle" or indeed any sort of "space" they occupy as zones or points or anything else.

So it's not like there's an existing physical/spatial model for them that Mike is proposing an alternative to. Because I say they are distinct in observation (see my quote above) does not mean I think they are three independent zones or points in some weird sort of psychological-axes space.

Best,
Ron

Quote from: Ron Edwards[snip]

So it's not like there's an existing physical/spatial model for them that Mike is proposing an alternative to. Because I say they are distinct in observation (see my quote above) does not mean I think they are three independent zones or points in some weird sort of psychological-axes space.

Yeah, I suppose I need to clarify.  There are a lot of subtly different viewpoints of how GNS should work at play here.  By "independent GNS priority model" I mean what M.J. is driving at.  I think the distinction has to do with whether or not you believe hybrid play exists.

Hi Jason,

I found these a bit ago:
Hybrids - looking for an understanding of (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=6628) has a little bit of my more recent thoughts in there.
Decision merging: an approach to hybridization (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=6520) demonstrates that odd little "how Mike" and "how Ron" think about the same thing
Can a game designer work for all three (G/N/S)? (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=3396) has more to do with customizing a game through play, without necessarily devaluing the other modes of play

I dunno if they'll be interesting, but who knows, they might help someone see how this comes up every so often.

Regarding hybrid play, I think that I see the term a little differently from the way Mike does. I think he's talking about the "little g, little s, little n" that can crop up in the way I quoted my essay about above. Whereas I see those as "fuzz blips" which aren't really worthy of a GNS name (although I could be wrong about that), and hybrid play as whole shifts among the group, 'way up there in the model, to play This Way for Now, as a supportive mode for another mode which is When We Get Back To It, in which those shifts are playing a specific facilitative role toward that second (main) one.

Best,
Ron

Quote from: Ron EdwardsRegarding hybrid play, I think that I see the term a little differently from the way Mike does. I think he's talking about the "little g, little s, little n" that can crop up in the way I quoted my essay about above. Whereas I see those as "fuzz blips" which aren't really worthy of a GNS name (although I could be wrong about that), and hybrid play as whole shifts among the group, 'way up there in the model, to play This Way for Now, as a supportive mode for another mode which is When We Get Back To It, in which those shifts are playing a specific facilitative role toward that second (main) one.

Yeah, I follow.  You could take it a step further and decide those shifts are irrelevant in the same fashion as little gns, and hence drop the idea of hybrid play.  It looks like the spectrum of atomic decisions -> instance of play (gns -> GNS -> G-N-S).

Can "it" (Discovery/Understanding/Knowledge) be viewed over an instance of play?  I think so.  

Does it conflict with theme/challenge?  I don't know.

This talk of hybrids reminds me of a situation I've watched develop over the past few months.  I play regularly in a gurps game run by a professor at the local university.  He was running this game and playing in a 3rd edition d&d game.  

The reason he started up this game was because he wasnt satisfied with the other, he stuck with it for awhile but eventually it just became not worthwhile for him and several of the other players in that group.  In discussing it with him he stated the reason for leaving was that it was pretty much hack and slash nothing more, not much story holding it together.  The game focused on lengthy planning sessions trying to figure out how best to overcome the enemies the gm had planned for the week, followed by the actual battle and afterwards the gm would go over what their best plan of attack would have been.

So it clearly sounded like it was a conflict between gamist and simulationist preferences but here's the funny thing, I've played in his game for a solid year now and find his games to be fairly gamist.  He has a detailed world built up and it retains a sense of consistency but the point of the game seems to be about the challenges.  Usually a mystery to figure out or a task to overcome with limitless solutions and generally a big combat scene that is incredibly tactically challenging.

It's obvious his prefences lie somewhere within the sim/game mix which would normally be considered a hybrid, or maybe he's a gamist using sim for support.  If restricted to choosing one mode as his preffered I would have to say gamism.  The interesting point to me is that he had a conflict with a mode of play that was the same as his own for reasons that were outside of his preference.  It seems to me that Mike's model solves the conundrum, sim was present in both but his gm only addressed it at a superficial level whereas his desire was more in the mid range.

