Splitting Simulationism?

[Marco]

What makes you think this is at odds with GNS Narrativism? One of the key tenants of Narrativist play is that one need not "worry about what will make a good story or address premises."

I think that the difference between most Narr play and immersionist Sim is that the players in the former are enjoying the way they can use the SIS to reflect issues they find interesting, while the latter are interested in the SIS itself.  It's not necessarily a matter of different techniques.  Narr players are enjoying the issues brought up in-game; they don't have to be issues that the players deliberately brought up.  They may be issues which simply spring from the nature of the setting and characters, which means that they don't have to worry about a 'good story' or how to address premises directly.  Nevertheless, they're after something distinct from the Sim players I'm talking about.

I understand the stated difference. What I don't see is how, in immersed play there is actually a workable, meaningful distinction. I mean, I can see a possible (or "hypothetical") distinction in "play situation that has nothing possibly or even remotely resembling a premise associated with it"--but I think that realistically such play is rare, is not "traditional genre play" (i.e. most games, 'in genre,' will involve an identifiable premise as a focus of situation--meaning that most stories have an identifiable premise ... Star Trek and Star Wars especially).

When that's not the case a lot of people here believe they can draw a distinction based, essentially, on the player's use of Author stance (this is based on most poster's analysis of my actual play write-ups). That is "because the write up doesn't focus on the player's response to the issue, rather than the player's response to situation which contains the issue," it is deemed Sim.

Whether those games are Sim or not is something that (a) I'm not sure of, having been there--although I think they meet the stated description of Nar in my opinion and (b) that many people are pretty sure are Nar because I clearly wasn't in Author stance and was (to a large degree, as a GM) working from internal-cause with a 'play it straight' ethic.

Of course part of this discussion is still pending Ron's illumination of the Sim process.

*Edit:  To clarify, Immersionist Sim and Narrativism are not 'at odds', and I've seen that often they are found in functional, coherent Sim/Nar play as long as the player doesn't get frustrated while constantly resolving the conflicting impulses to 'play it straight' and to 'make it interesting'.   Narrativism needs - or usually wants, at least - an ability to empathize with the character, which often springs from immersion.  Immersion needs a way to keep the character interesting, which often springs from narrativist moral/ethical/whatnot conflicts in the character's situation.  However, they're not always found together.

Well, I think everyone wants play to be interesting--sufficiently uninteresting play will, of course, kill any game (this is a recurring point of discussion for some reason). If I'm immersed in a character (Actor stance) it seems to me that "making it interesting" becomes either a request for a specific technique (i.e. not Virtuality) or an unacknowledged shift to Author stance.

Vincent discusses someting I think is key to this here:
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=11822&highlight=

And here
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=11904&highlight=

-Marco

[Silmenume]

Hey M. J.,

I've been doing much deep thinking and conversing recent, and I don't have much energy at the moment to bury you under a 8 billion page reply!

But I am seeing a fundamental problem here in the perspective of my goal.

...I don't particularly want to split sim into the objective and the subjective as distinct agenda. My problem has been that there are a number of people (Jay a.k.a. Silmenume comes to mind) who seem to have a narrower view of simulationism that focuses on the subjective and excludes the objective.

As I had indicated in my posting on the Site Discussion board, I am engaged in trying do some paradigm breaking, not trying to overtly exclude "objective" Sim.  I am throwing all sorts of ideas out there trying to see which are solid and which are assumptions that have been ossified into articles of faith.  I do not see myself as projecting a narrower view of Sim, rather I am trying to see what Sim IS so that it may accommodate or account for both types of Sim.  You say Discovery covers both, but from what I have read about it, and from the fact that it does not cover any of my gaming experiences suggests two immediate possibilities.  That there is indeed something irreconcilable between objective Sim and subjective Sim, or that there is some other definition of Sim beyond Discovery that has yet to be offered that will demonstrate the unity of the two.  So far neither case has been effectively argued - yet.  

My position is that I don't know if the two "types" of Sim are fundamentally the same or fundamentally different.  I am willing to entertain both ideas until a better understanding is brought to light.  Notice however, as I have struggled to form a definition of what (subjective) Sim is, how alienated and marginalized you have felt.  Not less than a few times have you basically said that I have been outright wrong.  Who says I am trying to marginalize anything?  I'm thrashing around until something can be definitively stated.  Given that the use of the word Discovery is so alienating to many of the "subjectivists", and the definitive manner in which it has been employed, despite protests, suggests that marginalization lies on the other foot.  

