Styles of Simulationist systems

[Seth L. Blumberg]

A certain amount of thought seems to have gone into developing a typology of Narrativist systems (abashed, vanilla, and "new school"/balls-to-the-wall being the three types that spring to mind).  I'm interested in trying to develop a similar breakdown of Simulationist systems.

Here's a first attempt.

QUASI-REALIST: Typified by GURPS, The Morrow Project, and TimeLords.  This style attempts to recreate some subset of the real world as accurately as possible; this subset usually includes small-unit hand-to-hand and ranged combat and excludes social interactions, but need not in principle do either--the historical tendency toward this behavior is due to Gamist influences.  Much attention is (ideally) paid to the facts of human physiology, ballistics, rates of skill acquisition, effect of environmental conditions on performance, statistical distribution of individuals' upper-body strength, etc.  Most rulesets of this type make an effort to be as generic as possible in terms of setting.

DOMAIN-FOCUSED: Typified by Champions and Vampire: the Masquerade.  This style attempts to simulate a particular class of setting with well-defined conventional assumptions, usually inspired by a fictional genre, but without the emphasis on PC protagonism and development of Premise found in Narrativist systems.  Rules which relate to significant aspects of the domain of focus are elaborated in great detail; rules for issues outside of the domain are left purposely sketchy, calling for a high degree of GM adjudication.

FRAMEWORK: Typified by FUDGE.  This style of system generally comes without a setting, and attempts to provide a generic set of mechanics for constructing Simulationist games.  Distinguished from the Quasi-Realist style by the lack of any great attempt at external consistency.

Amendments? Additions? Am I completely off my nut?

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

Checkin' out my big essay, it breaks down "Simulationist Premise" into all the categories of the elements of role-playing, ie, "that which is primarily to be explored."

A very straightforward example is Fudge - as presented, the game permits System to be Explored, with the explicit expectation that the group uses this as "the door" to Exploring the other elements, in whatever combination is desired. [Worth remembering here that "system" includes both character creation and resolution, among other things, not resolution alone]

GURPS is a bit different, but not much - in this case, again, System is the starting point, and there's a somewhat more focused expectation that Setting is going to be Explored via the "door" of System.

Hopping over to say, Jorune, here it's Setting (and Color, now that I think of it) that's the "door." Or to Feng Shui, in which it's Setting and Situation.

My idea of the door is that role-playing must Explore all the listed elements, but that a subset of the elements is usually taken as the starting point. So the "door" is whatever elements are Explored in more detail/commitment to start. [Yes, this would apply to all role-playing, but it's especially important, even crucial, for Simulationist play, which prioritizes the Exploration over person-to-person metagame concerns. ]

Anyway, if I'm not mistaken, your three categories line up in this way:

Quasi-Realist: System as the door, usually to Setting as a next/necessary step, but possibly to Situation (ie lots of fights)

Domain: Character and Setting as the door, usually headed pretty quickly to Situation

Framework: also System as the door, but much more customizable than Quasi-Realist regarding what gets Explored next (ie GM needs to decide; I'm going by what the games say; they never say "the group" decides)

One tricky aspect of all this is that it doesn't apply well to GNS-incoherent RPG design (nothing does). That means that Champions and Vampire aren't great candidates for any typology based on coherence. This is not to say that typologies of this kind can't be useful, but it is to say that they are not intended to apply to any RPG pulled out of a hat.

I'd say good Domain candidates would be Legend of the Five Rings (I'm thinking only of 1st edition, the only one I know well), and quite a few licensed-type games, like Albedo.

Finally, I think you're leaving out one of the king-hell players of the field, Call of Cthulhu and imitators, in which the "door" (and arguably remaining-primary) element is Situation. I consider Dramatist play (as described by others; no actual Dramatist has testified) to fall into this category, although I'd like to specify that the overall category, as defined here, may be either very rules/system oriented (ie highly-organized Fortune) or very improvisational/"rules-lite" (ie semi-organized Drama). My overall term for this category might be something like ... oh, I dunno. Suggestions welcome.

Best,
Ron

[Paul Czege]

Hey Ypsi dude,

It might seem like a lot of thought has gone into creating sub-categorizations of narrativism, but in actuality, "abashed" and "vanilla" weren't added to the terminology as an act of whole-cloth theory. They sort of emerged organically out of separate discussions.

And I'd hazard that they might apply to simulationist design as well.

