And so the difference is...

[soundwave]

Okay, like most of the newbies I'm sure you guys have to deal with quite regularly, I'm in something of a larval stage regarding my understanding of the concepts of GNS.

Now, a thread below sparked my interest with this phrase:

Paganini wrote:
An S:EP [Simulationist: Exploration of Premise] game based on this premise would be devoted to finding out what happens when the Premise is in focus, while a Narrativist game with that Premise would be devoted to constructing a story that adresses the Premise, including a final resolution that answers the question.

Now, I just want to make sure I get this. Would it be correct to say that the difference between Simulationist and Narrativist play is that Narrativism concentrates chiefly on the story (the sequence of events with a finite, structured arc), while Simulationism concentrates on the exploration of the Premise? To put it another way, in Simulationism, the focus of play is the landscape passed through in the 'journey', while in Narrativism, it is the 'journey' itself, and its inherent structure that is the focus (and perhaps in Gamism the focus is on the destination?).

[Valamir]

Almost.  

2 notes I'd add to the above:

Narrativism is about concentrating on the actual creation of story on purpose, as opposed to the story that "just happens" as a result of player actions over the course of the game.

Second, I caution on the use of the word premise.  One of the unfortuneate features of the latest article is it attempts to define several different kinds of premise.  Which generally results in people not knowing which kind of premise is being referred to when used.  I'm hoping to see the that terminology get an overhaul in the next version of the article.

Until then "Premise" with a capital P, is generally used to refer to Narrativist Premise.  Which specifically ties directly to the story that is being created in narrativist play (its a variation on the idea of literary theme).

But all types of games have a premise (small p) and so I think you're on the right track but that word is confusing (and few people are rigorous in their capitalization of it) so I tend to avoid it as much as possible.

With regards to Simulationism.  
All games promote Exploration.  Thats one of the foundations of roleplaying.  Exploration can focus on the character, or on the setting, or on the game system itself, or on a situation, or on color.  This is part of all RPGs.

What GNS refers to is what get overlaid on top of this Exploration.  In the case of Narrativism its the creation of story.

In the case of Simulationism, nothing additional is overlaid on top of this.  The Exploration itself becomes not just something you do in all RPGs, but the very reason for doing it.  

Pags was somewhat inaccurate in his referral to "Exploration of Premise"...that isn't one of the forms of Exploration in the model.

[Paganini]

Now, a thread below sparked my interest with this phrase:

Paganini wrote:
An S:EP [Simulationist: Exploration of Premise] game based on this premise would be devoted to finding out what happens when the Premise is in focus, while a Narrativist game with that Premise would be devoted to constructing a story that adresses the Premise, including a final resolution that answers the question.

This is a somewhat unfortunate quote for the purposes of your question.

You see, a fairly common question runs along the line of "since all role-playing deals with exploration, how can Simulationism exist as a separate goal of play?" Ron deals with this to a certian extent in his article. In the thread in question, the point I was making with the S:EP crack was that Simulationism focuses on process rather than product.

Narrativism involves the concsious, intentional construction of a story. If a group sits down and decides they want a narrative game, then they're actively focusing on the final product: "If I do this, will it make the eventual story better?"

Simulationism doesn't really care about the result. Simulationist play might very well generate a story of literary merit. Or, it might not. It doesn't really matter, because the focus of a simulationist game is on *what happens during play.*

It is then possible to have a Narrative Premise without playing a Narrative game - A simulationist game devoted to exploring a narrative Premise would not be concerned with creating an overall result (that is, a cohesive, interesting story in a literary sense). It would only be concerned with exploring the premise during play. A way of characterising this style of play would be, "Given this Premise, what would happen if..."

[Edit: I just wanted to add that, of course, this is only a very narrow subset of Simulationism. You can (indeed, you usually) have simulationist games without any Premise whatsoever. The question "what would happen if..." is what characterizes simulationism, not the existence of a Premise. Frex, other sorts of simulationism could be "Given this character, what would happen if..." or "Given this setting, what would happen if..." neither of which deal with any overriding moral or thematic question.]

Such a game would deal with many different issues involving the Premise. It would produce a story, in the sense of "a sequence of events," but that story might not be very interesting to read, or follow litary conventions, etc. etc.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi soundwave,

Although Ralph and Nathan have made good points, and answered the question well, I cannot over-stress the point that "Exploration of Premise" is not a valid concept to begin with.

Exploration is imaginative commitment. When you "explore," in the specialized terms of my essay, you are imagining something specific. It applies only to Character, Setting, Situation, System (which is to say, "events"), and Color.

Premise of whatever sort - the broadest possible interpretation of the word in my essay, what the group is "interested" in  - emerges from this Exploration. As soon as we look at this effect, we move into GNS-talk.

Therefore if possible, could you re-phrase the question such that it's consistent with the above points? I'm worried that if I perform a sort of translation of the question and then try to answer it, we'll actually be moving farther away from successful communication rather than toward it.

Best,
Ron

[M. J. Young]

Ron's advice that clarification of the question is needed is good, and I ignore it at my peril; but I'm hoping I can bring something to the discussion that will help get to your answer.

I want to go back to wargames, and look at GNS there--and before anyone objects, I think that this is illuminating precisely because it is imperfect.

There are actually two major ways people play wargames. One of these is to win; the other is to see what would happen.

The idea of playing to win is rather obvious. If you set up a game that recreates, say, Gettysburg, you have one side play the North and the other the South, and you begin by positioning everyone where they historically started; then each side tries to make its best moves to outmaneuver the other and see who wins.