Quote from: CaldisCan he not also be "stepping on up" to the challenge of surving the foreign landscape?     Can he not also be trying to survive so he can address the issue present in your example of the narrativist?

I knew as I was writing that Sim example that it was subject to a lot of interpretation. Thing is, that player who really threw himself into discovering the world was me--I've watched others do it since, but I was the first one, and I was the one who ripped the world apart looking for all those things. The world is particularly alien, and periodically we get someone into it who wants to explore it just to know all its nuances and secrets (and in my games there are some that have yet to be discovered by any player).

Sure, you can explore the world as a support mode for doing the other things; but then, you can worry about your family as a support mode for the other things, and you can face the challenges as a support mode for the other things.

I did go to the glass city, and I found a way to neutralize the danger of the spiders, not because I had any interest in beating the spiders but because I wanted to know what was in the city. I disassembled one of the spiders to see how it worked, not because I was searching for its weaknesses or wanting to know how to beat it, but because I believed that the spiders held clues to the nature of the universe and I wanted to understand it all.

I also gave thought to the fact that I was cut off from my family forever; this was not narrativist play, but background consideration for understanding how my character would react to his situation.

If Mike is arguing that there's a bit of simulationist-like conduct supporting narrativism and gamism, I'm ready to agree; I expect he will also concede that there is a bit of narrativist-like conduct supporting simulationism and gamism, and a bit of gamist-like conduct supporting simulationism and narrativism. The question is not whether we're involved in forms of play that look like each other. The question is whether our reason for playing is primarily one or another of the three big aspects.

As Ron says, only one of the three things can be most important to you over a period of play; the others are just things you do because they support what you want to do.

Quote from: He laterSo it clearly sounded like it was a conflict between gamist and simulationist preferences but here's the funny thing, I've played in his game for a solid year now and find his games to be fairly gamist. He has a detailed world built up and it retains a sense of consistency but the point of the game seems to be about the challenges. Usually a mystery to figure out or a task to overcome with limitless solutions and generally a big combat scene that is incredibly tactically challenging.

What it sounds like is conflict that is not strictly between modes. It's perfectly reasonable and common for gamists to disagree about how to play.

Not so long ago I posted an article, Game Ideas Unlimited: Challenge, in which I suggested that one of the important aspects of designing and running gamist games was setting the level of challenge to the preferences of the players. It's quite possible for someone who likes gamism generally to dislike any particular gamist game because the challenge is wrong for him. No one likes to play the game you can't win, and very few like to play the game you can't lose--but where that line appears is going to be very much dependent on the nature of the challenge and the level of the challenge, as against the skill and preferences of the player. Some who like very difficult puzzles don't like even simple combat so much; some who love tactically challenging combat hate puzzles. GNS doesn't say that there won't be discord between people in the same agendum; it says that there will be discord between people with conflicting agenda.

It's not the same thing.

--M. J. Young

Hey Sean,

I did not realize, that even after my disclaimer, that the phrase, "Beer and Pretzels," would be controversial.  I will refrain from the use of that particular phrase in the future.  But before I leap away from that topic, I think it is interesting to note that your definition of "Beer and Pretzels" also encompasses the idea of low intensity, which was exactly what I was aiming at.

One more point and then onto the meat of my post.  I am confused by your assertion that you think that I am using "Sim" as kind of term of praise.  The thought never entered my mind so I am not sure where it is in my post.  It is either not there and you misinterpreted me, by which remedy let me assure you that I am not intentionally using "Sim" as a kind of term of praise or it is in my post and I too self-blind to see it and I request that you point it out to me so that I may better police my own postings so as to avoid this error in the future.  Thank you!

Quote from: SeanMaybe it's just important to remember that people can be happy with that, and that 'incoherence' or 'weak attention to Creative Agenda' is only a problem if a group wants to ramp up the intensity of their play in some way.

I don't have any issues with games with 'weak attention to Creative Agenda' or perhaps what I think is a better term, 'weak expression of Creative Agenda' on any level.  I don't think I made any value judgment about such games other than to say they are difficult to quantify behaviorally in regards to the diagnostic portion of the model.  I think it is interesting to note the idea that as intensity of engagement decreases the greater the probability that multiple modes of play can exist side by side as the players just aren't all that fired up so the annoyance factor isn't that likely to be an issue either.