"Abashed" as a term for a narrativist game, basically means that it "talks the talk, but doesn't walk the walk." The game text articulates that story creation through play is the priority, but the game doesn't in fact deliver mechanics that facilitate that priority. Are there simulationist games that fall into the same category, that "talk the talk" of exploration of setting, for instance, or exploration of character, but don't provide the tools for that to happen? Others on the Forge are probably better qualified to answer that than I am.

"Vanilla" as a term for a narrativist game, basically means that it "talks softly but carries a big stick."¹ The vanilla narrativist game achieves its priority of creation of story through play without high threat, conspicuously avant-garde mechanics. I suspect there are vanilla simulationist games out there that "talk softly" about exploration of setting, or exploration of character, but don't grind the player with a spectacle of demanding mechanics.²

What do you think?

Paul

1. That's Ron's parallel phrase to my "talks the talk..." for abashed.
2. I'm not so happy with the way I've proposed that "vanilla" might apply to simulationism. Perhaps there's a better way of describing what vanilla simulationism might be?

[Mike Holmes]

Proposing "Vanilla Sim" would be to also propose "Extreme Sim". I'm sure that some Sim games are more avant guard than others, but I think that the spectrum is pretty narrow.

As far as the other dilineations, I see spectra there, too. Realism is a dial that you can turn up or down. Generic is also a dial (FUDGE being more generic than GURPS, for example). And settings are settings. Some games are more focused on particular settings, and others are less focused on that than a type of setting. Champions is really very little focused on setting, and loses almost all of the setting focus as hero system. As opposed to Feng Shui or Pendragon which are more setting focused.

Mike

[Seth L. Blumberg]

A very straightforward example is Fudge - as presented, the game permits System to be Explored, with the explicit expectation that the group uses this as "the door" to Exploring the other elements, in whatever combination is desired.

Ron, I totally fail to understand what you mean by "door" here.  Please elucidate.

Mike, I think Aria could be held up as an example of "Xtreme Simulationism", especially the Aria Worlds supplement.  There is a rule for everything, and everything has a rule; the GM is expected to fill a binder with completed forms documenting every aspect of the setting before character generation can begin.

In re dials, it seems to me that FUDGE is more generic than GURPS precisely insofar as it is less quasi-realist: you can't do GURPS TOON, for example, but you can do FUDGE TOON quite easily, and the reason is that the GURPS core rules implicitly define a great deal about the setting, despite being ostensibly setting-neutral.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

First: I entirely agree with you regarding both Aria as "Extreme Simulationism" (of its type) and the Fudge/GURPS distinction.

Now for the "door" notion ...

As I stated before, all role-playing relies on Exploring the following: Setting, Character, Situation, Color, and System. (Yes, I know the notion of "Exploring System" seems weird, but if you look over all my definitions, you'll see that it works.)

Now let's take it to Simulationist play, in which this act is the priority. It takes me a minute to do this, but I can put my mind in the space in which Exploring (and not interfering with others' Exploration) is the main thing in role-playing, if necessary at the expense of all metagame (personal) desires like "winning" or "making a story." [The Scarlet Jester and Seth Ben-Ezra identify the core-element of Exploration with daydreaming. Their arguments convinced me in full.]

So now Simulationist play is faced with the necessary question - what is going to be Explored in more detail or with more nailed-down elements, at the outset of play? Are we all going to enter into this with Setting rock-solid in our minds? Or perhaps System, insofar as we are all committed to how "things happen" in play? Or perhaps Character is the main starting point? Or some combination?

I think it's quite reasonable to say that one does not enter into this sort of play (or any sort) with all of the elements pre-imagined, pre-set, pre-resolved, and, well, all-done already. I also think it's reasonable to say that at least one, probably more, of the elements need to be pretty solid at the outset, especially for Simulationist play. That's what I'm calling the "door" - the one or more of the five listed Explored Things that is nicely agreed-upon as play begins. From there, the other ones grow and develop as play proceeds.

So, again: in GURPS, it's the System and (via GM effort pre-play) the Setting. In Legend of the Five Rings, it's Character and Setting. In Call of Cthulhu, it's Situation. All of these game designs are very clear about "what to imagine" regarding their "door" elements, for everyone, at the outset of play. The other elements are worked in and customized later.

My overall point is that this "door" concept makes a good basis for a typology of the sub-sets of Simulationist play.

I hope that makes sense,
Best,
Ron

[Seth L. Blumberg]

(Yes, I know the notion of "Exploring System" seems weird, but if you look over all my definitions, you'll see that it works.)

