Gamist Characteristics

[Rich Forest]

Hm,

Now you've gotten my neurons firing again, Ron.  

First, it has just occurred to me that Walt Freitag did some excellent analysis in this post that is relevant to the question of this thread.  His points are particularly useful because he's nailed down some interesting stuff at the "real people" level.  I think there are some parallels and connections between some of your breakdown, Ben, and some of the things Walt identified in his post.  His "Scorekeeping" seems to related to your identification of accumulative gamist play, for example.  He discusses:

1) Scorekeeping
2) The Be Prepared Game
3) The Set-Up Game
4) The Resource Management Game
5) The Modifiers Game
and
6) Luck

And any of these could become the focus of attention in gamist play.  

Also, something in Ron's quote from the gamism essay reminded me of another switch that could have interesting possibilities in gamist play: "incrementalism" versus "the bomb."  I've stolen this insight from The Ticking Time Bomb: How Steep Rewards and Sudden Catastrophes Help Make a Game Great.  Basically, "incrementalism" and "the bomb" describe how actions are rewarded in the game system.  Do small changes have incrementally small effects, with success dependent on careful and consistent resource management?  Rune has some of this in how points are scored.  Or do small changes have the potential to "explode" at certain points, leading to big changes in the playing field.  Now for an example... Hm...  Right now, no intentional incorporation of bombs in RPG design is jumping out at me, although I'm probably overlooking something really obvious in some game, somewhere.  Well, I suppose "exploding dice," "critical hits," and "botches" from various games offer the luck version of this, but bombs in other areas of potential gamist fun/focus seem lacking.  Incorporating bombs in other areas of gamist interest could be an intriguing possibility for a strong gamist game.  They offer clear options for those moments to arise where everyone suddenly goes, "Whoah.  That was great!" in response to "strategizing, guts, and performance" at the right time.  

I suspect some gamist play probably has taken advantage of bombs in game systems to various degrees, even if the game systems in question failed to intentionally provide for them.  I wonder if some "system breakers" could be said to be exploiting unintentional bombs in the character generation system (which some would argue is a game in and of itself) or in other aspects of a game system.

Rich

[contracycle]

I would suggest that in Classical RP, the "bomb" is character death via levels.  That is, you undergo successive incremental power-ups (sword +1, armour +1) but you still have a responsibility to avoid biting off more than you can chew.  The fatal mistake is to go to a level that you are not ready for, and hence get chopped to little tiny bits.

However, of course, the making of levels more or less explicit, and the introduction of mass resurrections severly undermine this aspect in a lot of actual play.  It was Rons T&T discussion and recently playing Baldurs Gate that suggests this to me.

Civilisation has a bomb which is "being left behind" in the technology race.  If you let this happen, you may well find tanks overrunning your spearmen.  I think the bomb concept as discussed in that article is very useful.

Edit: I mention Civ to provide a counterpoint to somne of the above discussion: SELF esteem matters at least as much as public esteem.  The chief critic of my own performance is me.

[Walt Freitag]

1) Scorekeeping
2) The Be Prepared Game
3) The Set-Up Game
4) The Resource Management Game
5) The Modifiers Game
and
6) Luck

And any of these could become the focus of attention in gamist play.

Actually, this list was of Step On Up aspects most likely to be specifically related to character skills. It doesn't cover all the possible Step On Up aspects of role playing in general, and omits some of the most common ones. A more thorough enumeration might be a good topic for another thread.

The "bomb" idea is a strong one. Bombs are everywhere in game design, from the escalating card-bonus armies in Risk to the blades of the windmill on the miniature golf course. Bombs, or nonlinearities or instabilities, provide much of the unpredictability that is half the game design equation. (Hidden information and player collusion are other, usually weaker, sources of unpredictability.) I view all game design as a balance between predictability (a player with a superior position is more likely to win) and unpredictability (a player with a superior position might still lose). That's my definition of "game balance" and all other descriptions of what "game balance" means come out of that definition as special cases. That, too, might be a topic for another thread.

- Walt