The Importance of Being External

[Gordon C. Landis]

So I found myself arguing for the legitimacy of "internal" Gamist measurement of performance in the "Gamism: The pursuit of excellence" thread.  I added a few words about how there will be OBSERVABLE external manifestations from this, because I remembered the importance of "observable behaviors" in GNS.  Then I go and check into the threads cross-referenced by Ron, and I read Ron's quote below:

"My take on Gamism is that the stakes have to be external and common to the competing participants, not internal and self-assessed."  

In that thread, Gareth (contracycle) disagreed, and some discussion followed, but I didn't see a clear conclusion reached.  I guess I disagree too - or do I?  That's what this post is an attempt to discover.

First, let me provide a little context, and add that Ron goes on to say "Therefore a Gamist Premise must have an acknowledged challenge and an acknowledged loss/victory condition; furthermore, although degrees of success may be recognized, equal success for all is ... well, not part of the picture."  I'm not really up to attacking the question of Gamist Premise at the moment (I'd need to reread that part of the essay) - I'm talking about internal vs. external stakes in plain, simple Gamism.

I'm going to go ahead and use the "compete" word, as it comes naturally to me and I *think* most readers will be aware what I mean by it.  I'm also going to try and use a concrete, RPG-based example, rather than a competive sport metaphor - and since we're talking Gamism, D&D seems a good choice.  In D&D, there ARE external stakes that players can compete/strive for - experience points, going up in levels, and acquiring treasure, to name the obvious.  But I have personally played in D&D games that effectively ignored those stakes.  Does that mean I wasn't playing a Gamist D&D game?

Not neccessarily - or at least, that's the claim.  I think I'm with Gareth (contracycle) here when I say the game stats (strength and etc.) are more than enough for a Gamist to construct a means to measure his or her performance with.  By the very nature of constructing hit points, attack bonuses, armor classes, and etc., the game provides an arena for competition.  An arena, and an arena only.  The Gamist (usually in conjuction with the rest of the group, consciously or not) can construct the details of the competition from there, many of which can be entirely internal - e.g., you accept the lower movement rate of heavy armor, and thus gain satisfaction when that armor pays off in an intense battle.

There is no specific external yardstick that says "good choice on the armor - plus 20 points".  But the internal satisfaction is given by the external parameters of the game system - and it will have had a "observable behaviors" of the player considering the mechanical considerations of his choice when equiping the character, directing the character in specific ways as a result of the choice, and expressing happiness about the protective effects of his armor during and after play.

Now I'll use a sports example - as far as I'm aware, there is no statistic in the NFL (American footbal) for "yards gained when somebody ran in my direction".  There's a score in the game, totals of yards gained, time played - all kinds of external measures, but that one doesn't exist, and would be quite difficult to determine if you tried.  None the less, a defensive lineman might derive a great deal of personal competitive satisfaction from knowing that in his little battle against his counterpart on the offense, he never gave ground.  Regardless of the other external measures, he knows he did a really good job.  

However, he is only able to reach this internal assesment by virtue of having been on the field, accepting the various external rules for the competition.

So - have I demonstrated that by saying "internal measurement", I am NOT saying "without regard for or influence by external measures"?  And therefore, I'm not actually contradicting Ron's statements when I speak about Gamists who determine how well they did in the challenge "internally"?  Or is this just liguistic trickery, and I should just say "Ron, I think you're wrong - Gamists can judge their competition internaly!"

I look forward to comments,

Gordon    

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

My concern is that people seem to be mistaking "external" for "official." In many cases, those are the same thing - leveling up your character faster than another person's character, for instance.

However, many people do not concern themselves with in-game, by-the-rules success, but find something to compete about on a more social level. For instance, based on much personal experience, I have seen Gamist-oriented players take something like Everway and INJECT extensive, personal, social competition into it, based on absolutely none of the official material.

So let's distinguish between (b) external-internal, which I am using in my essay as "group-assessed dynamic" vs. "personal-assessed dynamic," or something like that; and (b) official-unofficial by the rules, which is what people wrongly seem to think I am saying by (a).

Now some of you may have scoffed at the idea of people competing to level-up faster than one another, staying utterly "official" in terms of the competition. You'd be right, actually. That only applies in RPGs with overt winning mechanics, which includes only two that I can think of (Pantheon and Rune).

Most common, in my experience, is a hybrid of unofficial-official concerns, in which some personal aspect about the official thing (but not it, itself) is at stake among participants - externally acknowledged and shared. For instance, whether you live or die, in traditional AD&D, is considered to be a personal reflection on you as a player. Sure, we all get resurrected when we die, but you had to get resurrected twice last run, and I haven't been resurrected since two levels ago. I am AHEAD of you.