Actually, it used to seem weird until this past Saturday, when I had a long discussion of the GNS model with the GM and several other players from the Amber game I play in. One of the players said that her greatest interest in playing Amber lay in seeing the different ways that different GMs handle the Powers (Pattern, Logrus, etc.), and I thought, "Hey! That's Simulationist Exploration of System!"

(<anxiously> It is, isn't it?)

Another example that comes to mind is from way back in my Champions days, when we used to create the strangest, most intricately leveraged characters we could, not out of a desire to kick the most ass for the fewest points (which would be a Gamist motivation), but simply because we enjoyed hacking the system.

Anyway. Regarding doors: if you want to focus on Exploration of, say, Character in the course of the game, does that mean you want a system whose door is Character, or a system whose door is anything but character? How does having a Character door facilitate, or fail to facilitate, Exploration of each component of the Premise? It doesn't seem like a useful taxonomy to me.

[Ron Edwards]

Hey,

Dead-on-target with the Amber comment.

You know, you have a point regarding the Door thing, as in, what's the difference between the Door and the (so to speak) Room that it enters into? Some of my examples confounded the two. I was just musing about that this morning.

Anyway, lemme mull it over. I'm pretty sure there was something to it before I managed to gum it up for myself.

Best,
Ron

[Mike Holmes]

Door, antechamber, call it what you will. Some games provide a more stable platform for the exploration of certain elements. This support means that you will simultaneously have more direction in these areas, and more limitation. The result is that the game will probably end up revolving around exploration of these elements, but may, of course, drift off into exploration of secondary elements as well. Exploring the rest of the house, if you will.

Seems pretty straightforward to me.

Mike

[Seth L. Blumberg]

Door, antechamber, call it what you will. Some games provide a more stable platform for the exploration of certain elements.

Ron doesn't agree with you:

I also think it's reasonable to say that at least one, probably more, of the elements need to be pretty solid at the outset, especially for Simulationist play. That's what I'm calling the "door" - the one or more of the five listed Explored Things that is nicely agreed-upon as play begins.

Although I think Mike's definition is potentially much more useful.

So, Mike, care to provide some examples of Simulationist games and their classifications in your scheme? Since there's a dearth of published Simulationist games, you may have to make up some noddy examples.

[Ron Edwards]

Metal Fatigue,

Whoa there Tex, at last check-in, I said I was mulling the issue over. Please be careful with that "what Ron says" business ... you're quoting from exactly the text which I later said I was unsatisfied with.

I'm a bit puzzled by your claim about a dearth of published Simulationist games. The majority of published RPGs, when they're not incoherent, are Simulationist: the family of games from The Chaosium descended from RuneQuest (including Call of Cthulhu), nearly all Steve Jackson Games games including In Nomine and GURPS, Rolemaster, later versions of Champions (4th edition Millenium), and tons more like Jorune, Feng Shui, and Legend of the Five Rings. I also suggest that White Wolf games become most coherent when they drift in this direction.

Best,
Ron

[Seth L. Blumberg]

Please be careful with that "what Ron says" business ... you're quoting from exactly the text which I later said I was unsatisfied with.

Mike's tone seemed to me to indicate that he was attempting to explicate the text that I quoted, whereas in fact he was using "door" to mean something quite different from what you did. That's all I meant.

I'm a bit puzzled by your claim about a dearth of published Simulationist games. The majority of published RPGs, when they're not incoherent, are Simulationist:

(emphasis mine)

Aye, there's the rub.

the family of games from The Chaosium descended from RuneQuest (including Call of Cthulhu), nearly all Steve Jackson Games games including In Nomine and GURPS, Rolemaster, later versions of Champions (4th edition Millenium), and tons more like Jorune, Feng Shui, and Legend of the Five Rings. I also suggest that White Wolf games become most coherent when they drift in this direction.

I can see eye-to-eye with you on Call of Cthulhu, but I cannot fathom how you could accuse GURPS or Champions of coherence, and my limited experience of Feng Shui seems to indicate that it calls for too much Author and Director stance to be satisfying in the Simulationist mode.

[Ron Edwards]

Ah, the Feng Shui discussion ... kind of funny we should get into this, as I just played a session of this game last night.

Let's see - first, I'm speaking of Champions beginning with fourth edition and later, not of the earlier material. I won't call it the most coherent design known to man, but it's definitely focused much more intently toward Simulationist play than its predecessors. Some telltales include the loss of the Zero-Time Monologue, the halving of Endurance costs, and most importantly the emphasis on specified skills and skill families.