The idea of playing to see what happens is entirely different. In this case, you still start in the same place, but everyone makes the same moves as were made historically, except for those aspects which you are trying to explore. For example, many think that Pickett's Charge cost the south the battle, as the Union artillery blew his entire unit out of the battle. What would have happened had he waited for the second volley, or had he recognized the folly of making that attack and disobeyed orders, using his force in some other fashion? So we act out the battle, but at this critical moment we change history and follow the rest of it to see where it goes.

It should be apparent that these different approaches correspond, respectively, to Gamist and Simulationist play. The Gamist cares which side wins because he wants it to be his side; the Simulationist cares which side wins because he wants to try to better understand what would really happen given certain assumptions. The gamist might note that there's a flaw in the rules system which allows him to move his artillery and load it faster than reality would suggest, and so would exploit that flaw to his advantage. If the simulationist noticed such a flaw, he would attempt to mend it so that he would get a better idea of the true outcome (or at least he would state that exploiting the flaw violated the spirit of the game).

But where is Narrativism? I'm on shakier ground here, because 1) there are probably a thousand different ways a narrativist could approach this and 2) none of them are particularly innate to wargames. However, to the Narrativist, who wins the battle is only of secondary importance most of the time. This is a story about brothers fighting brothers, and we could be exploring that aspect through characters who discover they are fighting in opposing units. There is a great tension in the life of Pickett, as he must choose between obeying General Lee's orders to take the hill and following his own judgment that should tell him it's a suicide mission to charge the artillery. Lee himself is a conflicted man, fighting against the union largely because of his duty to his state (it was he who recaptured the fort taken by John Brown's insurrection years before, and he foresaw this war then) but trying to win against the odds anyway. The battle is a small piece of their lives, but a critical moment. How does it affect them? How do they affect it? What is the moral of the story, what lesson can we learn, how do we come away from this better people? Any or all of those questions are at the heart of the Narrativist's concern. Who wins the battle is of little consequence to anyone, except as it relates to these, in a personal sense, larger issues.

If I've misstated any of this, someone will correct me; but I think there's much here that should help.

--M. J. Young

[Ron Edwards]

Hi M.J.,

I think you've nailed it nicely, with one teeny-tiny quibble ... rather than say, "what would happen" as the issue, I think that focusing it a bit more onto "thought-experiment" or "experiencing what happens" is better. "Seeing what will happen" without qualification is inherent to any imaginary-causal activity, I think - that is, all of GNS.

There's more evidence for narrativism back in the wargaming day than some might think. One neat element of the history of role-playing that often gets overlooked includes many groups during the 1960s who used wargames or wargame-like activities as the foundation of a group-created novel, often through the final "author" as the central person. Several weak novels by a fellow named Walker, the first of which was called Wargamer's World, are one good example. Others include M.A.R. Barker's fiction (more focused than group, I suspect) and possibly many of the details and events of Gloranthan history.

Best,
Ron

[M. J. Young]

Ron, I certainly grant your quibble. Seeing what would happen is too broad a statement to limit to one kind of role playing. From your suggestions, I think you're probably struggling with a more precise way of stating it, too. "Thought experiment" (a phrase I first heard from a correspondent some years back with which I immediately became enamored) may be even broader than "seeing what would happen", and "experiencing what happens" is such a nuance of difference nine out of ten readers wouldn't recognize it (although it does move the right direction). "Discovering the likely outcome" has as much merit as anything else. If I can contrast it, the gamist is more interested in causing the outcome which favors him even if it is against the odds, and the narrativist in creating the outcome that is most satisfying from a story/moral/myth perspective without much reference to its likelihood (provided that it seems to flow from events in an appropriate and satisfying way). It seems a particularly simulationist desire to just find out what is likely to happen given certain assumptions. But I'm not entirely satisfied with that, either. I probably would have done better with "seeing what might have happened if" as the definition of simulationism in war games, although there are some games played so close to the reality that it's more a discovery of how the events unfolded and why they went as they did--that is, playing Gettysburg precisely to better understand what really did happen.

Your look back to the sixties reminds me that CARPga's Paul Cardwell attests to having seen a dice-driven role playing game in the late 1950's. Although it still had strong wargaming connections, he says he remembers it particularly because it was the first time he'd ever seen a D30 used for anything. He also says that C. S. Lewis played some type of diceless role playing game with his brother before that, but I've been unable to get the source of that information from him yet. So it seems that a lot of the history of role playing games has roots further back than most of us are aware, even with our long experiences and investigations.

I'm writing some stories built on the core concepts of Multiverser, and there is often the temptation to break out the rules and try running a scenario to help create believable outcomes. I have at times outlined a situation for one of my players and asked what he would do to help me brainstorm. Thus I can certainly see the value of using a game system to help create a story. On the other hand, this sort of use strikes me as more a simulationist backdrop to help keep the story from drifting into the absurd. That is, if I've got a scene where the knight slays the dragon, how credible is it, given what I have already assumed about the skill of the knight and the power of the dragon? If I can run the game in such a way that I get the desired outcome, I might be able to use the game results as a framework for the story. In the end, though, the narrative is not more related to the game than say a Risk player pretending to be the European Common Market or a Monopoly player taking the name Donald Trump. That story creation process is very useful for giving a kind of credibility to story events as they unfold, but it seems a two-step process--use the game to create the events, then write the story over it. (And, as you observed, the stories thus created were not so good in the main; perhaps there is a degree to which that background simulation doesn't give us the best stories.)

That's more than I intended to say, but I hope it's not too far a digression. The question is whether between us we've managed to get to the heart of the question. Paging SoundWave: Did we answer the question, or are we having a wonderful time talking to each other while you're still in the dark?

--M. J. Young