Quote from: Mike HolmesJay, that's always been part of the model, as I understand it. Agenda only becomes notable in certain circumstances.

There's something very important in the above quote.  One of the main arguments that has been promulgated in these threads recently is that whenever G/N isn't being addressed we are immediately defaulting into Sim.  The above clearly implies that Agenda is NOT always notable.  If that above is true then there are times or instances of play that are not Agenda identified.  For lack of a better term those interstitial moments of play have been referred to as "Zilchplay."  Maybe this particular argument is circular, but something is amiss.

I think there are some conflicting ideas about what Exploration means in roleplay.  As roleplay is a creation enterprise, we have more when we are done than when we started, and that the basis of roleplay is Exploration, I believe that Exploration must, by extention, be a creation activity.  If you're not creating you're not roleplaying.  I know the word create has all sorts of built in explodo buttons but hang with me for a moment.  Any player action that makes it into the SIS is a creative in that something new, that which was not there before, has been added to SIS.  However just because something was added to the SIS does not mean the goal/agenda of a CA have been added to.  In other words if the action taken by a player does not add to the body of material that is building towards the goal of CA then that act is not CA specific, it is Zilchplay.

In Gamism the player is taking steps, adding to the body of actions that will hopefully bring said player ultimately to victory.
In Narrativism the player is taking steps, adding to the body of actions that will hopefully bring said player ultimately to theme/story.
In Simulationism the player is directly adding new pieces to the body of the Explorative elements.

A player merely walking around is himself not directly adding to the Explorative Elements.  The DM who in response to the stated players stated intent of walking around adds to the SIS by describing setting, but the player has not.  Zilchplay.

Thus if a player adds to the Explorative Elements directly, if this is his goal and this is what he is jazzed about, then said player is playing Sim.  This can happen under two circumstances.  When a player has a choice about an action that will prioritize one agenda over another, or vitally important to the idea of Sim as a stand-alone agenda, when the player steps out of Zilchplay and directly into Sim.

To employ the much used example, said character walks across the street.  Zilchplay.  However the player could while walking across the street stop, go to a knee, pickup a handful of earth and say, "This is good soil.  I will build my farm here one day."  The player in this example was not under pressure to avoid Gam or Nar choices, but freely of his own creative inclination created an opportunity where none existed before to add to the Explorative Elements.  He chose to play Sim as an Agenda.  Like Walt said earlier, this creative bit must be "unexpected" or new to the circumstances.

So in order to see Creative Agenda in operation, something new/unexpected must be "created" and it must address the goals of that Agenda.

I believe the additive goal of Simulationism is adding to the Explorative Elements.  The players are collaborating in the creation, maintenance, and social reward delivery for living the Dream.

Aure Entaluva,

Silmenume

Quote from: M. J. Young
GNS doesn't say that there won't be discord between people in the same agendum; it says that there will be discord between people with conflicting agenda.

It's not the same thing.

--M. J. Young

Oh I agree with that entirely however the point I was trying to make is that his disagreement didn't depend on the type of challenge at all or even the level of the challenge it was the lack of something else that was his problem with the game, not a disagreement on what type of game to play but the missing elements that are associated with sim.

Maybe it's just a different way of looking at the same thing but for me it makes more sense to view the different modes as a horseshoe or maybe even an arc is better. At one end you have a preference for gamism, where characters are little more than chess pieces, as you slowly increase the amount of simulation you throw into the game the arc rises to the mid point where there is no more game going on it's all about the sim.  The sim adds more questions about characters their settings leading to emotions and morals which begins the downward slide to Narrativism which is all about creating stories with premise.

Thanks to all for an illuminating discussion.

Jay, I like your phrase 'weak expression of creative agenda' better, because it avoids the cognitivist implications of 'attention'. Assuming that the players of a game (including the GM, if any) are doing things that reflect their desires for what they want to get out of the game, and assuming that it is meaningful to talk about human action in terms of belief/desire psychology (materialist and behaviorist skeptics are referred to Daniel Dennett's article "Three Kinds of Intentional Psychology" - he's on your side in terms of metaphysics, and he still thinks that what the cognoscenti call 'folk psychology' is a predictive theory of human action) regardless of consciously expressed motives etc., talking about this as expression of those desires seems to be a better way to put it all around.

