Gamist Game Design and Cutthroat - Questions.

[Troy_Costisick]

Heya,

I'm going to riff a little bit off this discussion about Narrativism, but focus on a CA that I'm more familiar with. 

I've just released Cutthroat and I love the game.  The thing I like best about it is the emphasis it puts on social esteem.  I mean literally, you brag to win!  It's a great deal of fun.  But here's the thing.  There's another guy in my group who is hesitant to really compete with the other players for victory.  He's never been exposed to an RPG where the players actively try to subvert each other and that's okay! 

The real problem he has is during an Approach.  This is where the Girlfriend goes to one of the other Bikers and tries to learn his secrets through her womanly wiles. He's said this very thing to me several times in the middle of the game, "Dude, he knows why she's going over there.  Why would the Biker even talk to her?"  I try to explain to him that that's not really the point of the game.  It isn't about what the Bikers would necessarily do in this situation, but whether or not he can get his Girlfriend to give him a bonus versus the other Biker.  It's about the opposition and the chances you take in the game.

I suppose the real disconnect comes in my trying to explain a game designed to support Gamist decisions is in the Exploration.  I try to tell him that we're not playing to really explore what it would be like to be a Biker, but to explore the challenge of beating each other using the mechanics provided in the game.  So my problem really is describing to him what a "Gamist Game" prioritizes in its design.

It's a lot different from a game that supports Narrativist decisions in play, I think.  For instance, in the other thread it's important for a Nar-game not to dictate to the players what the end answer to the Premise is.  Yet, in Cutthroat the endgame is clearly laid out and the win conditions are explicit.  In a Nar-game, the ethical meaning of a decision is left up to the players to discern for themselves, but in Cutthroat a pecking order is purposely established right from the get-go and that *means* something tangible to the other players. 

So, what I'm really asking is for some help explaining the priorities of a Gamist Design.  What should it do?  What shouldn't it do?  What are the key things a Gamist Design should try to accomplish to promote that sort of behavior by the players during a game?

Peace,

-Troy

[xenopulse]

Hi Troy,

I think your friend might have a bit of a valid concern.  First, just because a game is designed to facilitate a Gamist agenda does not mean that characters automatically become pawns whose consistency in personality and action is unimportant.  In other words: you might not be focused on exploring what it means to be a biker, but the fiction still needs to make sense to the player in order for him to feel like he's roleplaying.

Second, it appears that he feels limited in how his character can act to address the challenge because not talking to the girl doesn't seem to be an option, even though he believes that it should be.  This is a trade-off you have in a design that gives specific rules for specific actions and does not allow for creative variations.  I'm not sure how to circumvent this trade-off in the absence of a GM, because in a competitive game, you necessarily need limited options (I bumped up against this with my Power/Evil design a while back).

As for the comparison to Narrativism and not telling people what the answer to the premise is:  I believe that the equivalent thing for Gamism is not prescribing what the best solution for a challenge is, in other words, not presenting one best strategy, one best approach.

Remember those two dials in Ron's Gamism essay?  The one about player competition is extremely important for you here.  Because the higher you turn that up, the more you have a need for an objective structure to resolve that competition.  When the players stop being impartial to one another because they're in competition with each other, you cannot rely on them to judge each other's contributions anymore.  Instead, you need a rigid system of numbers and values.  And that's where, in the absence of a GM, you slide out of roleplaying territory, because the fiction more and more ceases to matter to the outcome of the game.  In other words, it becomes a parlor game, as we've seen with some Ronnie's entries.

This, by the way, is my conclusion from attempts at making competitive RPGs, and I'm open to being persuaded otherwise if anyone has found a way around that issue.

Now to your questions:

What should a Gamist design do?  It should give the players an arena for Stepping On Up within the fiction of the game.  The game needs to focus on introducing, addressing, and resolving challenges.  Here's a personal value judgment: the more it allows players to use their creativity to do this, the more it focuses on the strength of playing a roleplaying game versus a wargame, computer game, or other medium that's not based on creating fiction.  But as I said above, this becomes tricky to adjudicate if you turn the competition dial up.

What shouldn't it do?  It should not make the challenges moot.  This can happen by having a single-best option so that there's no choice or creativity involved, by having the GM save the characters when the players fail (e.g., fudging dice), or by having the focus of the game on activities other than challenges.

What are the key things a Gamist Design should try to accomplish to promote that sort of behavior by the players during a game?  Well, that's the tricky part, ain't it?  As usual, a Gamist design needs to promote a System that focuses on the challenges, including a reward system that appropriately promotes Stepping On Up, clear communication about the goal of the game, and plenty of opportunities for the players to make meaningful choices regarding the challenges.

I think we're a little behind in Gamist designs in this regard when compared to Narrativist designs, but hopefully that'll change in the near future.

[Callan S.]

I think he's seeing no adversity and instead just a block. Like if you had to flap your arms and fly to the moon - there's no adversity there, just imposibility. And with the girlfriend - he just wouldn't talk to here - an imposibility. Any room for slipping rohipnol in his drink, catching him in the midst of watching porno's, in a dark room pretending to be his GF or suchlike?

Also, a progress meter/score might help the situation become approachable. It indicates this is less about 'mother, may I (win)' and more about the attempt and doing your best at the attempt. If he fills the progress meter, he gets the secret. The number of progress points per attempt is determined by the GM (up to completion), but has a default amount (like a few points) that you get for any attempt, so as to encourage trying.

The thing about a progress meter is that it lets the player evaluate his own progress, seeing which tactics work and which don't. While a single binary yes you get the secrete/no you don't doesn't give opportunity for evalutating ones own tactics. Once a player grasps that A: progress is being made and B: he has some means of influencing that progress (even if he hasn't figured it out yet), he'll recognise an opportunity.