Which Creative Agenda for this Game?

[Nathan W]

I recently studied Ron Edwards' essays on GNS and creative agenda in the Articles, and I think I have a pretty decent understanding of them. Actually, I summarized them on my blog for my players who aren't quite as interested in game design theory as I am. If you're interested, you can read my summaries here:
http://catalystcastle.blogspot.com/2008/11/building-better-role-playing-group-part.html
http://catalystcastle.blogspot.com/2008/12/building-better-role-playing-group-part.html
http://catalystcastle.blogspot.com/2008/12/building-better-role-playing-group-part_29.html
http://catalystcastle.blogspot.com/2008/12/building-better-role-playing-group-part_31.html

I wouldn't mind some feedback on my summaries, in the interest of confirming or denying my understanding. But what I would really like help with is determining which creative agenda fits my game concept. I know this is going to sound a little contrived as I explain it, but I really did begin developing this idea before I ever read about GNS. Now that I have studied creative agenda, I'm finding it hard to pin down just which agenda my game would fit.

So here is the idea. One player plays the Hero, the literal protagonist of a story. The other players play rival coauthors, competing against each other and, to a lesser extent, the Hero in an effort manipulate the Hero's story to develop their own theme. Imagine the movie Stranger than Fiction if Emma Thompson's character were forced to collaborate with a couple of other authors on Will Ferrell's story, all of whom had their own ideas as to how the story should end.

Now, I think the game has a definite element of Step On Up, because the players and characters must engage an actual challenge to manipulate the story in their favor. The game also features an upfront focus on Premise and Theme. All of this also takes place entirely in-character, however, upholding the Right to Dream.

So, which GNS creative agenda do you think this game would best support? If you can't tell based on my brief description, what questions might I consider to make that determination?

Thanks in advance for your help!

[Daniel B]

I hesitate to answer, because I only just recently became familiar with GNS while other people on here have debated this stuff for years, but .......

to me it sounds like it is fundamentally a Gamist-ish game, with a narration just being flavour, because the coauthors have to go out of their way to try and "win". Writing their own story is their ultimate motivation.

LOVE the concept, by the way. That movie rocked, and I can imagine a game like that being extremely entertaining.

Dan

[Erudite]

Nice right ups Nathan. Like ShallowThoughts I am new around here and to both the Big Model and GNS. I think you understand GNS as well or better than I do.

So for I like evaluating aspects of games and how I game using the GNS model. And, I really like some of the terms ideas. I'm trying to decide is I like and agree with some of the theory though.

And the game you are running does sound very interesting.

[Nathan W]

Thanks for the input! I can see why you would say Gamism. If anyone else, especially someone who's more familiar with GNS than I am, had any further observations I'd appreciate hearing them.

[Falc]

The question that I would like to ask you is why you're asking this particular question?

My understanding of the GNS has always been that the three Agenda's are broad strokes, none of them able to exist by itself. No one person will be 100% gamist and 0% sim and nar. No game will ever be, either. Keep also in mind that the GNS model is a method of describing roleplaying; it's not a tool for creating games.

So, asking what Agenda your game follows is in itself a strange question, since the answer will be 'those bits are gamist, those bits will encourage narrativism, and those bits are your simulationism'. Your game as a whole will probably lean towards one of these Agenda's, but to judge that you'd need to provide much more detail.

But say you did and we'd arrive at a concrete analysis of your game's GNS leanings. What would you do with this information? Why are you asking the question? What's your goal with this game?

That being said, the simple fact that your game is about storytelling would lead me to believe that, at face value, narrativist players will be more interested than gamist ones. Going against this expectation might not be a good idea.

[Nathan W]

Keep also in mind that the GNS model is a method of describing roleplaying; it's not a tool for creating games.

I can't speak with any authority about the original intent of the GNS model, but I would say that for myself it is an effective tool for help in creating games. For example, if I know that the target audience for my game enjoys extensive rules and a lot of die rolling then I can design my game so that it has extensive rules and a lot of die rolling. Likewise, if I know that the target audience for my game enjoys primarily Narrativist game play, then I can design my game to support Narrativist game play well.

But say you did and we'd arrive at a concrete analysis of your game's GNS leanings. What would you do with this information? Why are you asking the question? What's your goal with this game?

Those are good questions to ask. Maybe I should have been more clear when I asked my original question. My goal is to create a game based on this specific concept (rival storytellers manipulating another character's story), not to enable any particular creative agenda. I began work on this game before I had any real concept of GNS, so I didn't specifically set out to make "a Narrativist game", or "a Gamist game", or whatever. Having a better idea of GNS now, I'm just trying to figure out where this particular game falls in primarily supporting one creative agenda over another. In other words, rather than creating a game with a specific audience in mind, I'm trying to figure out what the most likely audience for my game might be.

Based on two different people's first impressions, it seems like it might chiefly enable either Gamist or Narrativist play. I think I agree that any sim elements will be small in comparison to the other two. Thanks!

[Falc]

Perhaps it's a bit of arguing just for argument's sake, but...

if I know that the target audience for my game enjoys extensive rules and a lot of die rolling then I can design my game so that it has extensive rules and a lot of die rolling. Likewise, if I know that the target audience for my game enjoys primarily Narrativist game play, then I can design my game to support Narrativist game play well.