The only reason I suggested that you were using Sim as a 'term of praise' is because you were distinguishing S from Z, as Walt seems to. We can drop the praiseworthy connotations of that for S, if there ever were any, which I'm happy to take your word that they're weren't, and just talk about whether this distinction exists. I apologize for the suggestion. As to 'beer and pretzels', we're all free to use the language the way we like, and I agree with you about the low-intensity connotation, but I do think this phrase almost always refers to low-intensity Gamism in my experience with it, and that I've generally used it that way.


Mike, I like your interpretation of my paraphrase of you as 'seeing Ron's arrow', and insofar as you're right that does serve to eliminate differences between you and Ron except on matters of emphasis. The fact that you and Ron both feel that those are the differences tends to bolster that impression.


I'm tending to look at it like this. People come to the table to explore; they make decisions which they at least like to pretend (even in Walt's example as he stated it) are influencing the shared imaginative space of the game. Actually, even in heavy Illusionist games, they are influencing it in some sense: something besides the players' decisions (say, one player, the GMs, decisions) are determining the outcomes, but the players are still determining, say, how they arrive at the predetermined outcomes.

The overall (little-g, little-s, little-n, and I think using different terms for these might potentially be more misleading, because the way you diagnose capital-letter GNS preferences in a player is to look at which of these decisions he or she (a) gets the most enjoyment out of and (b) makes most frequently) pattern of these decisions tells you something about the creative agenda preferences of the players. Some people may be happy to bop around with spontaneous decisions of different types.

On the other hand, frequently RPG groups get into trouble because there is a conflict between more strongly felt GNS preferences, which are neither stated well nor dealt with well, among the players. And also, there are a lot of really exceptional joys to be gotten out of RPGing with a creative agenda that focuses intensely on one mode of play, which are hard to get out of attenuated play. (And infact 'casual', attentuated play often seems to break down because one or two players get the bug of this more intense mode of play and others don't want to follow along.)


I think that if there's any phenomenon which mirrors what I take Walt and Jay to be pointing to here it's the happiness of some groups that play very attenuatedly, without intense focus on any decision type, to keep playing that way.


So at this point I'm sort of torn. On the one hand, I believe that people playing this way will probably be at least roughly diagnoseable with some kind of overall preference within any given game, G, N, or S. On the other hand, if they're happy with what they're doing, they might resist an intensification along any of those axes: they might make decisions not to explore intensely, or not to step on up, or not to get too hard-core into the story, because they just want to keep floating along. And in this sense, because they make negative decisions about the intensity of any of the three modes, it might make sense to talk about Z as a fourth preference - this one really defined negatively, as Sim should not be in my opinion. It's the creative agenda that says 'hey, let's not focus on any overall creative agenda, let's just bop around in the shared space and focus on whatever butters our muffin at the time, with the understanding that if your muffin gets too heavily buttered consistently in one direction you either need to lay off or find a new game'.

So: decisions in play are always understandable as little-g, little-s, or little-n, at least barring finding some new form of focus. And many games will have a creative agenda which involves focusing on one of these and making play more intense: the capital letter modes. On the other hand, there's also an overall creative agenda which is explicitly aimed against heavy focus, which we're calling "Zilchplay", but since that's negative and implies to me an absence of player desires, which is incoherent, I'd prefer C, "Casual Play", as the title, if this exists.

So I have two questions:

(a) For Walt and Jay: is this a reasonable way of thinking about what you have in mind? Would you accept this analysis? Any quibbles?

(b) For Mike, MJ, and Ron: would this way of looking at things be acceptable to you? If not, why not?

Of course, anyone else is welcome to join in on either or both questions too.

Post moved to zilchplay thread.

Quote from: JayIn Simulationism the player is directly adding new pieces to the body of the Explorative elements.

That's defining Sim in reference to Exploration, which is all sorts of fine and dandy if the Beeg Horseshoe is what you're after.  