Those of you who say "role-players don't do this," are blind. Those of you who say "that's not role-playing" are mistaken (and elitist). Those of you who say "that's dysfunctional" are missing the fact that the people are having a great time.

To repeat my point: when I say "external" in the essay, that may refer to plain old official rules (Gareth's hated "yardstick"), to totally unofficial things unrelated to the game mechanics, and to a hybrid of the two, which I think is most common.

Best,
Ron

[Gordon C. Landis]

All right, I'm gonna take a page from Ron's book and lay off posting on Gamism and GNS for a bit - nothing new is crystalizing for me.  But first - some comments on this thread, since I started it and Ron has responded.  I'm certainly on-board with the official vs. unofficial is NOT internal vs. external claim.  But - let me use a quote . . .

On 2001-12-13 23:30, Ron Edwards wrote:
For instance, whether you live or die, in traditional AD&D, is considered to be a personal reflection on you as a player. Sure, we all get resurrected when we die, but you had to get resurrected twice last run, and I haven't been resurrected since two levels ago. I am AHEAD of you.

Those of you who say "role-players don't do this," are blind. Those of you who say "that's not role-playing" are mistaken (and elitist). Those of you who say "that's dysfunctional" are missing the fact that the people are having a great time.

But - is this the whole of Gamism?  Saying that all this exists doesn't neccessarily mean that D&D games where we're not keeping track of who's "ahead" in any explict way can't be Gamist.

My experience is that such games can be very much about the thrill of competition, in the "competing with the module, with the GM as arbitraitor/referee" model.  The competitors aren't directly concerned about measuring themselves against each other, but when someone makes (e.g.) a good tactical challenge decision, they will get a thril from the recognition of that good decision by the other participants.  Not even measuring against the module need be done in any obviously way - they measure against their assesment as to if it was a good game (suitable challenge), and did they do well.  The ability to do that assesment is given by the external factors of the game system and/or module parameters, but the possibilities of how you "know" it was a good game are very wide.

Now, I agree that if you take this to an extreme, where it isn't really the thrill of the competition that you're going for but rather observing the results of Fortune and other game-mechanic tweaks/features on the outcome of events, you've stopped being Gamist and moved into Simulation (prioritizing Sim features in your play).

But it seems to me there's a good amount of room before you reach that spot.  E.g., I just realized I've seen a form of play (that kinda irritates me) that could be considered "Gamist Illusionism", where the GM is concerned with always making it SEEM (possibly complictly with the players, just like regular Illusionism) like the party is in great danger and the challenge is high - but in fact, no one is trully at risk most of the time.  By maintaining an illusion of competition, the GM allows players to get the Gamist thrills of meeting a challenge.  Such people are still prioritizing competition (over mechanics, over story, over immersion, and etc.), so as far as I can tell, they're Gamists of some flavor - that isn't well-described as mesuring themselves against an external standard ("external" definitely not used here as equivalent to "official").

Like I said, the vast majority of that feels like I'm repeating myself from the last threads, so I'm gonna shut up now.

Except for this . . . maybe one explanation for how this remains Gamism can be shown with the (maybe inadvisable) sports analogy again, from a different angle.  Let's consider a Gamist RPGs as team sport.  As I mentioned elsewhere, the individual memebers of a team can feel "good" about their participation in the competition no matter what the external measures might be.  By the same token, how they feel about their performance has NO effect on the objective measure of what happened to the team - that was a Win or a Loss, or perhaps a Tie.

One form of Gamist play is that in which the vast majority of the measurement of success is - how did the Team do?  Was the Party able to acheive what they wanted to acheive?  This form is one place where those who DON'T like the Gamist model presented in Ron's quote above go - it's not about *I'm* ahead, it's about *we're* ahead.  And *we're* can most certainly include the GM, though that requires acknowledging that the way in which he's "ahead" is somewhat different than the way the players are ahead (and usually involves a skillful presentation of the challenges of the module, and/or a clever compensation for the difficulties in maintaining "balance").

Now I'm really done.  G'night . . .

Gordon

Gordon

[Ron Edwards]

Gordon,

You ask, regarding my example, "Is this the whole of Gamism?"

NO! No, no, no! [jump around in circles]

It was an example of Gamism. That means that Gamism is a big, big box, and this was a little box within it, chosen to illustrate the point of concern.

I am on record, multiple times, as stating that this mode of play has tremendous potential diversity regarding any number of its aspects. I'd appreciate it if I wasn't required, every bleedin' time I use an example, to remind people about this.

[pant, pant]

Gordon, you have done more than any other person to bring the discussion of Gamism to a meaningful accord, and I thank you for that, with great respect. Please pardon my orkish self in response to that one paragraph.

Best,
Ron