GURPS, incoherent? Interesting. Perhaps that's worth a thread of its own, so that I can understand your point. My pretty-extensive play of GURPS pegs it as one of the most in-game-physics-linear-causal designs ever published, exceeded only by DC Heroes. A while ago, Mike Holmes suggested that the point-balance issue had no Simulationist function, but I argued that it was a Setting/Character enforcing mechanism rather than an "even starting point" (Gamist) mechanism.

Now for Feng Shui. I have maintained from the start, and I maintain now, that Feng Shui has no Narrativist-facilitating mechanics at all. What people often refer to as such (e.g. the ability to "cancel out" mooks as you see fit, on a successful hit; Melodramatic Hooks), qualify as Colorizers, not Author power. One may alter or create how X looks, but not what X is. The ordering system is stripped-down Runequest (Strike Ranks renamed as Shot Cost). All scenes and the choreography of the events in them are set and managed by the GM, in classic 80s fashion - the player is limited to announcing character intent "on his turn." I'll allow for Director stance when it comes to objects lying around, but not Author stance. And speaking of objects lying around, that brings us to Stunts. I've wearily explained, many times, that a system which penalizes the chance of success for announcing a Stunt is not, in fact, encouraging Stunts.

None of these are criticisms - they are descriptions of how the game is built and how it plays based on the available mechanics. Play is colorful; it does not create narrative. Last night, for instance, I was reminded very strongly of a typical Call of Chthulhu session - we knew our characters were "here," we knew they'd "get into a fight," we knew that the opponents were "this faction who wanted X," and we knew that it would all come down to a particular set of dice rolls "to hit," conducted without much difference from any other session or with any indication of when they were performed during the scenario. The Narrative was already there; we acted it out and made it ginchy.

The fun of play came specifically and almost entirely from the Color we could inject - my Ex-Special-Forces character was a totally-PC professor of Women's Studies ("or she," he would correct the villain), the GM "swooshed" a bunch of pages through the air from a magic book and two characters ran on the pages, one of the characters kicked a football into an Abomination's mouth, etc. It had nothing to do, at all, with creating a story through our decisions during play.

Best,
Ron

[Mike Holmes]

Let's see - first, I'm speaking of Champions beginning with fourth edition and later, not of the earlier material. I won't call it the most coherent design known to man,...

I'm not sure I agree with all of waht Ron attributes to Champs 4th, but I would agree that it's pretty solidly Sim. Or rather it makes a pretty bad Gamist game. Point systems have that incoherency with Sim systems usually, in typical use. Keep in mind that Incoherency is a scale itself. I'd say that in practice, for me, Champions has worked *fairly* coherently as a Sim game.

GURPS, incoherent? Interesting. Perhaps that's worth a thread of its own, so that I can understand your point. My pretty-extensive play of GURPS pegs it as one of the most in-game-physics-linear-causal designs ever published, exceeded only by DC Heroes. A while ago, Mike Holmes suggested that the point-balance issue had no Simulationist function, but I argued that it was a Setting/Character enforcing mechanism rather than an "even starting point" (Gamist) mechanism.

Actually that's a point I agree with. But no matter how many times Evil Stevie repeats himself people will attack point systems in a Gamist fashion. I just think that it's used as a Gamist mechanic more than it is intended to be. And you can do just fine in Simulating without it if Setting/Character is enforced through Social Contract methods or other methods (I use questionaires). That's my only point, there. Compare to Scattershot theory of points.

But GURPS is plays about as Sim as it gets in the end, IME. Love GURPS, personally. I just drop the points and presto, pure Sim. This is a good example of drift. Since I don't have to drift far to get to coherent play, again I'd call it only slightly Incoherent. Contrast with Palladium.

Now for Feng Shui.
...

Yep, Simulationist exploration of Setting and Color, primarily. Heck might be the best candidate for primarily exploration of color. We've hashed that over a lot. UA, is also Sim to many people's surprise.

But you want a very coherent Sim game? CoC would also be my first choice. Lesse. Pendragon for Sim Exploration of Character/Setting. In Nomine is classic Sim Ex Char/Situation. Fading Suns is Char/Setting. Ooh, Traveller, from day one pure Sim. Practically the posterchild for Exploration of Setting. Played often by D&D Gamists which makes for horrible play, but undrifted this way, and played as written, Sim in all editions.

Note that some of these games suffer from problems other than GNS incoherency (In Nomine has a terrible combat system, Traveller CharGen is quirky), but I find them all to be rather coherent Sim.

Mike