The lowdown on UA, quick and dirty!

[bastion-b]

Hey dudes!
I had a discussion about this with a fellow gamer who is even less GNS-savy than me. That is, he knows about the basic wide aspects of the model but couldn't really distinguish what makes a system a certain mode. I thought i could, but his question really made me wonder. He asked me in which category the simplistic system in Unknown Armies would belong. My immediate instinct told me it was sim, but i couldn't really motivate it in any convincing way so the discussion kind of died because of me not even knowing what I was trying to say. It was one of those times where you start rambling on and on thinking you make sense and the suddenly waking up to realize you don't know shit. I felt like Dr. Gonzo in Fear and loathing in Las Vegas when he has an attack in the car, suddenly stops and asks Raoul "What the fuck are we doing in the middle of the desert?"

So please, I feel like a god damn dumbass! I need help. How would you categorize unknown armies and why? I'm thinking it has something to do with adressing theme and premise, but I still feel like I'm in the middle of the desert here.


/Johan Granberg, monster reincarnation of Horatio Algier.

[Rob MacDougall]

Hi Johan.

(In case nobody's said it yet:) Welcome to the Forge!

I think consensus around here, to the extent there is consensus, is probably that UA facilitates Sim play, though a different kind of Sim than many games, with the emphasis on modeling the personality of the characters.

This thread - Unknown Armies and No-Myth role-playing - has a nice discussion of UA. It may read a little like UA-bashing, but I think it really isn't if you read it closely, and I say that as a big fan of the game.

A search for "Unknown Armies GNS" would probably reveal much more discussion.

Rob

[Bankuei]

Hi Johan,

I think a few folks have also encountered similar issues in discussing GNS and such.  To preface things- third person argumentation has never worked out well here, so you have been warned.  If your friend is interested, I'd suggest having him check out this thread for himself, and he is welcome to participate, contribute, ask questions, and/or disagree :)

Anyway, the easiest way to determine what sort of play a game facilitates, is to first see if it supports Gamism or Narrativism in its resolution or rewards, and finally in the "soft advice" given on how to play the game.

UA doesn't really support Gamism, as there's not a lot of tactics involved in it, or strategizing.  Rewards aren't for beating challenges- so its pretty much out of the question there.  

As far as Narrativism- UA could support it- but there's nothing in the resolution or rewards to make it so.  The neat personality mechanic tracks are the results of events in play, not necessarily choices (thematic input) on the parts of the players.  You pick your Rage/Noble/Fear stimulus and they don't change, and aren't necessarily a thematic jumper either.

Absent significant support of Gamist  or Narrativist play- you have Sim- focus on exploration.  

The neat content in UA can easily lend itself towards Narrativist play, but there is nothing in the system or the advice in the book that pushes for it.  Many games other games also fall into the same category- "High concept Sim".  You get a neat concept that folks can run with thematically if they're willing to take it and push it, but with what the system and the text provides alone- it's not going to reliably produce Addressing Premise.

Chris

[bastion-b]

Rob: Thanks! And thanks for the link too. That thread really got my brain going. Even though it wasn't exactly what I was looking for initially, it sparked some new thoughts about the game.

bankuei: Yeah, I understand your point of view but the third-person discussion wasn't really the point here. I'm the one who's interested. I want to straighten some stuff out in my head about GNS that I haven't had a grip on before. That other shit was just me trying to give you some background. Trying to make it a little more interesting and colourful, you know :)
Anyway, thanks. I think I understand at least partly where the S-definition comes from now. However, I still have loads of trouble with trying to distinguish one mode from the other in some systems but that might just be that the systems in question aren't totally pure in every aspect. Like Sorcerer, for instance. The planning and character creation is of course extremely narrativist, as is the way you're supposed to play the game as expressed in the book, but the rules (resolution) themselves i can't really define. Perhaps you're not supposed to dissect every little part of a system but instead try to have a broad perspective and define it as a whole?

/Johan

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Johan, I'm afraid some of the posts have misled you a little, not by telling you anything wrong ... but by permitting an important misperception to stand without correction.

It's this: give up any idea of classifying games as the primary goal of the whole GNS thing.

Sorcer = Narrativist. UA = Sim. D&D3 = Gamist. etc, all that kind of thinking and talk .... just lose it. Because as the primary goal, it's nothing but a descent into total craziness.

Creative Agenda (with G, N, and S as examples) is really only about playing, not about game texts. Once you get used to the idea of considering a bunch of people role-playing together, and how they act, and what they do over time ... then talking about Creative Agenda makes a lot of sense. And then considering how they're utilizing the procedures of play ("system") in line with Creative Agenda (or not), becomes a really cool question.

It might help as well to consider that "rules" (what's in the book) are not "system" (the procedures of play). The system is only ever expressed as interactions among people, and actually using designated physical objects - the rules are utilized for system only insofar as that group of people feels like it.

In other words, the System is what happens, and the rules are one reference point that might or might not be utilized for System.

This isn't just semantics or nitpicking. This is a huge hairy deal. It means that you don't pick up, say, Unknown Armies, and go "Oh, it's Simulationist," and figure that playing the game therefore must be a Simulationist act.

What do we do, then? Well, in my case, I take my experiences of playing literally hundreds of games with hundreds of people, and then I play Unknown Armies with other people who want to play it. I make a special point of using the rules as written for our System ("playing by the book") and also ... here's the important part ...

... we make sure to see the reward system of the rules in action, i.e., as System. All those "story points," any "improvement points," anything which serves as understandable payoff. We look at how long it takes, we look at how easy or fun it is, we look at how any other aspects of the System are involved with it, we look at how well it works for later play, we look at how well it works for "finishing" play, whatever. Anything about it. It's not very hard to find a Creative Agenda at work when you have this sort of discussion or reflection.

Ultimately, we can only really talk about the Creative Agenda we perceive for our particular game. But then we make a big jump - looking across hundreds of play-experiences, sharing experiences among us, communicating about it as best we can ... we often find that we agree about what Creative Agenda this set of rules is best suited to support. And with even more caution, we can look across different rules-sets and start to see some trends about what combinations of rules/System features tend to support which Creative Agendas.

So you're right: you can't look at a dice system and say, "Oh, that's Narrativist." That is bullshit. You can, however, with some caution, take play-experience like what I described above, think critically and comparatively about it, and say, "Hey, I think that supported [whichever] approach really well." And it's not some vague gestalt, either - the reward system is the center of the System, so focus on that. But be careful, because the rules reward stuff may not be actually what people are using for their real social and creative payoff. One has to learn how to observe for that stuff.

I hope this post has helped you to see how your initial approach (opening a game book, reading it, saying What Is It in GNS terms) should be reconsidered.

Best,
Ron