Removing the Incentive for Gamism

[Jason Lee]

So one way to eliminate the Egg Hunt is by removing those optimal choices.  For example, in the game Go all the pieces have the same size and function.  If there were pieces that took up multiple squares those pieces would obviously be better.  The Egg Hunt is looking for those pieces.

Well even in Go there are smarter opening moves than others and it would be *nonoptimal* and Stupid not to take these movies.  If you were to draw this analogy character creation would be the early game where you set up your positions and borders or what not.  Placing a peice ON the corner is a pretty dumb move, especially early game.  My point is that no matter how much you get rid of eggs to hunt, they will still be searched for.

Maybe so, but if the search is ultimately fruitless then the incentive is gone.  I think I get what you're saying, but you might not want to stretch the Go analogy to far.  The Egg Hunt is about player resources, not in-play tactics.  (Though tactics are a valid target for this discussion.)

I guess it boils down to being impossibly careful and having infinite foresight.  ;-)

However, usefully - ( ihope)
There is reward in egg hunting.  Get rid of it. The reward in egg hunting is that you have a stronger character to solve challanges.

To get rid of this reward this, it seems that your design is wants to be balanced but with different strategies all inherantly equal.  What I would do for this, is make a rock-paper-scissor sort of style of balance between three, four, or more different 'tactics'.  Defense might beat Quick might beat Offense might beat Defense.  Or whatever fits.  Of course don't make it flat rps, go ahead and add in a random factor.  Just make sure each area of the game is balanced in its own seperate area.  Don't let your skills affect combat significantly, or anything like that.  If you want a feign combat skill have a feign combat skill instead of using bluff.  

Other suggestions as earlier add this and help such as removing stacking, etc.  

Then find a way to satisfy the gamers.  I would suggest by taking the reward you just took away from having an uber character and putting it in solving challenges.  

I'm not sure if this was of any help, butI hope so.

I agree with that for non Egg Hunt Gamism.

To return to StarCraft, except not as an analogy this time, it's basically a big game of rock-paper-scissors.  I think it's somewhat poorly executed, but that's kind of beside the point (once you get that complex though, I think perfect circle is pretty impossible).

[M. J. Young]

Now once the vampire is suitably bound, the nar comes in and starts interogating him in the style of his character to find out the next step of the story.

I thought you were going to try to get to your theory without using the Creative Agenda terminology.

This is not narrativism at all. It doesn't even resemble narrativism. What it appears to be is something more like Threefold Dramatism, a desire to role play a character.

Why isn't it narrativism?

[*]Merely having dialogue and narrative, character interaction and role play, is not narrativist. It's just role playing, exploration at a basic level, that can be harnessed for any of the three agenda.[*]The suggestion of "find out the next step of the story" implies that there is a story to be found out. That's not narrativism; that's trailblazing--the referee has created an adventure, and our job is to follow the clues that will carry us through his story. Narrativism inherently means that the referee doesn't have a story, and neither do we--we are going to create the story by addressing the moral issues here. Looking for the next step in the story is common in gamist play (such as competition modules) and in simulationist play. Trailblazing is incompatible with narrativist play as a technique, because the degree to which there already is a story to be followed is the degree to which you are not creating it through play.[*]There is no issue being addressed at all. What you are describing is a simple information gathering scene. What is the moral, ethical, or personal issue with which your character is wrestling at this moment? There is none. Narrativism, in this situation, would arise if perhaps the characters now argued about whether it was moral to kill a vampire who had been captured alive, knowing that he can't survive without killing but at the same time that killing is precisely that which makes him evil, and killing him would be the same thing. It might arise if the vampire offered the character something he truly desired, in exchange for freeing the vampire, and the character had to consider whether the price of releasing just one blood sucking vampire into the world was worth receiving his desire (and this really mattered in play). Merely roleplaying a conversation is no more narrativist than walking around a Final Fantasy game discovering what the locals are programmed to say.[/list:u]
Sure, you've got a mixed group; but there's no evidence in anything you've presented that any of your group are narrativists. They're gamists, maybe simulationists, who enjoy a variety of different techniques, who may fall in different categories of the Threefold Model (which I gather is very much about techniques). There is no narrativist conflict here because there is no narrativism being displayed in anyone's play that you have thus far described. Resolving moral issues does not seem to be the point of play here, for any of the players. Everyone wants to win; they just like different aspects of that which has to be done to do so.

*****

I'm going to agree with Jason that a game without a rewards system is still rewarding; players set their own goals and achieve them in-game, whether it's overcoming an obstacle, dealing with a difficult issue, or discovering a new world.

Sorcerer and Alyria have, I think, narrativist reward systems, and are worth examining in this regard.