However – since both sides feel marginalized by each other's efforts, and given the open and well-mannered atmosphere at the Forge, I think it is inappropriate for anybody to cry victim within this debate.  There is no marginalization going on with the current discussion on Sim.  There is merely a willingness to challenge cherished or deeply held beliefs and assumptions in the pursuit of additional understanding.  So let us continue to slug it out within this understanding and let the struggle of ideas move forward!

Good night and may the underlying action of Sim be brought to light and understanding!

[clehrich]

M.J., this is your thread, and I know you have said it seems like it ought to close.  I think this is on-topic and a good continuation, but if I'm wrong please say so and we can get Ron to bump it over to a new split thread.

Jay's post is suggestive, I think, about what the division that M.J. sees as "splitting simulationism" is really about.  Part of it is indeed the objective/subjective division; that's essential.  But I think Jay is postulating something a little different.

My sense is that Jay is postulating that there is something about "subjective" Sim that is more central to the nature of the CA than what is important in "objective" Sim.  It's not that they are different beasts, as Ralph and (in the sense of zilch-play, anyway) Walt have suggested.  Rather, there are what we might call core goals and peripheral goals.  By this logic, objective Sim is focused primarily on the peripheral goals, with the core goals as an ever-present possibility, and subjective Sim is focused on the core goals.

I doubt this, myself, but I think I see where Jay is coming from.  The central issue here is character.

Based on a number of other posts he's made, I think Jay's point is that Sim goals are primarily achieved through character, in the ways I've discussed in my recent thread about Sim and diceless, in my recent long post in reply to M.J.  Character is if you will the lens through which we view the Dream.  There are hypothetically lots of other possibilities, but this is pretty much normative, as I understand things.

This means that there are two basic focal ways of doing things.  One, you can focus on the character, and examine that character by means of his interaction with the rest of the universe he encounters.  Two, you can focus on the universe, and examine that by means of how the character interacts with it.  The former is "subjective", the latter "objective".

Jay's question, I think, is whether these are the same thing or fundamentally different.  Myself, I am inclined to think that they are the same thing, at base.  But I think Jay is right to point out that if they are the same thing, then there's something funny about Sim that doesn't exactly fit the way we have usually been looking at it.

Consider the objective/subjective division M.J. has proposed, I realize as a heuristic device.  This really doesn't arise in other CA's.  People sometimes suggest that it does, producing for example the idea that Nar allows violation of character in favor of story, but as has been said several times (recently by Vincent) this isn't true: the two things are inseparable in Nar.  But they're not in Sim, and that's odd, and it requires analysis.

This is, I think, what Jay means about "victimization" or "marginalization."  In Sim, if your goals are not within the subjective side, and that's what Sim actually is, then logically speaking you should be perfectly content to say, "Nope, I'm not doing Sim."  But that feels absolutely wrong to M.J. and lots of others.  Meanwhile if your goals are exclusively within the subjective, and Sim encompasses a lot more, then logically speaking you should have no problem with Tourism or whatever; you should say, "That's Sim, but not the way I happen to like Sim."  But that feels wrong to some players, including (I think) Jay.

Now this is very interesting, because it suggests some kind of fundamental tension within Sim, or that Sim is two quite different things.

Here's my proposal:

Sim is indeed built on a fundamental tension.  There is nothing about Sim that says that it must be focused on character, but it seems as though people are used its being so.  I think this is because much of the source material is character-driven, so the validation of input by output (if I get those terms right) mostly happens when it's focused on character.  And for people who see the basic desired output in those terms, Sim that isn't character-focused isn't Sim, because there's a serious violation, a major failure of the output to validate the input.

On the other hand, for those who want to validate something different about the input, i.e. who are (for the moment at least) focused on emphasizing other elements and aspects of the source-material, Sim is a bigger sort of thing, and those who say it must emphasize one element (character) are narrowing the focus unnecessarily.

If the source-material were not character-driven, hypothetically, this tension would never arise.  All Sim would be objective Sim, full stop, and if you wanted to produce story, you'd go for Nar (Story Now).  But the reality is that the source-material contains this very same tension, and so naturally Sim reflects that.

Does that make sense?