The counter arguement is that Nar/Gam are also adding to the explored elements just as much, because Exploration and CA are part of the same whole.  Putting us back in the circle of doom, and needing some way to fix Sim (such as with the Beeg Horseshoe).

QuoteIf Mike is arguing that there's a bit of simulationist-like conduct supporting narrativism and gamism, I'm ready to agree; I expect he will also concede that there is a bit of narrativist-like conduct supporting simulationism and gamism, and a bit of gamist-like conduct supporting simulationism and narrativism. The question is not whether we're involved in forms of play that look like each other. The question is whether our reason for playing is primarily one or another of the three big aspects.

As Ron says, only one of the three things can be most important to you over a period of play; the others are just things you do because they support what you want to do.

Totally agreed. It's just, as Ron says, that I'm very interested in the support. See, how can Sim be a retreat from, say, gamism, if you're using gamism as a "support" conduct? More importantly, I'd say that gamism and narrativism can't support anything per se. That is exploration does fine with or without them. The reverse isn't true. This is the main difference. Exploration underlies these other two, and they can't really exist without it. Therefore "sim" to me is promoting exploration. Such that it's maintained whether you want to do nothing but explore, or play in some other mode at some later date.

Basically, the idea of agenda is sidetracking people into thinking that playing in one mode is a rejection of the other modes such that the player doing so must have no desire ever to play that way - that "support" conduct like this is incidental. But it's not incidental, it's an important part of the overall agenda. I want all three modes at once. In practice, yes, I have to prioritize one. But that doesn't mean that I've retreated from the others. I've just made the sadly inevitable decision that has to be made. The lesser of two evils, the other being incoherence.

I think once we realize this, there'll be less people poo-poohing other people's play because we'll all realize that we're more similar than we think. Yes, there are crucial differences in modes, but none of the functional ones involve cowardice or prejudice against any mode. Preference against, maybe (though I think even there we're more similar than we admit), but not "retreat".


I'd definitely buy Casual Play, Sean, if it means that the prioritizations that you're making aren't done with such a dramatic nature as to make them stand out. That is, I think that Casual Play probably has an overall agenda, but it's just not likely to be identifiable. OTOH, I think for that very reason, if play ever does intensify, unless the players know the actual agenda, that this is potentially problematic.

Mike

Hey Sean,

Quote from: SeanPeople come to the table to explore; they make decisions which they at least like to pretend (even in Walt's example as he stated it) are influencing the shared imaginative space of the game.

The main tripping point that keeps coming up is what exactly does it mean to Explore.  Exploration could be thought of as the process of statement creation that fits within the strictures laid out in the social contract.  For example in the Social Contract we agree that we are going to play in Middle Earth and that I am going to play a Vanyarian Elf by the name of Silmenume and that we are going to play system X.  System X basically confines my efforts to that can only be accomplished through my character.  If I make statements (or ask questions) that have nothing to do with the setting, situation, or something that my character would not have knowledge of or power to affect then I am not exploring.  For example, if am talking about sports, the weather, a trip I took to Alaska, last weeks game, how much I think the system sucks then I am not exploring.  Sometimes this is called out of character or out of game.  Thus for exploration to be happening I must confine my topics or subject matter to those elements that have been sanctioned in the Social Contract.  This all happens before the Lumpley Principle even comes into play.  The Explored elements constrain the roleplay "dialogue," employing said elements is called Exploration.

Creative Agenda is the metagame goal that directs our use of the Exploration process.  Thus Gamist play employs the elements of Exploration to provide an arena where a contest is created and the goal of victory is sought.  Narrativist play employs the elements of Exploration to provide an arena where a premise is created and the goal of theme/story is sought.  Simulationist play employs the elements of Exploration to provide an arena where the Exploratory elements can be added to in a fashion that is challenging (confining itself to the medium – not the Step On Up variety) yet aesthetically pleasing.

Note – employing the Exploratory elements is not the same as adding to them.

There is also this idea that seems to be floating in the Zeit Geist that Exploration (as in the defining act of roleplay, the employment of system, character, situation, setting, and color) is equivalent to walking around in the SIS and looking at things, i.e., exploring (lower case 'e') the environment/setting.