You do not *need* the GNS for this. Read your first line you wrote. That sentence stands perfectly on its own, without the slightest mention of GNS terminology. The second one is the exact same sentence, except now the detailed description "extensive rules and a lot of die rolling" has been replaced by a label "Narrativist game play". Yes, I know, that particular label is not correct for that particular description, but the point is that the second phrase is nothing more than the usage of jargon in order to convey a whole body of information quickly.

Like a doctor, who can describe a whole slew of symptoms combining in intricate patterns by just saying 'influenza'.

Those are good questions to ask. Maybe I should have been more clear when I asked my original question. My goal is to create a game based on this specific concept (rival storytellers manipulating another character's story), not to enable any particular creative agenda. I began work on this game before I had any real concept of GNS, so I didn't specifically set out to make "a Narrativist game", or "a Gamist game", or whatever. Having a better idea of GNS now, I'm just trying to figure out where this particular game falls in primarily supporting one creative agenda over another. In other words, rather than creating a game with a specific audience in mind, I'm trying to figure out what the most likely audience for my game might be.

Ah, I think here we reach the point that made me feel you're using the wrong tool for the task at hand: to me, you've started doing this analysis way too soon. Your posts so far indicate that you're still planning your game, that you have the broad strokes but nothing further than that yet. While you're free to do this analysis now, of course, I doubt you'll get anything useful out of it as long as you don't have a concrete set of rules yet.

Think about it. Version 1, each player has 3 chips. Start of a scene, the 'character' is allowed to narrate a basic premise. Then, all players including the character make a secret bid of chips (bids are lost). Highest bid wins control over the scene. After the scene, all players decide whether the winner gets one chip back or not based on the quality of the scene. High Narrativism gameplay.

Version 2, each player has a character sheet, with numbers for various stats. Start of a scene, everyone starts rolling dice in various fashions, trying to beat the numbers on their sheet while staying under the numbers on the other people's sheet (or something similar) in order to win narration rights. There's modifiers left and right based on what you're trying to narrate, there's some 'health' stat to determine when you're out of the scene, there's ways to come back from a losing position, ... High Gamism gameplay but same game premise.

As long as you don't have these details written out yet, your analysis will be frankly, rather pointless because your game could still go in many, many directions.

[Abkajud]

I have to agree with Falc - it's all too tempting, especially given the Forge's history of jargon discussions, to go and start searching for the right GNS-related label(s) to slap on your game.
But if you don't have more than the first few bits of a game in place yet, this isn't the time.
This might sound strange, but I think it's more valuable to use GNS theory to detect Drift (incoherent Creative Agenda) rather than to plan a game around a particular C.A. You avoid Drift, at least in theory, by rewarding and reinforcing a consistent, specific C.A. throughout the game.

An example of Drift: most of the White Wolf games want the actual "text" (actual play) of their games to be centered around the use of themes as storytelling devices, but they don't actually consist of much more than basic Gamist-ish mechanics with a heavy dollop of Simulation detail for flavor. Combat, basic dice-rolling, the available character traits... few of these things (don't even get me started on the interesting-yet-tangential Virtues and Vices) really connect back to a coherent theme, let alone to one another.
White Wolf games are mostly Drift-dross because they tell you to do one thing with the Premise, with emphasis on the horror of your condition or the wonder of the Otherworld, but the rules could be very easily adapted to a spy game, or something else entirely non-horror-genre, without anything feeling out of place. Most of the "setting-specific" mechanics aren't really *core* mechanical choices so much as they are "Well, if we take our generic rules, and apply them to *this* situation...". The rules for traveling in the Hedge (in Changeling: the Dreaming) are the basic mechanics of the World of Darkness ruleset, applied to a Hedge situation (the thorny sub-world between Earth and Fairyland/Arcadia).

Hope this helps!

[Eero Tuovinen]

All of these reservations about labeling a game system (itself a second-stage analytical challenge for GNS) at this early a stage (based on a rough idea) with the GNS brush are good ones. However, perhaps this sort of thing might be taken as an educational exercise, too - not too seriously, but maybe Nathan's understanding of GNS will benefit from this:

Speaking solely on the basis of the game I would design with that kernel, it'd be a Narrativist one - the notion of having characters compete for protagonism and spotlight is very natural in a narrativist game, as most of the time you don't want to predefine the exact relations of the characters and indeed can't know before the actual play which characters will instantiate which themes in their stories. Specifically, if you made the game such that individual players had to make real choices and could change their mind about the themes they're supposed to champion, then it'd be obvious narrativism.

The reason for why I find this game concept unnatural as Gamism is that I'm not seeing the fictional challenge. This still might develop into Gamism if the player characters were put into clear operational cross-purposes in the set-up stage of the game, from which they could then proceed to maneuver in competition. But if the "competition" you're seeing in the game is just the fact that different characters develop different themes and have interests that are potentially in cross-purposes, this alone is far from enough to breed Gamism. Indeed, all drama has these properties.

If I weren't creating a Narrativist game, I could see this idea executed for the purposes of Simulationism. Ideally I'd create some more context for the game by giving the players solid pre-created options for character creation; everybody would play archetypic, even cliched characters who embody rigid themes of a given genre. The characters would also get a predefined resource landscape of some sort so that when we wind them up and let them run, we'd see which themes would win the ground this time around.

So yeah, I'd understand this core idea to become a Narrativist or Simulationist game, depending on what it is exactly that interests you in it. Are you just curious about putting some themes into a game and letting them conflict to see what comes out on top? Or are you interested in creating themes and then defending them passionately? Those are the sort of questions that determine whether a game like this becomes Sim or Nar.