--M. J. Young

[Amadeus]

I thought you were going to try to get to your theory without using the Creative Agenda terminology.

Well no.  I'm going to get to my theory seperately in the theory forum when its ready.  Right now I'm both learning and questioning this theory.

That said, I want to give a better example, the last was hasty and nonspecific and somewhat useless.

This happened recently in a supers game in the M&M system:
Players:
Me:  A time travelling lizard monk (long story)
Him: A Psionic more or less renegade super hero
Others: Not in this example because aren't really that relevant to the example

We are having a challenge currently - Me, Him and the Others have been confronted with a mystic thats currently attacking us who has some information we might like to know.  He (being mechanically primed for kicking ass) steps up and attempt to harm him, first by breaking the ceiling glass in at him.  This strategy somewhat worked and he was hurt (with help from others).  I moved in and disabled his powers with a gadget that cut out mystic powers.  He started another attack on him.  He got in one round of damage before I was able to do anything at all. This one round knocks him out and it looks like he is going to continue for another ound which would kill the enemy.

A note about my character and how I play it. My character has several moral bounds due to his monk statis.  First he cannot allow someone who is not an active threat to be harmed.  However he also is bound to help his allies.  So I am forced with a moral decision - turn on my friend or allow this defenseless nonthreat to be killed for no reason especially when his death may stop us from finding information that will save innocents.  I make a choice and realize it and I rotate the gadget towards the psionic to disable his powers and give him a little speech about killing those who are defenseless or some such.  After we question him I diplomatically choose to ignore the fact that he stays in afterwards and does his thing with him.

We are both happy, and get something useful out of the game.  He gets to fulfill his need to beat this (even though I think it was beaten before this, but if he doesn't thats fine) and I get to arrive at a moral conclusion and use that to base my actions on.  

It seems to me though that we both have different gns.  Is this true? If so, what are each of us, if not what are both of us?  Maybe we are just using different technique? If so what techniques are we using?

We seem to have some conflict, but its so minor it doesn't matter in the end and is resolved with a little decency and doesn't effect either of us from having a good time overall.  Really I don't think it would have mattered if I choose not to ignore him beating the shit out of him when we left.  

This is not narrativism at all. It doesn't even resemble narrativism. What it appears to be is something more like Threefold Dramatism, a desire to role play a character.

meh, dramatism was the original roots of narrativism so i suppose it must at least resemble it.  

really though desire to roleplay a character seems more sim to me in a 'mask' sort of way (immersion). Is this correct?

His intent isn't so much as to roleplay the character as that he is becoming that character for a section of time.  Its not a desire to, it is an actualization of this desire.  The way he does it (in the other example which is a different game) is that he becomes this other character.  He was an actor for a while, before he changed his major to religion, so I suppose this is where he gets it from.  

Is this correct?

They're gamists, maybe simulationists, who enjoy a variety of different techniques, who may fall in different categories of the Threefold Model (which I gather is very much about techniques).

Ok fine.  Is it ok to say maybe one of us is a gamist and one a sim?  It still shows  that our group is mixed and a fun game for all is possible by not ignoring completely the other agenda.  Sure if you focus on all three its horrible, but 2 isnt a problem.

Meh actually nm.  I'll just work on my own thing and ignore gns since I seem to 'not get it' and I at least think its partly bs.  Plus I'll get lots more time to do this =-P

[contracycle]

As for the second part (italics), I disagree.  I think playing for its own sake, without a rewards system, is perfectly valid.  Without a rewards system you wouldn't be supporting/encouraging a play style, but you also won't be interfering with one.  So from my perspective, a lack of rewards system is one way you could fail to support Gamism.  Though not the topic of this thread, a lack of rewards system might also be a method for failing to support Nar.

Lets imagine a diofferent covert agenda.  Lets say I was building a game for kids becuase I wanted them to get outrside and play in the outdoors.  I feel this would be a good and useful thing that they will enjoy.

I then construct a pretext for being in the outdoors, which is a game.  But, so as not to distract them from the appreciation of the outdoors, I make the game No Fun.  The result will be that the 'game' is a burden, a chore, and it will not have much take-up.  And your covert agenda will be undermined by the failure of the overt agenda.

RPG is necessarily N+G+S; I don't think one of these can eliminated without transforming into something else.  N&S alone is arguably fancy-dress or some sort of historical re-enactment.  But I do not think it can be RPG.

[Jason Lee]

Lets imagine a diofferent covert agenda.  Lets say I was building a game for kids becuase I wanted them to get outrside and play in the outdoors.  I feel this would be a good and useful thing that they will enjoy.