So, to you assertion that players come to the table to explore (and I'll assume that you mean all players), I answer a qualified yes.  If you mean explore as in effecting the SIS, i.e., doing something that allows for, at the very least, some input I would say yes.  If you mean by explore that all players are interested in adding to the narrative elements (Explorative elements less formalized system) as a goal, then I would say no.  The goal of purposefully/mindfully adding to the narrative elements is the Sim Creative Agenda.

Quote from: SeanSo: decisions in play are always understandable as little-g, little-s, or little-n, at least barring finding some new form of focus.

I don't believe that decisions in player are always understandable as little-g, little-s, or little-n.  I believe there are decisions that are not understandable and these instances are what are currently being referred to as little z.  This may not be the best term, but it is the working term for the moment until something better should come up.

Now, little z instances do not mean that the acting player has no creative agenda, it just means that the instances in question cannot be diagnosed.  It doesn't say anything necessarily about the motive of the player.  This can happen for four reasons that I can think of.  The first is that said instance of play is a congruent instance between 2 or more agenda and thus making it impossible to determine which agenda was in operation so it looks like no CA was in operation at all.  The second is that the instance in question was specifically instituted in the service of a CA by said player, but the action itself yields no signature as to its (CA) source.  Third the said little z instance could be the result of lack of CA.  Finally the little z instance could be the result of the player purposefully suppressing CA for whatever reasons.  To reduce even further a little z instance could either basically represent a failure of the model to diagnose CA, or the actual absence of CA motive.

Quote from: SeanOn the other hand, there's also an overall creative agenda which is explicitly aimed against heavy focus, which we're calling "Zilchplay", but since that's negative and implies to me an absence of player desires, which is incoherent, I'd prefer C, "Casual Play", as the title, if this exists.

A big Z game does not necessarily mean that the players have willingly chosen such a style of play.  It could be a dysfunctional game whereby the players have purposefully squelched the free expression of their CA in order to "get along" or "keep the game going."  IOW though they may have chosen a big Z style game, it does not mean that it is their preferred mode of play or that they are enjoying themselves.  Or it could be that the game is more socially oriented than self-expression oriented.

I just had another epiphany that demonstrates that Sim is not self-same with exploration.  Sim does not allow for the dynamic addressing of formalized systems, which can be allowed for in Nar.  Both CA's employ the Exploration elements, but each prioritizes which elements are most important and which are not to be messed with.  Exploration as a whole says nothing about which elements are allowed or not allowed to be added to, while Sim has very clear strictures about what portions of the Exploration elements are subject to dynamic addressing and in what manner they are to be addressed.

I can't speak for Walt, but this is what I feel.

Aure Entaluva,

Silmenume

Hi Jay,

Your final epiphany nails it, as far as I'm concerned.

There's a section in GNS and Related Matters of Role-playing Theory called "Does it exist" (or something like that), and then there's the big ol' Simulationism essay itself ... both of those express my thinking on the topic, and I think they're consistent with your point.

Best,
Ron

Quote from: SilmenumeI just had another epiphany that demonstrates that Sim is not self-same with exploration.  Sim does not allow for the dynamic addressing of formalized systems, which can be allowed for in Nar.  Both CA's employ the Exploration elements, but each prioritizes which elements are most important and which are not to be messed with.  Exploration as a whole says nothing about which elements are allowed or not allowed to be added to, while Sim has very clear strictures about what portions of the Exploration elements are subject to dynamic addressing and in what manner they are to be addressed.

So those strictures we could call a Creative Agenda (the 'shape' of Exploration), which is why defining Sim in reference to Exploration isn't going to cut it (assuming Sim exists).  Gam and Nar are Exploration 'molds' as well, no more or less about Exploration than Sim.  Those strictures are where M.J.'s "it" (Discovery) comes into play.

Pretty much right on the nose.

I am not sure that I buy the Discovery idea per say, but it does vigorously address the idea of 'a' goal in Sim that is distinct from the act of Exploration as a process that is occuring in all three CA's.

Aure Entaluva,

Silmenume