I then construct a pretext for being in the outdoors, which is a game.  But, so as not to distract them from the appreciation of the outdoors, I make the game No Fun.  The result will be that the 'game' is a burden, a chore, and it will not have much take-up.  And your covert agenda will be undermined by the failure of the overt agenda.

RPG is necessarily N+G+S; I don't think one of these can eliminated without transforming into something else.  N&S alone is arguably fancy-dress or some sort of historical re-enactment.  But I do not think it can be RPG.

I think Simming (if I understand the hobby correctly) would be the result of an RPG stripped of all Gamism.  Though, in my experience some LARPS would also apply.  But the point is not to quibble over your example.  I agree with your general point that completely stripping G, N, or S from an RPG will make it something other than an RPG.  Just as I do your point  in the other thread about stripping out Nar making something a wargame.

The thing I disagree with is that I think you're over-stretching your point to say that by removing the Gamism you make something no fun - that implies that 'no fun' and 'not an RPG' are synonymous.

[pete_darby]

Even with no mechanical reward / support for gamism, the social reward and support for gamism can be there: in ST simming, as the most widespread example,  the "solving" of missions, the speed at which one rises through the ranks, the "correct" application of available resources, all feed gamism.

But I think the cart is before the horse a little here: rather than saying "An rpg must potentially support all 3 agenda, or it isn't an RPG", I'd say "Anything recognisable as an RPG will, by its nature, be potentially capable of supporting any agenda."

Which is to say that where you have a group of players using imaginary characters to explore a situation, that will be potentially any agenda regardless of mechanical support.

[contracycle]

The thing I disagree with is that I think you're over-stretching your point to say that by removing the Gamism you make something no fun - that implies that 'no fun' and 'not an RPG' are synonymous.

That wasn't quite my point.  Your stated goal is to make the gamist praxis non-rewarding, i.e. no fun. I'm not suggesting gamism has to be there for fun to be there.

[Jason Lee]

This happened recently in a supers game in the M&M system:
Players:
Me:  A time travelling lizard monk (long story)
Him: A Psionic more or less renegade super hero
Others: Not in this example because aren't really that relevant to the example

We are having a challenge currently - Me, Him and the Others have been confronted with a mystic thats currently attacking us who has some information we might like to know.  He (being mechanically primed for kicking ass) steps up and attempt to harm him, first by breaking the ceiling glass in at him.  This strategy somewhat worked and he was hurt (with help from others).  I moved in and disabled his powers with a gadget that cut out mystic powers.  He started another attack on him.  He got in one round of damage before I was able to do anything at all. This one round knocks him out and it looks like he is going to continue for another ound which would kill the enemy.

A note about my character and how I play it. My character has several moral bounds due to his monk statis.  First he cannot allow someone who is not an active threat to be harmed.  However he also is bound to help his allies.  So I am forced with a moral decision - turn on my friend or allow this defenseless nonthreat to be killed for no reason especially when his death may stop us from finding information that will save innocents.  I make a choice and realize it and I rotate the gadget towards the psionic to disable his powers and give him a little speech about killing those who are defenseless or some such.  After we question him I diplomatically choose to ignore the fact that he stays in afterwards and does his thing with him.

We are both happy, and get something useful out of the game.  He gets to fulfill his need to beat this (even though I think it was beaten before this, but if he doesn't thats fine) and I get to arrive at a moral conclusion and use that to base my actions on.  

It seems to me though that we both have different gns.  Is this true? If so, what are each of us, if not what are both of us?  Maybe we are just using different technique? If so what techniques are we using?

It's sort of hard to make an analysis from this example.  In my experience, and in my group, this is a fairly common Gamist approach.  Disarm big bad somehow, don't kill because of moral grounds and a need to question them, and block actions of other characters that try to kill them.

Any form of disarm (spell-block, taking away staff of doom, etc) is typically anti-climactic (because you have removed the threat from the antagonist), though it is almost always the most intelligent strategy.  The same is true for keeping them alive and pumping them for information; definitely the smart thing to do, but it lacks drama.

A moral code that a character sticks to doesn't necessarily mean Nar.  Character beliefs can be simply Color.  The thread Characterization vs Deep Character goes over this.   Also, in this sort of mode the moral code of the character tends to match that of the player, regardless of cultural context.

None of these are absolutes, and I am not saying your agenda is Gam. I'm just saying that the scenario isn't enough to go on (for me anyway) to assess what agenda is at work, particularly given that it matches up nicely with certain styles of Gamism I've seen.

What was the key interest in this scene - the conflict between the characters about killing the bad guy, or capturing the bad guy?  Which conflict was more fun?

No real answers in this post.  Just things to think about.